The question that’s been preying on my mind is who is best suited to study those strange beings known as liberals.  It strikes me that they’d be fit subjects for psychiatrists, who might be in a position to figure out why they revere the people they do — people such as Hugo Chavez, Fidel Castro, Al Gore and Ted Kennedy — men who haven’t a single notable accomplishment to their name, aside from either winning elections or eliminating them altogether.  Or perhaps it would be more appropriate for biologists to delve into the left-wing organism, and determine how it is possible that creatures without brains could have survived so long in an often hostile environment.

If you don’t believe that liberalism is a serious malady, consider that Paul Krugman of the New York Times, when addressing Sonia Sotomayor’s remark about an Hispanic woman being better qualified than a white man to be a judge, said that she was merely being entertaining.  Even if Mr. Krugman is, as his comment suggests, more easily entertained than a backward three-year-old, I have a feeling that he wasn’t nearly as forgiving when Trent Lott, on the occasion of Strom Thurmond’s 100th birthday in 2002, said it was a shame that the old Dixiecrat hadn’t been elected president in 1948. (more…)

In recent days, my attention was grabbed by former Secretary of State Colin Powell and Yelena Bonner, the widow of Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov.

The one I applaud is the former Mrs. Sakharov.  In a speech delivered in Norway, she pointed out that the Palestinians are still being referred to as refugees even though only a tiny percentage of them have ever even set foot in Israel.  According to my dictionary, and I assume Ms. Bonner’s, a refugee is someone who has fled from violence and wars.  How on earth can the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of those who left Israel in order to avoid being killed or injured by the invading Arab forces in 1948, 61 long years ago, be regarded as refugees?

It reminds me of American blacks who, 45 years after passage of the Civil Rights Act, continue to benefit from various programs such as Affirmative Action and Operation Head Start.  Is there no such thing as a statute of limitations, no point at which commonsense kicks in and people are permitted to say, “Enough is enough,” without being branded a villain?

Ms. Bonner pointed out that while every do-gooder group in the world seems to be concerned about the comfort level of Islamic terrorists at Gitmo, armed combatants who aren’t even covered by the Geneva Conventions because they don’t wear uniforms, carry a flag or even fight for a specific nation, nobody outside of Israel seems the least bit concerned about Gilad Schalit, the Israeli soldier who was abducted three years ago by Hamas.  She’s right, of course.  Our politicians don’t care, the U.N. doesn’t care, and God knows all those left-wing ACLU lawyers who are lined up eager to defend Islamic terrorists, up to and including Osama bin Laden, should he ever be captured, sure don’t give a damn. (more…)

Those on the Left who have trashed George Bush for this entire decade claim they weren’t being rude or unpatriotic, but were simply talking truth to power.  That has a nice ring to it, so I think I’ll give it a shot.

Today, I’ll talk truth to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, potential justice of the Supreme Court Sonia Sotomayor, Pope Benedict XVI and President Barack Obama.  That’s a more powerful lineup than the 1927 New York Yankees, if I do say so myself.

I have almost begun to feel sorry for Nancy Pelosi.  After all, when you get past the facelifts and the Botox injections, the designer suits and the large private jet, you have an aging grandmother who, in a perfect world, would be home playing with the grandkids and letting the wrinkles show.  Instead, she’s constantly on TV, telling lies and looking like a small animal staring at oncoming headlights.  I think that instead of babbling about what she didn’t know and when she didn’t know it, she should claim the Twinkie defense just like that other two-bit San Francisco politician, Dan White.  In case you don’t recall, when he went on trial for killing Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone, White’s lawyers, in making their case for diminished capacity, claimed he had been suffering from depression, and that his depression had been made more severe by a junk food diet that included a lot of Twinkies.  I can see Rep. Pelosi taking that defense out of moth balls, dusting it off and blaming all of her recent insanity on cheap confections.  Heck, forget the pastries; she’d only need to mention having to sit through meetings with the likes of Harry Reid, Rahm Emanuel or Arlen Specter, and even I would lessen her sentence. (more…)

One of the good things that came out of the tragic events of 9/11 is that heroism has reacquired some of its original luster.  I’m not certain when it lost it, not at all certain when bravery above and beyond the call of duty gave way to meaning nothing more or less than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. 

Looking back, I have an idea it happened during the Jimmy Carter administration when hostages were taken in Tehran.  People who had been abducted by the minions of Ayatolah Khomeni, and held captive by Iranian thugs, were being widely hailed as heroes by the American media. 

I’m not suggesting that a hostage can’t also be a hero.  Apparently Sen. John McCain behaved like one when he was a POW, volunteering to be beaten by the Vietnamese in order to spare the men in his charge.  But I’m afraid that your run-of-the-mill hostage is no more a hero than were any of the unfortunate passengers in the planes that were crashed into the World Trade Center. 

