Columnist.
Shortly after I turned six, my family left Chicago and moved to L.A. Because even at that age, the smell of wet woolens hanging in the kindergarten cloakroom was already a stench I found as unappealing as my mother's Friday night special, barley soup, I was happy to move to the land of eternal sunshine. In those days, California was the state that was to be the model for America's future. Its schools were the best, industry was booming, the San Joaquin Valley produced most of the nation's fruits and vegetables, Hollywood was still a magnet for the most talented people in the world and Republicans were winning most of the statewide elections.
If you keep hearing bad news, you come to expect it. I suppose in a way that's a good thing because you are at least spared the shock to your system. Therefore, the only real surprise these days is when a bit of good news slips through. For instance, I know that David Axelrod is getting a lot of media attention for writing a book in which he divulges the news -- stop the presses! – that Barack Obama did not really evolve, as he claimed, from being opposed to same-sex marriages to being an ardent supporter. Axelrod explained that Obama was always in favor of them, but claimed otherwise in 2008 for political reasons. But, really, did anyone really believe he was on the conservative side of the debate? Even homosexuals knew better, which explains why they voted overwhelmingly for the great pretender.
In the 1989 movie, "When Harry Met Sally," there is a famous restaurant scene in which Sally (Meg Ryan) and Harry (Billy Crystal) are having lunch when the subject turns to sex, and Sally feels called upon to prove that women can fake orgasms. Harry doesn't believe it, so Sally starts to moan and groan and thrash around in her chair, seemingly oblivious to her surroundings. When the waiter approaches an elderly woman (director Rob Reiner's mother, Estelle) and asks for her order, she indicates Sally and says, "I'll have what she's having." That pretty much sums up how I felt when I heard Barack Obama recently claim that the world is getting more peaceful and tolerant, and that Islamic terrorism is basically a hoax trumped up by the media. Or to paraphrase FDR, he would have us believe that we have nothing to fear but Fox News itself.
For a great many years, ours was a nation where class distinctions existed, but they weren't usually rolled out for strictly partisan purposes. But that was before Obama and his trolls decided there was political gold to be mined by dividing America into a series of political wards, separated by age, race, gender and income. In England, the people have long been divided into upper class and lower class. Over here, Obama, a notable Anglophobe, has seen to it that the major divide is between those with some vestige of class and those with none. By promoting the redistribution of wealth, he has garnered favor with poor blacks, single women, college students, illegal aliens and Jewish socialists, and through his economic policies he has made the poor poorer and the rich even richer, leading to increased political contributions from defense attorneys, insurance companies and Wall Street. It has also sent a great many of those who were formerly entrenched in the middleclass into poverty, making them increasingly dependent on the federal government, the natural feeding ground of Democrats.
It seems that Brian Williams is a victim of his own pathology. It's not as if anyone put a gun to his head and told him to lie about events in Iraq. But he didn't want to be dismissed as merely an observer. He wanted to be seen as heroic. We'd all like to be seen that way, but he was willing to lie for the glory. In fact, he was so desperate that as a member of his town's volunteer fire department, he once claimed to have rescued a kitten from a burning building. Another time, he mentioned saving two kittens. Unfortunately, lies are commonplace these days and there is little if any shame in being caught in the act. If Obama doesn't tell 10 or 12 whoppers a day, he gets Josh Earnest, Jen Psaki or John Kerry, to go out and tell them on his behalf.
Barack Obama keeps telling us that the overwhelming majority of Muslims are wonderful, peace-loving, people who oppose terrorism. I would love to believe that, but I only have his word for it. And by now, I believe we all know what his word is worth. All the evidence happens to point in the opposite direction. Although most Muslim nations are dictatorships run by royal families or mullahs, we have seen free elections on occasion. In so-called Palestine, the people elected Hamas, a terrorist group dedicated to the elimination of Israel. In Egypt, until the military fortunately took control, the people chose to replace Hosni Mubarak with the terrorists known as the Muslim Brotherhood.
