Columnist.
I find it fascinating and amusing that Obama said that the GOP convention was like a re-run and should have been viewed on a black-and-white TV with rabbit ears. If I were Obama, I'm not sure if I would ever bring any sort of ears into a conversation. But that being said, if anyone is looking backwards, it's the putz who wants to claim Clinton's economy for his own. But who can blame him? At this point, he's probably ready to claim Greece's economy for his own. Before moving on, it should be mentioned that the booming economy of the 90s came about in spite of Bill Clinton, not because of him. The 90s boom owed more to Newt Gingrich and the Republican Congress that delivered tax cuts and welfare reform after the '94 elections. Prior to that, Clinton was just as big a loon as Obama as he tried to push the unfunded HillaryCare bill on America 16 years before Obama saddled us with his own even bigger and more vile version.
I thought it was hilarious when Barack Obama took Mitt Romney to task for only disclosing two years of tax returns. He said, "When you run for president, people assume your life is an open book." I want to know who writes this guy's material so I can send him a fan letter. Imagine, the guy who has done his level best to keep all of his own personal records sealed has the chutzpah to chide his opponent for keeping secrets. That old adage about the pot calling the kettle names leaps to mind. If liberals didn't have double standards, they wouldn't have any standards at all. I refer to the fact that 102 American soldiers have been killed by Afghans in uniform, 40 of the murders just in the past eight months. How is it that the same folks who kept demanding that Bush pull our troops out of Iraq aren't insisting that Obama pull them out of Afghanistan? Why is it that the L.A. Times isn't running a daily scorecard of military deaths and that Garry Trudeau doesn't list the names of the ambushed warriors in his Sunday edition of Doonesbury?
The title of my latest book, "Barack Obama, You're Fired! (And Don't Bother Asking for a Letter of Recommendation)," is more than an example of wishful thinking. I am convinced that this year, Christmas will fall on November 6th when Santa Claus, recognizing who's been naughty and who's been nice, will do the right thing and fill our Christmas stocking with Mitt Romney and a Republican Senate. The part I don't get is why politicians who have been voted out of office in early November are then allowed to hang around until the third week of January, creating all sorts of mischief. What takes them so long to pack up and clear out? If you're fired from a job in the real world, you're expected to leave the premises and not let the door hit you in the backside. That being the case, why is a politician allowed 75 days to clean out his desk and hand over the keys? I mean, if we really wanted the stiff to keep voting, we wouldn't have elected the other guy.
If the second presidential debate had been a prize fight, the ringside announcer would have said, "In the right corner, wearing white trunks, is Mitt ("The Gentleman Pugilist") Romney. In the left corner, wearing black trunks, are Barack ("The Low Blow Kid") Obama and Candy ("I Wuv You, Barack") Crowley. I know that people were complaining about the replacement referees, who officiated at the first few football games this season, but at least they were merely incompetent, they didn't play favorites. It figured that at a debate where the live audience was asked not to cheer or boo, the agreement would be broken by Michelle Obama, when she led the applause after Ms. Crowley backed up Obama's lie about referring to the Benghazi attack as an act of terrorism, in the Rose Garden, on 9/12.
Mark Alexander is traveling this week. Enjoy this week's guest column from Burt Prelutsky.
As you all know, I hate pointing out that I was right. I'm sure the cynics among you are saying to yourself, "I bet it pains him about as much as winning the state lottery." But what else can I say when I kept telling people to wait for the debate, and the smarty pants crowd, folks like Bill Kristol, Peggy Noonan and Charles Krauthammer, spent weeks harping on Romney to do this, that and the other thing. Through it all, I pointed out that if Romney shot his wad prior to October 3rd, he would, one, help Team Obama know how to prep their guy and, two, give the goons in the media a chance to spin everything he said and accuse him of making endless gaffes. I was convinced that most viewers would have to acknowledge that one of the two debaters would be seen as a man born to be the president and the other guy would be seen for what he is, a pretender who was born to be the smarmy mouthpiece for a public sector union such as the SEIU, which is what Obama was referring to when he identified himself with the nebulous title of "ex-community organizer." The question nobody bothered asking in 2008 was which community was he referring to and what sort of mischief was he organizing them to do.