It is appropriate to grieve for innocent victims, but we should stop short of lionizing them.  Otherwise, how do we distinguish between those who simply die and those who perish trying to save others?  For instance, the U.S. Air Force pilot who was shot down behind enemy lines, surviving on bugs and swamp water in Kosovo, was not a hero; the pilots who risked their own necks flying in to save his, were.  (more…)

Whenever I have suggested that left-wingers aren’t normal human beings, and have wondered if perhaps they’re some weird interplanetary life form like the pods in “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” the liberals accuse me of indulging in ad hominem attacks, and I suppose I am.  But I am honestly bewildered.  It just doesn’t seem plausible that Americans could find good things to say about tyrants like Castro, Chavez and Ahmadinejad, while at the same time reviling the likes of Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh and General Petraeus.

Left-wingers side with the so-called Palestinians and insist that their country was stolen from them by the Jews, but when you ask them just exactly where the country was located, what their flag looked like and who their president was, they huff and they puff and they denounce you as a tool of the Jewish lobby. (more…)

I used to be what I thought was a liberal.  If, at the time, anyone had asked me to explain myself, I would have said that I opposed Jim Crow laws, that I believed workers were entitled to make a decent wage and work in a safe environment, and that American citizens shouldn’t be discriminated against because of their race, religion or national origin.

I quit being a liberal because I didn’t believe that members of particular minority groups deserved advantages denied to others; that illegal aliens weren’t entitled to anything but a swift kick to the backside; that being a devout Christian didn’t make you a bad person; and that capitalism was a system that worked, while socialism not only didn’t work, but, wherever it was tried, turned into a tyranny.

I honestly don’t know why there are so many liberals today and I certainly can’t imagine why they have such a lousy agenda.  I have come up with a theory, however.  Here in California, roughly 30 years ago, because of budget cuts, a great many people were released from insane asylums.  They wound up living in the streets, which explains the large number of homeless people, even though Democrats would have you believe that those are normal people who simply lost their jobs along the way. (more…)

According to my wife, I have a tendency to state my opinion as fact.  She suggests that I begin my sentences by saying “It’s only my opinion, but…” and go on from there.  It’s my opinion, however, that people already understand that it’s my opinion and that they share it if they’re smart, or don’t, if they’re not.  Furthermore, I don’t see my main function as a communicator to convince liberals, who are notoriously as blind as bats, to see the light, but to provide my fellow conservatives with ammunition to use against left-wingers and, whenever possible, to amuse. 

Gloria Steinem

In any case, in the spirit of compromise, let us pretend that each of the following paragraphs begins “It’s only my opinion, but…” 

When Gloria Steinem, who had been lionized by the ladies of NOW for her rather dumb remark about women needing men like fish needed bicycles, finally got married at the age of 66, I thought people should have sent her greeting cards complimenting her on having belatedly grown gills.  (more…)

There’s probably no single piece of writing in this country that’s as controversial or as likely to lead to fist fights as the U.S. Constitution.  It’s difficult to decide which portion of the document gets people riled up the most.  At times, it almost seems to change on a daily basis.  On Monday, it could be gun ownership, with folks like Michael Moore frothing at the mouth at the mere thought that a law-abiding citizen might own a weapon.  You’d think Moore was planning to burgle your home the way he frets over the possibility you might actually be armed. 

On Tuesday, it could be the pointy-headed crowd at the ACLU that’s in full throttle, demanding that illegal aliens are entitled to all the rights and privileges of American citizens, not to mention a chicken in every pot.  (more…)

I am not a religious man.  I’m neither proud of that nor ashamed. I merely state that fact to establish where I’m coming from.  I have friends who are believers and friends who are not.  Where religion is concerned, I believe in live and let live.  I only wish that the ACLU shared that attitude.  I don’t like to describe myself as an agnostic or an atheist because I don’t care to align myself with the people whose own religion consists of a profound antipathy to everybody else’s. 

I decided a long time ago that religion would play no part in my life, but I felt no compulsion to convert others.  Oddly enough, I never resented the folks who would ring my doorbell and try to proselytize me.  Although I don’t like dealing with uninvited guests, I always thought it was nice of them to be that concerned about the eternal soul of a perfect stranger. Having said all that, I wish to announce that I despise the ACLU for its relentless attacks on Christianity and Judaism.  It’s bad enough that they will wage battle on behalf of any busybody looking to banish Christmas and Hanukkah symbols from public places, including one’s own front yard.

