November 30, 2015

Paul Newman & My Electric Toothbrush

When I went to the supermarket today, I was waylaid near the entrance by a guy sitting at one of those card tables that have become omnipresent here in L.A. You can hardly go anywhere without being hit up by do-gooders collecting for some charity or other. I am personally reluctant to contribute to anything unless I know the recipients or know someone who can vouch for them. In this case, however, one of the two guys seated at the table got up and walked towards me, holding their brochure.

When I went to the supermarket today, I was waylaid near the entrance by a guy sitting at one of those card tables that have become omnipresent here in L.A. You can hardly go anywhere without being hit up by do-gooders collecting for some charity or other.

I am personally reluctant to contribute to anything unless I know the recipients or know someone who can vouch for them. In this case, however, one of the two guys seated at the table got up and walked towards me, holding their brochure.

He opened it, pointed to a photo of Paul Newman and said, “He helped found the group. We help bring water to people who don’t have any.”

I replied, “I didn’t like Paul Newman. He was a liberal who used the profits from his company to support left-wing causes.” To which the fellow, a young Asian, said: “I didn’t know that. I’m a Republican.”

“Good, then I’ve taught you something.”

Only slightly deterred, he proceeded to flip through a few pages of the brochure showing me pictures of thirsty people, who looked like sub-Saharan Africans. “But this is for the children,” he assured me, “They need water.”

I glanced at the photos and said, “In case you haven’t noticed, we have a drought in Southern California. A lot of people closer to home desperately need water. Besides, that’s Africa. They always need water. If after all these thousands of years, they still don’t know how to access water and Mother Nature hasn’t provided them with a camel’s hump, I would have thought they’d move to where water actually exists. And finally, we’re always bailing these people out of one catastrophe or another and the ingrates don’t even vote on our side at the U.N., so why should I worry about them?”

Obviously, unlike someone like John Kasich, I don’t feel the overwhelming need to pretend to be the poster boy for compassionate conservatism. *My compassion does extend, though, to my fellow conservatives. Therefore, I will share with you my experience dealing with the mucky-mucks at Proctor & Gamble.

I purchased an Oral B electric toothbrush and it worked just fine until the day the batteries died. When I tried to replace them, I found that after removing the cap and inserting the new batteries, it was impossible to reconnect the cap.

I finally took it back to CVS and when the clerks found they couldn’t attach it either, they gave me a replacement. Unfortunately, when it came time to replace the batteries on the new one, I found once again that I couldn’t connect the cap.

This time, I decided to go to the source by calling the Oral B complaint department. I tried several times, but only got a busy signal for my troubles. So I wrote to them, but never received a response.

Next I wrote to the CEO with similar results. So I tried the President of P&G. Keep in mind, I was merely asking that they send me a replacement after first testing it to make sure that once they removed the cap they could replace it.

This siege began nearly two months ago. In my last letter, I did threaten to write about my experience if they continued to snub me. I know it’s a fine line, but I don’t see it as extortion — and I hope the judge agrees with me. I see it as incentivizing the creeps to do the right thing.

*Recently, the Senate voted 91-3 to increase defense spending and at the same time deny Obama the right to shut down Gitmo. As I am always curious about the pinheads who vote the wrong way on these occasions, I looked into it and discovered that this particular trio consisted of Bernie Sanders of Vermont and both Oregon senators, Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley.

In explaining his vote, Sen. Sanders, the man who would be president, said that the Pentagon is a bloated agency where cost-overruns are all too typical. That’s true, but what Sanders failed to mention is that the Pentagon serves a purpose and is actually doing something specifically mandated in the Constitution, unlike the Departments of Commerce, Energy, Education, the EPA and the IRS, who also waste a great deal of our money.

Moreover, inasmuch as he voted in favor of ObamaCare, and to continue funding Planned Parenthood, in addition to having proposed programs that would double our $19 trillion national debt over the next few years, Bernie Sanders is hardly in a position to pass himself off as Scrooge McDuck.

*I am curious what the parents of those college students are thinking when they see their offspring on TV acting like squalling infants, carrying on as if their bruised feelings trump not only the First Amendment, but common decency.

When they see their progeny behaving like little brats, are they at least having second thoughts about the money they’re shelling out to keep the tykes in college? Or do they puff out their chests with pride when they see little Susie bawling her eyes out because someone dared challenge both political correctness and the moral cowardice that inevitably accompanies it.

I’m getting the impression that all those time-outs parents were giving their tots in the 90s weren’t nearly as effective as a swat on the rear would have been.

As a result, I’m afraid that we have raised a generation of what Megyn Kelly refers to as little cupcakes. Lacking the ability to think for themselves, they have resorted to accepting every bit of left-wing swill regurgitated by a corrupt media and an inferior education system.

It should be no surprise that we have millions of young people who believe that the climate is the single greatest danger facing the world; that every religion is an offense to rationality, but that Islam is the only one that deserves to be defended; that Israel, the freest society in the Middle East, is oppressive and fascistic; that America is an evil nation that owes its prosperity to slavery and that, for blacks, nothing has really changed over the past 150 years; that homosexuality is normal and that every possible measure, no matter how unrealistic and absurd, has to be taken to ensure that those who insist, in spite of their anatomy, to be boys or girls, men or women, be accommodated; and, finally, that socialism, not capitalism, is the fairest and most humane of all economic systems.

The late astronomer Carl Sagan once said: “If it can be destroyed by the truth, it deserves to be destroyed by the truth.”

Those 16 words should be on the wall of every classroom in America, and should be recited along with the Pledge of Allegiance every single morning.

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