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THE IRS HITS THE CENTURY MARK

2013-05-24T00:30:00.000-07:00

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by Burt Prelutsky

It is just possible that 1913 was one of the worst years in American history. Not only did Woodrow Wilson, a role model for Obama, become president, but the 16th Amendment was passed, giving Congress the right to levy income taxes on us. And as anyone who has been paying attention lately realizes, when you place that much power in the hands of federal bureaucrats, you’re just asking for trouble.

It was recently disclosed that our own tax collectors are every bit as evil as those that plagued Robin Hood. But as you may have noticed, these days there’s never a master archer around when you really need one.

It seems that starting as early as 2011, the IRS was already targeting groups that did not view Obama as the Second Coming. They made things easy for themselves by determining that if the name of the group included “Tea Party,” “Constitution,” “Bill of Rights” or “Patriot,” it was not entitled to have the same tax-exempt status as, say, such sacred entities as Media Matters or the ACLU.

What’s more, the groups were expected to identify their donors, which normally would be illegal, but this, after all, is Barack Obama’s America, a nation in which harsher words are used to describe law-abiding, gun-owning, Christian conservatives than blood-thirsty jihadists.

The good news of late is that even such dedicated leftists as Maureen Dowd of the New York Times and former congressman, Dennis Kucinich, have taken to attacking the current administration over Benghazi and its misuse of the IRS.

What’s more, by the time the various congressional committees get to the bottom of Benghazi, I suspect I will stand a better chance of garnering the 2016 Democratic nomination than Hillary Clinton. Considering her decision to remove security forces from the consulate in spite of Ambassador Stevens’ begging for reinforcements; her telling the ambassador’s grief-stricken mother that her son’s death was due to some silly video; and her delivering that disgusting line “What difference, at this point, does it really matter” when referring to the identity of the Libyan killers; I would say it’s time to stick a fork in her. That’s because, one, her presidential aspirations are D.O.A. and, two, because she’s long deserved to have a fork stuck in her.

I understand that it’s not always possible for conservatives to rid themselves of the liberals in their lives. In a few instances, even I have not entirely managed to carry it off. After all, it’s not easy to cast off college friends, and even harder to dump loony relatives. But I would suggest as a test, try asking those you know what they think of Obama after the Benghazi cover-up and the news about the IRS. Both, after all, are somewhat reminiscent of life under Richard Nixon. I’m sure most of us recall how outraged liberals were over Watergate and about his infamous enemies list.

If you ask the liberals in your life these two questions and they insist that Obama had no involvement in either matter or that neither of those events is worthy of their interest, and you don’t call them on it in the exact same way they would if George Bush were the responsible party, you are, at best, an enabler and, at worst, a moral coward.

I despise Obama, and while I regard him as a vile symptom, even I have to acknowledge that he’s not entirely the cause of our national malaise. I mean, he didn’t hand Dr. Kermit Gosnell the scissors with which he cut the spines of those babies. On the other hand, a spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood did say that the decision to cut or not to cut should be solely in the hands of the woman and her friendly abortionist, and Obama did find time to give a shout-out at the recent Planned Parenthood convention. But that was only fitting because as an Illinois state senator, he had already cast votes in favor of murdering the tiny survivors of botched abortions.

While I’m in attack mode, I’ll go on record that when it comes to criminal defense attorneys, they remind me less of actual human beings than they do of those slobbering long-fanged creatures one comes across in sci-fi horror movies. As if what Ariel Castro, the Tsarnaev brothers, Jodi Arias and Kermit Gosnell, did wasn’t appalling enough, we have an endless daisy chain of lawyers who are only too anxious to defend these monsters.

One assumes the motivation is publicity, although these creeps with their law degrees will inevitably contend that we are a nation of laws and that even those who are obviously guilty deserve the best defense that money can buy. But it seems to me that the Law, aka Justice, is really intended to protect the innocent, not to enable the guilty to escape their just deserts. What, after all, is so great about this Law they keep yammering about?

The Law, which these shysters pretend to hold sacred, permits a million legal abortions to take place every year. The Law permits convicted serial killers to survive for decades after they’ve slaughtered their victims, thanks to an appeal system so perverted that most of those on Death Row will never be executed. The Law also permits politicians to pass legislation, including ObamaCare, that affects the rest of us in terrible ways, but never them or their families.

The Law goes so far as to permit, one might even say encourage, Supreme Court justices to ignore the Constitution with impunity, and base their decisions on their own political disposition, having nothing to do with the Founders’ obvious intentions.

Thus I say, in the immortal words of Charles Dickens’ Mr. Bumble, “The law is an ass,” and, more often than not, so are its practitioners.

©2013 Burt Prelutsky. Comments? BurtPrelutsky@aol.com.

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COPING MECHANISMS

2013-05-22T00:30:00.000-07:00

by Burt Prelutsky

I will frankly admit I find it increasingly difficult to share the same planet as leftists. That’s because I believe they are all insane. They say such things as “We all belong to the state” or “It takes a village to raise a child” with a straight face. One might say that a North Korean belongs to the state, but an American?

To tell the truth, the only way I have found to cope with liberals is by ridiculing them every chance I get.

Does anyone but an idiot believe that folks like Jefferson, Washington and Franklin, went to all that trouble to create a nation that was basically the same as the English monarchy?

Just how is it that it takes a village to raise a child, but any female, even one as young as 12 or 13, is entitled to have it murdered by someone like Kermit Gosnell before the village gets their hands on it?

Lest anyone ever forget, Barack Obama, while in the Illinois legislature, not only voted in favor of late term abortions, but voted in favor of killing any tots who, miraculously, managed to survive the butchery. Furthermore, unlike same-sex marriages, transparency in government and the Patriot Act, Obama has not evolved even the slightest little bit when it comes to this particular issue.

Speaking of he who should go back to community-organizing, I immediately thought of Obama when I heard about the letter sent to a casting agency by the Canadian Broadcasting Company. The CBC was looking for someone to host an afternoon TV show. But they didn’t want just anyone to apply. In order to qualify, the person had to be good with kids, love physical comedy and enjoy hanging out with puppets all day. The job was open to people of any gender, so long as they weren’t white. I wouldn’t have been the least bit surprised if they had sent the job offer directly to the White House.

For one thing, we know Obama likes spending time with his daughters, especially when the taxpayer is picking up the tab. Next, anyone who saw him sink only two of the 22 shots he took on Easter Sunday knows he is Buster Keaton’s equal when it comes to physical comedy. And, finally, after spending four years pulling the strings of Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, Charley Rangel, Henry Waxman and Jay Carney, he has already put in more time with puppets than Burr Tillstrom, Jim Henson and Mr. Rogers, put together.

An odd fact I recently came across is that if you’re treated for COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) at the Bayonne Hospital Center in New Jersey, the cost is $99,490. However, just 30 miles away, at the Lincoln Medical Center in the Bronx, it will run you $7,094. I can’t possibly explain the discrepancy or recommend one hospital over the other but that doesn’t mean I’m not suspicious of Bayonne.

For one thing, the price is far too reminiscent of those rip-off artists that go out of their way to keep the price of their product or service below $100 by offering it for $99.99 or under $1000 by deducting a penny from the cost. But unless I find that Bayonne has a success rate 14 times higher than Lincoln or that they encourage smoking in the Bronx facility, I’d give Bayonne a very wide berth.

In case you missed the news, Kathy Boudin, a dedicated radical/convicted cop killer, went straight from the penitentiary to a professorship at Columbia. She is merely following in the tawdry footsteps of other unrepentant nogootniks like Angela Davis and William Ayers. If anyone is seriously wondering why academia is held in such low regard these days, it’s because so many universities will roll out the red carpet for murderous loons, while at the same time slamming their ivy-covered doors in the face of conservative scholars.

What makes Democrats so despicable isn’t simply that they’re wrong on just about every issue, but that they will lie and provide cover for their fellow liars. All you had to do was tune in to the Benghazi hearings to realize how, even in the wake of our ambassador and his three gallant colleagues being slaughtered by the barbarians in Libya, people like Rep. Elijah Cummings will put partisan politics ahead of ferreting out the truth. And for good measure, they will then attribute partisan motives to those seeking the facts.

In the run-up to the election, in order to bolster the big lie about having decimated Al Qaeda, Obama, Biden, Clinton and Susan Rice, pretended that the Benghazi massacre was the result of an impromptu demonstration brought on by a silly video.

One would think that however one felt about Obama’s re-election prospects, an honest person would have to take the word of the Libyan president when he immediately announced that the attack was premeditated and carried out by Muslim terrorists.

One would also think that a cover-up involving four dead Americans would trigger at least as big a reaction from the media as Watergate, which involved an office break-in, for God’s sake, but no spilling of innocent blood. But, then, of course, one can’t really expect a Democrat such as Patty Murray, Dianne Feinstein, Dick Durbin or Patrick Leahy, to follow the example of Barry Goldwater and tell the president in no uncertain terms to do the honorable thing and vacate the premises.

One of the more mind-boggling things about Americans is the ridiculously high esteem in which so many of them hold Hillary Clinton, a woman who owes her fame not to any actual achievement, but to the fact that 37 years ago she displayed her own lack of judgment by marrying a serial adulterer

But to me, the nadir of her public life took place last January. I only wish I had been sitting in Sen. Ron Johnson’s chair when she berated him for daring to question her over the tragic events that took place on 9/11 in Benghazi.

After her hammy outburst, I would have said, “Somehow I can’t quite believe that if Ambassador to Libya Chelsea Clinton had been murdered by jihadists four months ago, her mother would sit there today and say, ‘What difference, at this point, does it make who did it?’”

THE LEFT: GUILTY OF UNREQUITED STUPIDITY

2013-05-20T00:30:00.000-07:00

by Burt Prelutsky

It goes against my grain to generalize about large groups of people, but when it comes to liberals and Muslims, I find it increasingly difficult to resist the urge.

For instance, House Democrats, led by the thoroughly obnoxious Rep. Barbara Lee, have proposed a resolution calling on Congress to acknowledge that global warming could drive poor women to depend on “transactional sex” for their economic survival. Their reasoning, for want of a better word, is that global warming would lead to drought, and drought would inevitably lead to prostitution as food became scarce and more expensive.

What Ms. Lee neglects to explain is why prostitution is so widespread outside the confines of the already drought-riddled Third World, and has for millennia been referred to as the world’s oldest profession. When informed of the proposed legislation, Bill Clinton was overheard saying, “Remind me, what’s wrong with prostitution?”

Speaking of people named Clinton, as anyone familiar with my work knows, I hold his wife in even greater contempt than I hold her husband. This is especially true ever since her vile performance testifying before Congress on the subject of the Benghazi massacre. One can only imagine the hell she would raise if her own daughter, Chelsea, had been murdered, and a few months later, some loathsome Washington harridan had dared to say: “What difference, at this late date, does it really make who did it?”

Sometimes I attempt to imagine what life must be like inside the mind of a leftist. I’m guessing it’s filled with spider webs, squeaky doors and the faint echo of Obama’s countless lies. Sometimes, as in the case of people like O.J. Simpson, Robert Blake and Casey Anthony, it seems to me that our nation’s jury pools are filled exclusively with liberal morons who are devoid of commonsense and the ability to handle even a single idea, let alone juggle two simultaneously.

Is it possible that between “Perry Mason” and “CSI,” members of juries have no concept of what constitutes a reasonable doubt? Do they equate circumstantial evidence with perjury? Do they even know what circumstantial evidence is, and will anything short of the defendant rising in the courtroom and confessing his crime convince them?

But juries are merely one of the problems with our legal system. Between the endless and absurd appeals that have become standard practice, particularly in capital cases, the recipient of a death sentence is far more likely to die of old age than by lethal injection.

That reminds me of a friend, now deceased, who had worked for several years inside California’s Soledad Penitentiary. He had nothing but contempt for the inmates with whom he was forced to deal on a daily basis. He didn’t regard them as unfortunate victims of a cruel or neglectful society, but as vermin from whom society needed to be protected. The kicker is that he wasn’t a prison guard; he was the prison chaplain!

One of my readers has let me know that he got ripped off by an air conditioner repairman, and that neither the local police chief nor the state licensing board will do anything about it. I told him that it’s a sad day when service providers can get away with behaving like politicians. After all, repairmen are expected to have professional and ethical standards, whereas when it comes to politicians, lying and cheating are included in the job description.

