Natural and Unnatural Disasters
I don’t understand why whenever some part of the country is hit with a natural disaster — be it a hurricane, a cyclone, an earthquake, or a tidal wave — the national media acts as if nothing else of consequence is taking place in the world.
I don’t understand why whenever some part of the country is hit with a natural disaster — be it a hurricane, a cyclone, an earthquake, or a tidal wave — the national media acts as if nothing else of consequence is taking place in the world. I’m not suggesting it shouldn’t be covered, but do we really need up-to-the-minute accounts? I can see local news giving it blanket coverage, but how many times did the rest of us need to see some reporter wearing a raincoat being drenched by Hurricane Florence, alerting us to the fact that a lot of water was falling on the east coast?
For people who have friends and relatives in the affected areas, they are far more likely to get their updates via cell phones and email. They don’t really expect to spot Aunt Martha or cousin Sidney rowing by in a canoe.
The only reason I can imagine someone watching direct-from-the-site reports is to see if the reporter gets swept off the pier while letting us know it’s really wet where he is.
When the action is brought back to the guy in the studio with his little pointer and the swirling colorful circles on the weather map, I always wonder if those circles are triggering epileptic attacks on viewers at home or possibly hypnotizing some of the more susceptible couch potatoes.
Speaking of hurricanes, every time one of them hits Hawaii, Florida, Texas, or the Carolinas, the climate hoaxers do everything but rub their hands in glee and chortle about the dangers of global warming. But according to records going back to 1850 kept by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administrations’ Hurricane Research Division, there have been well over 300 of the super storms that hit the East Coast and plenty more that have drenched Hawaii and uprooted palm trees during all of those decades. The alarmists would have you believe that hurricanes are a latter-day menace, sort of like Facebook, Google, and the Clintons.
While a lot of people were keeping a sharp eye on the hurricane, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, in a futile attempt to convince California voters that she is still relevant, came up with an anonymous letter she hoped would toss a monkey wrench in Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation. The letter purports to claim that at his high school prom 35 years ago, Judge Kavanaugh did something unseemly. Considering what usually takes place at high school proms, my imagination fails me when I try to figure out what he could have possibly done that warrants a scolding letter 35 years after the fact.
As political scams go, this is particularly clumsy. For one thing, Sen. Feinstein apparently received the letter in July, failed to share it with any of her colleagues on the Senate Judiciary Committee, and only decided to send it along midst great fanfare to the FBI in mid-September.
The obvious questions are:
Why did she wait so long to reveal it?
Why didn’t she ask Judge Kavanaugh about the accusation during the weeks he was meeting with senators?
Why didn’t she bring it up during the four days of confirmation hearings?
Why send it to the FBI, which has no jurisdiction over anything that may have taken place at a high school prom, unless, of course, young Kavanaugh kidnapped his date and took her across state lines? In which case, I suspect it would have come to light long before now.
Although I suppose Sen. Feinstein was encouraged by the fact that a similar stunt was enough to keep Roy Moore from winning his 2017 Senate election in Alabama, I think the fact that she couldn’t receive the endorsement of the California Democratic Party this time around forced her to resort to desperate measures in order to convince the state’s loons that, even at age of 85, she remains a force to be reckoned with.
Sen. Feinstein may be elderly, but that doesn’t mean she can’t be counted on to maintain the party’s position on our borders; namely, that they shouldn’t be protected. Somewhere along the line, even before Donald Trump’s surprise victory, Democrats understood that they were losing white voters, thanks to their policies when it came to taxes, industry-destroying regulations, and national defense. Even black voters were beginning to wake up to the fact that aside from the riffraff willing to subsist on welfare, having the first black man in the White House wasn’t improving their lives. Therefore, Democrats decided to bring in ignorant, unskilled millions from Latin America, who, by and large, would be dependent on government handouts to survive.
To people like Harry Reid, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Bernie Sanders, and Elizabeth Warren, impoverished illiterates were a godsend, arriving just in time to offset disgruntled white voters who had finally begun to awaken from their self-induced comas.
Perhaps it’s just my cynicism, but I don’t believe that those who call for open borders do their shopping at the bargain bins and buy their baked goods at those outlets offering day-old bread and donuts. But that’s what the liberals are demanding of America.
Nobody could possibly argue that the best newcomers we can come up with are uneducated Latinos, especially in an era when low-skilled jobs are being replaced by automation.
Moreover, what are we to make of their insistence that diversity is all-important when the immigration policy they promote is the opposite of diverse?
My friend, composer-conductor Richard Kaufman, shared with me a witticism he came up with many years ago. I assured him that my readers were old enough to get it. “When he was in high school, Alabama’s future governor George Wallace was voted most likely to secede.”
Bob Hunt, who served in Vietnam and has, during his career as a CPA, had to deal with the IRS, is fearless. So much so that he sent me a series of items meant to offend everyone.
After winnowing out the lines that even made me blush, I was able to come up with the following:
“Where does an Irish family go on vacation? A different bar.”
“What do you call it when an Italian has one arm shorter than the other? A speech impediment.”
“What’s the difference between a southern zoo and a northern zoo? A southern zoo has a description of the animal on the front of the cage, along with a recipe.”
“Why isn’t there a Disneyland in China? Nobody’s tall enough to go on the good rides.”
“What’s the fastest way to a man’s heart? Through the chest with a sharp knife.”
“Why is it so hard for women to find men who are sensitive, caring and good-looking? It’s because those men already have boyfriends.”
“What did the blonde say when she found out she was pregnant? ‘Are you sure it’s mine?’”
“What makes men chase women they have no intention of marrying? The same urge that makes dogs chase cars they have no intention of driving.”
“How do you get a sweet little 80-year-old lady to say the F word? Get another sweet little 80-year-old lady to yell ‘Bingo.’”
