Columnist.
Let me confess that, aside from donating time or money, I rarely understand the odd things done on behalf of charities. For instance, even decades ago when I was an advertising copywriter, my fellow workers would often ask me to donate money based on how far they walked or ran on the weekend. I understood the part about donating, but I couldn't fathom why the distance they covered should have anything to do with the amount. These days, a great many people are allowing themselves to be doused with a large bucket of ice water as a way to help finance one cause or another. Although I admit to experiencing a certain *joie de vivre* each and every time I see some left-wing show biz celebrity being given an ice bath, I fail to see the connection to charity.
These days, you can hardly look at our institutions or the electorate and not wonder how or if America will survive. Even our so-called houses of worship are not above suspicion. Whether it's mosques, where far too often our vilest enemies meet to plot our deaths and America's downfall; black churches, where hatred of whites is often passed off as gospel by reverends cut in the style of Jeremiah Wright; or Presbyterian churches, where its ministers are so preoccupied with attacking Israel, they often ignore Christ altogether and overlook the fact that he was a Jew.
Recently, my wife told me to stop picking on the Tea Party. Frankly, I was taken aback that after six books and 1500 articles espousing my conservative beliefs, not to mention 29 years of marriage, I would be accused of attacking those with whom I tended to agree. But Yvonne's words gave me pause and made me think about it. I had to admit that on a couple of occasions I had admitted that I couldn't stand listening to Sarah Palin's voice, and that the recurring "You betchas" had begun wearing on me like an Alaskan water torture. I had also taken Ted Cruz to task because his carefully engineered, but ill-timed, shutdown of the federal government, had allowed Clinton bagman Terry McAuliffe to defeat Republican Ken Cuccinelli in Virginia's 2013 gubernatorial race. To be fair, Cruz wasn't entirely responsible. If the Libertarian candidate Robert Sarvis hadn't sucked off roughly seven percent of the votes, Cuccinelli would today be ensconced in the governor's mansion.
I hope that the Republicans gain control of the Senate, but I don't expect any miracles. I just want to wrench the reins away from Harry Reid, and force Obama to veto all those bills that the House has been sending along since 2010 that Reid has killed, thus sparing the Senate Democrats from ever having to cast an embarrassing vote. After all these years, the public would finally have a chance to see a real obstructionist in action. Some of my readers have likened Obama to the serpent in the Garden of Eden, but that's hardly fair. For one thing, the snake didn't keep running off to play golf and attend fund-raisers. For another thing, the snake didn't require the services of a Teleprompter in order to utter a coherent sentence. And for yet another, the snake only lied once.
Liberals, I hasten to add, are also an endless source of aggravation, terror and sheer nausea. But, really, if you can't laugh at them, you not only lack a sense of humor, but even the most basic of coping skills required to survive the current administration. For instance, Joe Biden, who can nearly always be counted on to be unintentionally hilarious, recently told a crowd of sycophants in Joplin, MO, that we should never forget the 161,000 Missourians who lost their lives during the 2011 tornado that ravaged their town. Because everyone in the crowd and on the stage with him was a liberal, nobody pointed out to the Vice President that the actual number was 161. Joplin's entire population is only 50,150 and, no, Mr. Biden, it wasn't 211,150 before the tornado hit.
Among the issues that the Democrats are trying to run on this year, it's a tie between the minimum wage and the war on women as to which of them is the phonier. The first step in trying to make the case for the minimum wage a campaign issue came years ago when the liberals changed what everyone knew was supposed to be the salary paid to teenagers who were looking to pay for their own movies and tennis shoes to something called "a living wage," which, thanks to the influx of unskilled Hispanics streaming across our border, was suddenly supposed to support entire families.
It is my contention that political correctness has so deeply infiltrated American society that it has affected our approach to defending ourselves against Islamic terrorism, deadly epidemics and even presidential assassins. In the past, AIDS, which, in spite of the massive publicity campaign waged by the homosexual community, was never a great threat to heterosexuals -- unless, of course, they were the really cheap and stupid drug addicts who shared hypodermic needles -- nobody in public life ever had the guts to suggest that those with the disease be quarantined.
