Columnist.
Even when you write as often as I do, you can't really keep up with all the zaniness that passes for the news today. But I can't help trying. For instance, there were only three senators who voted against confirming John Kerry, who not only lied about his service and his injuries in Vietnam, but then lied about throwing away his medals. He not only kept his medals, but had them framed on the wall of his Senate office. It was other people's medals he tossed for the benefit of the cameras. In any case, I thought it was worth looking into, and I discovered that the three senators who had the courage of their convictions, and deserved to be lauded, were John Cornyn, James Inhofe and Ted Cruz. Speaking of the members of the U.S. Senate, most of whom are ex-lawyers, I heard some wag recently suggest that it's 98% of lawyers who give the other 2% a bad name.
You have to wonder just how many times Obama is going to announce that, thanks entirely to Republicans in Congress, this nation is on the verge of going over the cliff or ending up in a ditch. I also wonder how many people still give a darn if Operation Head Start simply disappears or how it is that cops and firefighters, who all collect a city or county paycheck, will suddenly be unemployed if the federal government has to cut two cents from every dollar it currently squanders. And why is it that instead of ever coming up with a plan to avoid emergency measures, Obama always pretends that he has no choice in such matters but to fire food inspectors and air traffic control agents, people who actually perform vital services, but never mentions his own battalion of butt-kissing aides and Mrs. Obama's ladies-in-waiting?
Last month, I was invited to be on a panel at the bi-annual convention of the California Congress of Republicans. This isn't just a gathering of like-minded conservatives. These are political activists whose lives are built around actually trying to wage successful campaigns in a state so blue, it could be renamed East Hawaii. In case you're unaware, this is the place where the Democrats hold super majorities in both the state senate and the state assembly. This is the place that Dianne Feinstein, Barbara Boxer, Henry Waxman, Brad Sherman and Maxine Waters, call home. We're the cuckoo nest that decided that the only thing better than having a young Jerry Brown as our governor was having an old Jerry Brown.
If there's one term I would like to see retired in 2013, it's the one so much favored by politicians and other hypocrites: "With all due respect." Has anyone in the history of the world begun a sentence with those four words that didn't immediately evolve into the equivalent of calling the other person a charlatan, a thief or an ignoramus? Recently, we had Hillary Clinton open her remarks to Sen. Ron Johnson with those words just before going into her well-rehearsed rant about nobody needing to know whether Ambassador Stevens and his three colleagues were killed by members of al Qaeda or by some guys taking a nighttime stroll in Benghazi who suddenly decided to kill Americans.
By the time this article is posted, it's possible that Christopher Dorner, the ex-L.A. police officer who has been the target of a major manhunt here in Southern California will have been arrested or exterminated. It's also possible that he will have added to his kill total of one cop and two civilians. (In the days since I wrote those lines, both things took place.) In addition to the obvious, something else that really disturbs me is that once again, a large segment of the population has begun rooting for this blood-thirsty loon, just as they rooted for OJ Simpson 19 years ago. I'm sure a portion of that group is cheering him on because he's a black man with a grievance. Others applaud him because in his manifesto, he mentioned he's a big fan of Barack Obama. Still others hope he keeps eluding capture and continues killing cops because they get a vicarious thrill out of his doing for real what they can only do in their masturbatory video games.
I actually watched Obama's entire State of the Union address. I would like to think I was merely doing my duty as a citizen and as a political observer, but I'm beginning to worry that there is simply a streak of masochism that runs through me. After all, that's an hour of my life I'll never get back, and God knows I'm not getting any younger. If anything, just listening to and looking at His Arrogance has aged me considerably over the past five years. I can't even boast that I have cracked his code. A child of six could have figured out a long time ago that when he says "fees" and "revenue," he means "taxes;" when he says "investing," he means "spending;" and when he says "folks," he means "suckers." Furthermore, when he says "Let me make this perfectly clear," he means "Abracadabra, now you see it, now you don't." And, finally, when he refers to "God," he means himself.
It is once again that time of year when we are told that a billion people around the world will be tuned in to see which of the over-hyped movies and actors get to take home Academy Awards. My wife will be tuned in because she likes to see what everyone is wearing and I'll be watching because I enjoy seeing the winners trying to act humble and I get a kick out of watching the losers pretend to be good sports. The fact of the matter is that as with most elections, the winners have to spend a king's ransom advertising. For months, the same people who will go on stage and pretend they are unworthy have been waging war in the Hollywood trade papers.