One of my chief complaints with political correctness is that blacks, Muslims, illegal aliens, homosexuals and the transgender crowd, are not only encouraged to take offense with anything that doesn’t advance their various agendas, but are applauded for their alleged sensitivity. Being thin-skinned is bad enough without anyone trying to make a virtue of it. Sensitivity should be a word reserved for those who are concerned about the feelings of others, not for those ballyhooing their own under-developed defense systems, otherwise known as maturity.

Finally, a word to the current commander-in-chief and those who will succeed him: Not since 1945, has the United States engaged in a war with the intention of destroying the enemy. As we should have learned through our half-assed experiences in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan, playing for a tie is a great way to squander treasure and gallant American lives.

If the president and the Pentagon are going to continue fretting about collateral damage, nation-building and the risk of offending the tawdry religion of our sworn enemies, they really should step aside and leave it up to the folks who have a serious interest in protecting this nation. I refer to the patriotic members of the NRA and and the feisty Daughters of the American Revolution.

OUT OF MIND EXPERIENCES

2013-05-17T00:30:00.000-07:00

by Burt Prelutsky

We have all heard of out of body experiences in which people claim to be hovering in the air gazing down on themselves. But I think that it’s far more commonplace for left-wingers to take leave of their brains than their bodies. I mean, how can people with even half a brain possibly condone the things they do?

Take same-sex marriages, for instance. How such lunacy has come to be taken seriously as a civil right by so many on the Left makes you wonder if there is any goofy idea that these pinheads won’t promote, any silly slogan they won’t parrot. Every time I come across one of these farcical “marriages” on TV, I am reminded of those stomach-turning “beauty” contests involving five-year-olds decked out in lipstick, rouge, tiaras and evening gowns; grotesque parodies of normal life.

Or consider that this administration is encouraging Mexican consulates to tell illegal aliens to demand food stamps from the U.S. government. I’m reminded of a friend who wrote me to say that henceforth his unlicensed guns won’t be illegal; they will merely be undocumented.

Speaking of guns, Thomas Jefferson wisely observed that “Those who beat their guns into plowshares will soon be plowing for those who don’t.”

Having now had several months to rue the last presidential election, I have decided there’s no big secret why 51% of the voters went for Obama. It’s because more and more Americans are childish, if not downright infantile. In a divorce, will the kids favor the disciplinarian who demands they complete their schoolwork and do their chores or the one who bribes them with toys and other goodies? Americans should grow up, but it may already be too late to expect such an unlikely miracle.

As someone else pointed out, in the U.S., a 13-year-old girl is already an adult who can be trusted to buy the day-after pill off the shelf, but 26-year-olds are still children who must be covered by their parents’ medical insurance policies.
I know there are some people who hold Kirsten Powers in higher regard than her fellow left-wing propagandists because, on very rare occasion, she will acknowledge that Obama doesn’t walk on water. I, on the other hand, find her usual expression so relentlessly smug, I have to assume she’s come to regard herself as being the prettiest woman in any venue in which she happens to appear. Unfortunately, the venue in which she appears most frequently is Fox News, where the likes of Dana Perino, Kimberly Guilfoyle and Megyn Kelly, hang out. So my advice to Ms. Powers is that she wipe that smirk off her puss.

Not since O.J. Simpson’s murder trial have so many shysters lined up to defend a criminal as have offered to help Dzhokhar Tsarnaev out of his legal difficulties. Under our system, lawyers are free to defend whomever they wish. But I would remind people that they have the right to shun and despise whomever they wish.

Frankly, I’m sure if there had been any law school grads around in ancient times, some latent ambulance chaser would have been only too happy to defend Cain. Of course in the case of the Tsarnaev brothers, there is no Abel. Instead, we have the disgrace of Cain and Cain.

Finally, in 1999, Al Gore augmented his salary as vice-president by selling cows off the family farm for $6,000. Back then, he had a net worth of $1.7 million. Today, 14 years later, he’s worth an estimated $200 million, thanks to the success of his global warming hoax.

To me, that simply proves that in America today there’s a heck of a lot less money to be made selling actual livestock than in peddling bullshit.

COOLIDGE & CUCKOOS

2013-05-15T00:30:00.000-07:00

by Burt Prelutsky

I always knew I liked Calvin Coolidge, but I thought perhaps it was merely because he was a quiet man who, unlike most of our presidents, wasn’t infatuated with the sound of his own voice. I also liked the fact that he was apparently devoid of that thing called charisma, which is generally what politicians have in place of character.

But, thanks to economist/historian Amity Shlaes, who proved in her book, “The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression,” that although FDR didn’t create the Depression, he did a great deal to prolong the agony until World War II finally brought it to an end, Coolidge emerges as a heroic figure.

She points out that even though Ronald Reagan was a tax cutter, reducing the top marginal rate from 70% to 28%, the federal budget increased by close to 40% during his administration. As I have often observed, Republicans are only anxious to decrease spending when the Democrats are in power.

But you could never say that about Coolidge, a man who said shortly after assuming office upon Warren Harding’s death: “We must have no carelessness in our dealings with public property or the expenditure of public money. Such a condition is characteristic of undeveloped people, or of a decadent generation.”

He also said such sensible things as “Collecting more taxes than is absolutely necessary is legalized robbery,” “I should like to be known as a former President who minded his own business” and “It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones.”

Speaking of bad bills, when I wrote about the 20,000 pages of administrative rules for ObamaCare, my friend Art Hershey sent an email alerting me to the fact that the Social Security Act, or Economic Security Act as it was called in 1935, was just 63 pages long. The Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938, which dealt with minimum wages and overtime pay, ran 64 pages. And the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a scant 10 pages.

Nancy Pelosi wasn’t just whistling “Dixie” when she announced that Congress would have to enact the Patient Affordable Health Care Act of 2010 (aka ObamaCare) before anyone would know what was in it. Three years later, we are still finding out about all the vile snips and snails and puppy dog tails that are concealed within its 2,700 pages.

It’s very possible that you might have missed the news, as I had, that GE Capital made the following announcement in 2008: “As a responsible lender, we regularly review our lending policies and products to meet changing conditions and requirements. We have adopted a policy to cease providing consumer financing programs for merchants whose primary business is the sale of firearms.”

One of my readers, who shared this with me, sent GE a message that read, “As a responsible consumer, I regularly review my buying practices to meet changing conditions and requirements. I have decided to cease purchasing GE products. Any firm that tries to manipulate the free marketplace for political reasons doesn’t merit my support and trade.”

The next time you go shopping for light bulbs, you might keep this exchange in mind.

Finally, I must confess I have often longed to be invited to join a think tank. Imagine how delightful it must be to sit and think, and be paid to do it. I’ve gone through life sitting and thinking, but nobody has ever paid me to do so. In fact, on those few occasions when I’ve actually worked in an office, if my boss passed by, asked me what I was doing, and I had told him I was thinking, I would have been canned on the spot. But at a think tank, the same answer would probably garner me a raise.

As the old sage said, beware of what you pray for. As often happens, there are exceptions to the rule. In this case, the exception would be Ron Paul’s Institute for Peace and Prosperity. Among the nutballs the former goofy congressman has gathered around him are John Laughland, Eric Margolis, Butler Shaffer, Lew Rockwell, Dennis Kucinich and Andrew Napolitano. With the possible exception of the last two, these are hardly household names. But each, in his own way, would have been right at home at Lewis Carroll’s famous tea party along with the White Rabbit and the Mad Hatter.

Among this collection of kooks are to be found people who defend Serbian war criminal Slobodan Milosevic; moved to try George W. Bush for war crimes; support Hamas; opposed America’s intervention in World War II; and edited Rep. Paul’s racist and anti-Semitic newsletter. You remember -- the newsletter bearing his name that Ron Paul insisted he barely ever looked at during the 20 years it was published, reminding some of us of Obama’s absurd contention that he snoozed through 20 years of Jeremiah Wright’s vile sermons.

Less a think tank, I’d suggest, than a stink tank.

For those of you who merely know Judge Napolitano from his rather arrogant pronouncements on the law for Fox News, it turns out that he is one of those loony conspiracy theorists known as 9/11 truthers. In other words, he doesn’t think that Muslim jihadists were behind the attacks that killed 3,000 Americans. Instead, he believes it was an inside job by the George Bush administration.

Maybe it’s just me, but I have never trusted anyone whose hairline starts half an inch above his eyebrows. It suggests to me that the brain was surgically removed and the head was then stitched back together.

SPREADING THE BLAME AROUND

2013-05-13T00:30:00.000-07:00

by Burt Prelutsky

I generally regard the Israelis as sensible and self-sufficient, but now I hear that they put a major construction job up for bids and, lo and behold, a Chinese firm got the contract. Frankly, I wouldn’t trust the Chinese to build me a bird house, let alone a railroad from Eilat to the Mediterranean. What? There are no Israeli construction companies? What if Iran had submitted a lower bid than the Chinese? Would Ahmadinejad be the foreman on the job? At this point, I only hope that the construction company is the one we know as Chang, Lee, Wu and Rosenberg.

Speaking of that part of the world, the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald insists it’s U.S. intervention in the Middle East that motivates screwballs like the blood-thirsty Tsarnaev brothers. In the meantime, former TV anchorman and all-around pinhead Tom Brokaw lays the blame on our drone attacks. What neither of these chuckleheads bothers to explain is why the Muslim jihadists have blown up civilians in Bali, Japan, Brazil and India, among other places that have left no footprints on their precious sand. People like Mr. Greenwald and Mr. Brokaw would be labeled useful idiots if anyone could ever come up with a use for them.

Although it’s much more fun to mock Bob Beckel, who spends hours a day on Fox looking as if he’s about to fall off the wagon at any moment, truth demands that I give him a shout-out for proposing a sensible idea. He suggests that until we find out where the thousands of people who came here on student visas and never attended a single class are hiding out, so we can round them up and boot them out, we shut down all immigration from China and the Muslim nations. And I say if we fail to collar all the ne’er-do-wells, what’s the big deal if their countrymen can’t ever come to America? They can always go to Israel and help them build that damn railroad.

Speaking of glorious days, wouldn’t it be great if instead of worrying about law-abiding citizens being able to protect themselves with guns, and providing citizenship to people who don’t have it coming, Congress would devote its time and energy to passing a federal law denying voting privileges to anyone who can’t provide a valid photo ID? The notion that such a requirement would deny suffrage to millions of people who are either elderly or members of some racial minority is so preposterous that only a liberal would have the chutzpah to make the charge with a straight face.

But it figures that a country that’s been so frivolous when it comes to protecting its sovereignty by guarding its borders would be equally cavalier when it comes to preserving the sanctity of the polling booth. I would actually have more respect for the Democrats if they just came out and admitted they wanted illegal aliens to have every possible opportunity to elect their candidates. That would go down so much better than all their lies and false pieties, especially when everyone, including the illegal aliens and fraudulent voters, know the truth.

Although by now we’ve all seen the commercials urging us to sign up for food stamps, what you might not know is that the federal government is paying people to go out and recruit older Americans to sign up for the program. Florida is proving to be a happy hunting ground for these recruiters.

Even though most of those signing up in recent years are living comfortably on their investments, pensions and Social Security, idling away the golden years soaking up the sun, playing golf and taking macramé classes, they’re being told that they’ve earned all this largesse, and, essentially, that they’re suckers if they don’t let their fellow taxpayers put food on their table.

And, so, much like Faust, they trade their souls for something they don’t really need and, worse yet, don’t deserve.

I only hope that the next time those old retired folks cluck their tongues over welfare cheats, they realize they’re talking about themselves.

VENTING

2013-05-10T00:30:00.001-07:00

by Burt Prelutsky

A while back, it occurred to me that while the glamour magazines are constantly telling American women that 60 is the new 50, and 50 is the new 40, and 40 is the new 30, in Hollywood, 60 is the new 30, and 50 is the new 15. For instance, if you consider the movie roles they play, you might get the idea that most leading men are in their teens or early 20s. So it may come as a shock to you that Matt Damon is 42, Will Ferrell is 45, Adam Sandler is 46, Ben Stiller is 47, David Spade is 48 and Jim Carrey is a ripe old 51.

Even more surprising to me is that in spite of his boyish ways and his collegiate haircut, Jay Carney is 48. But I guess it takes time and experience to learn how to lie on Obama’s behalf with such ease and, apparently, without the slightest bit of embarrassment.

But, then, he has learned from the master. Imagine the amount of gall it must take to furlough air traffic controllers, causing massive delays at airports all around the country, blaming it on the Sequester, while at the same time throw lavish galas at the White House, blow a million bucks on a round of golf with Tiger Woods, and God knows how many of our tax dollars jetting down to Texas for a fund-raiser! And of course Air Force One is never forced to idle on the tarmac for a couple of grueling hours simply because air traffic controllers have been sent home as a cheap political ploy.