I don't believe the polls that insist that Obama is ahead of Romney. This isn't just wishful thinking on my part, either. It simply doesn't make any sense that Obama would be doing better in any state than he did in 2008, especially when you realize that he was running against McCain, one of the worst campaigners in history, and that he now has to run on his own record. I have heard a lot of questions about the polls this time around. Some people are claiming that they're heavily weighted towards Democrats and that some pollsters are even in the tank for Obama, trying to discourage Republicans from even leaving the house on Election Day because the outcome is a foregone conclusion.
I keep hearing a lot of moaning at the bar from the right wing; most notably from Bill Kristol of the Weekly Standard. It seems like every time I see this guy, whom I refer to as "The Wincer" because he always looks like he thinks he's about to be slugged, he's going off on Mitt Romney. No matter what Romney says or does, Kristol and a few of his fellow ivory tower pinheads can't wait to dissect it, as if they're performing the world's longest autopsy. I'll admit that Romney doesn't always say things in the best way possible, and that his attempts at humor often bring the term "lead balloon" to mind. But he's entitled to goof occasionally. Heck, he's been on the campaign trail for what must seem like an eternity to him, and a bit longer than that to me. But the bone I'd pick with Kristol is that until the debates, Romney isn't going to have a chance to go toe-to-toe with Obama. Every single thing Obama says will be filtered through the media until it shines like gold. Everything out of Romney's mouth is going to be slathered with mud. That's no excuse for conservatives to pile on, as though jockeying for an invitation to MSNBC's Christmas bash.
One often hears that those who fall for liberal claptrap have been brainwashed by their teachers, the media and the Hollywood elite. The trouble with that is it's based on the presumption that these guttersnipes have brains to begin with, when there's no evidence at all of that being the case. For instance, California, the largest and possibly the most liberal state in the Union, is like a giant laboratory for a mad man. Once it's proven by the likes of Jerry Brown, Gavin Newsome and their cronies in Sacramento, that something absolutely, positively, doesn't work here, a number of the other 49 states can't wait to try it out.
On those occasions when he wasn't trying to convince people that he had swallowed a dictionary and could break his habit of using arcane multi-syllabic words, William F. Buckley proved he could be both Solomon-like and pithy in his comments about those who infest the Left. One of my favorites was his observation that "Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views." Although in no way would I ever defend or endorse the institution of slavery, when you see how blacks, even in the 21st century, live in Africa and the Caribbean, no one can honestly pity the plight of modern-day American blacks. Compared to most of their brethren around the world, even those perennial underachievers who choose to remain uneducated and outside the mainstream of American life, manage to own TV sets, cars, refrigerators and cellphones.
When I hear liberals in the media and Congress repeating Obama's lies while doing their best to make Romney appear to be a tax chiseler, a killer of cancer victims, a job destroyer and a candidate doomed to lose, I am reminded that whereas bees give up their lives to protect their queen, liberals are only willing to risk their reputations on behalf of their own. Another lie that everyone on the Left seems dedicated to promoting is that the majority of the world's Muslims are decent and peace-loving. What absolute hogwash! I would first remind everyone that even in the heyday of Hitler and Stalin, not every German or Russian was a Nazi or a Communist. In every society, there are those who lead and those who follow. But once war breaks out, everyone falls into line.
The way that people carried on in 2008, you would have thought we had elected a messiah and not merely a president. Some people who felt that way can be excused because that's the way Obama was sold to us. After all, he vowed to lower the oceans, heal the planet and unite all Americans, whatever their class, race, gender or nation of origin. That's pretty big talk for someone whose singular accomplishment as a member of the Illinois legislature was to vote in favor of partial-birth abortions, and whose most noteworthy achievement during his two years in Washington was to be named the most liberal member of the Senate, beating out the unholy likes of Ted Kennedy, Barbara Boxer, Hillary Clinton and Harry Reid.
There was a time, as my wife, who is a TCM addict, keeps reminding me when there was no more patriotic place on earth than Hollywood. It wasn't just that such super stars as Jimmy Stewart, Clark Gable and Tyrone Power, enlisted in the military; that others volunteered to entertain the troops through USO shows and appearances at the Hollywood Canteen; while major film directors, such as John Houston, Frank Capra, George Stevens and John Ford, turned their talents to turning out military training and propaganda films. It was also true that Hollywood's moguls, including Louis B. Mayer, Jack Warner and Daryl Zanuck, churned out pro-American, anti-Nazi, movies by the gross. It provided potent punch at the box office, but it also served to keep American morale high even in those early years when we seemed to be losing the war.
