Columnist.
With ObamaCare so much in the news lately, we should all keep in mind that Nancy Pelosi told us that the Affordable Care Act, as it was originally called, would have to be passed before we'd know what was in it. A lot of people thought she was kidding. I wasn't one of them. For one thing, she isn't even as funny as Harry Reid. For another, there are a lot of nutty people in Congress, but not one of them is crazy enough to sit down and read a 2,000 page piece of legislation. While it's true that L. Ron Hubbard's "Mission Earth" is even longer, at least it had something of a plot. ObamaCare, on the other hand, *was* a plot, conceived as a way to take over a sixth of our economy, thus redistributing wealth, and turning us into Greece.
It seems to me that a lot of people are worrying about the wrong things these days. Instead of concentrating on an administration that aided and abetted in the murder of Ambassador Stevens and three of his colleagues in Libya; an IRS that gave up any semblance of political neutrality by targeting conservatives; and the singling out of news organizations and individuals for intimidation; they're going nuts over a computer program aimed at tracking down communications between jihadists. Now, I grant I am an atypical case. For one thing, I rarely use a telephone. I don't like them. They're too intrusive. Unlike email, they carry on like babies yowling to be picked up. They demand your attention here and now, totally unconcerned that you are otherwise occupied. The truth is that if it weren't for receptionists reminding me that I have a doctor's or dentist's appointment the next day, and those damn telemarketers , my phone wouldn't ring for months at a time.
How dangerous are liberals? Well, here in California, where the Democrats hold super majorities in both state houses, there are bills pending in the Assembly that would give additional rights to bums and gang members, allow illegal aliens to vote in our elections and allow high school students the choice of which locker rooms and bathrooms they decide to use, regardless of their official gender. I realize that even some conservatives are up in arms over the NSA mining phone numbers. I attribute this mainly to the fact that the federal government has been acting sleazier than usual lately. Between Benghazi, the IRS and the monitoring of AP and Fox reporter James Rosen, even normal people could find themselves indulging in a little paranoia.
Children, someone once said, are a consolation for everything in life, except having children. Casey Stengel once observed "There comes time in every man's life, and I've had plenty of them." And which of us hasn't said the very same thing? One of my readers, Stanley Helfeld, insists "The problem isn't that we have a policy of leading from behind, it's that we have a behind leading us."
With so many disasters befalling us domestically, it's easy to take our eye off all the bloody nonsense taking place outside our borders. And of course let it be understood that when I speak of borders, I'm referring to a concept, nothing more than a notion, and not to anything that actually exists in the real world. For instance, a Nazi flag has been seen flying over a mosque near the Palestinian village of Beit Omar, on the outskirts of Hebron. But that won't stop the Jew-haters, both those inside and outside of the rat-infested U.N., from siding with the barbaric Arabs and Muslims against Israel.
Some people insist that racism no longer exists in America. Clearly, that isn't true. After all, Barack Obama once said that Trayvon Martin looked like the son he might have had. Inasmuch as Obama is half-white, can any of us imagine his making that statement if the 17-year-old who was known to be a dope-dealing thug had been a Caucasian? On the other hand, I suspect that when he gazes fondly at Eric Holder, the Attorney General who refuses to indict blacks for intimidating white voters, he sees himself with a little mustache.
When Jack Finney's book, "Invasion of the Body Snatchers," was made into a movie in 1956, a lot of people insisted that it was an attack on McCarthyism. I don't know. I was a fan of the late Mr. Finney's novels, but I know nothing about his politics. To my mind, the pods were Communists. To me, the book and the movie both foreshadowed the way that leftists move from place to place, tainting the political landscape as they go. For instance, Californians moved north and, as a result, today Oregon and Washington are as far to the left politically as they are geographically. In the East, Manhattanites migrated, and as a result New England might as well call itself Upper New York.
I confess that's a somewhat misleading title because there are lots of things worse than lawyers. But, in addition to cold sores, computer breakdowns and a flare-up of my rheumatoid arthritis, they tend to be actual criminals. The folks I have in mind are academics, those escapees from college campuses who tend to congregate around Barack Obama. It's almost as if Obama has made a pledge, vowing never to allow a person who has been actively engaged in, say, commerce into his inner circle.
Ever since I first heard about the Gang of Eight, I knew that, as with the Arab Spring, nothing good would come of it. It didn't take Nostradamus to make such an obvious prediction. For one thing, the group was supposed to be bi-partisan, consisting of four Democrats and four Republicans. But one of the latter was John McCain, a lunkhead who's never met an amnesty bill he didn't like.
We had just had our second dog, Duke, put to sleep a few months earlier. He had been a Maltese, just like our earlier Sammy. I had put my foot down. No more dogs, I told my wife. There was just too much grief involved in losing them. But that's an easier vow to make than to keep if you love dogs. So Yvonne and I had begun to talk about what kind of dog to get in the unlikely event that I ever changed my mind. As usual, she said it would have to be small and white just like the other two. I insisted that it would have to be female.