In the wake of the Boston bombings, I have noticed that the media is up to its old tricks. Just as they persisted in posting photos of 11-year-old Trayvon Martin for months after the 6’2,” 17-year-old menace was shot in self-defense by George Zimmerman, I keep seeing photos of bushy-haired, baby-faced, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev looking like he’s at his first Communion. Instead of a pressure cooker bomb, he’s holding a single red carnation. Funny, but I don’t seem to recall seeing pictures of Charles Manson or Timothy McVeigh at the age of 10, frolicking with their puppies.

Even in the wake of the Boston massacre, I keep hearing liberals complaining that cameras in public places are an invasion of privacy. Just how loony are left-wingers, you ask? Let’s just say that if their stupidity could be transformed into electrical power, we’d have a power grid in America that would free us of our dependency on oil, coal, sun and wind. Anyone who believes that once he steps outside his front door, the Constitution provides him with the expectation of privacy is clearly non compos mentis, and should not be trusted to venture outdoors.

Thanks to the media’s infatuation with abortions, the trial of late term abortionist Kermit Gosnell has pretty much flown under the public’s radar. The fact that he made a practice of snipping the spines of babies who managed to survive his butchery would normally make him lip-smacking grist for TV, but aside from Fox News, the media is giving his trial a wide berth. God forbid they do anything that might make abortions unpalatable to the American public.

For a long time, I generally limited my remarks about abortions to honestly admitting that I couldn’t imagine how in this day and age, with all the birth control pills and devices, and the decades of sex education classes in our schools, anyone could still be dumb enough to become accidentally pregnant. But after 51% of the country decided to re-elect Obama last November, I realized that there is no limit to human stupidity.

Therefore, ridicule is plainly not enough. So, instead, I will say that unless a three-man panel of gynecologists whose names have been drawn out of a hat has determined that an abortion is necessary to save the life of the mother, abortions should be banned.

What’s more, any man who impregnates a woman to whom he isn’t married will be arrested and serve time in jail. And, furthermore, any doctor who performs abortions, in clear violation of his Hippocratic Oath “to first do no harm,” will both lose his medical license and be charged with murder.

I am well aware that the Supreme Court made abortions legal in its Roe v. Wade decision. I am also aware that slavery was once legal and women’s suffrage wasn’t. Anyone who puts his faith in the Supreme Court is guilty of naiveté in the first degree. These are merely men and women who owe their positions and authority to the whims of politicians. They were not appointed by God, after all, but merely by the likes of people named Carter, Clinton, Bush and Obama.

Excusing what is immoral on the grounds that it is legal is dangerous. After all, under Nazi law, the butchery performed by Dr. Josef Mengele on concentration camp prisoners in the abattoir he called a laboratory was perfectly legal.

What astonishes me is that liberals shed more tears for the murder of late term Kansas abortionist George Tiller than they ever did for the thousands of babies he destroyed. And what disturbs me even more are the millions of people who parrot the nonsense that embryos belong solely to the women carrying them, and that an abortion is no different from a woman’s having a mole removed.

Abortion enthusiast Paris Harris of MSNBC recently insisted that children belong to society, not their parents. If I follow that correctly, one second before birth, the child belongs exclusively to some woman who has the perfect right to kill it, while a second later it belongs to all of us.

I have long contended that it’s impossible to dig up a Democrat who makes any sense at all unless, of course, you literally dug one up. So, does anyone happen to know where Harry Truman is buried?

ALLAH NOT SO AKBAR!

2013-05-08T00:30:00.001-07:00

by Burt Prelutsky

In the aftermath of the Boston bombings, we hear that the FBI was informed by Russia that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was a Muslim radical, but even after he spent six months in Chechen, the FBI decided he wasn’t worth a second look. As a result, the FBI has come in for a great deal of criticism. I’m not saying it’s not warranted, but I suspect there’s a lot of blame to spread around. And, at the risk of sounding like Obama, some of it can be laid at the feet of George W. Bush.

It wasn’t long after 9/11 that we started hearing Bush and Condoleezza Rice parroting the line that Islam was a religion of peace. I don’t recall any president reminding us that Christianity, Judaism or Buddhism, was a peaceful religion. Well, considering that in the name of Islam, 3,000 Americans had just been killed, and that in the subsequent years innocent people have been killed and maimed in countries ranging from Russia to the Philippines, Spain to India, all in the name of Allah, it’s obvious that Bush and Rice were lying.

The truth is that we are in a state of war, but when the police commissioner of New York City gets tarred for trying to conduct undercover surveillance in mosques and when Major Nidal Hasan is allowed to continue serving in the military even after it’s known that he is communicating with terrorists in the Middle East and doing everything but taping pin-up photos of Osama bin Laden on the walls of his barracks at Fort Hood, it’s clear that anyone who dares to say “Islamic” and “terrorist” in the same sentence is running the risk of committing professional suicide.

That, I believe, is why the FBI didn’t haul Tamerlan Tsarnaev into its Boston field office and grill him like a Labor Day wienie.

Now I hear a lot of people assuring us that Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving brother, will be found guilty and executed. I’m convinced he’ll be found guilty, but I suspect that I stand a far better chance of being executed for not separating my trash. The reason for my skepticism is that John Walker Lindh, the American jihadist who killed an American soldier in Iraq, got off with a prison sentence, as did Lee Boyd Malvo, half of the D.C. sniper team that killed 10 people and critically wounded three others a decade ago, all in the name of Allah.

Tsarnaev won’t be executed because, like the other two vicious creeps, he’s young. Lindh was 21 when he went on trial, Malvo was 17 and Tsarnaev is 19. For reasons I can’t fathom, there is a reluctance to execute women or young men, no matter how clearly they have it coming.

That brings us to those three mealy-mouthed liars, Barack Obama, John Brennan and Jay Carney. Obama has determined that whether it’s in Iraq, Afghanistan or the moon, we are not engaged in a war on Islamic terrorism; instead, it’s designated an overseas contingency operation. I’m sure Ambassador Stevens and his three colleagues would be relieved to know that it wasn’t really Islamic zealots who massacred them in Benghazi, but merely some guys, in the immortal words of Hillary Clinton, who might have been out for a walk and decided to kill Americans.

The new CIA chief, John Brennan, announced, “We don’t describe the enemy as jihadists or Islamists because jihad is a holy struggle, a legitimate tenet of Islam.” No wonder I keep hearing from people asking me if it’s true that Brennan is a Muslim convert.

As for Jay Carney, who not only earned a B.A. in Russian and Eastern European Studies from Yale, but a Ph.D in bullshitting, when asked why it was that young Mr. Tsarnaev was read his Miranda rights so soon after his arrest, replied that if he had been designated an enemy combatant, it would have required subverting the Constitution by trying him in a military tribunal. The problem is that an enemy combatant can be tried in a civilian court; the upside of the designation is that it would have allowed law enforcement agencies up to 30 days to mine him for information before he had the opportunity to lawyer up. Apparently Mr. Carney never heard, even during his years at Yale, that the Constitution is not supposed to be a suicide pact.

Finally, there were two great ironies that resulted from the Boston bombings. The first of these was that the bumper sticker on the Mercedes that the Tsarnaev brothers carjacked read “Coexist,” the letters formed from the symbols of the world’s seven major religions. If the Tsarnaevs had seen that bit of blasphemy, I wonder if they would have let the driver survive, even if he wasn’t an American.

The other irony is that the hospital where both of them wound up, and where Dzhokhar’s life was saved, was Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, whose president and CEO is a Jew named Kevin Tabb.

I realize it’s precious little consolation to the three people who were killed and the 200 who were maimed at the Boston massacre, but I’d like to think that somewhere in the universe the God of Abraham is giving Allah one big horselaugh.

A FEW GLAD TIDINGS

2013-05-06T00:30:00.000-07:00

by Burt Prelutsky

I don’t mind admitting I was relieved that the Boston bombers were Muslims. While I regret the murders and mutilations committed by the Chechen brothers, I admit I was worried that the mayhem had been perpetrated by native-born Americans. That’s because I am so sick and tired of the politically correct crowd countering legitimate attacks on radical Islam by playing the moral equivalence game every chance they get.

You can bet that if they had been Americans, the liberal pinheads would have immediately identified them as conservative ideologues who were card-carrying members of the Sarah Palin Fan Club. Then they would have quickly dragged Timothy McVeigh and the Tea Party into the mix. The way some people insist on providing cover for Muslim jihadists, you would think that Islam was a major religion in America, when in reality there are only about two million followers of Allah in the entire country.

For a while, I figured that Obama, in spite of his all-out crusade against the Second Amendment, would at most get his universal background check. But, in spite of pulling those Newtown parents out of his back pocket every 20 minutes, he couldn’t even muster enough votes for that. It’s beginning to look as if his lame duck status has already been recognized even by his fellow Democrats.

When it appeared that he would have to settle for the background checks, even after going full-bore after guns and bullets, I was picturing him running a series of victory laps, pretending he had landed a knockout punch on law-abiding gun owners. It would have been like a guy vowing to climb Mount Everest, going up five feet and coming back down. When asked about his failure to reach the summit, Obama would have said, “I said I would climb it. I never said how high.”

But as things turned out, he couldn’t even claim he’d set foot on Everest. The best he could do was mail Michelle a postcard from Nepal: “Having a wonderful time. Not climbing any mountains for the foreseeable future. Love to the kids.”

Another piece of good news comes our way from Brevard Community College, where the administration fired Prof. Sharon Sweet for last year forcing her students to sign the following: “I pledge to vote for President Obama and Democrats up and down the ticket.”

Aside from the fact that a college actually had the courage to fire a professor, the biggest surprise is that she’s a professor of mathematics. I would have bet on political science, black studies, Hispanic studies or lesbian studies. Those tend to be the departments where the pinheads congregate, whereas math, science and engineering, tend to attract intelligent professors, along with those students whose life plans generally include moving out of their parents’ basements.

One of the things included in the immigration reform bill proposed by the Gang of Eight that caught my attention was the part where it mentioned that proof of the border being secure would be when Homeland Security managed to stop 90% of those people attempting to sneak in.

One, I know how to count those we manage to round up, but how on earth do you count those who elude capture? And, two, if you manage to do everything necessary to prevent illegal aliens from sneaking in, how and why would those ten-percenters continue to get through? How much lower can expectations go?

Wouldn’t it be like the warden of Sing Sing addressing a convention of his fellow wardens, and saying, “Fellas, we’re all doing a hell of a job. Only one out of every 10 prisoners is breaking out of jail! Drinks for everyone!”

A Burt Prelutsky EXTRA: A POX ON POLITICIANS

2013-05-04T00:00:00.000-07:00

by Burt Prelutsky

Until I read Amity Shlaes ‘s tribute to Calvin Coolidge, I had assumed that Ronald Reagan was the last true fiscal conservative we’ve had in the White House. Well, it seems I only missed by 60 years. I was aware that Reagan had lowered the marginal tax rate from 70% to 28%, but I hadn’t been aware that federal spending increased by 40% during his eight years in office. In other words, both parties want to increase the number of dollars flowing into Washington. Where they differ is in which way they believe the larger amount will accrue, be it from raising or lowering tax rates. Alas, neither side regards reduced spending as a virtue.

I believe this country is in deep doo-doo. But I believe that Obama is the result of the national malaise, and not entirely the cause, as some would insist. After all, with reporters working as enablers of all things left-wing, with professors indoctrinating students with communist swill, and with the majority of Americans casting votes for any swine who promises them freebies, I am not convinced that things would be a lot better with someone else in the Oval Office.

I can’t bring myself to say that Mitt Romney wouldn’t have made any difference, although probably not as much as he or I would like. But I believe we can assume that he would not have lied about the Benghazi massacre, would not have threatened the survivors to keep their yaps shut and would have made a sincere effort to capture or kill those responsible for murdering Ambassador Stevens and his three colleagues by this late date. I also can’t picture Romney using lies about the Sequester to punish Americans with cancelled White House tours and furloughed air traffic controllers.

But I’m only guessing because 51% of the voters let us know that four years of record unemployment, a nuclear Iran, a berserk North Korea, soaring inflation and diminished American influence around the world, don’t really matter when it comes to choosing between an honorable man who has succeeded in every aspect of his life and one who has surrounded himself with lowlifes and succeeded at nothing except winning a few elections. But he has a winning smile, which in a sane universe would land him a toothpaste commercial, not the presidency.