Over the past six years, Obama has left us with a slew of memorable moments. There was that occasion when he called together a group of Democrats and Republicans, and took the opportunity to tell John McCain to sit down and shut up because one of them had won a presidential election, and that someone wasn't Sen. McCain. Then there were the many times that Obama swore that we could all keep our doctors and our health insurance, hoping nobody would notice he had his fingers crossed. Then there was the speech at the U.N. when Obama claimed that the Benghazi massacre was the direct result of a video nobody had seen or the debate with Mitt Romney when he denied that he had shut down oil production on federal land and got moderator Candy Crowley to back him up.
Just when you think every actor is a narcissistic nincompoop along comes Sir Ben ("Gandhi," "Schindler's List") Kingsley, who sadly observed that Europe never grieved over the Holocaust. Asked if he thought it could ever happen again, he said, "Of course," noting that Hitler once asked "Who remembers the Armenians?" referencing the first holocaust of the 20th century when 1.5 million Armenian Christians were slaughtered by the Islamic Turks. Relating a personal anecdote, Kingsley reports that he was on the set of a Holocaust-related film being shot in Budapest when an elderly Hungarian passing by said, "It never happened, and if you don't shut up it will happen again."
Taking a page from Obama's playbook, Al Jazeera America (and how is that for an oxymoron?) has banned such words as "extremist," "Islamist" and "jihad" from its broadcasts, suggesting it may soon be an all-music network. In explaining the rationale for all this pandering to terrorists, an AJA executive said, "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter." I didn't catch the fellow's name, but it might have been Michael Moore, Bill Maher or Josh Earnest. Speaking of the sleazy, slick-haired Maher, he has declared Chris Kyle, the legendary American Sniper, a psychopath. But Bill Maher, who has never failed to live up to his initials, has always been something of a joke. But for someone who bills himself as comedian, he's never been a funny one.
Not since Santa Claus was in short pants has anyone been as generous as Obama when it comes to bestowing gifts. But unlike Santa, Obama insists on rewarding those who have been naughty and turning into Scrooge when it comes to those who are nice. Although all it would take to bring about immigration reform is for Obama to build a 21st century fence along our southern border, he keeps it as porous as possible because he wants the nation flooded with future Democrats. Actually, before erecting a barrier that would solve the problem for the states in the southwest, Obama would be more likely to officially cede Texas, New Mexico, Arizona and California, back to Mexico, and let Nevada, Oregon, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Arkansas and Colorado, inherit the border problem.
As many of you know, I have long trumpeted my support of Scott Walker in the 2016 presidential race. I regard it as a surplus of riches that we Republicans will get to decide between the governor of Wisconsin and several other first-rate candidates, whereas the Democrats seem to be stuck, like prehistoric animals finding themselves knee-deep in the tar pits, with two left-wing dinosaurs named Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren. One thing for certain is that there is much that needs to be done in America to make things right and, thanks to Barack Hussein Obama, perhaps even more that needs to be undone.
Okay, I wasn't on the Titanic. But had I been born 40 years earlier and had my parents been English and decided to sail to America, I could have been on the doomed ship. Apparently that is the sort of thing that passes for the truth in certain liberal circles. So when Brian Williams, the NBC news anchor, claimed for years that his helicopter had been shot down in Iraq, he was merely channeling his inner Hillary Clinton, who insisted in 2008 that she and Chelsea had come under enemy fire during a visit to Serbia. She, in turn, was merely channeling her inner John Kerry, who fibbed about being sent into Cambodia during the Vietnam War and compounded the sin by lying about his war-related injuries and his undeserved Purple Hearts.
For quite a long time, Bernard Goldberg, Bill O'Reilly's go-to guy on media matters, carried my articles on his blog. But, recently, he let me know that would no longer be the case. I had been dumped before, most notably by Townhall. But whereas Townhall never told me why, Bernie, who's a stand-up guy, made his reasons clear. So in case that's where you were reading me, here is why you no longer will: After paying me a few nice compliments, Bernie wrote: "I just don't have time to worry about what you're going to say next about blacks or Muslims or gays or whomever." In response, I wrote: "I can't argue with you, except to state that where blacks are concerned, I believe I have differentiated between the good and the bad on many occasions. On the other hand, when it comes to Islam, I admit I find it difficult to differentiate between those who massacre and those who merely dance in the streets to celebrate massacres.
