Columnist.
After dismissing the importance of the Bilderberg Group, the Tri-Lateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations, in a recent article, I knew I would hear from those people who check under their beds every night to make certain that Henry Kissinger isn't lurking under the box springs. I only wish I could predict Kentucky Derby winners with equal success. The angriest of the conspiracy nuts insisted that I was intentionally ignoring solid evidence of the threat these people posed, suggesting that I just might be a closet Bilderberger. In response, I wrote to tell him that, like Groucho Marx, I refuse to join any group whose standards were so low that they'd accept me as a member. Besides, I try to never come between a man and his paranoia. But does anyone in his right mind seriously believe we are any closer to a one-world government today than we were a hundred years ago? Heck, we're not even close to a one-nation America these days. One might as well contend that Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy, are planning a coup d'état.
I can certainly understand why Gingrich is so angry with Mitt Romney. It's because of all the negative ads that Romney ran in Iowa. You know, the ones that told the truth about Gingrich's having been censured by Congress for financial shenanigans when he was the Speaker of the House; that he had fully supported mandated health care; that he had joined Nancy Pelosi and Al Gore in promoting the fraud known as global warming; and that he had been paid 1.6 million of our tax dollars by Freddie Mac. Frankly, I think that nobody was more surprised than Newt when he found himself riding high in the polls back in December. After all, this was the same guy who went off to the Greek islands with Mrs. Gingrich at the start of the primary season, leading his entire election team to quit, after having decided that he obviously wasn't a serious candidate. It also helps explain why he didn't bother getting his name on the Virginia ballot. All along, I figured that he had thrown his hat in the ring for the very same reason that Pat Buchanan used to throw his. It's called branding, the human equivalent of the way that Coca Cola, GE and Disney promote themselves. By keeping his name in front of the public, it helps Newt sell books, videos and make certain that his big, fat lecture fees remain big and fat.
Recently, a reader wrote to ask me why anyone would spend a million dollars to become a member of Congress, a job that pays less than $200,000 a year. I explained that there were several reasons. One, they seek fame. Celebrity is a major goal for a large number of people, and not just kids who are dying to switch places with rock stars and fashion models Two, they want to oversee fiefdoms that would have been the envy of English royals. You often see the likes of Nancy Pelosi and John Boehner striding down congressional corridors, dozens of attendants in their wake. They don't have anywhere in particular to rush off to, they just enjoy leading parades. Too bad they can't twirl a baton.
I know that Barack Obama puts a great deal of stock in people like Timothy Geithner, Ben Bernanke, Harry Reid and Barney Frank, but they're the folks who helped get us into this financial mess. As usual, it takes an ordinary American such as myself who relies on logic and common sense, not a bunch of pie charts and Keynesian theories, to get this economy moving in the right direction. I realize that Obama is counting on class warfare to win re-election, but I'm here to tell him that most Americans won't fall for it. They know that Bush started that jalopy down the hill, but it was Obama who kept pushing it over the cliff or into the ditch or wherever the hell it wound up. As a result, a child of six can see that placing a two or three percent surtax on rich people is just more of the same.
There seem to be two kinds of Americans. There are those who wish this nation could once again be what it used to be, a beacon for those who cherished freedom and liberty. Then there are those who look at America and wish it could be more like Cuba, of all places. Or if not Cuba, perhaps Spain or Mexico or Venezuela, with maybe just a smidgen of Iran or Egypt or the West Bank tossed in, and a dash of the Occupy Wall Street movement. In short, they prefer a swamp to a melting pot.
Apparently the Obama family holiday in the islands will run us taxpayers $4,113,038, and that's not counting Sno-cones, leis, surf board rentals and assorted Hawaiian souvenirs. Still, it's hard to begrudge the man his vacation. After all, for months now, it's been one damn fund-raiser after another, broken up only by a daily round of golf and an hourly excoriation of Republican congressmen. A schedule like that can take it out of anyone.