Obama spoke about dire consequences if Assad used chemical weapons, and when the weapons were used, he began threatening to take the matter to the U.N. Apparently, it doesn’t matter even a little bit to Obama if his idle threats mean that America loses its credibility not only with our enemies, but our allies. At least he didn’t tell Assad to just wait until his father comes home.

It’s probably just a rumor, but I heard that Obama is waiting for O.J. Simpson to be released from jail, so they can join forces to track down the people responsible for the Benghazi massacre and the murders of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.

Someone sent me a photo of Obama and Kim Jong-un. The caption read: “He eats the finest foods, drinks the finest wines, and lives like royalty while his people suffer from his oppressive policies. The other guy is the communist dictator of North Korea.”

Getting back to the survivors of the Benghazi massacre, I hear that there are three men who are anxious to tell what they know to Congress, but they first want to be granted immunity, lest they be fired for engaging in whistleblowing. Now if I’ve got that right, these employees of the State Department and the CIA are, at least theoretically, willing to sacrifice their lives for America, but not their jobs? Is this what is now passing for patriotism?

It’s not just our presidents who keep telling us that we shouldn’t tar all Muslims with the same brush. I also keep hearing commentators remind us that it’s only radicalized jihadists who want us dead. I beg to differ. These days, as I see it, a radical Muslim, if by radical we mean the exception to the rule, is one who doesn’t crave sharia law, one of a tiny minority whose heart didn’t swell on 9/11, and who didn’t feel a surge of tribal pride when they got word that two of their guys spilled all that blood in Boston.

Finally, when I heard that Jason Collins, the backup center on the Washington Wizards, came out of the closet, and immediately received a phone call from Obama, I assumed it was to invite him to the White House for a little one-on-one. And maybe even some basketball.

THE WORLD'S GONE MAD TODAY

2013-05-03T00:30:00.000-07:00

by Burt Prelutsky

My title comes from a Cole Porter lyric for “Anything Goes.” If anything, it’s even more relevant today than when he wrote it 79 years ago.

For instance? For instance, we dither around while tinhorns in Iran and North Korea threaten to nuke us. I say that when you’re in an alley fight with thugs, you toss out the Marquis of Queensbury rules and do whatever needs to be done to cripple your opponent. What you don’t do is ask him time and again what you have to give him so that he’ll leave you alone, while in the meantime he has all the time in the world to get his ducks, not to mention nuclear missiles, in a row.

For instance, I heard that Rep. Dave Camp (R-MI), chairman of the powerful Ways and Means Committee, is refusing to push for repeal of the ObamaCare tax on medical devices. It seems that he’s afraid that if the House sends such a bill to the Senate, Harry Reid will pull something tricky. I agree that it’s always in America’s best interests to distrust Sen. Reid, but that is hardly a good reason not to force him to deal with a bill that would go a long way to help various businesses stay solvent and keep thousands of workers gainfully employed.

If Camp is this easy to bluff, every poker player in Washington, D.C., must be eager to have this pigeon sitting at his table, just waiting to be plucked.

People used to joke that the Democrats have taxed just about everything but the air we breathe. In Maryland, the left-wing legislature is getting close with the new rain tax that will cost homeowners anywhere between $50 and $200 annually. The bill states that if you own a roof or a driveway, which are identified as impervious surfaces, you will be held responsible for your share of the tainted water that runs off into Chesapeake Bay. Hey, don’t look at me, you folks elected these humbugs.

The latest word from Europe is that Greece, seeking a way out of its fiscal malaise, wants Germany to pay reparations for World War II. So, first, these left-wing idiots go hat-in-hand, begging the krauts to send them money because they have lived the Karl Marx dream with its inevitable unhappy ending; and now the ingrates turn around and demand reparations. Usually there’s an “or else” that goes with demands. But aside from threatening to hold their collective breath until Germany comes across, I can’t imagine what the Greeks have in mind.

My favorite novelist these days is Donna Leon, an American who has lived in Venice, Italy, for several years and has written 22 books featuring a police commissioner named Guido Brunetti. In “The Girl of His Dreams,” Brunetti’s wife at one point is expressing her contempt for the sort of pious platitudes for which certain Italian newspapers are noted, but acknowledges that “they’re the sort of thing people like to hear.”

When a friend asks her why, she says, “Because they don’t have to do anything. All they have to do is feel the right things, and that makes them believe they deserve credit for having done something. It’s all so terribly American.”

“Why American?” her friend asks.

“Because they think it’s enough to feel things: they’ve come to believe it’s more important than doing things, or it’s the same thing, or at any rate, deserves just as much credit as actually doing something. What is it that poseur of a president of theirs was always saying, ‘I feel your pain’? As if that made any difference to anything. God, it’s enough to choke a pig.

“All you’ve got to do is have the proper feelings,” Mrs. Brunetti went on, “the fashionable sentiments, and make a business about how delicate your sensibility is. And then you don’t have to do anything. All you do is stand there with your precious sentiments hanging out while the world falls over itself applauding you for them and giving you credit for having the same feelings that any sentient being would have.”

Except that I would have substituted “liberal” or “celebrity” for “American,” I think Ms. Leon has brilliantly summed up what we saw at the Democratic convention last year and what we see and hear at every single gathering of left-wingers, be they on the floor of the Senate, on a late night TV talk show or at an Occupy Wall Street demonstration.

These self-anointed saints are always feeling someone’s pain, usually while on their way to collect yet another humanitarian award while driving their Hummer over some poor schmuck’s foot.

THE CRAZIES

2013-05-01T00:30:00.000-07:00

by Burt Prelutsky

A serial killer has been on trial in Philadelphia for several weeks and yet the TV networks that love to devote every waking hour to covering a murder trial if it involves the likes of Casey Anthony or Jodi Arias, have totally ignored it. I’m referring to the trial of a ghoul named Kermit Gosnell, who made a practice of murdering babies born alive after he botched late-term abortions.

Obviously, the reason that all the TV networks other than Fox have gone out of their way to bury this story is because anything that varies from the left-wing narrative that there’s no difference between a woman having an abortion and having a mole removed is seen as providing Pro-Lifers with ammunition.

Several of Gosnell’s unlicensed assistants have testified that they’ve seen these babies breathing and have heard Gosnell, who would have been right at home performing experiments for the Nazis, joke that some of them were big enough to walk to the bus stop. He would deliver the coup de grace by cutting their tiny spines.

The problem is that even if he’s found guilty and sentenced to death, he will live another few decades while his lawyers appeal his conviction. And even after the appeals run out, the state will make every effort to ensure that his execution is pain-free. The truth is justice would only be served if a day after he’s found guilty he would be done away with by having his own spine severed.

It’s worth mentioning that Obama, when he served in the Illinois legislature, voted against making it a crime to kill babies who survived abortions. Not to be outdone, California’s own loony senator, Barbara Boxer, once insisted that “A baby’s life doesn’t begin until it’s brought home from the hospital.” I haven’t yet found a theological basis for that, but it does remind me of the Jewish joke -- and, no, I’m not referring to Mrs. Boxer -- that a Jewish boy is still a baby until he graduates from medical school.

If you spend any time at all studying American liberals, you will be convinced that “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” with its spooky pod people from outer space, is a documentary.

In all the skirmishing over weapons, the one conclusion I have come to is that if this administration were really serious about doing something to decrease violence in America, they would forget about trying to shoot holes in the Second Amendment. Instead, they would make it easier for states to institutionalize psychotics. I’m not a psychiatrist, but I don’t think you would have needed to have a Ph.D to recognize that the guys who committed mass murder in Tucson, Aurora, Fort Hood and Newtown, weren’t playing with a full deck.

I mean, have you looked at their photos? They might as well have been walking around with a sign around their necks that read: “I am certifiably insane, and if you don’t get me into a padded cell immediately, you will live to regret it.”

The other thing a nation that was actually serious about gun violence would do is send the National Guard into every major urban area and clear out the gangbangers. Anyone who thinks that Kabul, Kunduz and Kandahar, present a greater danger to Americans than Chicago, Philadelphia and Detroit, has simply not been paying attention.

In much the same way, our nation twiddles its thumbs while nutballs in Iran and North Korea threaten to nuke us and our allies. In the meantime, while our enemies gear up, we’re stuck with a president who likes to hear his own voice almost as much as Kim Jung Un. Obama speaks loudly and carries a very small stick.

Our foreign policy mirrors the way we deal with violent lunatics domestically. Just as we waited until Jared Loughner, James Holmes, Nidal Hasan and Adam Lanza, went off on their killing sprees, leaving 58 dead people in their wake because we lacked the spine to be proactive, we dawdle while the loons in Tehran and Pyongyang promise to destroy us. Some folks don’t think they’re capable of carrying out their threats. Maybe they are and maybe they’re not. But why take chances?

It seems to me that the sensible thing to do if a nation vows to nuke America is to do unto them before they do unto us. Otherwise, what’s the point of having all those very expensive bombs at our disposal? Where is it written that the bad guys get to hit us first? I know that the same louts who wanted us to disarm unilaterally during the Cold War want us to convert our nuclear arsenal into plowshares, but we used similar bombs 68 years ago and it worked like a charm.

I hate to sound like a worrywart, but it seems to me that time is of the essence. I’m concerned that if we wait too long, Obama will simply be snookered into making one more disarmament treaty with Vladimir Putin, and we’ll wind up at the mercy of the Canadians.

Law and Disorder

2013-04-29T00:30:00.000-07:00

by Burt Prelutsky

Instead of all the needless nattering about guns and bullets, there is a public safety issue that the states and the federal government could actually do something about. I refer to prisons. Why aren’t we building more and bigger ones?

Maybe it’s just me, but that seems a lot more sensible than releasing felons because some pinheaded bureaucrat decides we should be overly concerned about the discomfort of robbers, rapists and murderers. I mean, these are the most vicious of the vicious, and we’re treating them like guests at a hotel.

I even know how we could start funding construction of new prisons. I suggest we simply stop providing prisoners with gymnasiums, TV sets and sex change operations. They did not, after all, go on a TV game show and win 10-20 years at a Marriott.

Another way to help cover the cost is to sell naming rights to corporate sponsors, just the way they do with stadiums and arenas. All by themselves, rap music record companies could easily re-christen the likes of Leavenworth, Attica, Soledad, Folsom and Sing-Sing. And, what’s more, the new monikers would be far more fitting once you realize that among the major labels are Asylum, Bad Boys, Gangsta Advisory, Captivity, Psychopathic, Low Life and Konvict Muzik.

Also, unlike sporting venues, where the payoff to the corporation ebbs and flows with the fortunes of the teams, the nice thing about having your company’s name attached to a penitentiary is that people will always be grateful to be reminded that those walls are keeping them safe from the human vermin inside.

Getting back to guns for a moment, Harry Reid admitted that Dianne Feinstein, even with 55 Democrats in the Senate, wouldn’t be able to muster even 40 votes in support of her bill to eviscerate the Second Amendment. But rather than force those 15 or 20 Democrats to cast votes in opposition to Obama or face the ire of the NRA in 2014 and beyond, McConnell and his Republican colleagues threatened a filibuster if the bill was brought to the floor. The question that comes to mind is just how stupid are they?

Is it possible that because Rand Paul got so much attention for filibustering John Brennan’s appointment to head up the CIA, Republican lunkheads have decided that they will now filibuster against everything except a pay raise?

Speaking of Obama, I found it amusing that he recently got in hot water for complimenting California’s Attorney General Kamala Harris on her looks. Now if he’d gotten an earful from Michelle, I might have understood it. But, instead, he caught hell from a coven of feminists who treated the poor schnook as if he’d referred to Mrs. Harris as a broad, a dame or a skirt. According to these harridans, by commenting on her looks, Obama was turning the clock back by several decades. You would have thought he was campaigning to reverse the 19th Amendment, denying women the right to vote.

I would have loved to have listened in on his apology to the woman. What could he say? “Hi, Kamala, it’s Barack. I just wanted to call and assure you that I didn’t mean it when I said you were good-looking.”

Because it always annoys me when I hear people refer to a federal judge who delivers a stupid ruling without naming the schmuck, as if the ruling came down from the Mount, I always try to track him down. In the case of the decision to make Plan B, the so-called day-after contraceptive pill, available without a prescription and without age restrictions, the dunderhead was Federal District Court Judge Edward Korman. It was he who decided that girls as young as 11 or 12 should be able to go into a drug store and buy a comic book, a candy bar and contraception off the shelf. No big surprise. After all, that’s the sort of nonsense that federal judges do on a regular basis. What I was surprised to discover was that Korman was first appointed by Ronald Reagan.

