Columnist.
I admit it's not easy picturing Bernie Sanders, the schnook from Brooklyn by way of Vermont as a Mafioso, but it's obvious that he will make Hillary Clinton an offer she won't be able to refuse. The offer will be to support her and not run as a third party candidate so long as he gets to create the Democratic platform in his own goofy image and that she remains as far to the left as he has moved her, and that she not try to sneak back to the middle in the general election.
I couldn't wait to see the documentary "Weiner," which in about an hour and a half documented the remarkable fall, rise and fall, of the former NY congressman and aspiring mayor of NYC. Being a political junkie, I found the movie fascinating, funny and even a little sad. It was funny because here was a guy who, as a liberal Jew, could have spent 40 more years in Congress, rising, as every aging leftwing hack does, to the inevitable rank of statesman, if only he wasn't fixated on texting pictures of what, in romance fiction, is often described as one's throbbing manhood, to various women he had never even met.
If I ever decided to get into the retail trade, I wouldn't want to sell cars, clothes or electronics. I'd want to open a market where people could go shopping for grievances. I wouldn't even have to pay for advertising. Word of (loud) mouth would be enough, and best of all, I'd have ready buyers in every strata of society, in every city and town in America.
There are various forms of addictions that are rampant in America today. The most obvious one involves illegal drugs. It's bad enough that millions of our citizens have chosen to not only turn themselves into moral and physical cripples, but help finance drug cartels and Islamic jihadists. I mean, they can plead ignorance, but where do they think the blood money goes?
There's no getting around the fact that America is not what she used to be. Depending on your worldview, which has more than a little to do with your age, that is either a good thing or the worst thing imaginable. Being a 76-year-old conservative, it should be no surprise that I believe it is the latter. I don't believe it is a coincidence that three of the most repulsive candidates in our nation's history are presently duking it out, hoping to be the next president of the United States. What makes it truly mind-boggling is that I believe the person who is the rudest and crudest of the three is the last best hope America has of recouping some of the enormous losses here and abroad the nation has experienced under Barack Obama.
Most of us are raised to root for the underdog, for the person or people who somehow succeed in spite of the odds stacked against them. At least that used to be the case. These days, it seems what we keep seeing are those who were previously held down behaving as if they are now entitled to rule the roost and call the shots.
As most of you are aware, I am not a black man. That means that in certain quarters, whatever negative comment I might care to make about Barack Obama, Al Sharpton, Black Lives Matter or Loretta Lynch, will be dismissed as racist drivel. So be it. I had imagined that Eric Holder would go down as the worst Attorney General in American history. But, then, I also assumed that Jimmy Carter would go down as the worst president. But Obama has spent the last seven years making me eat those words for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
When West Virginians got upset with Hillary Clinton for stating "I will put coal miners and coal companies out of business," she hastened to explain that she had misspoken. Apparently the voters didn't believe her any more than the rest of us did, providing Bernie Sanders with a 15-point victory in the primary.
By now, I have to assume you all know that Donald Trump was never my favorite in the race. I had fonder feelings for others — including a few, such as Dr. Ben Carson, Bobby Jindal and Scott Walker — whom I didn't feel were qualified to be the Commander-in-Chief. But that was then and this is now, and quite frankly, I don't understand those who either intend to sit out the election in November or even vote for Hillary Clinton. After all this time, I don't wish to list all the reasons I didn't want Trump to be the GOP standard bearer. But that list would read like the forward to a 600-page book dealing with the multiple sins and failings of Mrs. Clinton.
There's no question that illegal immigration is a major headache in America, a headache of migraine proportions. Even though liberals choose to pretend that the problem exists only in the minds of conservative racists, even they know that race has nothing to do with it. If there were 15 or 20 million Scandinavians "living in the shadows," as they like to say, conservatives would be equally resentful that of all the nations in the world, ours was the only one whose sovereignty could be ignored with impunity. Of course it would also mean that there was nobody left in Sweden, Denmark and Norway.
