Columnist.
Recently, it occurred to me that when we say certain painters are great, we're generally only parroting what others have told us. I, personally, don't happen to care for Picasso, Gauguin or Van Gogh. Their subjects held no interest for me. But even if they did, does that make any of their canvases worth millions of dollars on the open market? Tell an art critic that you prefer Norman Rockwell's magazine covers to Degas, and he'd have you horsewhipped in the public square as a self-admitted Philistine. But why is a painting of water lilies superior to an amusing depiction of a small town barber or a boy and his dog?
One of the basic problems with those on the Left is that they become infatuated with certain words while choosing to ignore their meanings. For instance, one of their favorites is equality. Unfortunately, equality is merely a concept. No two individuals are really the same; human beings, after all, are not robots, although liberals come close. For sane people, equality translates to equality under the law and equal opportunity to achieve one's goals.
If you're not a baseball fan, you might not know who Mariano -- Mo to his friends, fans and teammates -- Rivera is. He is the closer for the New York Yankees, the fellow they've been calling on since the mid-90s to protect leads in the late innings. Nobody has ever come close to being as good at what he does as Rivera. This past season, as he's announced his retirement, every team the Yankees have played against has honored him. Even the Boston Red Sox gave him testimonials and gifts. Several teams have given him checks for his foundation. And every member of the opposing teams has stood and applauded the man and his accomplishments.
During the Great Depression, when there were even fewer jobs than there are today, there were still a great many men who refused to go on the dole, which was what welfare was called under FDR. That was only 75 or 80 years ago, but today, as you've probably noticed, their kids and grandkids can't wait to start living off the efforts of others. Whether it's seniors in Florida signing up for food stamps they don't need, young people in the inner-city assuming they're entitled to be supported by others because clowns like Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson keep telling them they're victims of oppression, illegal aliens being fed similar hooey by Democrats or simply run-of-the-mill creeps lying in order to scam their way onto the disability rolls, millions of Americans are proving to be an embarrassment to their ancestors. The land of the free has morphed into the land of the freeloader.
I have always felt that when politicians clamor for work projects, instead of focusing on roads and bridges, they should be mentioning prisons. We never seem to have enough of them. As a result, felons are constantly being released before finishing their sentences. And whereas liberals are always insisting that civilized nations shouldn't have so many people incarcerated, the truth, as usual, is they're wrong. So long as those behind bars are there because they've committed actual felonies, and aren't there because of their political or religious beliefs, there is no ideal number or percentage of people who should be locked up. If you're in jail, it's proof that you're uncivilized, not that society is.
One of my favorite God stories involves the guy named Harry who sought shelter on the roof of his house during a flood. When a fellow with a boat rowed by and offered to take him to higher ground, Harry turned him down, explaining that God would provide. His response was the same to the next two guys who rowed by. He was still perched on his roof when nightfall came and the storm resumed. When he woke up, drenched, in Heaven, he asked God why He had failed to rescue him. God said, "What are you talking about? I sent three boats." I think the story works better if God refers to Harry as a darn fool, but I wouldn't want to offend anyone who thinks God shouldn't say "darn."
When comedian Ken Murray first came to Los Angeles, it was the late 1920s and he was a member of a vaudeville troupe. Luckily, he brought with him a movie camera because he was a star-struck fan, and wished to share his experiences with the folks back in New York. In the beginning, he would film any actor or actress he came across. As his own career developed and his circle of acquaintances widened over the next 40 years, he eventually captured anyone who was anyone in what he came to refer to as his hometown.
The worst thing about liberals is not that they're wrong on the issues, but that they are hypocrites and liars. The basis for my claim is that the same things they thought were hanging offenses when Bush was president are perfectly okay with them so long as one of their own is the guy keeping Gitmo open, extending the Patriot Act and attacking Syria even though they haven't attacked us. I could list other acts of hypocrisy, but of course I already have in hundreds of earlier articles. The notion that Syria is really expected to hand over its chemical arsenal and that Russia is going to compel al-Assad to do so at the best of times is laughable. The idea that he's going to do so in the midst of a civil war is even more ludicrous. Combine all that with a deadline of mid-2014 and the threat of a U.N. resolution if they don't comply is proof the whole thing's a farce.
I often feel like one of those lumberjacks we used to see in the newsreels, trying to knock a competing lumberjack off a spinning log. The foolishness comes at us so rapidly that trying to stay on top of it all before we wind up in the drink is too much for one man. That's why when the opportunity presents itself, I like to delegate responsibility. So it's with a sense of gratitude, I acknowledge that when Melanie Campbell, one of the many pinheads who was invited to speak at the Martin Luther King anniversary shindig, compared the Supreme Court to the Ku Klux Klan, comedy writer Argus Hamilton pointed out how wrong she was: "The Klan are a bunch of guys in white sheets that scare the hell out of black people, while the Court's a bunch of guys in black sheets that scare the hell out of white people."
Thanks to the cold-blooded murders in Oklahoma and Washington, black teenage thugs have been much in the news lately. But they've been newsworthy for quite a while now. It wasn't that long ago that gangs of them ran wild in Philadelphia, forcing even the black mayor to denounce them. More recently, they ran amok here in California, looting and mugging in L.A. and in Long Beach. And we mustn't overlook the record number of people they've been gunning down in the mean streets of Chicago. What's easy to forget, especially if you're a liberal, is that it's all an inevitable consequence of Lyndon Johnson's policies. It was he and his stooges in Congress that made welfare to black women conditional on there not being a man on the premises. With a swipe of his presidential pen, Johnson ended black families as America had known them. Until he put his welfare policy in place, the rate of marriages was higher among blacks than among whites. From 1890 on, the great majority of black children were raised in two parent homes.
