Columnist.
I happen to believe that the whole notion of man-made global warming is a load of hooey. After all, it's a matter of record that temperatures were rising and falling long before the Industrial Revolution took place, and have continued to fluctuate even after the advent of the internal combustion engine. Furthermore, I believe that Al Gore and the various grifters who have promoted the notion that we could control the weather if only we would agree to return to the Stone Age are only looking to line their pockets by scamming the rest of us. Still, I'd be lying if I said they haven't wormed their way partially into my heart by providing me with more than a few laughs.
I'm aware that a lot of people, including Charles Krauthammer, who happens to be Jewish, and the editors at Time magazine, no doubt secularists, who selected him Person of the Year, are apparently nuts about Pope Francis. I'm just curious what American Catholics honestly think of him. I don't happen to be Catholic, but I certainly hold no ill feelings towards the Church. But if I were a Catholic, I know I'd be conflicted about a pope who doesn't think it's his place to judge abortions and homosexuality, but well within his purview to condemn free market capitalism, as he did during his year-end address.
The big brouhaha that ensued after "Duck Dynasty" patriarch Phil Robertson shared his biblical-based opinion of sodomites ended as I assumed it would. After first bending to objections from the homosexual community and suspending Mr. Robertson, the A&E network quickly reversed itself when some grown-up at corporate headquarters must have said, "Are you guys all insane? Robertson's TV show is the only thing that's keeping the lights on around here." I'm not saying that homosexuals or any other minority group shouldn't have every right to make its feelings known. I'm only suggesting it doesn't entitle them to having the final say.
It's said that everyone has opinions, but I sense that most people don't have as many as I do. Sometimes they become such a burden that I simply have to unload them the way Santa unloads his bag of toys, lest I suffer a hernia of the brain. So, to begin with, when did people forget how to write their names? Now that I'm spending an inordinate amount of time in doctors' offices, I notice that mine is the only signature on the sign-in sheets that's legible. It also makes me wonder how banks can spot forged checks when every signature is a squiggle. I'm sure that nobody makes out a shopping list that's unreadable, so what is it about signatures that bring out the illiterate or at least the illegible in people? Do they think it makes them appear important, the way people thought it did when cell phones were first coming into fashion and every cluck would walk down the street, chattering into one, with furrowed brow, as if the President was calling for advice about the Middle East?
One of the things I don't get about ObamaCare is that they are overcharging young people for health care because those extra dollars are supposed to fund health care services for old folks. But at the same time, we all know that those death panels Sarah Palin warned us about will be denying meds and operations to those of us in our 70s, 80s and 90s. So what's the real purpose of that extra money? I suspect it's to pay for a few more Obama family vacations over the next three years. I admit my evidence is purely circumstantial, but it's based on five years of experience with the weasels in the White House.
The New York Times recently ran a front page story promoting the fiction that a silly video had everything to do with the Benghazi massacre, ignoring the fact that Obama and his Secretary of State had consistently denied Ambassador Chris Stevens' pleas for additional security, and then refused to deploy troops on a rescue mission the evening of 9/11/12. Even liberals had to grasp it was the partisan rag's way of ensuring that this time around nothing would come between Mrs. Clinton and her belated coronation. It was such a clumsy attempt to spin the facts, I'm rather surprised there wasn't a single Democrat with the gumption to call them on it.
Because this is the 50th anniversary of Lyndon Johnson's declaring war on poverty, there has been a lot of attention paid to the problem that I'm betting will somehow survive even longer than cockroaches and Twinkies. Over the past half century, more than $20 trillion has been squandered on various programs intended to magically bring those who refuse to be educated, to refrain from using drugs or waiting until marriage to have children, into the middle class. Like all federal programs initiated by liberals, it demands nothing of recipients but that they refuse to change their ways.
I have no way of knowing all the facts regarding the New Jersey scandal swirling around Gov. Chris Christie, but I certainly have my suspicions. As the story goes, in retaliation for Fort Lee's Mayor Mark Sokolich's refusal to support Christie in his bid for re-election, Christie's deputy chief of staff Bridget Anne Kelly ordered several lanes of the George Washington Bridge shut down, allegedly for the sake of a traffic study. In his defense, Christie insisted he knew nothing about it, claiming that Ms. Kelly betrayed his trust. That would be easier to swallow if we hadn't lived through several years of Barack Obama insisting that he knew nothing about his own various scandals until he read about them in a newspaper.
Far too often, I hear people, including Republicans, whine about gridlock in Washington. They long for compromise the way Romeo yearned for Juliet. I, on the other hand, applaud gridlock. How can I do otherwise when those on one side of the aisle are always wrong? If you disagree, tell me one time that Obama and his gang have been right. This administration was wrong about the trillion dollar Stimulus, Cash for Clunkers and shovel-ready jobs. They've been wrong about Syria, Libya, Iran, Iraq, Russia and Egypt. They have also been wrong about the national debt, illegal immigrants, defense spending, same-sex marriages, climate change, "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," military pensions and a 2.3% tax on medical devices, which will inevitably leave medical innovation entirely up to the Israelis. That's assuming that Obama's treaty with Iran doesn't lead to the mullahs nuking Israel out of existence.