Although I generally rely solely on my own brain when writing my articles, I'd be pretty darn silly if I didn't occasionally share the thoughts of others. To kick things off, my actor friend James Wood, who, having retired, thus cutting himself loose from the shackles of group think, Hollywood-style, is finally free to express his own conservatism. Taking advantage of his new-found freedom, he recently observed: "The world is fighting Islamic terrorism, starvation and disease, but Democrats are fighting for men to pee in the ladies' room."
Over the past few decades, I've made a conscious effort to avoid liberals. I realize it's intolerant of me, but I find it next to impossible to associate with people who support the politicians I believe are actively and intentionally destroying America. Even I can only talk about baseball for just so long. One of the few liberals I have retained cordial relations with is a former agent of mine. He is without a doubt the only agent I ever had that I liked. Believe me, in most cases, you really don't want to be seen in public with these people.
Say what you will about Donald Trump, and God knows I've said plenty, he is a political phenomenon. When he tossed his hair in the ring nine or ten months ago, there were very few people who thought that of the 8,347 Republican contenders, he would be one of the *final* three in the hunt and certainly not be the one leading the pack. I understand the attraction. Whereas some of us regard him as boorish and arrogant, and about as conservative as the typical New York or Hollywood wheeler-dealer, others happily overlook his shortcomings because he's rich, been married to a number of European knock-outs and doesn't mince his words.
There isn't a doubt in my mind that leftists are certifiably insane. I don't mean that as an insult. At least not entirely. It's just that after years of analyzing the subspecies, that is the only conclusion I can arrive at with any degree of certainty. For instance, two people with equally good intentions can arrive at differing conclusions when it comes to achieving certain shared goals. But when one of those people intentionally lies, and for no apparent reason, gaining no obvious advantage, what other explanation can there be?
To hear the way that some people talk, you would think that a contested convention would be the worst thing to hit humankind since the black plague killed off half of Europe in the Middle Ages. By "some people," I suppose I mean Donald Trump and his consigliore, Roger Stone, who keeps saying he has no connection to the Trump campaign, but nevertheless took it upon himself to threaten delegates to the Cleveland convention with eternal damnation if they even considered abandoning Trump after the first ballot.
There is, of course, no such thing as an ideal candidate. Even I wouldn't pass muster because, on a few rare occasions, I have changed my mind and I might therefore dismiss myself as an unreliable flip-flopper. But, by and large, I would be happy to vote for someone who agreed with me on, say, 75% of the following issues: I'm against abortions and same-sex marriages. In the first instance, I refuse to accept that a baby can be both a little person whose birth is anxiously anticipated by large numbers of people, while in another case it can simply be removed like a wart. Either the little life is precious or it's worthless, but it can't be both simultaneously.
Like Barack Obama, Donald Trump is convinced that he is the smartest person in the room. Any room. So it is that when he entered the lair of Chris Matthews, the schnook who confessed to experiencing an orgasm when he heard Obama's voice, and was asked to name the three main functions of the federal government, the big oaf mentioned national security, health and education. Well, a .333 batting average will get a baseball player into Cooperstown, but when you're hoping to be the GOP candidate for president, it's strictly bush league.
I know that a lot of people distrust polls. I'm not one of those people. I learned my lesson in 2012 when the polls all said that Obama would be re-elected and I went with my gut, which insisted there was no way on earth that the worst president in American history would, after the most disastrous first term imaginable, be provided with an additional four years in which to make things even worse. At the time, I said that America could probably manage to survive eight years of Barack Obama, but I wasn't convinced it could survive an electorate that would provide him with a second term. I still feel that way.
I bet that title grabbed your attention. Is it possible, you're asking yourselves, that Prelutsky has gone over to the dark side? Has he signed on to join Obama, Mrs. Clinton, Joe Biden and Al Gore, in proclaiming that in a loony bin of a world in which Iran will soon be a nuclear power, North Korea is threatening to incinerate New York, ISIS is building a caliphate populated entirely by serial killers and Vladimir Putin is counting his blessings that Barack Obama is president and not Ronald Reagan, that the weather is our single biggest worry?
