Ever since the campaigns began earlier this year, Democrats, desperate to save their political hides, have been dragging up silly stuff that their opponents allegedly did during their college and even their high school days. Frankly, I’m surprised that conservative candidates haven’t been accused of causing mischief in their nursery school sandboxes.

I can certainly understand why liberals would prefer to have us concentrating on stupid pranks and childish follies than on ObamaCare, a 9.6 unemployment rate and a trillion dollars blown on shovel-ready jobs that existed only on Obama’s teleprompter.

One of the reasons I go to movies as rarely as I do is because I no longer have a reviewer I can totally rely on. Years ago, there was a fellow writing for a local paper named Dick Williams. What made him indispensable was that he was always wrong in his judgments, although, to be fair, he would have said the same about me. In any case, if he panned a movie, it was sure to be one I’d enjoy; if he raved about a movie, I learned to avoid it like the plague. It’s now that way with me and Obama. No matter the issue, if he’s for it, I know it stinks. It’s as if he’s reading my mind and then basing his agenda on no other criteria except to tick me off. Judging by the polls, I’m glad to see I’m not alone in being ticked.

Heaven knows we’ve had other mediocre men in the Oval Office, but I’m pretty certain we’ve never had another who was so contemptuous of our nation. Whether it’s because of his family background, his education or his unfortunate choice of mentors, it’s as if he views America through the wrong end of a telescope. Instead of a great, good and generous country, he sees something small and distant, hardly worth his time and certainly undeserving of his respect and devotion. Ask him what he likes most about America and I suspect his honest answer would be our golf courses.

One of Obama’s most glaring deficiencies is in the area of economics. He apparently believes he can keep throwing money to his base, which consists of unions, minorities and the callow young, and never have to pay the piper. In spite of all the hype about his intellect, he really has a second-rate mind. He fails to grasp the simple fact that the federal government doesn’t make money; it merely prints the stuff.

But because, unlike the great pretender in the White House, I put my country above partisan politics, I have come up with a couple of ways that Washington can start to pay its own way.

First off, when schools want to raise money, they often stage carnivals and, invariably, one of the major attractions is the water-dunking booth. For a buck or two, you get to toss three balls at a target. If you hit it, the boy’s vice principal or one of the phys ed teachers is flipped off a platform and dropped into a tank of cold water. Now imagine if Barney Frank, Henry Waxman or Nancy Pelosi, were perched on that platform. The line of customers would stretch all the way back to Kansas. Not only would it make a dent in the national deficit, but it would do wonders for the nation’s morale.

Another guaranteed moneymaker I’ve come up with combines something people hate with something they love. The first of these is paying their income taxes. The other is a lottery. With the present system, everybody is paying as little as he can get away with, trying to deduct everything from a pack of chewing gum to a trip to Cancun. But what if we tied April 15th to a lottery with first prize being, say, 20 times whatever you paid in taxes, second place being 10 times the amount, third place being five times the total, and with, say, 50 honorable mentions where you’d get your money back, plus a steak dinner? It would sure beat the heck out of that Publishers Clearinghouse Sweepstakes with all those annoying little stickers you have to track down midst all the magazine ads.

Overnight, most people – Americans being the inveterate and optimistic gamblers they are – would be overpaying their taxes on the chance of increasing their prize money.

Now do you see why Tim Geithner should be handing the Treasury job over to me?

Finally, a friend of mine was recently relating the problems he was having with his young daughters, and it occurred to me why dog owners have it so much better than parents: Dogs never become teenagers. They simply go from being adorable little puppies to being our faithful companions.

That led me to an equally dazzling insight: Once liberals become teenagers, they remain teenagers even if they live to be 95! Once you grasp this simple truth everything about leftist politics becomes perfectly, and frighteningly, clear.