The Patriot Post® · Things Nobel & Not So Noble
In a recent article, while dealing with the absurdity of Bob Dylan being awarded the Nobel Peace for Literature, I mentioned that far worse miscarriages of justice occur when the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to the likes of Woodrow Wilson, Henry Kissinger, Le Duc Tho, Yasir Arafat and the U.N. Peacekeeping Forces. But as a couple of my readers pointed out, I somehow neglected to mention Jimmy Carter, Al Gore and Barack Obama.
I also neglected to place the blame where it belongs. Whereas all the other Prizes are handled by the Swedes, for some reason they jobbed out the Peace Prize to the Norwegians, who clearly aren’t up to it.
Besides the fact that neither I nor Mark Twain ever won it, my biggest gripe with the Literature Prize is that I can’t figure out how they decide on the recipient. No knock on the Swedes, and I’ll be the first to concede that they can handle English and the Scandinavian languages, but how on earth can they determine that those who write prose or poetry in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Finnish, Russian, Icelandic, Polish, Nigerian, Egyptian, Portuguese, Hungarian and Hebrew, are worthy of the million-dollar windfall?
America’s chiropractors should name James Comey Man of the Year and toss him a banquet. After all, he has probably been the cause of more whiplash victims than drunken drivers and lousy brakes put together. I confess that I am one of those unfortunates. After he listed all of Hillary Clinton’s federal offenses in July before concluding she hadn’t committed a single indictable crime, I wanted him carried away in shackles. But, then, with just 11 days to go in the election, he dropped the bombshell that she was once again under investigation!
So, while I no longer feel the need to have my neck adjusted, I’m assuming a line quickly formed at the door of every chiropractor in Washington, D.C. There was Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Tim Kaine, Elijah Cummings, Robby Mook, Brian Fallon, the entire MSNBC lineup and Mrs. Clinton herself, all of whom had been hailing Director Comey’s honesty and integrity to the sky three months ago, suffering severe cases of whiplash and demanding that he now be drawn-and-quartered, and that each quarter be smacked with a hammer and the remains tossed into the Potomac.
The most distressing news to come out of the Wikileaks scandal isn’t what it tells us about Mrs. Clinton. After all, most people, including Democrats, knew that she, her husband and daughter, were all sleazebags, who would do and say anything for a buck. But what the leaked emails tells us is that virtually everyone connected to them in any way is corrupt, just not on so grand a scale.
For instance, Donna Brazile, temporary head of the DNC, sent questions to Mrs. Clinton before debates to help prep her during the primaries. Things only got worse when she appeared on Megyn Kelly’s show. When asked to explain herself, Ms. Brazile had the gall to say: “As a Christian woman, I know about persecution, but I won’t sit here and be persecuted.” She went on to say she hadn’t done any of the things the leaked emails showed she had done.
I suppose when CNN announced her resignation a day or two later, she no doubt regarded that as persecution.
But that brings up a few other matters. One, why did CNN say she had resigned. She had obviously been fired. People can resign for any number of good reasons. There are very few good excuses for being fired, and it’s time that elitists started getting axed just the way the rest of us do. It is worth noting, though, that the DNC hasn’t even suspended her, although it remains unclear whether that’s because they approved of her deceit or because no left-wing entity can ever be seen treating a black person the same way they would a Caucasian.
Also, the day after she was gone, I had to hear both Ed Henry of Fox and Charles Hurt of the Washington Times tell us that despite her dishonest conduct, Ms. Brazile was “a nice person.” But neither took the time to tell us what’s so nice about her. At least when Joe Biden wanted to put in a good word for Barack Obama back in 2008, he specifically mentioned that this particular black man was articulate and, what’s more, smelled good.
Hillary Clinton, in explaining the huge fees she received for the 92 speeches she delivered over the past three years to the likes of Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, UBS Wealth Management, Bank of America and the World Affairs Council, said: “It’s what they offered me. I happen to think we need more conversations about what’s going on in the world.”
Inasmuch as most of these pricey events lasted less than an hour and she did all the talking, they can hardly be described as conversations. But the fact is that some of the companies thought that she was worth far more the standard $225,000-$250,000 bribes that others were paying. eBay, Inc., thought she was a bargain at $315,000, as did the National Automobile Dealers Association ($325,000), while the United Jewish Fund apparently tied her down and forced her to accept a check for $400,000.
The California Medical Association coughed up a measly $100,000, but, to be fair, they only got to see her via satellite.
In case you’re wondering why all these outfits were paying her all that money, it wasn’t, as you probably imagined, that they simply couldn’t get enough of that frozen smile and the witch’s cackle. It’s because whereas there’s a limit on what companies can contribute to political campaigns, the sky’s the limit when it comes to speakers’ fees.
Yet even here you can’t avoid that income inequality Democrats are always droning on about. While Mrs. Clinton was averaging about $240,000-a-speech, the man in the family was cashing $700,000 checks for doing the exact same job; namely, peddling influence.
Someone sent me a cartoon that finally made sense of Hillary’s campaign slogan. It showed Mrs. Clinton handcuffed to an FBI agent, with the caption “Stronger Together.”
One of my readers made a good point in a recent email: “I was just reading an article on abortions and those who think the taxpayer should pay for them because of a woman’s right to have one. Well, the last time I checked, abortions are not mentioned anywhere in the Constitution. There is, however, a constitutional right to own a gun. Using the liberal’s logic, the government should buy me a gun because it’s my right to have one.”
Although I have no way of confirming this, I would like to believe it’s true that as he lay dying in a Paris garret, the last words Oscar Wilde ever uttered as he looked around at his miserable surroundings were: “Either the wallpaper goes or I go.”