A while back, I confessed that I had grown tired of people – including some conservatives – who demeaned those of us who wished that Barack Obama would be compelled to cough up his birth certificate and his college application. It just strikes me as very suspicious that the fellow hanging out in the Oval Office is so determined to keep those items under wraps.

It’s not that I am dying to see Joe Biden take his place; I would much prefer to see Obama suffer a shellacking in 2012, but I see no reason that he should be allowed to get away with stuff that no other president would even consider attempting.

If a Republican were the president and he fought to keep his personal documents locked up, you can bet that for liberals, “birthers” would be a term of respect.

Something else that rankles me – and not just because I’m short – is that the taller of the two candidates vying for the presidency nearly always wins the election. It’s not just height, either, but build and looks in general that seem to carry far too much weight for Americans. For example, Nixon’s 5 o'clock shadow and over-active sweat glands probably had more to do with his loss to JFK in 1960 than even the ballot box shenanigans that took place in Texas and Illinois.

Even though a lot of Joe McCarthy’s claims about Communist infiltration in the State Department were absolutely true, the fact remains that he looked and sounded like someone that Central Casting would have sent over to Warner Brothers if they were looking to cast the leader of a lynch mob. American Communists were extremely lucky in having Nixon and McCarthy appear to be the personification – the face, as it were – of the anti-Communist movement during the early 50s.

At about the same time, a lot of people were attacking Whittaker Chambers for blowing the whistle on Alger Hiss, a highly influential member of our State Department, who just happened to be a dedicated Communist. The problem, again, was one of image. Hiss looked like a middle-aged male model. Gregory Peck would have played him in a movie. Chambers, on the other hand, looked like an unmade bed, and would have been portrayed by William Bendix or Walter Slezak.

Something else that annoys the heck out of me is this business with Somali pirates. Since the craziness began a while back, those punks have extorted money for six bulk-type carriers, eight dhows, four oil tankers, one liquid petroleum gas carrier, a dozen cargo vessels, one tug boat and a couple of yachts – the second of which led to the murder of four Americans.

Two centuries ago, when the Barbary pirates were pulling this same kind of crap, Thomas Jefferson sent the Marines over to deal with them. As usual, the Marines got the job done, and later immortalized the operation in the Marine Hymn, the part where it mentions “the shores of Tripoli.”

I realize it’s too much to hope that Obama would order our military to wipe out the creeps. After all, when has he ever displayed moral outrage, except perhaps when he’s joined Pelosi and Reid in haranguing members of the Tea Party?

But the reason that he won’t deal with the pirates as they should be dealt with, even after the slaughter of those four seafaring Americans, isn’t because he’s nothing more than a puffed-up community organizer posing as the commander-in-chief. Or should I say that it’s not just because he’s nothing more than a puffed-up community organizer posing as the commander-in-chief? Rather, it’s because, no matter the provocation or whether he was born in Mombassa or Honolulu, there’s no way that this gutless poltroon, who refused to even indict the New Black Panther Party thugs, is going to be responsible for spilling the blood of black men, no matter how vile they might be.

Finally, it annoys me when people predict the world will end on a specific day. They should at least be willing to put their money where their mouth is. After all, so long as they’re right, they don’t have to worry about someone showing up to collect.

Recently, a cult leader announced that Doomsday will arrive on December 12, 2012. Frankly, I believe that November 6th is the more ominous date. Because it’s Election Day, that’s when we’ll find out if we’re going to be stuck with another four years of Obama.

For my part, I am willing to make a sizable wager that the world will not end either with a bang or a whimper on the 12th of December. On the other hand, anything is possible, so I will definitely hold off on my Christmas shopping until the 13th has rolled around.