Columnist.
This week, the Los Angeles Times reported a wave of theft plaguing area high schools. The objects at stake? Tubas. According to South Gate High School music teacher Ruben Gonzalez Jr., thieves broke into the band room and stole nothing but tubas. A few weeks before, thieves took eight sousaphones from a Compton high school. Either the original cast of "The Music Man" is criminally eager for a revival, or these thieves are selling the horns on the black market. Now the left loves to claim that crime waves like this are caused by poverty. If you're poor, the logic goes, you'll have to steal a loaf of bread -- or a trombone -- to feed your child. Criminality thus becomes a moral act.
Last week in Boston, a seven-year-old boy named Mark got into a fight with a bully. The bully put his hands around the boy's throat and began to squeeze. That's when Mark fought back; he kicked his aggressor right in the family jewels. In a normal society, we'd celebrate Mark. Throw him a ticker tape parade or something. Bullies need a sharp kick to the testicles. That's how you convince them that bullying is wrong. But in Boston, Mark was charged with sexual assault. Just to get this straight: Massachusetts Democrat Barney Frank's gay lover can run a homosexual prostitution ring from his apartment and Frank will not be prosecuted. But a boy kicks a bully in the berries and he faces expulsion from school.
This week, in Oakland, Calif., America saw yet another stellar example of the glories of diversity. At a taping of a rap music video in that fair city, eight people, including a one-year-old child, were shot. When a classical music video goes wrong, somebody busts a string. When a rap music video goes wrong, somebody busts a cap. Such observations, however, are now taboo. We're not supposed to suggest that the rap culture is any different from the classical music culture or that one is better than another. As white guy John Kerry put it, "I think there's a lot of poetry in it. There's a lot of anger, a lot of social energy in it. And I think you'd better listen to it pretty carefully, 'cause it's important ... it's a reflection of the street and it's a reflection of life."
The first object of government, wrote James Madison in Federalist Paper No. 10, was to protect the American people from deep turkey fryers. Oh, wait. That was Janet Napolitano, who this week had her Department of Homeland Security release a two-minute video highlighting the incredible danger to Homeland Security posed by these kettles of horror. "We recently tested several models of deep fat turkey fryers," a bureaucratic-looking fellow wearing a hardhat tells the camera, "and find that this method of cooking can be very hazardous." A man-made disaster, if you will. Undoubtedly, the American people must be protected from the scourge of misused turkey fryers. If we burn ourselves on Thanksgiving dinner, the terrorists will have won.
When the Israeli government captured Nazi mass murderer Adolf Eichmann, journalist Hannah Arendt was struck by the fact that Eichmann appeared to be a nondescript accountant type. He was not highly intelligent, and he did not appear to be particularly vicious. This led Arendt to the conclusion that anyone could, under the right ideological circumstances, become evil. Evil, she said, was banal. This was an exaggeration of the case. Eichmann was a willing executioner of Hitler's orders; he identified deeply with Hitler's anti-Semitism. He was not just a cog in the system, he was an active system-maker.
What is Barack Hussein Obama thinking? That's the question that has to be on everyone's lips at this point. We've spent trillions of dollars of taxpayer money we don't have -- to no avail. We've created massive new entitlement programs without funding them. We've emboldened class warfare artists to take to the streets, littering America's public spaces with human debris -- all with presidential backing. We've kowtowed to dictators around the world and created new Islamic terror states in the Middle East. It's as though this man doesn't have the best interests of the United States at heart.
There are reports out of Washington, D.C., this week that the Obama administration is in a regular tizzy about the possibility that Israel will strike Iran's nuclear facilities without U.S. help or permission. According to a senior State Department official, the Obama administration is so worried that Israel will go it alone that they are finally placing pressure on China and Russia to sanction Iran more strictly. Such pressure will accomplish precisely nothing, just as it has since the ascendancy of the ayatollahs. Iran does not care about economic pressure. As a fascist religious state, their concern is strictly with fulfillment of their cataclysmic destiny -- in short, with the mass genocide of the Jews in Israel. Benjamin Netanyahu knows that, which is why he has been bringing home hostages such as Gilad Shalit in anticipation of an attack on Iran. When that attack takes place, Netanyahu knows, every Jew in Muslim territory will be endangered.
"Imagine there's no countries," John Lennon warbled in his inane song "Imagine." "It isn't hard to do / Nothing to kill or die for ... Imagine all the people / Living life in peace / You may say that I'm a dreamer / But I'm not the only one / I hope someday you'll join us / And the world will be as one." They believed in those pathetic dreams in Europe. In the aftermath of World War II, facing the prospect of Soviet domination and wanting to keep the defeated Germans from completing a World War trilogy, the European community, aided by the United States, created the European Coal and Steel Community. A federal Europe was the goal; the original plans included a European Defense Community and a European Political Community, both of which fell through. Eventually, this grew into the European Economic Community.
There are very few people we come across who profoundly touch our lives -- parents, teachers, friends. Almost all have one aspect in common: They spend copious amounts of time with us. Then there are the rarities, folks who move us deeply even after just a few meetings. These are people who don't require time to make their presence felt. These people leave their indelible mark simply by being who they are. We are lucky to come into contact with them.