However, these very same lawyers will eagerly go to the mat to safeguard a Muslim’s right to wear a disguise on her driver’s license, a Navajo’s right to ingest peyote, and a cultist’s right to ritualistically slaughter small animals.  (more…)

I’m not of the opinion that a person has to be perfect in order to point out the failings of others, but liberals take it to such an extreme that you have to wonder if they have any self-awareness at all.

I mean, when someone like George Soros, who collaborated with the Nazis, compared George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler, am I the only one who wondered if he meant it as a compliment?

Or take Janeane Garofalo, who says stupid things with such regularity you might take her for a sulky teenager even though she’s 44 years old.  Because she is an ignoramus and has the self-righteous attitude of an adolescent brat, she was a perfect fit for Air America, where she and Al Franken competed to see which of them could attract fewer listeners.

For those of you who have managed to go through life without ever having heard the nasty sound bites for which she’s best known, your good luck is about to run out.  (more…)

In all of history, so far as I’m aware, there had only been two famous tea parties.  At the first one, Samuel Adams and a few of his freedom-loving friends pitched several crates of tea into Boston Harbor.  The second was the one Lewis Carroll wrote about, a madcap affair with the March Hare, the mad Hatter and the narcoleptic Dormouse, ganging up to give Alice a hard time.    

All of that changed on the 15th of April, when a series of tea parties took place all across America.  Even I, who try to avoid crowds, attended a gathering here in the San Fernando Valley. 

If you believe the creeps in the MSM — and why would you? — we were all dues-paying members of political fringe groups, and none of us would think about leaving the house without first donning our little aluminum hats.  If you believe Janet Napolitano — and how could you? — we were not merely man-created disasters like Somali pirates and Islamic butchers, but full-fledged terrorists.  Some among us even confessed to being military veterans.  (more…)

Recently, I was called cranky in an article posted at the Huffington Post.  The good news is that it’s one of the few times that anything approaching the truth has been posted there.  The part I resented, though, was having my crankiness attributed to age.  The fact is I was a precocious curmudgeon.  But the question that springs to mind is why more people aren’t cranky these days when there is so much to be cranky about.

For instance, it used to irk me that Carl Bernstein, a rather minor footnote in America’s history, who only came to prominence because an anonymous snitch chose to pass along secrets to him and Bob Woodward, was depicted in two major motion pictures, “All the President’s Men” (Dustin Hoffman) and “Heartburn” (Jack Nicholson), when so many more deserving people haven’t been featured in any.  But that pales when compared to the number of movies that have glorified Che Guevara, a blood-thirsty villain.  In addition to numerous TV productions, he has shown up in “Che!” (Omar Sharif), “Evita” (Antonio Banderas), “Motorcycle Diaries” (Eduardo Noriega Gael Garcia Bernal) and “Che: Parts One and Two” (Benecio Del Toro). (more…)

Judging by my e-mail, a great many conservatives are counting down the days until they next get to vote in 2010.  They hope and pray that Americans will come to their collective senses and undo some of the horrors unleashed by last November’s election. 

Naturally, I hope they’re right.  But I’m not sure that it will be enough to sound the alarm that the sky is falling because, by then, I suspect it will have already fallen.  Besides, I’m not convinced that most of my fellow citizens have a problem with the direction that Obama, Pelosi and Reid, have taken us during these past few months.

At the rate that Obama and the liberals are going, when it comes to piling up the national debt; nationalizing banks and major companies; scuttling our missile defense system; reaching out to Islamic and Communist tyrants; funding ACORN, AmeriCorps and Hamas; discussing nuclear disarmament with Russia at the same time that Iran, Pakistan and North Korea are gearing up; talking tough to Israel while currying favor with the Arabs and the Islamics; I have no idea what will be left to salvage a year-and-a-half down the road.  (more…)

So many absurd things are taking place around the world on a weekly, daily and even hourly basis that there’s simply no way to stay on top of it all.  If one man can barely keep up with the lunacy occurring in America, you can imagine what a Herculean task it is to also keep abreast of foreign follies.  But I am not one to shirk my responsibility.

For instance, in Afghanistan, the farmers recently called for a meeting with U.S. Marines in order to alert them to the fact that they will be in their fields at night harvesting opium poppies.  They wanted to make sure that the Marines didn’t take them for members of the Taliban and shoot them by mistake.  Like the farmers, I also don’t want our Marines to shoot them by mistake. (more…)

A few years ago, I re-connected with a guy I hadn’t seen in about 50 years.  We’d been friends in junior high, but once my family moved, Gary and I wound up attending different high schools.  Which is pretty much like living on different planets. 

