Rearranging the Deck Chairs on the Titanic

by Burt Prelutsky

Sometimes, I must confess, I find myself feeling like one of those cursed individuals like Job and Sisyphus.  In my case, the curse takes the form of trying to be rational in a mad world.  My particular albatross is trying to make sense of the liberal mind.  No sooner do I try to delve into it than I pop out on the other side.  It’s as shallow as a midget’s footbath. 

For instance, I understand why liberals opposed invading Iraq.  It was because George W. Bush instigated it.  They voiced no objections when Bill Clinton took us into Somalia and Kosovo, and now that Obama has expanded the war in Afghanistan, you don’t hear them whining that it’s a quagmire, that the Afghanis had nothing to do with 9/11 or demanding that Obama spell out his exit strategy and specify the date of withdrawal.  But, given all that, I would have thought that at least the tree-huggers would have campaigned for regime change in Iraq, based not on Saddam Hussein’s gassing of the Kurds and his history of torture and rape, God forbid, but for having set fire to the oil fields of Kuwait in 1991, probably the worst man-made ecological disaster in history. 

It is beginning to look as if the various fascists, racists and astroturfers who have been showing up at town halls may have stopped Obama from taking his next step in  destroying America.  But Obama and his cronies are like those creatures in scary movies; just when you think they’re dead and buried, they reach a hand up from the grave and grab someone’s ankle. 

Somebody summed up ObamaCare very neatly.  In an e-mail that was forwarded to me, it said: “Let me get this straight.  We’re going to pass a health care plan written by a committee whose head said he doesn’t understand it, passed by a Congress that didn’t read it but exempts them from abiding by it, signed by a President who smokes and is also exempted, with funding administered by a treasury chief who didn’t pay his taxes, overseen by a surgeon general who is obese and financed by a country that’s nearly broke.  What could possibly go wrong?” 

Of course we keep hearing the left-wing lunkheads tell us how glorious single payer health care is, pointing to Canada and England as sterling examples of medical Nirvana.  Yet the BBC reported that there is a five month wait to have surgery for a slipped disc or to have a hernia repaired, eight months for cataract surgery, 11 months for a hip replacement and an entire year if you need to have your knee worked on.  So I guess the best thing an Englishman can do is claim he needs to have surgery for a hernia and when, after five months, they wheel him into the operating room, break the news that it’s really his damn knee that’s been acting up. 

One thing that’s been made clear is that whether it’s last year’s amnesty bill or this Frankensteinian health care monstrosity, the people still retain some clout when they stand up and start acting like Americans and not like a herd of sheep waiting to be shorn by the likes of Henry Waxman, Barney Frank and Nancy Pelosi.  As someone once observed, in order to make politicians see the light, they first need to feel the heat.  Or as Ronald Reagan put it so eloquently:  “Government isn’t the solution.  Government is the problem.” 

If there’s one thing you have to say about liberal politicians, it’s that they regard consistency pretty much the way they regard their constituents; namely with arrogant contempt.  It’s liberals, after all, who are constantly telling us that women have absolute autonomy over their own bodies, so long as the topic under discussion happens to be abortions.  But when it comes to everything else, they are quite content to leave all medical decisions in the hands of the federal government, up to and including the rationing of health care to babies and the elderly.  Gee, and we all thought the Nazis were bad! 

Because I live in California, I occasionally am lucky enough to receive an e-mail from Barbara Boxer.  The other day, she let me know that she’s hard at work on a Bill of Rights for Passengers.  The rest of us are concerned about Iran and North Korea building a nuclear bomb and about Obama sovietizing the United States, but Boxer is worried about disgruntled airline passengers. 

I sent her ladyship the following message:  “President Obama is trying to morph America into a socialist tyranny, complete with commissars and armed thugs, and you’re worrying about airliners sitting on the tarmac?  Most Americans do not support the pork-stuffed stimulus bill, cap & trade, the pandering to the UAW and the CEIU, the financing of ACORN or the abomination known as ObamaCare, and you’re busy pushing legislation so that airline passengers won’t occasionally suffer some minor discomfort?  Just for the record, we’d all gladly just settle for a little more legroom.  Are you trying to give new meaning to “inconsequential,” ma’am?” 

Finally, lest someone gets the idea that I only pick on liberals, I have a bone to pick with Sean Hannity.  I recently heard him give absolution to Michael Vick.  He was ready to forgive Vick his trespasses because, after all, Vick had served 18 months in jail and he had apologized.  The problem is, one, Vick should have been sentenced to at least 10 years; two, inasmuch as Hannity wasn’t one of Vick’s victims, he’s not entitled to accept his apology; and, three, the time for remorse and possibly redemption, it seems to me, is before you’re arrested.  After that, it’s only defense strategy — whether what’s at stake is a more severe sentence or trying to salvage a multi-million dollar NFL career. 

This is a guy, after all, who beat, drowned, hanged and electrocuted dogs for no other reason than that they lost fights to other dogs, and because, sadist that he is, he could.  Imagine if quarterbacks who lost games were treated like that. 

All I can say is, defensive linemen of the NFL — have at him!


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Posted Aug 27th 2009 at 10:27 am in Politics | 206 Comments