There are so many bad things one can say about those on the Left, one hardly knows where to begin. But one of their most annoying traits is that they absolutely refuse to acknowledge that they've ever been wrong even when actual events, as opposed to the fiction so often spun by liberal professors and historians, confirms it time and again. For instance, when I was a youngster, Time magazine editor Whittaker Chambers testified that Alger Hiss, the fair-haired boy of FDR's and Truman's State Department, was not only a member of the Communist Party, but an agent of the Soviet Union. The way that the Left erupted, you might have thought that Chambers was a latter-day Pontius Pilate and that Hiss was Jesus. Even when the Soviet Union released the Venona Papers years later, proving that Hiss had indeed been one of their agents -- in other words, a traitor, one of Stalin's useful idiots -- the Left refused to acknowledge their collective naiveté.
Political prognosticators are a lot like Iowa and New Hampshire in that it's only every four years that people pay them any attention. Something you can always count on is that at some point they'll stop gazing into crystal balls and reading tea leaves long enough to remind us that the taller presidential candidate tends to win elections and that the candidate with the longer name has an even better track record. Occasionally, such notable exceptions as Richard Nixon and George W. Bush break the rules, but it's pretty rare.
When I see all the infighting taking place in the ranks of the GOP, I find myself hoping that by the time we finally get through the primaries and nominate a candidate, hard feelings will have subsided and we'll all be able to support the last person standing. After all, the most important consideration isn't whether it's Gingrich, Romney or Perry, who carries the banner next November, but that Barack Obama be sent packing, and that Harry Reid joins Nancy Pelosi in the ranks of the terminally irrelevant.
It seems that whenever I point out that a true conservative is not ever likely to win the presidency in a country that is only slightly right of the middle, I can count on hearing from people who regard RINOs as worse than Obama, worse than Pelosi, Reid and Waxman, and even worse than jihadists. They are sure to let me know that Ron Paul is the only true patriot in the running. When I point out that in 2008 when he was well-financed and only had to worry about McCain and Romney, Rep. Paul couldn't win a single Republican primary. How in the world did anyone think that he would ever win a presidential election when, for reasons I don't really understand, they permit Democrats to vote?
There are a number of questions I keep waiting to have answered, and I am getting doggone impatient. For instance, is Barack Obama's mother-in-law still living in the White House? If she's living there rent-free and dining on our dime, why do we never see her? They sure made a big deal about it when they moved her in, allegedly to help look after the grandkids, but then she fell off the face of the earth. Sort of like Bo, the invisible dog. Next, I want to know how much money Jeffrey Immelt is being paid to be Obama's job czar. During WWII, a great many wealthy men went to Washington to serve their country and were known as dollar-a-year men because that is what they were getting paid. So, what's Immelt's salary? The fact is, if he, the man who runs GE, the outfit that paid no corporate taxes last year, the man who sent major divisions of his company over to China, is getting as much as a dollar-a-year, he is definitely being overpaid.
In a way, it's rather admirable that Ron Paul sticks to his guns when everyone knows that his ostrich-like response to a nuclear Iran positively guarantees that he will not be the presidential nominee in 2012. Although I've always thought that Rep. Paul has a startling physical resemblance to the myopic cartoon creation, Mr. Magoo, the real life person he invariably brings to mind is none other than Neville Chamberlin. All the man needs is the furled umbrella. On the other hand, I'd be churlish if I didn't commend Paul for providing me with my only laugh during the Sioux City GOP debate. That was when he let us know that none other than James Clapper, Obama's head of National Intelligence, agreed with his assessment of Iran. That would be like my denying that the Holocaust had taken place because no less an authority than Muammar Ahmadinejad said it hadn't.
One of my main objections to registered Independents is that they love to announce that there's no difference between Democrats and Republicans. That is such a dumb remark that one would only expect to hear it uttered by liberals. Anyone unable to see any difference between the two parties really hasn't been paying any attention. Even if you're not a fan of Mitch McConnell or John Boehner, who but a moron would claim they're not a major improvement over Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi?