One of the many oddities of this administration is that while it's constantly referring to congressional Republicans as bomb-throwing terrorists, villains with whom it's useless to negotiate, they are always willing to give away the store to actual bomb-throwing terrorists in Syria, Iran, Afghanistan and Palestine. The fact is that they were so fearful that the Palestinians were going to walk away from peace talks with the Israelis, Kerry slipped them a $75 million bribe to stay at the table and continue the charade. Even though everyone knows that the Palestinians have no desire to reach a peaceful agreement with the Jews, with this administration, everything is finally about optics, and Obama and Kerry thought it would look bad if the Arabs left in a huff.
You may have heard about the German Christian family that sought refuge in America because home-schooling is outlawed in Germany. Because the public schools in Germany are probably as bad as ours, except that, along with promoting secular socialism, they somehow manage to teach the kids how to read, write and do math, the parents refused to turn their children over to the state to be indoctrinated. The Obama administration, which refuses even to enforce immigration laws when they involve young Latinos, is attempting to deport the family back to Germany, where the parents stand to lose custody of their children.
If I were only as oblivious to the news as so many of my fellow Americans are, I have no doubt I would sleep a lot better than I do. For instance, when I bet on Mitt Romney last year, it wasn't because I was unaware that Obama was leading in the polls, but because I couldn't accept that in spite of a gruesome economy, a foreign policy that benefitted our enemies and harmed our allies, and a socialized medicine plan that would destroy the best health care system in the world, the electorate would ignore the evidence and re-elect Obama. Proving it was no fluke, recent polls indicate that two out of three Americans think the treaty with Iran that gains us nothing, but serves to legitimatize their nuclear program and free up seven billion dollars that they can use to sponsor terrorism around the world, is reason to celebrate.
Because I'm a conservative, it figures that I am going to be highly skeptical of anything Barack Obama or his sock puppet, Jay Carney, says, but are there any liberals who still believe a word they utter? For instance, when those two guys claim that everything Republicans do and say is based solely on partisan politics, surely there must be at least a few Democrats in or out of Congress whose gut response is, "Hey, look who's talking." Listening to Obama and Carney whine about the other side being blinded by partisan politics would be like hearing Al Capone and old Joe Kennedy complain that people weren't obeying the Prohibition ban on liquor consumption.
Barack Obama seems less and less like a president and more and more like a visitor from the spirit world. He looks real enough, but wouldn't an actual human being be embarrassed if he had to keep saying that he didn't know about things that were happening right under his nose? Can you even imagine being the commander-in-chief and claiming to be unaware of Operation Fast and Furious, electioneering at the IRS and what took place at Benghazi, until you read about it in the NY Times?
At the time Nancy Pelosi famously remarked that the Affordable Care Act would have to be passed before we knew what was in it, I didn't realize that by "we," she was including Barack Obama. I should have guessed, though. After all, this guy is as lazy as that kid who always tried to hide out in the eighth grade by sitting in the last seat in the back row, praying never to be called on. It's only right that it's referred to as his signature piece of legislation because the only role this goofus played in creating this monster was signing it.
I think we can all agree that when major world leaders die, we all die a little bit ourselves. In my case, I generally come down with a terminal case of boredom because the media bombards us with tributes from people who labor under the delusion that a little bit of glory rubs off on them if they utter the requisite number of laudatory clichés. In Mandela's case, he was apparently as good and bad as any figure of our time. Nobody can deny that he was exactly what his nation needed -- a leader who not only didn't seek revenge on those who had kept him in prison for 27 years, but who had handed over the presidency after a few short years when every other African leader hangs on for as long as he can, generally murdering countless thousands in order to do so.
Only a stumblebum like Obama would think that signing an agreement with Iran that basically caves to an evil nation would be a good way to distract people from the catastrophe known as the Affordable Care Act. Just because Obama can't do two things at once -- or even one thing if it requires anything beyond reading words off a Teleprompter -- he assumes other people can't recognize that he is as toxic on the world stage as he is domestically.
For nearly five years, I waited and wondered if anything would ever puncture the Teflon shell surrounding Obama. Nothing seemed capable of even denting the fortress erected by the media, the DNC and all his henchmen in Congress. The irony is that it was a weapon of his own making, the Affordable Care Act, that finally exploded the man and the manufactured myth.
Because it's been about 80 years since Will Rogers died in a plane crash, there are a lot of people who never heard of him even though he had been a major attraction in vaudeville, a movie star and a homespun columnist given to such observations as "The only difference between death and taxes is that death doesn't get worse every time Congress meets." But, to be fair, as wise as he was, Mr. Rogers never heard of ObamaCare. It's also worth noting that when he uttered his most famous line, "I never met a man I didn't like," he had never met Barack Obama.
When people used to say "Only in America," they intended it as praise, highlighting the promise that anyone -- no matter his religion, his nation of origin or the circumstances into which he was born -- could succeed in America beyond anyone's expectation. But when you see a Marxist slacker like Obama twice elected to the highest office in the land, the words take on a cynical connotation, and are definitely no longer a compliment.