But I suppose I shouldn’t have been too surprised. After all, when guys like Clinton and Obama appoint justices to the Supreme Court, it’s always someone like Breyer, Ginsburg, Kagan and Sotomayor. Good old-fashioned left-wing ideologues. But when it’s time for the likes of Eisenhower, Nixon, Reagan and George H.W. Bush, to handle it, it’s just as likely -- make that more likely -- to be a Brennan, Burger, Blackmun, Kennedy, O’Connor and Souter, as it is to be a Scalia or Thomas.

So, whereas the Democrats vet their judicial appointments to within an inch of their lives, knowing that the Court will be their lasting legacy, the Republicans seem content to pick their names out of a cap. And a dunce cap, at that.

SO MUCH BS, SO LITTLE TIME

2013-04-26T00:30:00.000-07:00

by Burt Prelutsky

Over 30 states have voted against recognizing same-sex marriages, and of the few states where it’s legal, most have had it mandated by judicial bullies, not through the election process. But in spite of all that, gays and other leftists insist that within a few years, homosexual marriages will be legal in all 50 states. They base that conclusion on the polls that show that young people favor the silly notion.

What these seers ignore is that as people mature, get married, have children, as often as not, they discard the faddish beliefs they held in their twenties. After all, many of today’s parents experimented with drugs, booze and sex, in their own youth. That doesn’t mean they approve of their own sons and daughters doing the same. Not even if they’re named Clinton, Bush or Obama.

Speaking of which, Sen. Rand Paul, a devout libertarian who wishes to see drug use de-criminalized, pointed out, in making his case, that the past two presidents -- and he could have said three -- could have been arrested on drug charges in their twenties. He was trying to make the point that our drug laws are too draconian, and that these men might have had their political aspirations snuffed out if they had had drug arrests on their record. But that’s not how I look at it. Instead, my reaction was that the country might have been spared these past couple of decades if only the DEA had been doing its job.

Al Sharpton, who should have wound up in the clink after choreographing the Tawana Brawley hoax, claims that the opposition to Michael Bloomberg’s gun-control crusade is the result of -- hold on to your hats! -- anti-Semitism! Well, I guess if anyone knows about that sort of thing, Sharpton is the go-to guy. After all, he’s the minister who once said, “If the Jews want to get it on, tell them to pin on their yarmulkes and come over to my house.” He’s also the schmuck who led the Crown Heights rioters who chanted “Kill the Jews” and actually killed one, Yankel Rosenbaum, a student visiting New York from Australia.

I don’t think anyone has yet explained what Joe Biden was doing that was so important that it was worth spending over a million dollars to put him up for two nights in London and Paris. Has nobody in this administration ever heard of teleconferencing? Although I can’t imagine Biden doing or saying anything that could be worth the price of a phone call, but canceling White House tours at the same time that Obama’s mascot is running up humongous hotel bills is as arrogant a display as anything ever attributed to Marie Antoinette.

At Florida Atlantic University, Professor Deandre Poole, while conducting an Intercultural Communications class, ordered the students to write “Jesus Christ” on a piece of paper, and then place it on the floor and step on it. When some people got wind of this outrage, they complained to the FAU administrators. Typically, they responded with the sort of high-sounding claptrap for which these pinheads are famous: “Faculty and students at academic institutions pursue knowledge and engage in open discourse. While at times, the topics discussed may be sensitive, a university environment is a venue for such dialogue and debate.”

Unfortunately, it is also a venue in which the one student who objected to this blasphemous and juvenile exercise, a Mormon named Ryan Rotela, was suspended.

I doubt if it comes as a surprise to anyone that Professor Poole moonlights as Vice-Chairman of the Palm Beach County Democratic Party.

One thing we do know is that Poole would never have dared tell his students to write “Allah” or “Mohammad” or even “Martin Luther King” on that piece of paper. And we can only hazard a guess that the honchos at Florida Atlantic might have reacted differently if the professor had been a white man instead of a black one.

As you’ve probably heard by now, another thousand or so pages of new regulations were recently added to the 20,000 or so pages of regulations regarding ObamaCare. Frankly, even I am amazed at the way we’ve allowed government bureaucrats -- people who don’t actually know how to do anything -- regulate how the rest of us do everything.

Because Romney had an even worse writing staff than most TV sit coms, just about the only thing he said during the entire campaign that anyone remembers was his dismissive line about 47% of the population having been bought off by the Obama administration. My only objection to his statement was that I thought his statistic was slightly off, and so it proved to be. As borne out on Election Day, the actual number was 51%.

In the aftermath of the Sequester, more and more of the goofy programs being financed with our tax dollars are coming to light. Most recently, it was discovered that $360,000 is earmarked for a fund to study the reproductive organs of ducks.

I don’t know if they give names to these various boondoggles. But if they do, this one is crying out to be christened “We’ve been ducked!”

THROWING DOWN THE GAUNTLET

2013-04-24T00:30:00.000-07:00

by Burt Prelutsky

As you may have noticed, liberals are ever on the alert when it comes to what they love to label “the religious right.” But they never have a problem with those on the left mixing religion and politics. So far as they’re concerned, when Jesse Jackson runs for president, he’s merely exercising his rights as an American. However, when Pat Robertson ran, he was out to turn the U.S. into a theocracy.

When Catholic bishops speak out against wholesale abortions, they’re crossing the line. But when Obama sits in a pew for 20 years while Jeremiah Wright condemns white people or when Rev. Luis Leon of St. John’s Episcopal devotes an Easter sermon to labeling conservatives racists, Obama and his supporters are as happy as pigs in slop.

A friend of mine suggested a slogan Obama should have employed last year instead of his generic “Forward.” He thought it would have been more honest if the radical transformer had used “I’ve Got What it Takes to Take What You’ve Got.” And by reading between the lines, which is all the reading some people do, young women, Hispanics, blacks and public sector union members, knew that once he took it, he would split the proceeds with them. What, after all, is redistribution of wealth but taking what some people have worked to earn and using it to bribe those who want it in exchange for their votes?

H.L. Mencken, the cynical sage of Baltimore, wrote, nearly a century ago, “As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.”

Some people, even some conservatives will take umbrage at calling Obama a moron. Like trained parrots, they will say, “I may not agree with his policies, but he is an Ivy League graduate, after all.” In rebuttal, I will say, he is merely the over-weaned product of affirmative action. Not only have generations of morons graduated from Harvard, Yale and Princeton, but generations of the mentally challenged have taught there and continue to teach there.

A recent poll of America’s college law faculty shows that nearly 30% of the law professors made political contributions last year. Over 76% of them only contributed to Democrats, while 12.8% contributed only to Republicans. That says all you need to know about diversity on college campuses.

Getting back to Obama, I must confess I found myself chuckling when I saw him sink just two of the 22 shots he took at the Easter festivities. It wasn’t just a rare pleasure to see him fail at something he likes to boast about, but it provided a perfect insight to his mentality. As he shot one brick after another, you would have thought you were looking at the same shot over and over again. That’s because he stubbornly refused to change the arc on his shots. Even though one shot after another bounced off the rim, he kept shooting it the exact same way. Rarely have I seen such a perfect illustration of that old definition of insanity: Doing the exact same thing again and again in the deluded belief that you will get different results.

So it should be no surprise that his solution to our financial malaise is to raise taxes and pass more regulations on business. After all, it hasn’t worked before, so it figures Mr. 2-for- 22 is firmly convinced it will work this time.

But Obama isn’t alone in his delusions. After all, he was re-elected after the worst first term any president, including Jimmy Carter, has ever overseen.

When I think of the nation that was bequeathed to us by the Founding Fathers, I could sit down and weep. We Americans are like the ne’er-do-well scions of great men who are left large fortunes, only to fritter them away on electronic toys, drugs, booze and pornography. And simply because we haven’t squandered away every last nickel, and because we say nice, but generally untrue, things about illegal aliens, sodomites and people so ignorant and lazy that if the government didn’t coerce the rest of us to support them with our taxes, could only survive by stealing, we hold ourselves in ridiculously high esteem.

Some will take fierce objection to that last paragraph, which suits me just fine. I only hope it won’t be used to tar all conservatives as heartless, homophobic racists. The worst I can say about most conservatives, at least those in public office, is that they’ve become so accustomed to mincing their words, they fail to notice that eventually it’s the truth that gets minced.

For my part, I will quote George Orwell, who observed that “During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

It took a revolution, after all, to create this nation. It will take nothing less to save it.

LISTEN UP, O'REILLY

2013-04-22T00:30:00.000-07:00

by Burt Prelutsky

There are only two daily shows I watch on Fox. The first is Bret Baier’s “Special Report.” The other is Bill O’Reilly’s “The Factor.”

Because I record everything I watch, I am able to fast forward through the commercials on Baier’s show. When it comes to O’Reilly, I will often fast forward not only through his commercials, but through segments in which Bob Beckel, Leslie Marshall, Alan Colmes, Geraldo Rivera, Juan Williams, Lis Wiehl, Kimberly Guilfoyle and/or Marc Lamont Hill, appear. Some nights, I can fly through the entire hour in about eight or nine minutes.

In fact, if it weren’t for Bernie Goldberg, Charles Krauthammer, Megyn Kelly, Lou Dobbs and, to a lesser degree, Dennis Miller, I wouldn’t tune in at all.

A while back, I got caught up in watching O’Reilly get fired up over same-sex marriages. One night, he claimed that too many people who opposed them did so for no other reason than their religious beliefs, and he didn’t think that “Bible-thumpers” were in a position to persuade those who disagreed with them. I had to concede his point. After all, if people weren’t religious, it stood to reason that they wouldn’t be swayed by arguments based on gospel.

However, I was shocked by his reference to Bible-thumpers. And so was Laura Ingraham, who appeared as a guest on his show the following evening. Viewers must have thought O’Reilly’s head was going to explode. He kept shouting her down each time she merely tried to explain that Bible-thumper was a demeaning term. Frankly, I half-expected her to walk off. But I guess she enjoys the perk of occasionally sitting in for O’Reilly too much to offend the blowhard. So she sat there and allowed him to treat her like an obnoxious brat.

Making things even worse was his denying that he had used the term, but had merely said, “Bible-thumping.” I waited in vain for Ms. Ingraham to ask him who it is exactly who engages in Bible-thumping if not Bible-thumpers.

That evening, I sent him an email. I didn’t really expect him to post it; after all, he had never posted any of my other messages, even though I do try to make them pithy. For the longest time, in fact, I’ve written them for no other reason than to share them with friends.

I wrote: “However you may have intended it, ‘Bible thumper’ is a derogatory term for a Christian, especially a fundamentalist or evangelical. You might as well have referred to religious nutburgers. Also, why would you urge letter writers to The Factor, as you did tonight, to not be ‘prescient.’ The word, after all, refers to someone possessing foresight.”

As I assumed, my note wasn’t posted, so now I’m once again sharing it with friends.

Like many people, I assumed that the problem with American politics was that most politicians are ex-lawyers. I figured that such was not the case in earlier times. Was I ever wrong! Although Washington and Jefferson were not members of the legal profession, 25 of the 43 presidents were, including John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Madison, Monroe and Van Buren.

The only conclusions I could draw from the list was that we’ve done reasonably well with former members of the military, if we limit it to the likes of Washington, Teddy Roosevelt, Eisenhower, Truman and Kennedy; and actors, if we limit it to professionals, such as Ronald Reagan, and not to such rank amateurs as LBJ, Nixon, Carter, Clinton and Obama.

Something I don’t understand is how it is that welfare reform was passed back in the mid- 90s, but today we have 47 million people getting food stamps and another 14 million collecting disability checks. And how is it that just a few years ago, unless I was hallucinating, Congress banned earmarks, but the relief bill for the victims of Hurricane Sandy was held up because so many legislators had added earmarks totaling untold millions of dollars in pet projects?

Also, how is it, I find myself wondering, that when their guy is in the White House, Democrats will spend trillions of tax dollars successfully pursuing the votes of women, blacks and illegal aliens, whereas Republicans will squander only slightly less money, but wind up buying no votes at all? Which reminds me of a question someone recently sent me: What’s the difference between genius and stupidity? Answer: There’s a limit to genius.

To bolster his argument that the Sequester would wreak financial havoc with the economy, Obama announced he is taking a five percent cut in his salary. That means that instead of receiving $33,333 on the first of every month, he will only receive $31,666. I, for one, hope that doesn’t mean that Michelle will have to start wearing last week’s dresses.

As symbolic acts go, you have to admit it’s pretty lame. I mean, does Obama even pay for his own golf balls? He certainly didn’t pay the freight to fly out here to California to co- host a recent DNC fund-raising event with Nancy Pelosi. I’m betting we even have to pay for those ice cream cones he’s always noshing on when he’s vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard.