One of the many things that make liberals so obnoxious is their hypocrisy. For instance, when campaigning against Christmas symbols, they make a mantra of "separation of church and state," although those words never appear in the Constitution. They appeared in a letter that Thomas Jefferson addressed to the members of the Danbury, Connecticut, Baptist Association. While insisting that a person's religious beliefs were a personal matter, he did not expand upon the Constitution's very specific wording, "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."
Nothing that I have ever written has provoked as huge a response as a piece I wrote some years ago called "The Jewish Grinch That Stole Christmas." In the article, which brought me roughly ten times as much e-mail as I'm accustomed to receiving, I suggested that my fellow secular Jews (aka atheists and agnostics) were at the forefront in waging war on the values and traditions of Christian Americans.
It would appear that the DNC has me confused with George Soros. I don't know why this would be. For one thing, he was born in Hungary and I was born in Chicago, so we sound nothing alike. For another thing, he has a full head of hair and I only have a cute little fringe around my ears. He's a billionaire and I am only just getting by. And, finally, I am sane and he's as crazy as a proverbial bedbug. But obviously something has gone haywire at Ground Zero of the loony Left. During the past week or so, Frank Lautenberg, James Carville, Jason Rosenbaum, Dick Durbin and Ted Kennedy's dipstick son, Patrick, have all sent me messages, urging me to donate money to help them defeat the GOP.
I have long insisted that the decline of America began roughly 50 years ago. That was the decade that saw the liberals take a hacksaw to the black family, as LBJ and thousands of social workers did everything they could to drive black husbands and fathers out of the household. It also saw the advent of the Free Speech movement that started out in Berkeley and culminated in Kent State. Snapshots of the decade would include the Yippies rioting in the streets of Chicago, the Black Panthers murdering people in Oakland, suburban couples engaged in wife-swapping, and parents all over the country looking to swap places with their children, while extolling the hedonistic life style summed up by the odious phrase "sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll."
Recently, I had an exchange with my friend Alan Caruba, a fellow Jew who had written a piece in which he pointed out that in hard economic times anti-Semites have a greater tendency to crawl out from under their favorite rocks. After acknowledging that he was right, I went on to state that as an American Jew, I was frankly surprised that there wasn't more hatred of Jews than there is. And for once, I was being totally serious. If I weren't Jewish, I could see how I, as a conservative, could be very antagonistic towards Jews. I mean, not being a total barbarian, I would try to be fair; I would attempt to balance things off by listing all of the Jewish contributions to medicine and science, literature and music, Hollywood and Broadway. I would think how much more unpleasant modern life would be without the efforts of Jonas Salk, George Gershwin, Albert Einstein, Richard Rodgers, Saul Bellow, J.D. Salinger, Jerome Kern, Billy Wilder, Carl Sagan and Milton Friedman. And that's just the tiny tip of a huge iceberg.
Occasionally, a reader will take me to task for covering several topics in a single piece. I assume such people somehow regard themselves as my boss. Although I generally try to be polite about it, I feel obligated to set them straight. In short, I write these articles in order to let off steam. I generally try to leaven them with humor, but that's just the way I am. Inasmuch as most of my fellow commentators are quite happy to devote entire articles to a single issue, I generally just steer the malcontents to the competition. For my part, I have a rather short attention span, so I like to hop around, lest I bore myself.
In recent years, there have been several instances of female high school teachers having sex with their male students. I do not approve of such behavior, and only the most cynical among you would even think to suggest that it's because it's been 54 years since I graduated. Understand, I do not sanction such behavior, but it strikes me as a very long stretch when people compare it to teenage girls being seduced by their 35-year-old male teachers. Whenever I hear about these women, my initial reaction is to wonder how they were able to stand the stench. Having been around teenage boys and having been one myself, I know that in terms of hygiene, they have far more in common with those clods squatting in Occupy Wall Street shanty towns than they do with the folks in soap and shampoo commercials.