There must be something in the air near the Potomac that rots the brains of just about everyone who ventures into our nation's capital. The latest example was Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta insisting that having women fighting in the frontlines would just about ensure that we'd never lose a future war. ... The propaganda would have it that women only want to have the opportunity to compete for the opportunity to serve in the infantry and armor units. People like Mr. Panetta insist that they oppose lowering military standards. To which, I say, with all due disrespect: phooey!
Some group or other recently voted on words and terms they would like to see banished in 2013. The top five vote-getters were "trending," "spoiler alert," "superfood," "guru" and, predictably, "fiscal cliff." I must confess that I had not been overly aware of "guru" in 2012 and had not heard a single reference to "superfood," which would explain why I have no idea what it means. And while I think that pepperoni pizza fits the description, I have a hunch that whatever TV chef was tossing the term around willy-nilly doesn't. I'm guessing it will turn out to be some overpriced item like truffles, which nobody would have the slightest interest in if it sold for a dollar-a-pound and didn't require trained pigs to dig it up. As you might have guessed, I have my own list. I would do away with "distinguished" when referring to a politician. And I mean any politician. So far as I'm concerned, the word is employed far too often and applied far too generously to people who do nothing more than vote for a living. In a sane world, it would only be applied to military heroes, firemen and conservative columnists, especially those residing in such left-wing bastions as California.
People who have blind faith in science would do well to recall that during the Middle Ages, a time not all that different from our own, especially in the Middle East, not to mention Chicago, Detroit and Hollywood, there were those who regarded alchemy to be a science. They were convinced that base metals such as lead could be magically turned into precious metals such as gold. In modern times, we find remnants of those earlier pinheads in left-wing circles, where it is widely accepted that a community organizer, by virtue of winning an election, can be transformed into a savior. When I first heard that Obama and his stooges were demanding that gun magazines be made smaller, I naturally assumed they wanted the NRA monthly to be condensed. When I discovered they actually believed that the answer to violence in America was fewer bullets, I found myself wondering if they had put Michael Bloomberg, the idiot who thinks smaller soft drink containers is the answer to obesity, in charge of the crusade.
Barack Obama would like you to believe that it's white guys with assault weapons and NRA memberships that commit most of the murders in this country. But the truth, and he knows it, is that although whites comprise 67% of the population, Hispanics 16% and blacks, just 13%, blacks are responsible for roughly half the murders in America. ... [T]he number of accidental gun deaths in America averages around 1,500-a-year. The number of accidental deaths caused by physicians and hospitals is over 120,000. I leave it to you to decide which poses the greater danger, guns or healthcare providers.
In 1946, there was a rebellion in McMinn County, Tennessee, that came to be known as the Battle of Athens. Frankly, I had never heard of it until recently. I guess it took the latest campaign against the Second Amendment to remind people that there was a time when Americans had to depend on their guns to ensure their rights against their fellow Americans. It was shortly after the end of World War II. A group of rotten politicians, a crooked sheriff and his corrupt deputies, were once again trying to steal an election by confiscating the ballot boxes and reporting the tally. It had been a way of life in the city of Athens, but this time was different. This time, a bunch of returning veterans, who had just got done fighting and bleeding for liberty in Europe and Asia, decided to put a stop to it. And thanks to their guns, they did just that by storming the sheriff's office and rescuing the votes before they could once again be miscounted.
What I find so fascinating about atheists is that they are so certain there's no God that they've gone and created a religion based on that conviction. But they're not alone in their lunacy. Take the rabid environmentalists, if you will. Their central belief is that Earth would be far better off if it weren't for people. Now I happen to feel that way about California, but it's not the same thing at all. It's one thing to look around at the beauty of this state, with its temperate climate and magnificent coastline, and not muse about how glorious this place would be if it weren't infested with liberals.
You might even say that insanity is a growth industry. For example, the liberals are tripping all over themselves to pass new gun control legislation. To prove how sincere they are, they have put Joe Biden and Dianne Feinstein in charge. Joe Biden is so dumb that schools have renamed dunce caps in his honor, and Feinstein is such a political hack that even after swearing to get to the bottom of the national security leaks to the NY Times, once she realized the footprints led back to the Oval Office, she never again mentioned it. Even people as stupid as Sen. Patty Murray and Mayor Michael Bloomberg know that federal bans on assault weapons were in place for 10 years starting in the mid-90s and did nothing to diminish gun violence. They also know that Illinois has very strict gun laws in place, and yet over 500 people were gunned down in the streets of Chicago in 2012, making it the murder capital of every locale this side of Syria.