I have come to the realization that I am not cut out to be God. I mention that because there was actually a time when I thought I could handle the job. I'm not just bragging. I just figured that if I'd been in charge, I would have prevented the Holocaust, I would have given Stalin and Mao heart attacks in their 20s, I would have done away with cancer and Alzheimer's, I would kept the temperature in the low 70s year round here in the San Fernando Valley and I'd have steered Juan Williams into a different line of work. But I have come to the conclusion that I lack the prerequisite of patience. I can't tell you how many times if I had the power, I would have scrubbed the human race and started over from scratch. I'd probably have let dogs and elephants run things. Clearly, leaving people in charge is a big mistake. Especially when you look around the world and you see people like Kim Jong Un, Vladimir Putin, the Castro brothers, Bashar al-Assad, Asif Ali Zardari, Hamid Karzai, Xi Jinping, Mohamed Morsi, Mahmoud Abbas, Robert Mugabe, the mullahs of Iran and Barack Obama, running things.
Once I thought of referring to Obama's appointees as the untouchables, I decided to check out Eliot Ness, who led the small squad of honest cops engaged in waging war on Al Capone. Although I had been a big fan of the original TV series and an even bigger fan of the movie, I really knew very little about Mr. Ness. It seems Ness and his guys had a lot to do with shutting down Capone's breweries, but very little with finally bringing "Scarface" down for tax evasion. But nobody ever suggested he was anything but a tough, honest, straight-arrow cop. Unfortunately, unlike the character portrayed by Robert Stack and, later, Kevin Costner, his life didn't end with Capone's heading off to federal prison.
Arthur Conan Doyle's greatest creation, the pre-eminent logician and crime solver, Sherlock Holmes was wont to compare the human brain to an attic. It was his belief that the finite space was best employed as a storage bin for those items that would be of use in his work. Thus, at any given time, he might not know the name of the Prime Minister, but he would be able to identify over 150 different types of tobacco. I'm sure there are those who would argue that the human brain has infinite capacity, but even they would have to acknowledge that life would be a lot easier if, when searching for someone's name, they didn't have to rummage through a brain that was cluttered with a lot of names they'd casually tossed into their cranial attics, where they lie and collect dust; the verbal equivalent of torn lampshades, rusted ice skates and Hula Hoops.
I have decided there's no big secret why 51% of the voters went for Obama. It's because more and more Americans are childish, if not downright infantile. In a divorce, will the kids favor the disciplinarian who demands they complete their schoolwork and do their chores or the one who bribes them with toys and other goodies?
We have all come to expect split-decisions from the Supreme Court, but we don't expect the four on the losing side to consist of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and...Antonin Scalia! But there he was lurking with the three left-wing harpies when it came to the recent decision involving DNA. In case you missed it, Alonzo Jay King had been arrested for assault. As part of the booking process, the cops took a swab of his cheek. The DNA test resulted in his being connected to a rape in Maryland for which he was subsequently tried and found guilty.
I always knew I liked Calvin Coolidge, but I thought perhaps it was merely because he was a quiet man who, unlike most of our presidents, wasn't infatuated with the sound of his own voice. I also liked the fact that he was apparently devoid of that thing called charisma, which is generally what politicians have in place of character. But, thanks to economist/historian Amity Shlaes, who proved in her book, "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression," that although FDR didn't create the Depression, he did a great deal to prolong the agony until World War II finally brought it to an end, Coolidge emerges as a heroic figure.
I don't mind admitting I'm relieved that the Boston bombers were Muslims. While I regret the murders and mutilations committed by the Chechen brothers, I admit I was worried that the mayhem had been perpetrated by native-born Americans. That's because I am so sick and tired of the politically correct crowd countering legitimate attacks on radical Islam by playing the moral equivalence game every chance they get. You can bet that if they had been Americans, the liberal pinheads would have immediately identified them as conservative ideologues who were card-carrying members of the Sarah Palin Fan Club. Then they would have quickly dragged Timothy McVeigh and the Tea Party into the mix. The way some people insist on providing cover for Muslim jihadists, you would think that Islam was a major religion in America, when in reality there are only about two million followers of Allah in the entire country.
Money has no morality, but that doesn't mean it should be dispensed by those who share that failing. That is particularly the case when it's the people's money, our tax dollars, which are being dispensed. For instance, since going on a murderous rampage at Fort Hood, Muslim jihadist Major Nidal Hasan has collected $278,000 in salary from the Army. Meanwhile, because his crime was designated "workplace violence," his surviving victims have been denied various benefits, including Purple Hearts, which would have increased their disability pensions.
Sometimes, I must confess, I almost feel like a bully when I ridicule so-called progressives. The old expression "Like shooting fish in a barrel" comes to mind. But, then, I merely have to remind myself that these fish happen to control the White House, the Senate, the Department of Justice and the IRS, and I don't feel so bad. Besides, how can one not ridicule Obama when he insists that federally-funded pre-school programs will lead to good-paying jobs down the line? Oh, really? As pre-school teachers, perhaps? In the meantime, as an inevitable consequence of this brainstorm, all privately-owned pre-schools will be put out of business.
It goes against my grain to generalize about large groups of people, but when it comes to liberals and Muslims, I find it increasingly difficult to resist the urge. For instance, House Democrats, led by the thoroughly obnoxious Rep. Barbara Lee, have proposed a resolution calling on Congress to acknowledge that global warming could drive poor women to depend on "transactional sex" for their economic survival. Their reasoning, for want of a better word, is that global warming would lead to drought, and drought would inevitably lead to prostitution as food became scarce and more expensive.
