Now, THAT’S cheating!
Wednesday, October 28th, 2009This one’s worthy of Rodney Dangerfield:
“I played golf with a guy who cheated so much that he made a hole in one and wrote zero on the card!”
Archive for October, 2009
Book Review: Common Sense
Wednesday, October 21st, 2009Glenn Beck is a showman, but has become a fairly powerful political philosopher, a government watchdog (sort of like the “free press” envisioned by the Constitution). Cases in point: The 9-12 Project…Van Jones…ACORN. Glenn Beck was the primary mover and shaker in each one of those stories, which have at various times this year dominated the political news. He is also the primary target in the current campaign of the White House against Fox News. (He must be getting under SOMEBODY’S skin…) By the way, Jay Leno reported tonight that President Obama did decide to commit 40,000 more troops to help fight Fox News.
I remember first hearing his radio show, which contained a lot of comedy, some stunts, some off-the-beaten-path news stories, etc. Now it’s all-politics-all-the-time, and his TV show is a jeremiad over corruption in Washington. His wacky sense of humor is still there, but he is also practically in tears every day over the state of the union.
A large part of his appeal (and power) is that he doesn’t claim to be Walter Lippmann or Walter Cronkite or any other serious journalist. He’s just Everyman, a recovering alcoholic, a family man, a religious person (Mormon), and a patriotic American who thinks his whole way of life is being hijacked by self-anointed, arrogant, know-it-all, royal elite political class of busybodies who think the average American is too stupid (Bill Maher, anyone?) to know what’s good for him. Beck calls politicians “cockroaches.”
My review of his book, Common Sense: The Case Against an Out-of-control Government, Inspired by Thomas Paine, is necessarily brief, because it is a borrowed book. As such, I couldn’t mark it up in my usual manner. Thus, I’m merely scanning back through the book for the highlights.
I heartily recommend the book. It doesn’t blaze any new trails in terms of research, problems, warnings, etc., but it does give some plain talk on some simple but direct concerns that most of us would share – talking points that regular folks can share with regular folks, if you will. This is precisely what he intended to do, in the spirit of the original Common Sense by T. Paine (which, by the way, is also included in its entirety in the second part of the book).
He starts by stating that “SOMETHING JUST DOESN’T FEEL RIGHT,” and gives some evidence for the rightness of that ominous feeling. He wonders why nothing ever seems to get done on issues like illegal immigration, our dependence on foreign oil, pork barrel earmarks in congressional legislation, bogus science on global warming, burgeoning federal budgets, bloated government bureaucracy, a hopelessly complex tax code that discourages entrepreneurship and encourages cheating, etc.
The main problem, as he develops it, is that mainstream Americans have been so busy minding our own business that “progressives” have been subverting the Constitution. They include both Republicans and Democrats, and go all the way back to Teddy Roosevelt, Herbert Hoover, FDR [of course], LBJ, Jimmy Carter (the Worthless One), Bill Clinton, George W. Bush (yes, that’s right – and I agree with Beck – ask me why), and Barack Obama.
Beck states: “The sad part is that most of us work hard, play by the rules, and just want a fair shake – but we’re tired. We’re tired of being angry, tired of being lied to, and, quite frankly, tired of being tired. But we are the current guardians of freedom and, because others have let us down, it is now our duty to face the hard truths and do the right thing – no matter the personal cost.”
It’s a short book – 100 pages, plus another 50 or so for Paine’s pamphlet – and well worth the read.
I’m not a global warming guy, but…
Monday, October 19th, 2009Mark Levin’s Liberty and Tyranny contains 3 1/2 pages of alarmist claims in news reports that man-made global warming causes or has caused. I am listing only a few: acne, aggressive weeds, amphibians breeding earlier (or not), animals head for the hills, Antarctic ice grows, Antarctic ice shrinks, Atlantic more salty, Atlantic less salty, attack of the killer jellyfish, beer shortage, birds confused, brothels struggle, bubonic plague, butterflies move north, cannibalism, cataracts, cave paintings threatened, circumcision in decline, cockroach migration, coral reefs dying, coral reefs grow, coral reefs shrink, crime increase, crocodile sex, Darfur, diseases move north, early marriages, Earth lopsided, Earth slowing down, Earth spins faster, Earth upside down, equality threatened, fish deaf, fish sex change, flesh eating disease, Garden of Eden wilts, giant oysters invade, giant pythons invade, gingerbread houses collapse, glacial retreat, glacial growth, gray whales lose weight, hibernation ends too soon, hibernation ends too late, HIV increasing, ice sheet growth, ice sheet shrinkage, inflation in China, invasion of cats, invasion of herons, invasion of jellyfish, insurance increases, itchier poison ivy, jets fall from sky, kitten boom, lake shrinking and growing, mammoth dung melt, maple syrup shortage, methane burps, minorities hit, moose dying, more raw sewage, national security implications, NFL threatened, oaks move north, opera house to be destroyed, outdoor hockey threatened, polar bears cannibalistic, rape wave, robins rampant, ruins ruined, seals mating more, sewer bills rise, sheep shrink, shop closures, short-nosed dogs endangered, smaller brains, spiders invade Scotland, swordfish in the Baltic, teenage drinking, tourism decrease, tourism increase, truffle shortage, turtles crash, walrus stampede, witchcraft executions…
I’m not a global warming guy, but I do worry about the threat to the NFL. I’d like the Bears to win at least one more Super Bowl before I burn up.
The best t-shirt I’ve seen lately
Thursday, October 8th, 2009“Ask me about my vow of silence.”