What do Newt Gingrich, Mike Huckabee and Sheriffs Paul Babeu and Larry Deaver have in common? On almost a daily basis, they send me or my wife letters beseeching us to send them donations. What’s more, even though we ignore their pleas, their faith never wanes. Although I admire perseverance as much as the next guy, I’m going to take this opportunity to set them straight. If I had any money lying around that I didn’t need for food and gasoline, there are probably about 84,000 charities I’d send it to before coughing it up for a couple of sheriffs and a couple of ex-politicians who are trying to turn some face time on TV into competition with the Red Cross and the Little Sisters of Mercy.
Maybe these leeches can lure Jerry Lewis out of retirement to host a telethon. I might even tune in if there’s the slightest chance that Jerry might dawdle Gingrich on his knee.
In the wake of the last-second budget agreement, some people are saying that Obama caved and that it will cost him some votes in 2012. The question is whether the Washington pundits mean it when they say these dopey things or if they’re just trying to give me a much-needed laugh in these troubling times. The fact is, Obama has changed his position on Gitmo, civilian trials for terrorists, deploying troops without congressional approval, renditions and transparency, and no matter what Paul Krugman and The New York Times say, Obama’s base will line up like a bunch of lap dogs on Election Day. Liberals, as everybody knows, are like those women in country music songs who are always getting their hearts trampled on, but they can’t help lovin’ that man of theirs.
I saw that Eric Holder has gone to bat for the Muslim teacher who insisted on taking a three-week vacation during the school term so that she could visit Mecca. This is the same Department of Justice that refused to indict the Black Panthers for voter intimidation and decided to make an example of Arizona for daring to defend its border against foreign invasion. Is it too much to expect Attorney General Holder will be the next recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize?
I’ve heard that when Obama’s poll numbers recently hit record lows, a great many Kenyans began insisting that he was born in Hawaii.
A friend asked me if I thought that if the GOP had Herman Cain or Allen West on the national ticket next year, it would cut into Obama’s numbers in the black community. I told him the only votes it might sway would be found among the immediate members of their respective families. Unfortunately, in spite of Martin Luther King’s hope that people would start judging others by their character, and not by the color of their skin, for 90% of black voters, the final judgment is based on neither character nor pigmentation, but on party affiliation.
Two things that liberals can never bring themselves to acknowledge because it refutes everything they say about taxes and education is that the top one percent of the population pays 40% of the taxes and that throwing more and more money at education, as Democrats and the teachers’ unions demand be done, doesn’t work. The cost of education in America over the past few decades has tripled, while standardized test scores have remained static. Although we spend the third most per student in the world, in terms of reading, math and science, our students rank somewhere between those on Togo and Nauru.
The one thing I came away with from the recent battle to keep the government from shutting down was that both sides of the aisle agreed there was a category of federal employee known as “non-essential.” When it comes to fighting over the next budget, I suggest we start by getting rid of those people. I believe that a great many of them are presently members of the House and Senate.
Finally, and I admit this is only a rumor, but I’ve heard that Gaddafi has asked Barack Obama to abide by the will of the American people, and to honor their aspirations for freedom and democracy, by stepping down.
Burt Prelutsky is a humor columnist, a movie critic and a writer for TV. He’s written episodes of MASH, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, Family Ties, Dr. Quinn and Diagnosis Murder. He blogs at BurtPrelutsky.com.
