Columnist.
Recently, in writing an article in which I was bemoaning all the tax dollars Obama blew on Solyndra, I typed $500 "billion" before I realized I had meant to type $500 "million." Fortunately, I corrected it before the article was posted. The reason I'm mentioning it is to acknowledge that we are all prone to error, and in this case I wasn't even under any pressure. So I can certainly empathize with people running for president when they suffer a brain freeze, the way Cain did when asked how he felt about the way Obama had handled Libya, and Gov. Perry did when asked which three departments of government he would cut.
When it comes to the Theory of Evolution, the religiously devout often find themselves locked in futile battle with those who lack religious faith. Those on one side are convinced that the earth is a mere 6,000 years old, and that God woke up one day and suddenly decided to create the earth, the stars, the giraffe, the camel and his crowning glory, Adam. Then, lest Adam get too big for his britches, He created Eve. Those on the other side of the argument think that is simply the goofiest story they ever heard. They insist it ignores tons of scientific evidence, including fossils, carbon dating and common sense. The faithful counter by saying that, for its part, science conveniently fails to explain how and why evolution would have ever begun. They insist that the universe can only be explained as the result of Intelligent Design.
When I was a kid, next to the cartoon, one of my favorite things at the movies was the weekly newsreel. In fact, unless the cartoon starred Tom and Jerry, I often enjoyed the newsreel more. For those too young to remember, in the days before TV, these 10-minute films generally included some politician, usually FDR or Harry Truman, giving a speech or tossing out the first ball at an All Star Game; celebrities showing up for a movie premiere; bathing beauties water-skiing in Florida; highlights from an Army-Navy football game; an exhibition of trick bowling or pool shooting by Andy Varipapa or Willie Hoppe, respectively; and, on their birthday, an update on the status of the Dionne Quintuplets of Canada. At its conclusion, we would all be urged to buy War Bonds or, once WWII ended, to contribute to the March of Dimes in order to stamp out infantile paralysis.
The only thing in shorter supply in America than jobs, shovel-ready or otherwise, is logic. And with most liberal arts professors taking their lead from Saul Alinksy and Noam Chomsky, not Socrates, it doesn't appear that college students will start thinking for themselves anytime soon. For instance, how is it that every other group in America has to go through the rigmarole of obtaining a city permit if it wants to conduct a two-hour parade down Main Street, and that municipalities can't even put up Christmas trees in the public square, but the bozos in the Occupy Wall Street movement are free to turn entire neighborhoods into toxic dumps? And how is it that until a few women are raped or a few guys are murdered, America's mayors and city councils all adopt a live-and-let-live policy to accommodate these creeps?
I have my own problems with Mitt Romney, but I have to confess that when Rick Perry and others deride him as a flip-flopper, I take personal umbrage. For one thing, I was raised to be a Democrat and remained one until the strain just got to be too much for me, just as it did, you may recall, for Ronald Reagan. For another thing, talk about the obvious disadvantage for people in glass houses when it comes to stone throwing, Gov. Perry campaigned for Al Gore. And that was back in the late 80s, when Reagan had shown all of us the advantage of being a Republican.
Heterosexuals are always being accused by homosexuals of being narrow-minded and intolerant, but have any of them ever said they understood why straights might regard sodomy as disgusting behavior? Have they ever said that although we all grasp the fact that not all homosexuals are pedophiles, it still behooves them to speak out against adults having gay sex with "consenting" teenagers and, furthermore, why it would be inappropriate and criminally irresponsible for the Boy Scouts to allow homosexuals to be Scout Masters and to oversee camping trips? Just as an aside, I can't help reflecting on the fact that "camping" is a word long used to describe gays acting out in the most outrageous fashion.
By now I'm sure that even people who have less interest in college football than I, if such a thing is possible, are aware of the sex scandal that tore Penn State apart. It does not surprise me that Jerry Sandusky got away with his vile activity for so many years or that Joe Paterno and the college administrators basically turned a blind eye to it. College football, after all, is a cash cow that is far more sacred in America than the cattle that wander blithely through India's countryside. Even when I was just a kid, a popular joke was that such college super stars as Charlie "Choo Choo" Justice, Doak Walker and Hugh McElhenny, would all have to take pay cuts when they turned pro.
I have now sat through all of the GOP debates and have come to a few conclusions. First, they should not be called debates. They are actually Meet the Candidates events. As such, they serve a useful purpose. But they are not debates. If they were, Newt Gingrich would have the nomination sewn up by this time. Unfortunately for the former Speaker of the House, the ability to speak quickly and coherently on a number of issues isn't enough.
Although the general election is still a long way off, the primaries are right around the corner, unless you happen to live in California. Out here, I think we get to vote sometime in July or August. But since we west coast Republicans comprise such a small band of rebels, it probably doesn't matter that New Hampshire and Iowa, whose cumulative population is about half that of L.A. County, actually get to play a major role in determining who will be the GOP nominee. But, unlike some perpetual pessimists, I remain confident that whoever our candidate turns out to be, he or she will defeat Chairman Obama even if he's armed with a billion dollar bankroll. All that dough squandered in a losing presidential election only means the Democrats will have less money to spend in their futile attempt to maintain control of the Senate.
