The Patriot Post® · Mrs. Prelutsky Weighs In

Although I’m a very good speller, even I need a proofreader. In my case, the problem is that my eyes sometimes see what my brain has convinced them is on the page. As a result, my eyes will read a word that belongs on the page, but which isn’t really there. It is usually a little word, so in the previous sentence I could easily have left out the “a” or the “on” and not noticed they’d gone missing.

That’s where Yvonne’s role kicks in, but she will also comment on the content, and as annoying as that can be, I must confess she sometimes makes such a persuasive case that even Ted Cruz would be swayed.

I thought her last two suggestions were particularly good and although my initial reaction was to pass them off as my own, I figured she might notice.

First, she would like Congress to pass legislation requiring that no member of the federal government ever be exempt from the laws they pass. If Yvonne’s bill had already been the law of the land, I very much doubt that every Democrat would have been quite so anxious to sign the Affordable Care Act. I can’t quite picture Nancy Pelosi giggling while telling her fellow House Democrats: “I guess we’ll have to sign it before we actually know what’s in it.”

Yvonne’s other bill would dictate that those legislators who oppose school vouchers be forced to enroll their own children in those local public schools they’re forever boasting about, even as they have their own offspring safely ensconced in private and religious schools.

I’m aware that Yvonne wasn’t the first person who ever came up with those ideas, but as husbands everywhere will confirm, ideas carry more weight when they come from your wife, and then keep coming.

Speaking of schools, whenever I see the young college louts shouting down speakers with whom they disagree or getting away with the sort of anti-social behavior that would get them arrested if committed off-campus, I am reminded of the acronym that Al Capp came up with in the turbulent 60s: “Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything,” or SWINE, for short.

Most, though not nearly all, of the problems with colleges these days involves those teaching the classes and those taking them. In far too many cases, neither group really belongs there. The professors, instead of utilizing the Socratic method in order to help the students to think for themselves are using their bully pulpits to bully the students into parroting their leftist propaganda. Good-bye, Socrates; hello, Saul Alinsky.

In many cases, the fault belongs with the well-intentioned parents, who would like to believe the fruit of their loins are all scholars, not because the kids have ever shown any interest in pursuing scholarly matters, but because the parents are convinced it reflects well on them. And far too often, these idiots are willing to mortgage their homes in order to finance the delusion.

But the fault is shared by those companies who won’t even consider employing someone without a college degree, although most jobs require little more than a high school diploma.

If they were on the ball, more businesses would hire kids straight out of high school and put them through a 30 or 60-day training program so the kids would learn what they actually need to know and not waste four years while left-wing morons fill their little sponge brains with a lot of anti-capitalist bull-hockey.

Heck, if the military can take half-baked kids and teach them to fly supersonic jets and handle computers on nuclear subs, I’m betting that P&G or Ford can manage to teach them everything they’ll ever need to know about cereal and cars.

When you listen to Bernie Sanders or Hillary Clinton drone on about economics, mainly competing to see which of them can offer the most free stuff, you realize how tempting it must be to bribe one group of people with other people’s money. What you don’t know is how much of what they say is merely self-serving tripe and how much is based on economic ignorance.

At least so far as Sanders is concerned, I suspect he really doesn’t understand that million, billion and trillion, aren’t really the same word spelled slightly differently for no other reason than to confuse him. Otherwise, how could he possibly believe that he could up with the $18 trillion he’d need in order to provide free universal health care and free college tuition by merely raising taxes on the super wealthy?

The shocking truth is there are only 540 billionaires in America. Bill Gates tops the list with $78 billion, and there are 39 others with fortunes in excess of $10 billion. Together, they add up to roughly $1.1 trillion.

The other 500 are worth on average $4 billion. In other words, if Bernie were able to confiscate every last cent these people had in the world — and he’d like nothing better! — the entire haul would fall short of $18 trillion by $14.9 trillion, give or take a few hundred billion.

Surely even a 74-year-old Socialist who spent his first 40 years scrounging off his parents and living in their basement, must understand that if confiscating the wealth of the very richest Americans still leaves you that far shy of the mark, the only way you’ll ever reach your goal is by doing the very same thing to what still remains of America’s middle class.

Some folks we know recently visited China and sent us the usual photos of themselves standing atop the Great Wall, wearing the typical glazed expression that says “I spent all that money and sat cramped on a plane for what seemed like several days for this?!”.

Still, the Wall remains one of the wonders of the world. That’s because if you include its branches, it measures over 13,000 miles long and is easily visible from outer space. Its walls originally rose to a height of 16'5", but over the centuries those sections that were composed mainly of mud, rather than stone or brick, have eroded down to a height of less than seven feet. Having experienced similar erosion myself, I know all too well how the Wall feels.

Finally, it is only Chinese legend that the Great Emperor Don not only got it built, but made Mongolia pay for it.