The Patriot Post® · Prof. Jiminy Cricket

By Burt Prelutsky ·
https://patriotpost.us/opinion/67078-prof-jiminy-cricket-2019-12-09

If you recall the story of Pinocchio, you’ll recall that although he was made of wood, he was blessed to have a cricket for a conscience. But having a head, not to mention legs and arms, made of wood, he was always ignoring Jiminy’s wise counsel. As a result, he wound up on Pleasure Island where boys are encouraged to misbehave. Eventually, because they carry on like braying jackasses, they are turned into donkeys and sold off to work on farms and in mines.

In the 1930’s, during the Depression, pedophile hobos began singing “Big Rock Candy Mountain” with altered lyrics which promised a magical place where, instead of “cops with wooden legs, bulldogs with rubber teeth and hens that lay soft-boiled eggs,” children would find candy, soda pop and gum drops. That was before the freaks began luring away their tiny victims by asking for their help in finding lost puppies and kittens.

It seems that our college age children are every bit as gullible as these others even though they are three or four times older. At a time when they should be paying heed to the Jiminy Cricket’s in their life, they are allowing themselves to be snookered by those like Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and their Socialist cohorts who are promising them a Big Rock Candy Mountain that will provide them with free health care, free college tuition, a forgiveness of student debt, a living wage whether or not they have a job, and just maybe a puppy dog of their own that somebody else will walk and feed and bathe.


President Trump wants to declare drug cartels terrorist organizations, but Mexico is resisting the action, declaring they can handle the problem on their own. Well, of course, they can. Since 2000, there have been four presidents of Mexico. They have been Vicente Fox (2000-2006), Felipe Calderon (2006-2012), Enrique Pena Nieto (2012-2018) and Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador (2018-present). Under their gallant leadership, 365,000 Mexicans, several American Border Patrol agents and nine American civilians, have been murdered by the drug cartels.

Mexico is such a corrupt country that even when I was very young, tourists knew they could avoid traffic tickets by bribing the police officers. We also knew that the reason the president didn’t mind being limited to a single six-year term was because anyone who couldn’t steal a fortune in that time simply wasn’t trying.

Since the drug cartels took control of Mexico, the presidents have only gotten richer.


Even though the election is still a year off, we are already hearing that Russia, Ukraine, Iran, China and North Korea, will all be trying to meddle in our elections. My assumption is that they couldn’t do much worse than the Democrats, who keep opposing photo I.D.s because they see them as a way to cut down on their attempts at election fraud.

My own revolutionary solution is to use paper ballots. Obviously, it’s not a sure cure. After all, it wasn’t that long ago that Al Franken won his Senate seat because the corrupt Minnesota Democrats kept finding missing boxes of ballots in closets, attics and the trunks of ‘87 Chevys, until he had enough to win the election by a few hundred votes.

But at least with paper ballots, we could stop worrying about foreigners cocking up our elections and leaving it in the hands of corrupt Americans.


Barack Obama has apparently told friends that he will do whatever he needs to do to prevent Bernie Sanders from winning the nomination. With all the Socialists in the race, I can’t imagine why he would single out Sanders, unless it is to once again express his anti-Semitic feelings.


Speaking of the contenders, they are deluding themselves if they’re using the enthusiasm of their crowds as a yardstick. When they go on and on about open borders; free healthcare for illegal aliens; special rights for transgenders; gun confiscation; higher taxes; decriminalizing drug use; banning fossil fuels; compelling bakers and florists to defy their religious beliefs by servicing same-sex marriages; and the whole rest of the woke agenda items, they assume that the 600 clapping seals represent untold millions.

They are so besotted with their own greatness, they ignore the fact that normal people do not leave their nice, warm homes to listen to the likes of Biden, Warren, Sanders and Buttigieg, prattle on. President Trump can draw huge crowds because he’s entertaining and fairly spontaneous. Even the Clintons, who had a little pizazz, relied heavily on black singers and Hollywood stars to draw a crowd.

What the Democrats choose to ignore is that it’s the folks who stay away from these cult meetings who do most of the voting in this country. And even those who are registered Democrats are not particularly enamored with the likes of Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, assuming so much influence in their party.

Being normal, and not zealots, means they don’t want to give up on cheeseburgers and gas-fueled vehicles, and they certainly don’t want America to surrender its sovereignty to the whims of the assorted gangster nations who congregate at the U.N.


John Lewis alerted me to the fact that the law students at Washington and Lee University are campaigning to have the portraits of George Washington and Robert E. Lee removed from the school’s diplomas because people — by which they must mean future clients — may find the pictures of slaveholders “controversial or offensive.”

If there’s one thing I wouldn’t want to do, it’s to offend a bunch of bottom-feeding ambulance chasers who might sue me, but if they’re so worried about the pictures scaring off business, shouldn’t they have thought about that before matriculating at a university bearing their names? Or would they also like the university to remove its name from the sheepskins?


Bob Hunt sent along a joke about a man named John who received a parrot as a gift.

The parrot’s vocabulary was so obscene, it would have made a sailor blush.

John attempted to civilize the bird by playing soft music and using only the politest of language in the parrot’s presence. But nothing worked. Finally, out of frustration, John cursed out the bird. But the bird was out of his league when it came to filthy language.

John became so enraged, he grabbed the bird and placed him in the freezer. For a few minutes, the parrot squawked out a series of obscenities. Then there was silence. Not a peep, not even a single “son of a bitch.”

John, suddenly fearing he’d gone too far and killed the bird, quickly opened the freezer door. The parrot calmly stepped out and onto John’s shoulder and said: “I fear I may have offended you with my crude language. I’m sincerely remorseful. I can only pray that you will forgive my previous transgressions. I pledge to do better in the future.”

John was stunned by the parrot’s new attitude.

Just as he was about to ask the parrot what had brought about such a dramatic change, the parrot said in a very soft voice: “Might I ask what the turkey did to displease you?”