The biggest laugh Obama has handed me recently wasn’t, as you may have guessed, his sinking just two of the 22 shots he took, trying to show off for the kids on Easter Sunday. Rather, it was his announcement that he wants to teach America’s youth how to budget responsibly.

Is the man so completely oblivious that he doesn’t realize that with his cavalier approach to a $17 trillion national debt and an annual trillion dollar deficit, it would make far more sense if he announced he was going to teach our young people how to shoot baskets?

BOMBS AND OTHER DISASTERS

2013-04-19T01:00:00.000-07:00

by Burt Prelutsky

I have been holding off writing anything about the horrific events at the Boston Marathon until the suspect or suspects had been arrested, because until then I couldn’t see any point in discussing it. Then it occurred to me that what I was overlooking was the way that every other media outlet has covered the story.

That first night, even Fox devoted every single second to repeating the few facts anyone knew and showing the same ten seconds of video. I’m not suggesting that the catastrophe could or should have been ignored. But without knowing who set off the bombs, what was the point of the endless coverage? Did people really think that if they didn’t stay tuned 24/7, they would somehow miss out on the news that the FBI had captured the creeps?

Perhaps it’s just me. After all, I didn’t devote very much time to the trials and tribulations of O.J. Simpson, Robert Blake, Casey Anthony or Jodi Arias, either. But, then, I am also not a fan of soap operas or so-called reality shows like “The Bachelor” or “The Apprentice.” Maybe I’m just not like other people. And for that, I’m grateful, as I’m sure are they.

In the wake of the Boston massacre, Dianne Feinstein has proposed legislation banning pressure cookers, but Barack Obama has indicated that he’d be willing to settle for a national register. In San Francisco, the police are offering concert tickets in exchange for the lethal devices. I’ve already seen bumper-stickers that remind us that pressure cookers don’t kill people, other people do.

Speaking of which, my brother-in-law wrote to me from Michigan, wanting to know if I had any idea who was paying to have all those Newtown parents flying around from one event to another, serving as props for Obama. I had to admit I had no idea. For all I know, they might have been paying their own way. But inasmuch as even these grief-stricken parents must have known that none of Obama’s anti-gun proposals would have prevented their children and their teachers from being murdered by Adam Lanza, one has to suspect that something besides their grief kept them moving from one high-profile venue to another.

Just because Obama has been focused on doing away with the Second Amendment doesn’t mean he hasn’t been causing mischief in other quarters. Apparently on his orders, the Army has stopped serving cooked breakfasts to 2,700 soldiers deployed in remote parts of Afghanistan. It’s either in preparation of the drawdown or the result of the Sequester. In either case, soldiers have been writing home, asking their families to send them cereal and breakfast bars.

America, it seems to me, was founded on Judeo-Christian principles, but it has floundered on the shoals of ignorance, sloth and greed. What brings that to mind is the immigration reform bill proposed by the bi-partisan gang of eight. It was back in the 1980s that Ronald Reagan got sucker-punched by the Democrats, who promised that if he signed the amnesty bill, a fence would be erected at our southern border. Here it is, 27 years and 17 million more illegal aliens later, and they’re still talking about some five-year plan for closing the border. Only now they have guys like Marco Rubio and John McCain on board, fronting for them.

Immigration reform either begins with a double fence separated by a road easily accessible to border agents or it’s just the same re-heated hash that political hacks trolling for Hispanic votes have been feeding us for nearly 30 years!

Finally, in China, a man shoved a live eel up his butt after seeing some other dude do it in a porno film. As you might have guessed, he wound up having to undergo surgery after the creature ate its way through his intestine.

Now I can’t tell you exactly why it is, but his experience reminds me in some peculiar way of all those people who voted to re-elect Barack Obama last November.

A TRASHY SOCIETY

2013-04-19T00:30:00.000-07:00

by Burt Prelutsky

There was a recent study of the 50 states that determined that the five freest were North and South Dakota, Tennessee, New Hampshire and Oklahoma; the least free were Rhode Island, Hawaii, New Jersey, California and New York.

The results shouldn’t be too surprising. The freest, after all, tend to be more conservative, the least free are all liberal. That stands to reason when you see how much leftists relish bureaucratic regulations and regularly elect nannies such as California’s Jerry Brown and New York’s Andrew Cuomo and Michael Bloomberg.

It occurred to me that even though I don’t watch Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel and David Letterman, I don’t read the trashy magazines or tune in to “The View” or Ellen DeGeneres, I am all too aware of people like Paris Hilton, Justin Bieber, Lindsay Lohan, Madonna and the 4,000 women known collectively as the Kardashians. It’s as if all this vile protoplasm were floating in the air, and no matter how hard you try, you can’t avoid sucking them in like human smog.

In the old days, movie stars and singers hired publicity agents. They paid good money to get their names and pictures in the press in order to promote their careers and enhance their images. Thus, nymphos, drunks and drug addicts, would be sold to the gullible public as if the next logical step in their lives wouldn’t be Oscars and hit records, but canonization as saints.

One of the few celebrities who was an exception was Frank Sinatra, who paid an expensive flack to keep his name out of the press. Even a guy who liked to play up his connection to Mafia dons didn’t want it to be headline fodder every time he sucker-punched some shrimp or had his thuggish bodyguards put some guy in the hospital.

But how the times have changed! Now every two-bit schnook can’t wait to go on TV and confess all. Instead of seeking atonement through private confession to a priest, these bottom-feeders seek out one of those aging sob sisters, like Barbara Walters, Diane Sawyer or Oprah Winfrey, while 500 pinheads in the studio audience mindlessly applaud, and the viler the confessions, the louder the applause.

Whenever I see someone like Bill O’Reilly get dewy-eyed over Abe Lincoln, I wonder why. I know the 16th president has been passed down to us as a humble log-splitter who was killed during a valiant attempt to end slavery. But that doesn’t quite mesh with the fact that he only freed the slaves in the Confederacy, not those in the Union states. I also know that he didn’t care for black people and urged the freed ones to self-deport to Liberia.

On top of all that, although his fable tells of his walking five miles in the snow to school and five miles home, uphill in both directions, and being a poor, but honest, lawyer, he was in fact constantly running for one political office or another. In the meantime, he served as a very wealthy mouthpiece for the railroad barons, who, in turn, financed his successful run for the presidency.

Then there was also the blatant hypocrisy of his “malice toward none, with charity to all” malarkey, while constantly urging his generals to wage bloody havoc on women and children, burning down homes and farms, all the while waging a war that left 620,000 Americans dead. What’s worse, his overriding motive was to make it possible for the North to continue punishing the South with tariffs that protected the producers of steel and textiles, while ruining those who raised and exported cotton and other farm products.

To me, the greatest of our presidents was without question George Washington. Not only had he commanded the Army that defeated the mighty English forces, but he both rejected the crown and was probably the last president who couldn’t wait to leave the presidency and return home.

George (“First in war, first in peace and first in the hearts of his countrymen”) Washington was to American politics what Babe Ruth was to baseball. Ruth, while with the Boston Red Sox, was one of the greatest pitchers in the game. Then he went to the New York Yankees and became the game’s all-time greatest hitter.

One of the worst results of the Lincoln fable was that, to this day, politicians never stop bragging about how poor they started out. Did even a single day go by in 2012 when Joe Biden or Rick Santorum didn’t remind us of their humble origins? But neither, you may have noticed, bothered mentioning how wealthy they had become in the guise of being public servants.

Another subject of popular fairy tales are Indians, or Native Americans, as they’re referred to in certain effete circles. Although there were some peaceful tribes back in the day, don’t believe anyone who tells you that it was white men who introduced torture and genocide to the noble savages. Many of them even engaged in cannibalism.

These days, they have added something new and shameful to their resume. It’s called disenrollment. That is a process whereby tribal leaders get to decide who does and who doesn’t have a legitimate claim to tribal identity. This outrageous activity owes its origin to the success of Indian casinos.

The way it works is that the fewer members of the tribe, the bigger the payouts to those who survive these purges. What’s more, because the tribal leaders get to make these decisions unilaterally, there can be no appeal to state or federal courts. I guess some people would take heart from the fact that in this way, at least, the Indians have finally learned the ways of the white man.

Finally, although Bob Beckel, who, for some unfathomable reason has become the darling of Fox News, should be commended for being a recovering alcoholic, I have to confess that every time I see him blathering away on “The Five” or “The Factor,” I feel as if I’m being driven to drink.

THE MORPHING OF AMERICA

2013-04-17T00:30:00.000-07:00

by Burt Prelutsky

I keep hearing from older Americans that the best thing about getting closer to the end is that they got to live most of their lives in an earlier and much better version of America.

A lot of that can be attributed to having lived during a time when you could trust what you read in newspapers so long as you discounted what ran on the editorial page. These days, just about every page reads like an editorial dictated by Barack Obama to his favorite ghostwriter, William Ayers.

One example of journalistic bias can be found in the way that the media covered the war in Afghanistan when Bush was the president and the way they’ve covered it since 2009 when Obama moved into the Oval Office. Over the course of seven Bush years, 575 American soldiers were killed in that war, and another 3,000 were wounded. Under Obama, the numbers soared to nearly 1,500 dead and 15,000 wounded. But if you judged by the coverage the war has received, you would imagine those numbers were reversed.

I still recall that when the war in Iraq was going strong, Garry Trudeau would occasionally devote an entire Sunday strip of “Doonesbury” to listing the names of the fallen warriors. Evidently, when they die with a Democrat in the White House, they don’t matter quite as much.

Something I can’t get my head around is how quickly public opinion can make a U-turn. Take gun laws. In December, 2012, 57% of those polled wanted them made stricter. In March of this year,, the number dropped to 47%. I am certainly not arguing for more legislation, but how it is that 10% of the people can do a complete reversal in three months? I mean, even the likes of Obama and the Clintons didn’t have the gall to switch their stance on same-sex marriages quite that quickly. Instead, they evolved, which is political-speak for checking which way the wind’s blowing.

Speaking of guns, the Second Amendment distinctly states that the federal government will do nothing to infringe on the rights of the people to own them. Clearly, when the government passed Dianne Feinstein’s ban on assault rifles in the 1990s, it was definitely infringing. But, then, ever since Lincoln decided to ignore writs of habeas corpus, politicians, as well as Supreme Court justices, have increasingly come to regard the Constitution as nothing more than a list of suggestions.

Sen. Feinstein, who certainly has earned her place among the most hypocritical members of the U.S. Senate, last year insisted she would get to the bottom of the scandal that saw this administration passing along security secrets to the NY Times…until she realized it could only be Barack Obama or one of his flunkies.

In a somewhat related matter, Richard Blum’s firm was recently assigned the task of selling off 56 buildings housing post offices, meaning millions of dollars in commissions. In case his name doesn’t ring a bell, Dianne Feinstein is Mrs. Richard Blum. (Have you noticed there’s never an assault rifle around when you really need one?)

One of my readers, Randall Slafsky, called my attention to an article in the Washington Post. It stated that the Arctic Ocean is warming up, icebergs and glaciers are disappearing and in some places, the seals are finding the water too hot for their usual activities.

It went on to report that no white fish are being found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds. Moreover, within a few years it is predicted that due to the ice melt, the sea will rise and make most coastal cities uninhabitable.

The AP news story actually ran in the Post on November 2, 1922. Who would have ever guessed Al Gore was that old?

Apparently, I’m not the only person who has noticed that liberals are constantly giving new meaning to the word “hypocrisy.” Cartoonist Dixon Diaz pointed out in his takeoff on “Peanuts” that liberals oppose people having the right to smoke; drink large sodas; eat cookies; use gas, oil and coal; celebrate Easter and Christmas; use incandescent bulbs; or own guns. The only area in which they’re truly pro-choice is when it comes to abortions.

In another strip, he had his version of Lucy telling Linus that he and his fellow conservatives are racist, sexist, homophobic, gun-toting, religious fanatics. When Linus points out that she and her fellow liberals support Muslims, who are racist, sexist, homophobic, gun-toting, religious fanatics, she replies, “That’s their culture. You have no right to judge them.”

To which I and most conservatives can only say, quoting that eminent philosopher, Charlie Brown, “Good grief!”