Because I do my level best to avoid liberals, most of the political arguments I get into are with my fellow conservatives. As a rule, it comes down to my being willing to vote for any Republican on the general ballot. In the primaries, I will always favor the one furthest to the right. But if he or she loses, I will vote for the last Republican standing. The folks I argue with are the ones who would rather sit out an election than vote for a Republican who fails the litmus test. It does no good to point out that even Reagan wouldn't be able to pass the test in 2013. After all, he raised our state taxes twice when he was governor, and even signed the most liberal abortion bill in America. As president, when amnesty was still merely a glint in John McCain's eye, Reagan, who made such a big thing out of trusting but verifying when dealing with the Soviet Union, turned into a flounder, and fell, hook, line and sinker, for the bait when the Democrats swore to shut down the border.
Some people object to the fact that I generally jump around in my articles instead of devoting each to a single topic. They have my sympathy, but I'm afraid I can't possibly accommodate them. It would be too much like firing a musket at a herd of charging buffalo. You might pick one off, but you're sure to be trampled to death by the others. Other conservative pundits can do what they like, but I prefer using a machine gun when it comes to liberals.
Who would have ever guessed that Vladimir Putin would pull Obama's chestnuts out of the fire? Nothing else could have saved Obama from having Congress deny him the green light to attack Syria. Ironically, even though I opposed hitting Syria unless it was going to be with a nuke, for staking out a position and sticking to it in spite of massive opposition in his own party, I rather admired Obama. It was the first time I can recall that he did anything that he knew would upset his base.
Let it be understood that I don't want to be president, and for a variety of reasons. For one thing, I don't like pomp. At state dinners, I would probably fall asleep even before the soup plates were cleared away. For another, I don't like dressing up. I don't recall the last time I wore a necktie, and the next time will probably be at my funeral, when I won't have any say in the matter and I won't have to tie the darn thing. I also wouldn't want to have to spend all my time with whatever dunce wound up being my vice president, and I certainly wouldn't want to confab, as they say, with politicians. The ones in my own party would be bad enough, but having to be civil to the likes of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Sheila Jackson Lee and Dick Durbin, would be calling for the impossible.
There are people who will find excuses for pedophiles and for women who feel themselves entitled to having abortions five minutes before the baby is ready to pop, but will call for a lynch rope if anyone dares to pronounce the word that the n-word refers to. We have been told time and again that the world will stop spinning if white people utter the word that's tossed around like a Frisbee in the black community. Blacks never explain why the word that's supposed to be the worst obscenity imaginable has such wide currency within their own ranks. Black stand-up comedian Chris Rock made his name doing a bit in which he compared blacks, whom he claimed to love, to ni**ers, whom he despised and ridiculed. It resonated with middle-class black audiences because it summed up their own attitudes. So why is it that whites aren't allowed to make the same obvious distinctions without resorting to the babyish n-word?
It occurred to me the other day that people are confined to mental institutions when they're found to constitute a danger to themselves or others. So, why is it that Obama is still running around loose? I also found myself thinking how far this nation has declined since the time of the Founding Fathers, while at the same time acknowledging that this seems to be the natural order of things. Historically, the patriarch of a family, through invention or industry, accumulates a great fortune. But, eventually, he dies, leaving his wealth to be dispersed to future generations. In time, the family deteriorates into a collection of floozies, playboys, drunks, addicts and, inevitably, politicians.
Charles Dickens famously opened "A Tale of Two Cities" with "It was the best of times; it was the worst of times." If I were writing an updated version, I would announce it is the worst of times. Wherever you turn, you are confronted by journalists, politicians and just plain folks, who make you ashamed to be a member of the same species. These days, America is divided between the useful idiots who believe everything they read in the NY Times or hear from Obama and the useless idiots they elect to fill the seats in the House and Senate.
The good news is that the economy isn't as awful as we've been hearing. If it were, left-wing knuckleheads wouldn't be able to cough up $200,000 and travel expenses in order to persuade Hillary Clinton to deliver a speech. But, politics aside, can you imagine paying that kind of money to listen to that whiny voice drone on for an hour or so? It also gives new meaning to greed. After all, in the first ten years after the Clintons moved out of the White House, through his speeches and their ghost-written books, they accumulated $100,000,000. On top of that, after spending $10 million of their own money to get Hillary the nomination in 2008, they demanded that the DNC hold fund-raisers in order to replenish their coffers. After all, Arkansas's gift to the world couldn't really be expected to get by on a piddling $90 million, even though some of us couldn't help asking, "What difference, at this point, does it make?"
It's been twelve years since the Islamic faithful inadvertently brought down the twin towers. I say inadvertently because nobody was more surprised than Osama bin Laden when jet planes crashed into the tops of New York skyscrapers and brought the buildings tumbling down. Because he had no idea how thousands of gallons of burning jet fuel would work on steel girders, he had only imagined he would send a message by murdering a few hundred office workers and airplane passengers.
Obama insists that in spite of Putin's body language, their private conversations are often very productive. Indeed they are. For Putin, that is. Without his lifting a finger to help us when it comes to Iran, Syria and Edward Snowden, Obama has agreed not to supply Poland with a promised anti-missile system, has agreed to diminish our nuclear arsenal and, for all I know, agreed to subscribe to Pravda. If it were up to me, we would have used a few nukes to curb Islam long before now. Just because the jihadists don't wear uniforms or carry flags is no reason not to let their host nations understand that certain rotten activities will inevitably result in very unpleasant consequences.