The emasculation of the U.S. military began, I believe, during the first Gulf War, and had nothing to do with the red carpet that was eventually rolled out for women and homosexuals. I still remember how shocked I was that there was such a to-do over the fact that our troops had to deal with their chocolate bars melting in the desert heat. I kept hearing that something, by God, had to be done about it. I would never suggest that our soldiers should be regarded as cannon fodder, but the uproar over candy bars made it sound as if they were a troop of Brownies. Things have only gotten worse under Obama's watch with his pledge that our warriors will never get any closer to the battlefield than 20,000 feet above it.
How it is that so many cuckoos escaped from their clocks and have wound up in positions of authority, I will never know. But there's no getting around the fact that the American symbol is no longer a bald eagle or even Ben Franklin's preferred turkey, but has been replaced by the Swiss-made cuckoo bird. For instance, the University of California, San Francisco, has just launched an online abortion course that will delve into "clinical aspects of medication abortion, aspiration abortion, post-abortion contraception, and pain management for abortion." According to Prof. Jody Steinauer: "I think if we can inspire even a small portion of the people who take the course to take steps in their communities to increase access to safe abortion and decrease stigma about abortion, then we will have been totally successful."
When it comes to Islam, people like George W. Bush, Barack Obama and our corrupt State Department, insist the jihadists are an aberration and should not be the cause of slandering an entire religion. To which, I say a heart-felt "Baloney!" When it comes to the followers of Islam, we're not talking about a few rotten apples; we're talking about a toxic orchard. In much the same way, our leaders keep pretending there's a world of difference between Sunni and Shite, or between Al Qaeda, the Khorasan Group, the Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, ISIS, Boko Haram and the Muslim Brotherhood. They even pretend that CAIR, the propaganda arm of the Brotherhood here in America, is any better or has any other function than the Nazi Bund had in the 30s and early 40s, prior to our entry into World War II. The problem is that the past two administrations have refused to acknowledge that Islam is at war with us.
We all have things to complain about. We always have and we always will. But it strikes me that the things we have to gripe about have become increasingly important over the past 30 years or so because so often they leave America and the world in worse shape than before. Our education system, once the envy of the world, has become hostage to progressive teachers, professors, administrators, fascistic student bodies and Islamic pressure groups. Our mass media, which at one time, at least made the attempt to deal objectively with the news has, in the wake of Woodward and Bernstein's enormous success, tossed off even the pretense of being anything other than a propaganda outlet for a liberal agenda.
I acknowledge that charity is one of the virtues, but I have a hard time accepting the way it works. For one thing, I don't know why people often insist that it be anonymous. To me, a critical part of accepting charity is to express gratitude to the giver. Otherwise, or so it seems to me, people will inevitably come to accept it as their due. I also do not understand that which strikes me as charity in perpetuity. For instance, every time I turn on my radio I'm hearing commercials calling for donations to feed the poor in Haiti. I'm told how little it will cost me to feed x-number of Haitian kids for x-number of months for x-number of dollars. But inasmuch as I've been hearing these same commercials for years now, I keep wondering how it is that nobody has ever taught Haitians how to fish and how to grow their own crops. Is this an entire nation that relies entirely on the generosity of American radio listeners in the same way that generations of Americans have come to depend on the largesse of the American taxpayer?