OBAMA AND FRIENDS

2013-04-15T00:30:00.000-07:00

by Burt Prelutsky

Some people insist that guilt by association is unfair. They often dredge up Sen. Joe McCarthy as an example of what that sort of thing can lead to. But the fact is that we all judge people by those with whom they choose to associate. That’s where the expression about people lying down with dogs and getting up with fleas originated. And the fact is, more often than not, McCarthy was right, although it was his own fault that he usually came off as a buffoon and drunken bully, thereby tainting even those of us who recognized that Soviet spies and apologists had long polluted our State Department, and that it was Alger Hiss and not Whitaker Chambers who was the lying scumbag.

In much the same way, Obama discloses a great deal about himself by the people he selects to be his advisors. Who but a dedicated Leftist would have the likes of Valerie Jarrett, Kathleen Sebelius and Tom Perez, in his inner circle? And although I know that Obama is not responsible for electing the members of the Congressional Black Caucus, is it even possible that he’s not embarrassed to be supported by a group of ignoramuses who went to Cuba a few years back and came back praising Fidel Castro?

More recently, Maxine Waters warned that sequestration would cost the U.S. 170 million jobs, which is 50 million more jobs than we have. In fact, if we had that many Americans working, our unemployment rate would be zero. Not to be outdone, Rep. Charley Rangel announced that “millions of kids are dying because they are being shot down by assault weapons.”

Not hundreds of kids, not even thousands of kids, but millions! This is not only extraordinarily dumb, but, as a black man, he should be aware that most black kids are shot down by other black kids with hand guns. But rather than address that problem, he elects to go to war with gun manufacturers. Someone should tell the tax cheat that whereas assault weapons rarely kill people, gangbangers do it constantly.

And rumor has it that Waters and Rangel are two of the brighter members of the Black Caucus, a group that includes Hank Johnson, the Georgia congressman who famously worried that if too many Navy personnel were transferred to Guam, the island would likely tip over and sink!

While getting off the plane in Israel, Barack Obama was overheard saying that it was good to get away from Congress. I’m sure that for its part, Congress, at least that portion populated by Republicans, felt the same way. I would only point out to Obama that, however he feels about it, Congress is here to stay. But there’s nothing that says he has to stick around. After all, if the Pope can retire, surely there’s nothing to prevent a lame duck president from calling it quits.

It used to be said that a conservative was a liberal who’d just been mugged. Apparently, these days, a conservative is a liberal who just saw his tax bill. At least that would explain Bill Maher’s recent hissy fit. He was so inflamed that he actually said, “You know what, liberals…rich people actually do pay the freight in this country. It’s outrageous what we’re paying—over 50%! I’m willing to pay my share, but, yeah, it’s ridiculous.”

I assume it’s too late for him to put a stop on that million dollar check he sent to the Obama campaign last year.

Now, with the next presidential election coming up right around the corner, at least judging by the recent words and actions by the likes of Marco Rubio, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, Jeb Bush, Paul Ryan, Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum, it’s not too early to alert Republicans to the fact that a one-size-fits-all litmus test is just plain nuts.

Geography matters. Along with William F. Buckley’s injunction to always vote for the most conservative candidate…who can win, I would advise Republicans to always keep geography in mind. Two politicians can hold exactly the same conservative views, but whereas the one running in Texas, Utah or Oklahoma, will coast to victory, the one voicing those identical beliefs in most parts of the country won’t even get out of the starting gate.

It would be well to keep in mind that we may all be Americans, but the guy in Chicago barely speaks the same language as his brother in Dallas. In the same way, different cultures have different rules. In France, for instance, it’s not only assumed that politicians will have mistresses, it’s almost mandatory. Sort of the way it is with Democrats.

I’m reminded that years ago, there was a story floating around that a foreign diplomat connected to the U.N. was photographed professionally engaged, as it were, with a New York prostitute. Not only didn’t he pay hush money to the blackmailers, but requested a full set of glossies because he thought it would enhance his reputation with his colleagues.

As I was saying, that’s sort of the way it is with Democrats.

A CORNUCOPIA OF OBSERVATIONS

2013-04-12T00:30:00.001-07:00

by Burt Prelutsky

When Margaret Thatcher, who came to power when England had an unemployment rate of about 13% and managed to reduce it to 5.8%, passed away, a large number of Brits celebrated the occasion by singing “Ding Dong, the Witch is Dead.” They despised her not only because she rescued her nation from sinking into the abyss of European socialism, but that she did it in part by facing down the powerful coalminer’s union. And, sadly, if you saw her movie bio, “The Iron Lady,” just about the only thing you would have known about this glorious leader is that she eventually became a dotty old woman hearing voices.

Here in America, millions of left-wing cretins greeted Ronald Reagan’s death in similar fashion. Like Thatcher, he inherited an economy from Jimmy Carter that was basically on life support and turned it around in just a few years. He was despised by those on the Left, at least in part, because he had faced down the air controller’s union.

The secret of their success was that they had principles and refused to be cowed by the elitists who inhabit academia and a media that has never gotten over its infantile infatuation with Soviet-style communism.

We may never see their like again.

Instead, we are cursed with the likes of the Obamas. While the progressives sing his praises, he does everything in his power to destroy the middle class, while the missus has the gall to whine to the CBS affiliate in Burlington, Vermont, “Believe me, I’m a busy single mother. I shouldn’t say ‘single,’ though. As a busy mother, sometimes, you know, when you’ve got a husband who’s president, it can feel a little single.”

I have tried to imagine how a woman who has more hand maidens than Marie Antoinette and is constantly flying off to vacation in exotic locales; has chefs, make-up artists and an army of nannies at her beck and call; and doesn’t even have to walk the family dog; can muster the chutzpah to complain how difficult she has it. But, then, her husband manages to make it sound like he’s being water-boarded any time he merely has to talk to a Republican.

Walt Whitman once observed “To have great poets, there must be great audiences.” It is something I have long said about movies and even TV shows. So long as people are satisfied with garbage, there’s little incentive for studios and networks to produce anything worthwhile. The same, I have come to realize, is true when it comes to politics. After all, when someone who has made a rotten economy worse and has badly misplayed his hand when it comes to foreign affairs, can be re-elected president, it figures that the RNC would busy itself trying to figure out how to out-bribe and out-promise the Democrats in order to seduce Hispanics, blacks, women and twenty-somethings, into switching parties.

Finally, you have probably heard that those killed and wounded by Major Nidal Hasan have been denied the honor and benefits that go with Purple Hearts because Obama’s Department of Defense has categorized the massacre as “workplace violence.”

It makes you wonder why those being wounded and killed in Afghanistan aren’t also being deprived of their medals. After all, if you’re in the military, what else would you call a war zone but a workplace?

The Defense Department further argues that if Hasan’s victims were awarded Purple Hearts, it might harm his chances of receiving a fair trial. I contend that after three-and-a-half years, nobody should utter the words “fair trial” and “Hasan” in the same sentence. There is nothing the least bit fair about this jihadist’s still being alive after killing and maiming more than four dozen Americans while shrieking “Allah Akbar!” at Fort Hood.

Speaking of which, Fort Hood, an Army base in Texas, was, thanks to the eunuchs at the Pentagon and lunkheads such as Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a gun-free zone. Gun-free, that is, except, of course, for the FN Five-seven the Muslim creep was firing until police officers Mark Todd and Kim Munley showed up and shot him.

No word yet whether Major Hasan is going to receive a Purple Heart.

APPLYING FOR THIRD WORLD STATUS

2013-04-10T00:30:00.000-07:00

by Burt Prelutsky

If the U.S. isn’t yet a third world nation, it’s not because we’re not trying. As if the Congressional Black Caucus isn’t bad enough, there is an even larger group calling itself the Congressional Progressive Caucus. It has even more members, including the entire Black Caucus. Its co-chairmen are Keith Ellison, who chose to be sworn into office with his hand on the Koran, and Raul Grijalva, whose resume includes having been a leader of both the racist Raza Unida Party and the Chicano Liberation Committee.

As if that’s not bad enough, the Vice-Chair is Sheila Jackson Lee, the Whip is Barbara Lee, and Bernie Sanders, the only left-winger honest enough to identify himself as a Socialist, is the lone Senate member. This group is so far to the Left, that even Henry Waxman, one of a minority of House Democrats who actually voted to continue funding ACORN even after those scandalous videos were made public by the late Andrew Breitbart, isn’t a member.

When Allen West announced there were over 80 members of Congress who were communists, he was pilloried. That is often the price for telling the truth in America.

When you see scores of these dimwits being elected to high office, you have reason to worry about this nation’s future. Although I don’t know exactly how they measure such things, but the National Journal determined that the most liberal members of the Senate were Rich Blumenthal (Connecticut), Tom Udall (New Mexico), Dick Durbin (Illinois), Al Franken (Minnesota), Patty Murray (Washington) and Frank Lautenberg (New Jersey). Is it any wonder that the South is thriving?

Meanwhile, Detroit, which has been overseen by Democrats for decades, and has, as a result, become a mirror image of Bangladesh, has had Kevyn Orr appointed its new financial manager by Republican Governor Rick Snyder. It should come as no surprise that Mr. Orr has had tax liens on his million dollar home in Maryland since 2010, and that he claimed to know nothing about it until he recently read about it in the newspaper.

What’s more, the embarrassing information apparently didn’t show up in the vetting by Governor Snyder. Inasmuch as part of Orr’s job will be to improve Detroit’s tax-collecting operations, perhaps Snyder was guided by the principle of it takes a thief, just as Barack Obama was when he appointed tax-delinquent Tim Geithner to be his Secretary of the Treasury.

Recently, I heard about a six month study of disability claims. It was simultaneously fascinating and unnerving to learn that there are 14 million Americans collecting federal disability checks, averaging $1,000-a-month. In addition, they receive free health care. What’s more, their numbers aren’t included when we hear about those unemployment rates. When you add 14 million to the millions who are working part-time jobs or have simply decided to stop seeking employment, you can see how quickly 7.7% can rise to 15 or 16%, and how happy Obama must be that none of these people ever seem to appear on the same list.

At the same time that the administration boasts of 150,000 new jobs every month, there are 250,000 new people being added to the disability rolls during that period.

One odd fact that the study turned up is that the numbers have soared in the time since it became illegal for employers to discriminate against handicapped workers. How is that possible? Well, it seems that you only need two things in order to collect. The first is an accommodating doctor who will claim you can’t hold down a job. And, as we all know, judging by how many doctors provided young men disinclined to serve in Vietnam with medical excuses, and how many doctors are willing to sign phony prescriptions for medical marijuana, that’s hardly a Herculean task.

The second thing you need, or may need if your application is turned down by the Department of Labor, is a lawyer who will file an appeal for you. You don’t even have to pay him. He collects his cut once he wins the appeal, and that happens more frequently than not. It almost seems as if the system is set up to benefit the lawyers, but, then, what isn’t?

All things considered, it’s not so surprising in this society with 47 million people accepting food stamps that 14 million are collecting disability checks. In fact, I’m rather surprised the number isn’t higher. But fear not. At the rate we’re going, the number will hit 20 million by the summer of 2015.

Finally, the Florida Board of Education passed a race-based program that calls for certain goals to be reached by 2018. Under the plan, 90% of Asian students, 88% of white students, 81% of Hispanics and 74% of blacks, are expected to read at or above the reading grade levels in future tests.

According to a Florida Department of Education spokeswoman, “Of course we want every student to be successful, but we have to take into account their starting point.”

Which raises the question: What starting point? These kids all start out in kindergarten. The black children actually start out in something called Operation Head Start, where they apparently are taught to chant “Mmm mmm mmm, Barack Obama,” but not much else.

So here we are, half a century after the passage of the Civil Rights Act, and we continue to expect the minimum of black kids. But still their parents continue to vote for Democrats. I guess the plantation isn’t as bad as they’ve made it out to be.
The chains the slave traders put on these people’s ancestors were vile. The chains they insist on placing on themselves and their kids are far worse.

A LOT OF DOLLARS AND NO SENSE

2013-04-08T00:30:00.000-07:00

by Burt Prelutsky

E ven though everyone knows that canceling White House tours to prove the severity of the Sequester cuts was a scam perpetrated by Obama, it didn’t prevent Joe Biden from blowing 460,000 of our tax dollars for one day in London and another $585,000 on a one-day stopover in Paris.

The arrogance of this administration is seemingly unlimited. When the French revolted against their royals in the 18th century, they did so with less justification than we have. George Washington was offered the kingship of America and he refused the crown. But that hasn’t prevented future presidents, as well as vice-presidents, Republicans and Democrats, from behaving like royalty.

That’s why it kills me when even conservatives grudgingly agree that presidents deserve to take expensive vacations. Just how hard does anyone think these people are working? There’s no heavy lifting involved, and they pretty much work bankers’ hours. On top of that, over a billion dollars a year is spent providing them with protection, 24/7 access to chefs, waiters, personal trainers, barbers and beauticians, medical and dental specialists, plus nannies for the kids and the dog.