Frankly, I don't think it will make much difference whether or not Chuck Hagel is confirmed. After all, he will be taking his marching orders from the single greatest menace America has ever had to endure. Still, that's no reason to confirm the man who has made a career out of demeaning Israel and sucking up to Iran to such an unseemly extent that Iran's foreign minister has applauded his nomination. If nothing else, when your nation's archenemy gives a big thumbs-up to the guy who's being considered as your Secretary of Defense, it should give even Democrats pause. Not only has Hagel displayed an open bias against American Jews, insisting that something he refers to as the Jewish/Israel lobby intimidates members of Congress into doing dumb things, but when Sen. Lindsey Graham asked him to identify a single senator who's been intimidated or to mention even one of those dumb things, Hagel turned into Porky Pig.
Even back in the 1960s when I was in my 20s and a registered Democrat, I refused to call myself a liberal. To me, liberals were those of my fellow collegians who dodged the draft and pretended it was character and not cowardice that sent them north to Canada or those others who evaded service through deferments and medical fraud, but got to display their moral superiority by spitting on returning veterans. Even that long ago, I couldn't quite decide if it was their lack of spine or their hypocrisy that I found more reprehensible. On top of everything else, it didn't help that I hated their music, their movies, their fads, their lack of personal hygiene and their infantile slogans. It never occurred to me that 50 years later, they and their goofy offspring would be America's school teachers, professors, journalists, judges, union leaders and politicians, and that they'd still be mucking up the works.
Although I have devoted most of the 1,200 articles I've written over the past decade to deriding Democrats, I wouldn't want anyone to get the idea that I don't have my share of problems with Republicans. I'm not merely referring to the lack of guts they so often display in Congress or the way they let things slide from 2001-2007 when they controlled everything in Washington, D.C., and instead of pushing forward a conservative agenda, spent most of their time trying to cozy up to the likes of Ted Kennedy and proving they could waste our tax dollars nearly as well as liberals. Speaking of money, on this one occasion, I won't spend a lot of time chastising wealthy conservatives for blowing their loot trying to promote some mediocrity in the primaries when they should be buying up newspapers and TV stations. It seems pretty obvious that we can't rely entirely on blogs and talk radio to get our message out.
As a rule, I prefer relying on my own words, but there are times when I'd regard myself as the worst sort of miser if I didn't share other people's thoughts with my readers. For instance, Carl Sagan, the eminent astronomer, once stated the case for religious belief as succinctly as this: "If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe." Someone I can't identify once, in comparing actors and politicians, pointed out "If they can learn to fake sincerity, they have it made." Eric Hoffer, the late longshoreman/philosopher who wrote my favorite work of non-fiction, "The True Believer," observed: "If a society is to preserve stability and a degree of continuity, it must know how to keep its adolescents from imposing their tastes, attitudes, values and fantasies on everyday life."
This past year may have set a record for shootings involving multiple victims. The worst of these was the massacre in Newtown, CT, where Adam Lanza murdered 20 little children and seven adults, including his mother, before finally killing himself. A short time later, William Spengler burned down his house in Webster, NY, in order to lure firefighters to their death. Before he killed himself, he murdered two firemen, wounded two others and a policeman, and left seven families homeless on Christmas Eve when his house fire spread to theirs. In the aftermath of all this senseless violence, politicians decided what was needed were more gun control laws and the gumption to stand up to the NRA. That's because politicians share a number of characteristics with sheep; what they lack is the ability to provide the world with mutton, wool and lamb chops.
We all know that whenever liberal politicians start insisting that guns are evil, it's for the same reason that stage magicians employ patter, top hats and silk capes. It's done in order to distract us. At present, Obama would like us to ignore the fact that thanks to the end of the payroll tax holiday and ObamaCare everyone's taxes have shot up. That's not to say the liberals wouldn't love to disarm us and make the Second Amendment null and void. But even they know that's not going to happen. If they were serious about reducing gun violence, they'd quit yapping about guns in the hands of law-abiding citizens, and go after the people who use them not for hunting or for defending their homes and families, but to murder.