After he came across my stuff on the Internet, Gary contacted me and suggested getting together for lunch.  And so we did.  While reminiscing about the old days, I told him that I was still grateful that he’d taught me to play tennis.  He was surprised to hear that I still played.  But his surprise was nothing compared to mine when he said that he was grateful that I’d introduced him to good books and great music.  Quite honestly, I hadn’t realized I’d done that.  Unlike his teaching me tennis, it wasn’t something I’d set out to do.  But he assured me that I was the first person he’d ever known who read Steinbeck and Dickens, Salinger and Dostoyefsky, Hugo and Twain, Robert Benchley and S.J. Perelman, and who listened to classical music.  (more…)

I never imagined I’d say it, but I’m beginning to identify with Barack Obama.  I’m certainly not referring to his politics or his narcissism, but it seems that both of us really suck when it comes to gift giving. 

First, he gave Prime Minister Gordon Brown some DVDs that were incompatible with English electronics and then he gave Queen Elizabeth an iPod that contained his speeches.  Well, I hate to admit it, but I can empathize.  Shopping for a prime minister has got to be hard enough, but trying to shop for a woman who has her own country would give me the mother of all migraines.  Frankly, I’m surprised he didn’t just fall back on that old reliable.  When in doubt, I say, you can’t go wrong giving cash.  Which, by the way, seems to be one of the things, as opposed to bowling and speaking without a TelePrompter, at which the president seems to be quite adept.  And, best of all, the cash, unlike the iPod, would be a personal gift because the Queen’s picture would be on it. (more…)

I was born in 1940, which means that during my lifetime 13 men have been the president of the United States.  For many of those years, I was a Democrat.  As was the case with Ronald Reagan, I didn’t feel I had left the party, but that the party had gone stark raving mad and left me. 

By and large, I don’t find the baker’s dozen to be overly impressive, either as leaders or as individuals.  There are only three or four of them I can even imagine being friends with or wanting to have as next-door neighbors.  But there are only two of them, Carter and Obama, whom I regard as unmitigated disasters.  While it took Carter four years in office and 29 years out to achieve his greatly deserved recognition as an incompetent, a phony and a sanctimonious anti-Semite, Obama has pulled it off in just a few short months.  (more…)

Just for the record, I am a non-observant Jew.  That means that my mother’s father, Max Lashevsky, who kept kosher and attended an orthodox synagogue twice-a-day every day of his life, would probably have considered me a heathen, while Adolf Hitler would have had me exterminated. 

I want that to be perfectly clear so that when I declare my concern for Israel, nobody will simply assume it’s because I’m Jewish.  I am on the side of Israel because it’s a western democracy, an ally of America, and because I regard her enemies to be our enemies, people dedicated to our mutual annihilation. 

Israel’s foes believe in targeting women and children just so long as they’re Jewish or Christian.  They are not only intolerant of the freedoms we take for granted — speech and religion — but they are polygamous, treat their women as chattel and encourage their children to achieve martyrdom as suicide bombers.  Moreover, so-called honor killings are part of what passes for their culture.  (more…)

Television is often treated like the unloved step-child of the arts.  It’s been called a vast wasteland and worse.  And vast it certainly is.  It’s on all the time and on hundreds of channels, so it’s no surprise that most of it is just awful.  The surprise is how much of it is worthwhile, and I’m not just referring to the artsy-fartsy stuff that shows up on Masterpiece Theatre. 

Of course everyone’s list is going to seem eccentric to other people.  My own is no exception.  For one thing, there have been very popular shows that I never even tuned in.  I’m thinking of “Beverly Hillbillies,” “Bonanza,” “Green Acres,” “Gilligan’s Island,” “Dallas,” “Dynasty,” “Knott’s Landing,” “Peyton Place,” “L.A. Law,” “Six Feet Under,” “ER,” “Chicago Hope,” “CSI,” “Fresh Prince of Bel Air,” “Ally McBeal” and “Sex and the City.”  There were a few I watched once or twice to see what all the fuss was about, but I didn’t care for “Star Trek,” “Picket Fences,” “The X Files,” “Boston Legal,” “Touched By An Angel,” “Monty Python” or “N.Y.P.D. Blue.”  (more…)

I have to hope for the sake of our country’s future that when people voted for Obama they really had no idea what a disaster he would be, even though I kept warning them that he was a left-wing lug nut.  It seemed to me that his legion of fans had been hypnotized or sprinkled with fairy dust.  They blindly accepted that words like “hope” and “change” were complete sentences that actually added up to a national policy. 

We, who assumed that a grown-up whose friends and mentors were people like Bill Ayers, Jeremiah Wright, Tony Rezko, Saul Alinsky, the folks at ACORN and the most corrupt of Chicago politicians, believed he was more likely to belong in a square cell than in the Oval Office. 

For my part, I felt a lot like Kevin McCarthy in the movie, “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” trying to warn my fellow earthlings that the pod people were among us and definitely up to no good.  (more…)