With one percent of Americans paying most of the income taxes in America, while 47% pay nothing, it figures that Democrats would decide that the fair thing to do is to force the one-percenters to pay even more. That is what liberals refer to as social justice, which they believe is better than just plain old-fashioned justice because it allows them to stack the deck. That, in a nutshell, is not only a good reason to never vote for liberals, but an equally good reason not to play cards with them.
Some of us imagined that Barack Obama couldn't possibly have a lousier, more corrupt, circle of friends and advisors in Washington than he had back in Chicago. But is it possible that we simply underestimated the man's uncanny ability to attract vermin?
Who was the dunderhead who came up with the primary system? I'm not referring to the primary elections themselves, but to the order in which they must be conducted. There are ancient religious rituals that aren't held to be this sacred. When Floridians quite reasonably suggest that their primary should come earlier than it has in the past, the GOP hierarchy threatens to excommunicate them and deny them full representation at the national convention.
Recently, I took a rare vacation. Inasmuch as I am not gainfully employed, I agree it's a strange concept. "A vacation from what?" is a question that would certainly spring to my mind. In this case, it meant that I was out of town and off the computer. But, apparently being something of a masochist, I continued to monitor the news of the day. Or, to be precise, I should say the news of the week. During that period, the leader of the Libyan rebels confirmed that the country would now exist under sharia law. As I expected when I first heard about the Arab Spring, only simpletons can ever be overjoyed at the notion of a tyrant being overthrown in that part of the world. King Farouk was bad, Gamal Nasser was worse. The Shah of Iran was bad, the Ayatollah Khomeini was worse. Hosni Mubarak was bad, the generals are worse. Muammar Kaddafi was bad, his assassins will be worse. I understand that the Muslim Brotherhood has already sent roses and a box of candy to NATO.
When liberals insist that the reason Obama is faring so badly in the polls is because most of us are racists, does it never occur to them that they're like the boy who cried "Wolf!"? Let us say that, unlike Michael Bloomberg, Henry Waxman and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, you're not a career politician, but merely a run of the mill Democrat. Wouldn't it ever occur to you to wonder why it is that if we're all racists, how it is that Obama won the election three years ago? And how is it that a guy who's much blacker than Obama, Herman Cain, is doing so well with conservatives? And how is it that the likes of Thomas Sowell, Shelby Steele, Walter Williams, Ward Connerly, Condoleezza Rice, Clarence Thomas and Allen West, are universally liked and admired by Republicans?
I must confess that I've been getting a kick out of Democrats trying to align themselves with the Occupy Wall Street mob. If ever a political stratagem was destined to blow up in their face, this is it. For folks who like to brag about their knowledge of history, it's amazing that they've already forgotten what the Yuppies demonstrating in the streets of Chicago did to enhance Hubert Humphrey's chances of defeating Richard Nixon in 1968. And at least those chowderheads could claim that they were demonstrating against the Vietnam War. Ask these baboons what they're demonstrating against and, depending on whom you speak to, you might be told Goldman Sachs, banks in general, George Bush, the Tea Party, oil companies, the U.S. military, Fox News or Martians.
When you're a conservative, it's just about impossible, unless you're the sort of person who wins million dollar lotteries, to not have some friends and relatives who are liberal. The secret, I've found, to maintaining even slightly cordial relationships with them is to never share your honest opinions about anything important, sliding through social occasions discussing the weather, sports and, well, more weather.
For the past three years, as we've watched Obama try to deal with a lot of things that we can all agree are way above his pay grade, we've been constantly mindful of the fact that this schmuck has never really held a job in the private sector. The good news is that we are now less than 400 days away from November 6, 2012, when we can fire his sorry butt. The bad news is that no matter who replaces him in the Oval Office, we will still be stuck with a House and Senate filled with men and women who, for the most part, have spent their entire adult lives sitting on their butts making uninformed decisions that dictate how the rest of us get to live our lives.
Although, as a rule, I prefer avoiding using words in my articles that will send most normal people scurrying for their dictionary, I only recently came across "anosognosia" and I felt I should share it because it so perfectly describes the mental condition of liberals. It is the total unawareness of one's own disease, disability or defect. So when we find ourselves asking why leftists think and act as they do, apparently living in a fantasy world totally disconnected from reality, at least we now know there's a word that defines it.
I used to sympathize with my wife because every day's mail brought her half a dozen requests from the likes of the RNC, Newt Gingrich and Dick Morris, to send money. She rarely sent any money, but she would faithfully fill out the enclosed questionnaires. No matter how often I would tell her that they weren't interested in her opinion, only her checkbook, she would labor on. When she was in one of her feistier moods, she would ask me what made me think anyone was interested in my opinion. I blamed such outbursts on her youth.