The source of the title is Yogi Berra, the Hall of Fame Yankee catcher and part time pundit. And never have his words been truer than they were on January 20th, when Barack Obama delivered his penultimate State of the Union address. Because I feel it's my duty, I actually watch these snoozearamas every year. But I can't tell you what a relief it is to realize I only have to sit through one more with Barack Obama at the podium. To be fair, Obama's addresses are not a lot worse than anyone else's. The difference is that all of his are the same. They invariably ignore all the problems created by his policies – especially when it comes to foreign affairs – and invariably call for additional taxes so that Democrats can use the revenue to buy up votes by providing federally-funded bribes to women, students, blacks and illegal aliens.
Barack Obama continues setting free one Islamic terrorist after another in his rush to empty Gitmo, all the while insisting he has to get the place shut down because it is a major recruiting tool for the jihadists. The only problem with that explanation is that, like everything else he says, it's a big, fat lie. You see, the detention center wasn't opened until January, 2002, four months after 3,000 Americans were killed on 9/11. By that time, the Islamists had already taken hostages in Iran; attacked three of our embassies in Africa and the Middle East, along with the U.S.S. Cole and the Marine barracks in Lebanon; initially bombed the World Trade Center in 1993 and, finally, the Islamic version of Pearl Harbor which took place on September11, 2001.
Although even Hillary Clinton, who vowed at the age of four to one day be President, is acting coy about making a run in 2016, I am trying to set a good example for others by announcing that under no circumstances will I be tossing my hat in the ring. That being said, I don't understand why so many Republicans who are also not running seem so upset at the prospect of Mitt Romney giving it another try. The notion that just because he failed to defeat John McCain for the nomination in 2008 or Barack Obama in 2012, he shouldn't run again is just plain goofy. After all, any sane person would acknowledge that we have all lived long enough to rue the results of both those races.
I am Jewish, but not very Jewish. I had Jewish parents and Jewish grandparents, but I am not religiously observant, don't keep kosher and never even had a bar mitzvah because my secular parents left it up to me whether after six hours of junior high I wanted to spend my afternoons attending Hebrew school or playing ball. I only mention this as a matter of full disclosure, so you will understand that when I take Israel's side against its Arab and Muslim neighbors, it's understood that I do so because it is a western-style democracy that shares America's traditional values and not because it is a Jewish state.
I am like a squirrel, but instead of storing nuts in a hollow tree trunk for future consumption, I store idle thoughts away in my in-box. Then one fine day, I decide it's time to empty the contents on an unsuspecting world. This is that day. To start with, a doctor friend of mine informed me that while taking a patient's history before performing an appendectomy, he discovered she was receiving Social Security disability and was on Medicare/Medicaid, but the only ID she had other than the benefit cards was a Mexican voter photo ID. When my friend, who speaks Spanish, asked her if photo IDs were required to vote in Mexico, she said they were because the Mexicans didn't want people who were in Mexico illegally to be able to vote. Apparently she thought that was only sensible, as do I, but unlike her, I'm aware of the irony.
I got such a lift from the midterm elections that I have only recently returned from the stratosphere, leading some people to wonder if I took off again when I heard that Barbara Boxer would not be seeking a fourth term in 2016. I'm afraid not. There is a world of difference between Democrats losing elections and simply retiring, which isn't to say I'll miss seeing or hearing Boxer, whose speaking voice was nearly as off-putting as the liberal malarkey she spewed. Whether we're speaking about Barbara ("Call me Senator") Boxer or Henry (The Garden Gnome) Waxman, their retirement only means that a younger, but equally pigheaded leftist will replace them. Until those who kept re-electing these louts for several decades are retired, we shouldn't expect any miracles.
There was widespread agreement that until Barack Obama came along, Jimmy Carter had a lock on the title of Worst President in American history. However, after he left office, an expensive publicity campaign waged by Habitat for Humanity tried to convince us that he had been magically transformed into a latter-day saint. Amazing what can be accomplished by simply snapping a few photos of a schmuck holding a hammer while standing on a stepladder. But he's no more a carpenter than he was a farmer. The man never got his hands dirty doing either. However, that doesn't mean his hands aren't filthy. In the 35 years since Ronald Reagan evicted him from the White House, Carter has become a bought-and-paid-for propagandist for Islam.