(Ebola, the IRS, Thomas Duncan, Leon Panetta, Bill Clinton, Roe v. Wade)
Recently, Omar Gonzalez and Kevin Carr were arrested for hopping over the White House fence. Gonzalez made it all the way inside, proving that Ronald Kessler wasn't just whistling Dixie when he wrote in "The First Family Detail" about all the corners the Secret Service has been cutting over the past several years, just so that the directors can take bows for cutting costs. On the other hand, when you realize how Obama and the Democrats have conspired to erase our borders, it seems hypocritical that they can encourage millions of aliens to trespass in America, but feel entitled to throw the book at a couple of guys for daring to trespass in Obama's temporary digs. Some people have been astonished at the ease with which Gonzalez and Carr carried off their stunt. But that's nothing compared to the ease with which Barack Hussein Obama managed to sneak into the White House.
I confess I'm at a loss when it comes to deciding when it's okay to brand someone a villain and when it's not. For instance, it seems to be acceptable for some people to label conservatives, Tea Party members and even white people in general, as good-for-nothings. However, it's regarded as bad manners, insensitive and racist, if you point out that Muslims create an inordinate amount of trouble in the world and that blacks cause a disproportionate amount of havoc in America. Even today, when Muslims are responsible for violence all around the globe, we're all expected to pretend that it's just a few bad apples, and that most followers of Islam are gentle, loving individuals. Nonsense! They are a bloodthirsty lot who have contributed little to the world in 1500 years, aside from suicide bombs, a degenerate view of Paradise and clitorectomies.
Much, I'd say too much, has been made of the incident in the elevator involving Ray Rice and his then-fiancée. I believe that most of us agree that men should not slug women and women should not spit on men. But in a world where men are being beheaded and women are being stoned, whipped and sold into sexual slavery, I think we should all get a grip. In the wake of the incident NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell stood a good chance of losing his job. As I sit here, the question hasn't yet been answered and, unless you're a friend or relative of Mr. Goodell's, it will be of no concern to you.
I believe it is essential that the GOP take back control of the Senate in November because it would help limit the damage that Obama can do to this nation in his final two years. But I'm not sure that's enough. If you doff your rose-colored glasses, it's awfully hard to see a lot of silver linings. Once you get past our gallant past and the promise of our divinely-inspired Constitution, what do you see? What I see are a million abortions a year. I see the foolishness of same-sex marriages and I see states tripping over themselves in their rush to legalize brain-deadening drugs. I see the filth and decadence of our popular culture. I see journalists who have rejected objectivity and assumed the role of propagandists for the Left. I see our leaders promoting a racial divide that ignores black violence, black illegitimacy rates and the morphing of black thugs into Muslim terrorists, while accusing the entire white race of bigotry.
As you may have heard, when Obama finally got around to announcing that he thought the Islamic State was almost as dangerous as John Kerry, Joe Biden, Chuck Hagel and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, had been insisting it was for several weeks, the first thing he did was tell us that the enemy was neither Islamic nor a state. One could argue whether the area the terrorist group controls, an area the size of Belgium, is really a state. But, then, one could argue whether Belgium, a place the rest of us have only heard of because it was the birthplace of Agatha Christie's fictional detective, Hercule Poirot, is a state.
I recently heard from a woman whose late son had been gay, but had nevertheless been a conservative and had tried to persuade his gay friends not to vote for Obama. I commended her for raising a son who obviously thought for himself. I also let her know that I realized that not every homosexual feels compelled to cast his lot with the Left simply because liberals have adopted same-sex marriage as a major plank in their goofy platform. Still, knowing something about her from earlier exchanges, I asked how it was that she could continue being a Presbyterian when the church hierarchy is not only to the left of the DNC, but virulently anti-Israel, forever denouncing the Jewish state and leading the anti-Semitic chorus of those urging individuals and colleges to divest themselves of their investments in Israeli companies.
I don't know if you're aware of it, and until I checked it out I certainly wasn't, but 17 states are represented by one Democrat and one Republican in the U.S. Senate. How can that be? How is it that in a nation as divided as America is today, that a third of the states have seen fit to split its vote this way? Frankly, I can better understand California's electing a pair of liberal dingbats like Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer than I can grasp why it is that, say, Alaska, Florida, New Hampshire and Wisconsin, wound up with one dingbat and one Republican.