I understand why liberals want to get elected to political office. After all, not everyone can be a millionaire, but at least if you're elected to Congress, you get to live like one. You get to receive all sorts of perks, including a bevy of aides and interns whom you don't have to pay out of your own pocket, but who are nevertheless ready at a moment's notice to gas up your car, drive you to the airport and pick up your dry cleaning. The part I don't get is why anyone would want to vote for them. For one thing, they all lie. And not only do they lie, but they lie so badly that they simultaneously insult our intelligence. The most blatant example took place recently when Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, who is not only a member of Congress, but the head of the Democratic National Committee, said that she had no idea if the folks who produced the disgusting ad accusing Mitt Romney of playing a role in killing a cancer victim were Democrats or Republicans.
I, for one, was extremely upset about the storming of the American embassy in Cairo, Egypt. Perhaps I should be more specific. It wasn't the storming itself that angered me. We have all come to expect that sort of thing from the non-Israeli inhabitants of the Middle East. What pissed me off was that in the aftermath, the U.S. apologized. Apparently it is now our official policy to speak softly and carry no stick at all. I also fear that our response may act as precedence in other areas. For instance, it may now be incumbent on rape victims to apologize to their attackers.
For openers, I don't believe any national poll that claims Obama is running ahead of Romney. For one thing, Obama has been in office for nearly four years. As the incumbent, if he's not scoring above 50%, it's highly unlikely he is going to carry the state. Right now, his poll numbers are below 50% in 37 states, and hover at only 51% in Washington and 50% in Minnesota. Another factor that must be considered is that a lot of people still don't know his opponent. Right now, Romney's poll numbers are lower than they should be simply because a lot of people are judging him on no other basis than Obama's negative ads.
With the Democratic convention wrapped up, I find myself wondering if Timothy Cardinal Dolan finds microphones and TV cameras as irresistible as moths find burning candles. I mean, this was an event at which the assembly clearly voiced its disapproval of putting "God" back in the Party platform. In addition, on the same night that Cardinal Dolan gave the benediction, Caroline Kennedy, after identifying herself as a Catholic, gave her unwavering support to abortion, and Barack Obama, who remains one of the few people who ever voted in favor of partial-birth abortions, accepted his party's nomination. The question that comes to mind is whether there is any venue, no matter how unsavory, no matter how openly offensive to Church doctrine, that Dolan would avoid so long as he was guaranteed a featured role in the proceedings. One can only wonder if next season he'll be hosting a new TV reality show, "Celebrity Divorce Court."
I swear I tried to sit through all the speeches at the Democratic convention. As it turned out, I couldn't make it through a single one. I watched a few minutes of Michelle Obama's and Mayor Castro's and a few seconds of Elizabeth Warren's before throwing in the towel. I actually found myself sitting through a half-hour's worth of Clinton's magnum opus, but gave up when I realized I had no idea if he was at the halfway mark or was merely getting started. My overall reaction was that if someone had only thought to bring bread to the Convention, they could have made sandwiches for thousands with all the baloney on display.
Those of us who are conservatives tend to be dismissive of the popular arts. We say, and with good reason I'd argue, that music has been going downhill since the days when composers and lyricists named Gershwin, Porter, Kern, Berlin, Loesser, Rodgers, Hammerstein, Hart, Mercer and Fields, were writing the songs; people named Astaire, Rogers, Kelly and O'Connor, were dancing to them; and folks named Crosby, Sinatra, Fitzgerald and Stafford, were singing them.
I find the proposed speakers lined up by the Democrats to address their convention bizarre, to say the least. I mean, do they really think any sane person regards Jimmy Carter as the grand old man of their party. He's the guy who pulled the rug out from under the Shah of Iran, which swung open the door for the Ayatollah Khomeini and unleashed Islamic terrorism on the entire world. He is also the fellow who was invited to dive into the deep pockets of his Arab friends in exchange for using his bully pulpit as an ex-president to condemn Israel in books and speeches for the past three decades.