This year, we may not get to see Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers play. The people of Italy probably will. While the National Basketball Association lockout continues, Bryant is considering a deal worth $5 million for one year from the Virtus Bologna. He's not the only NBA player who might appear overseas. Deron Williams of the New Jersey Nets signed a contract with the Turkish team Besiktas, worth $200,000 per month. Many more top players are jumping overseas during the work stoppage. By contrast, Bryant signed a contract on April 2, 2010, with the Lakers for $87 million, which means he's playing for about one-sixth what he would be if the NBA lockout ended. Williams has a player option for $17.7 million next year, so he's playing for about one-seventh his normal pay.
The stars are aligned for Mitt Romney. In every Republican debate, he has been left relatively untouched by the moderators and by every candidate save Gov. Rick Perry of Texas. He continues to ride high in the national polling, holding steady at near one quarter of the likely Republican primary voters. The Republican Party bigwigs, including key funders on Wall Street, are throwing their support to him. There's only one problem: He'll lose the general election.
"The story is one of not covert activity alone," intoned Sen. Daniel Inouye, D-Hawaii, "but of covert foreign policy .... It is a tale of working outside the system and of utilizing irregular channels and private parties accountable to no one, on matters of national security, while ignoring the Congress and even the traditional agencies of executive foreign policy making. The story is both sad and sordid." Sen. Inouye was speaking not of the biggest scandal of the Obama administration, but of the biggest scandal of the Reagan administration -- the Iran-Contra scandal. In that scandal, the United States sold weapons to parties in Iran in an attempt to free Lebanese-held hostages, then funneled the weapons cash to the anti-communist Contras in Nicaragua. The outcome of that scandal: indictments against the secretary of defense, the national security advisor, the assistant secretary of state, the chief of covert ops at the CIA and several others.
Very often, I am asked to sum up for politics-minded colleagues just what I think is so terribly wrong with the American economy. It's always difficult to encapsulate all of America's fiscal problems in a few sentences -- everything from devastating crime to rising poverty levels, from inflated real estate values to bank bailouts, comes into play. Barrels of ink have been spilled on this topic, and barrels more will follow them. In short, it's almost impossible to sum up what's wrong with America's economy while standing on one leg.
America stands on the brink of economic annihilation. The situation has become that serious. Our president wants to spend an additional $447 billion on random nonsense guaranteed to create zero new jobs; he wants to tax American citizens to pay for it. There are only 1.75 full-time private sector workers for each Social Security recipient, which means that Social Security is essentially insolvent. The unemployment rate remains 9.1 percent. The stock market is bouncing like a ping-pong ball because nobody knows what to expect -- and some experts estimate that it will drop another 20 percent in the long run before hitting rock bottom.
This week, Sarah Palin gave a terrific speech in Indianola, Iowa. In it, she tore into the Washington political class. Men and women in government get wealthy by "bail(ing) out their friends on Wall Street and their corporate cronies...reward(ing) campaign contributors...buy(ing) votes via earmarks...And there is a name for this: It's called corporate crony capitalism...It's the collusion of big government and big business and big finance to the detriment of all the rest -- to the little guys." This "crony capitalism," Palin said, is "not the capitalism of free men and free markets." It is the "crony capitalism that destroyed Europe's economies."
This week, the ubiquitously absurd Lady Gaga appeared at the MTV Video Music Awards. Well, actually, she didn't appear -- her alter ego, Jo Calderone, did. Calderone looked frighteningly hideous, with a large coif that looked a good deal like Elvis and a dark brooding look that looked a good deal like crystal meth. Overall, she strongly resembled Sal Mineo in "Rebel Without A Cause." In her opening monologue, Gaga channeling Calderone said, "She left me! She said it always starts out good and then the guys -- meaning me, I'm one of the guys -- we get crazy. I did. I got crazy. But she's f---ing crazy too, right?" Apparently, Gaga as Calderone was telling fans that Gaga left Calderone. Got it?
There are a few key phrases that tell you precisely where someone stands on the political spectrum. If someone invokes "social justice," you can guarantee he or she voted for Obama, even though everyone on earth is presumably for justice in all of its forms. If someone preaches "women's rights," you know he or she supports abortion, even though the rights of the women have nothing to do with whether or not they can kill their unborn child. The left has claimed these terms, and we all know it.
Gov. Rick Perry's entry into the Republican nomination process has transformed the 2012 election into a truly memorable contest. Before his entry, conservatives were stuck with a choice between a hard-nosed newcomer with just two House elections under her belt and a penchant for occasional gaffes, and a smooth-talking corporate type who fathered ObamaCare and ranked 47 out of 50 in state job growth as governor of Massachusetts -- hardly inspiring options. Perry changes the game. This election cycle is going to be about two main issues: the economy and the nature of what America will look like. Perry is an advocate with a record on both scores.
For years, the President of the United States has told us that his single economic achievement has been the recovery of the stock market. In his state of the union address this year, President Obama told us, "Two years after the worst recession most of us have ever known, the stock market has come roaring back. The economy is growing again." So...there's that.
We were told over and over again that if America didn't raise her debt-ceiling, the financial roof would come tumbling down about our ears. We were told that the consequences for our credit rating would be disastrous. We were told that the stock market would crash. So, our elected representatives passed a debt-ceiling increase. Democrats complained that the increase didn't raise taxes; Republicans complained that the increase kicked the proverbial can down the road on spending. Democrats claimed victory for having forced Republicans to raise the ceiling at all; Republicans claimed victory for having forced Democrats to offset increased spending with certain cuts.
