I can’t quite decide which recent news item aggravated me the most. First there was Obama’s latest salvo in his war on coal, followed by Mrs. Clinton’s clumsy attempt to put Benghazi behind her and, finally, the swap of five Islamic terrorists for one Army prisoner.

Even though Obama’s plan to finish off the coal industry through the use of EPA regulations are expected to cost America 224,000 jobs each year for the next 16 years and send energy costs soaring across the board, the Democrats are all on board for it. It is amazing to me that so many Americans, the very people it will hurt the most, continue paying lip service to the hoax known as global-warming.

At present, coal supplies 40% of our electrical needs. You would think that even backward children would recognize that if a foreign nation attempted to cut off our coal supply, we would go to war with them. So why is it that millions of Americans, along with the liberals they elect to high office, are so willing to be complicit in the self-destruction of the nation’s economy?

That brings us to Hillary Clinton, who’s still acting coy about running for president and is about as convincing as a $10 hooker announcing that after turning another dozen tricks she’s entering a nunnery. It would take someone as arrogant and deceitful as Cruella d'Clinton to claim that the GOP is politicizing Benghazi when everyone knows or should know that the reason the massacre of the four Americans and the ensuing cover-up took place was because it was Obama’s pre-election mantra that Osama bin Laden was dead and Al Qaeda was on life support.

Hillary declares she won’t engage in a political slugfest over Benghazi on the backs of four dead Americans. It’s like Al Capone announcing that he won’t lower himself to debating the pros and cons of paying income taxes. I find it laughable for Hillary, who hasn’t taken a non-political breath since she was weaned 65 years ago, to ever condemn another for playing politics.

For my part, I say what difference, at this point, does it make what the lying shrew says. Let her wait until she’s in front of Trey Gowdy’s committee and her choice is to risk perjury charges if she lies or face a dashing of her presidential hopes if she takes a page from Lois Lerner’s playbook and pleads the Fifth.

When you see a 91-year-old Texas congressman running for re-election or an Eric Shinseki trying to hang on to his job at the VA in the midst of a media firestorm while being universally derided, you begin to grasp just how marvelous the perks are for a Washington insider.

That is why, if I were president, the first things I would do is banish every government limo within city limits, cut every congressional and bureaucratic office into three or four cubicles and slash everybody’s staff down to three people. That would be the rule for everyone, except, of course, for President Prelutsky. For me, it would be enough of a sacrifice to wear long pants and have to associate with politicians.

It occurred to me that if you happen to know a rich liberal, try sneaking into his house and setting up housekeeping. If he complains, accuse him of being a hypocrite. After all, why should anyone espousing comprehensive immigration reform (formerly known as amnesty) object to someone seeking a better life by scrounging off someone who has more? According to my rules, you collect extra points if you manage to sneak into Jeb Bush’s home or Barack Obama’s.

When you realize that in Mexico, 95% of all felonies go unpunished, you can better understand why they were so anxious to grab ex-Marine Andrew Tahmooressi, whose crime was being stuck in the wrong traffic lane. It improved their arrest numbers.

The main question regarding Jay Carney’s sudden bolt from the White House podium is whether he’ll ever be able to stop lying now that he’s no longer Obama’s mouthpiece or if the problem is now permanently ingrained.

Of all the ways in which this administration wastes money, perhaps nothing is quite as outrageous as foreign aid. Inasmuch as Sudan receives $300 million a year from us, you would think all it would take would be a phone call to get that Christian woman who faces 100 lashes and execution because of her religion released. But, as you may have noticed, we not only don’t attach any strings to our largesse, we even refuse to taint the gift by suggesting that occasionally a bit of gratitude would be appreciated. For $300 million, Sudan’s only response to our command that it jump should be “How high?”

It’s fascinating the way liberals feel free to trash conservative blacks like Clarence Thomas and Tom Sowell, women like Sarah Palin and Condoleezza Rice, or gays like GOP congressional candidate Carl DeMaio, condemning them as traitors to their race, gender or sexual orientation. However, when confronted by an actual traitor like Edward Snowden, their first instinct is to proclaim him a hero.

Speaking of heroes, I was as ready as anyone to break out the confetti and party hats to celebrate the return of Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl until I heard the price of his release was the release of five Islamic terrorists from Gitmo. The next thing I heard was that far from being a hero, the reason Sgt. Bergdahl had been so easily abducted by the Taliban was because he had wandered off the military base in Afghanistan while attempting to desert.

His former colleagues aren’t looking forward to his being feted at the White House. They’d prefer to see him go directly to Leavenworth because American lives were lost by those who had to go searching for his sorry ass. Not exactly a Private Ryan type saga.

Adding to the farce, we had Bergdahl’s father, looking like a jihadist, standing alongside Obama in the Rose Garden praising Allah and speaking Pashto, the lingo of the Taliban.

Speaking of the unspeakable, it occurs to me that Obama swore to shut down Gitmo. To achieve that result, all he needs now is to have a few more Army deserters snatched up by our enemies, and then swap the remaining terrorists for them.

If the Taliban dig in their heels, I’m betting our commander-in-chief could be persuaded to sweeten the deal by tossing in a few Happy Meals, his autographed photo of Oprah Winfrey, a beer summit with Joe Biden and a CD of Slim Whitman’s Greatest Hits.