When you get right down to it, every day they spend in the White House is the equivalent of an extravagant vacation for normal people.

But most of us are so sheep-like that we have actually bought into the fairy tale that even a president who hasn’t come up with a budget in four years is working harder than a grunt in Afghanistan, and desperately needs his R&R.

Like the Shadow of radio fame, Barack Obama clearly has the power to cloud men’s minds. But even that fails to explain why Israel’s college students treated him like a combination of Mick Jagger and Moishe Dayan when he addressed them during his recent excursion to the Middle East. Until one of the kids heckled him in Hebrew, I found myself wondering if he had brought the young chowderheads along from Harvard or Georgetown.

So although this administration is unable to come up with the chump change required to allow school kids to tour their White House, Joe Biden can waste a million dollars living it up on the continent and they can pay a schmuck named Samuel Betances a couple of million dollars to promote diversity -- by which they, and he, mean anti-white bigotry -- to federal employees.

Some people assumed that when I titled my second book of political commentary “Liberals: America’s Termites,” I was merely engaging in name-calling. Well, I wasn’t. At least not entirely. Otherwise, I might have titled it “America’s Skunks” or “America’s Weasels.” I referred to them as termites because, like the nasty little crawly creatures, they have shown an extraordinary ability to take a great stately edifice that has withstood over two centuries of wind, rain, depressions and wars, and bring it crashing down on our collective heads.

Speaking of termites, I don’t want any parks, bridges, buildings or ships, named after politicians, unless they write a personal check to pay for the darn thing. If we’re looking around for people to honor, I suggest we begin honoring honorable people, such as Jonas Salk or Irving Berlin, Mark Twain or Richard Rodgers, people who have actually made enormous contributions to America.

I found it ironic that Obama, who has devoted four years to dividing Americans based on race, wealth and gender, told the Israelis and the Palestinians they should start getting along. This coming from the putz who has spent his entire administration demonizing Republicans, who may have somewhat inhibited his ability to turn this country into Greece, but they never rained missiles down on him and his family. And when I last checked, they hadn’t blown up any school buses or pizza parlors.

I realize that Chuck Hagel isn’t looking to me for advice, but I would still like to suggest that we don’t engage in any more wars unless the U.S. or an actual ally is attacked. But we should never again be involved in siding with one side or the other in a conflict between Arabs or Muslims. As we should have learned from the overhyped Arab Spring, there’s no advantage for us, no matter which side wins. For us, it’s just a tragic loss of lives and an immoral waste of money.

A recent poll disclosed that of the ten nations in the world that despise America the most, nine are in the Middle East. And that’s after decades of trying to defend these people against the Serbs, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Hamas and Saddam Hussein. (Lest you not be able to sleep tonight, the tenth was Greece. I don’t know why, but perhaps they resent our trying to copy them.)

I’m not suggesting we turn a blind eye to any of these countries that threaten us. I’m merely stating that we never go to war to defend them. I’m all for using special ops to take out the likes of Ahmadinejad, Al Assad, the Iranian mullahs, and to use armed drones to take out other jihadists if they appear to be a threat to Christians or Jews.
So long as we start drilling for our own oil, natural gas and coal, we can go back to ignoring them the way western civilization did for several centuries after their first misguided attempt to conquer and convert the world to their lunacy.

For their part, they can go back to pretending that Mohammad wasn’t a blood-thirsty pedophile, and insisting that art, music, literature, science and technology, are the stuff of infidels.

And for my part, I can’t help thinking these are the people Obama wants Israelis to get along with when he can’t even be civil to the likes of Paul Ryan, Justice Sam Alito and Ted Cruz!

TERM LIMITS AND THE CATHOLIC CHURCH

2013-04-05T00:30:00.000-07:00

Although Just a friendly reminder that you pay nothing for the dozen articles you receive every month. In order to absolve your guilt pangs, feel free to send donations to Burt Prelutsky at 16604 Dearborn St., North Hills, CA 91343-3604, or via PayPal. You'll be automatically entered in the monthly book drawing. And remember to tune in on my webcast every Wednesday at 1 p.m. (PST), on channel 1. Click here to listen live or on demand 24/7 from Channel 1 LaTalkRadio.com. You can also download to your iPhone or Android apps. The call-in number is (323)203-0815. I'd like to hear your questions and comments, pro or con. Especially pro.

by Burt Prelutsky

Recently, Thomas Sowell wrote an excellent piece dealing with term limits. The point he made is that if the idea behind limits was to rid us of those people who spend their entire lives doing little more than voting, we’ve gone about it in a really stupid way.

For one thing, as we’ve seen here in California, it merely means that once one of these palookas has termed out in, say, the state assembly, he merely runs for the state senate or for governor or lieutenant governor or attorney general. In short, he moves on, he doesn’t move out.

Another problem is that once elected to the House or Senate, where term limits are never even considered, it’s next to impossible to dislodge the likes of Harry Reid, Charley Rangel and Henry Waxman.

There is no reason why we should have an actual class of politicians, people, in short, who never have to do an honest day’s work in their lives. And why should a Supreme Court judge be ensconced for life? For one thing, it presumes that we need professionals in those jobs. We don’t. In fact, those who decide on politics as a career are the very people who shouldn’t be there.

I realize that some would argue that you at least need specialized knowledge to serve as a member of the high court, but the fact that so many decisions come down to 5-4 votes suggests that you merely have to possess an opinion, not a law degree.

And it’s my opinion that the ongoing debate over same-sex marriages is much ado about nothing. A few gay activists have pretended that it’s a civil right, but, if so, has there ever been a civil right that’s been taken advantage of by fewer people than this one? We passed women’s suffrage and women got out and voted. We passed the Civil Rights Act and black people went to the schools of their choice and sat wherever they liked on the bus and at the lunch counter. But when it comes to same-sex marriage, it’s mainly sound and fury signifying nothing.

I know that whenever gay marriage legislation is passed, the left-wing news media is sure to share photos of the ecstatic couples. But I am beginning to think that I’m seeing the same couples time and again. I don’t believe that any significant number of lesbians have tied the knot, and I’m willing to bet it’s an even smaller percentage of gay men.

And after all the posturing over gays in the military, I have yet to hear of large numbers of gay enlistments. And I’m sure I would have heard of them, thanks to a liberal media that would be certain to ballyhoo the glad tidings.

If gays had been as successful at selling a soft drink brand as they have been at selling their very odd life style, we’d all be drinking Dad’s Root Beer or Diet Pepsi. How successful? Well, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, hardly the east coast answer to San Francisco, the Green Street United Methodist Church is now refusing to perform marriage ceremonies for straight couples until same-sex marriage is legalized in that state. What’s more, they’re asking other churches to join the movement, and I have no doubt that other churches will follow their foolish lead.

A lesser man might go so far as to say there’s Methodism in their madness. I am that lesser man.

I confess I’m not a religious person, but even I’m aware that the Bible makes no bones about where it stands on the question of homosexuality. Now I’m not suggesting that gays should be stoned, but when the Bible refers to the practice as an abomination, where do churches get off promoting it? I mean, are there any lines in the sand? What’s next? Changing the 10 Commandments to the 10 Suggestions?

Even the Catholic Church is acting more like a social club than a religious denomination. Considering the damage it inflicted on itself first through the pedophile scandal and then through the ensuing cover-up, you would have thought the Vatican would have become proactive. Why is it, for instance, that the Church sits idly by while most Hispanic Catholics voted overwhelmingly for Obama, a man who proudly promotes abortions and homosexuality? Is denunciation from the pulpit a thing of the past?

And why is it that Catholics such as Patty Murray, Joe Biden, Nancy Pelosi and a bunch of people named Kennedy, are never excommunicated for not merely championing abortions, but funding Planned Parenthood and doing everything in their power to make abortions readily accessible to teenagers?

It’s one thing, after all, to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s, but if even abortion is Caesar’s, what’s left to render unto the Lord besides a few bucks in the collection plate?

I say if the Church wants people to pay attention to it without having to wait around until Pope Francis dies or retires, it should start booting these high-profile backsliders out on their collective fannies.

Otherwise, when it comes to their members as well as their leaders, we have to assume that the Elks, the Moose and the Rotarians, all have higher standards than the Catholic Church.

SCREWBALLS & SLURRY SINGERS

2013-04-03T00:30:00.000-07:00

by Burt Prelutsky

I did not attend the Conservative Political Action Conference. That was partly because, like Chris Christie, I wasn’t invited. But it was also because I can’t imagine voluntarily sitting through days of speeches. To me, it verges on enhanced interrogation, but without the water. After listening to Sarah Palin, Rand Paul, Jeb Bush and Mitch McConnell, I suspect I’d tell my tormentors just about anything they wanted to know.

What I don’t get is why anyone wants to sit and listen to these people read speeches to them for hours on end. In fact, if I had the power, I wouldn’t let any politician ever speak from a podium unless he or she then had to take and answer questions from people like me. And that definitely includes Barack Obama, Harry Reid and Michael Bloomberg. The way these people get away with uttering sheer balderdash, it’s no wonder they come to regard themselves as godlike.

For instance, not too long ago, John Boehner said that he trusted Barack Obama, and nobody got to say, “Well, you’re a pinhead, John. A little over four years ago, when George Bush had sent the national debt soaring to nine trillion dollars, Sen. Obama announced that the sky was falling. Now that he’s raised it an additional seven trillion dollars, he said we had nothing to worry about.”

If Boehner really believes that bespeaks a trustworthy man, he’s an idiot who has no more business than my big toe being the Speaker of the House.

Speaking of Obama, apparently when he condescended to break bread with the Senate Republicans, he merely broke the bread, he didn’t eat it. In fact, apparently he didn’t eat anything because his food taster wasn’t on duty. Now, for all I know, perhaps every president employs one of those people, especially when he’s dining with members of the opposition party. But if he’s that paranoid, what happens when he’s vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard and we get to see him having an ice cream cone? Does it mean that some guy named Charley was skulking in the back room and got to take that dangerous first lick?

I read that Republican Sen. Rob Portman is getting kudos for reversing his position when it comes to same-sex marriages. Apparently it happened because his son Will came out of the closet. Frankly, I would have had more respect for Portman if he had simply had an honest change of heart.

If I found out I had a gay son, I would still love him, but why would I change my core beliefs? Why shouldn’t Will change his position in order to prove how much he loves his father? To me, it makes as much sense as saying that Portman was opposed to bank robbery or jay-walking, but only until he found out that his son robbed banks or was an inveterate jay-walker.

Because there is so much about modern society to despise, sometimes things slip by without anyone’s noticing. For instance, in the wake of the gun debate, a lot of us have argued that one of the main causes of these recent massacres is that obviously crazy people aren’t being confined in mental institutions. What makes this so totally illogical, not to mention reprehensible, is that we are constantly confining old people for no other reason than their age, treating them as if they had the plague, but we allow dangerous loons to roam free.

What’s more, we allow lawyers to use the lunacy of their clients as a defense in murder and rape trials, but once ObamaCare fully kicks in, death panels -- or whatever euphemism the liberals come up with -- will have the power to determine which old people live and which ones die.

This brings us to those I refer to as slurry singers. It has often amazed me that people who will agree on virtually every issue under the sun will almost come to blows when it comes to those who don’t share their taste in movies, TV shows, actors and even singers. In my case, I have spent nearly 60 years disagreeing with people when it comes to Elvis Presley. He first burst on the scene when I was in high school, and although I rather liked “Heartbreak Hotel,” I never could stand listening to him.

Over the years, I couldn’t help noticing that I was just about the only person I knew who felt that way. Understand, I don’t really object to being in the minority. I figure there are people who like all sorts of things I don’t like, and although it annoys me when people don’t agree with me when it comes to politics, I tend to be a live-and-let-live sort of guy. I simply figure I’m right and they’re wrong.

The thing that recently occurred to me was that there was a group of singers I could never bear listening to, and they included, along with Presley, Dean Martin, Phil Harris, Johnny Mercer and Louis Prima. To me, they all sounded like they had mush in their mouths and that a song’s lyrics were lucky to get out alive.

The reason I’m making this confession is because I suspect that just as I know that some people only felt free to speak openly and honestly about cilantro after I insisted it tasted like something that had been found in the cat’s sandbox, I suspect there are some people who feel as I do about these slurry singers, but have been cowed into silence for far too long, just waiting for someone to come along and point out, as it were, that the King’s new clothes don’t leave much to the imagination.