Strange Bedfellow

Strange Bedfellow By Rick Robinson

Headline Books, Inc. Terra Alta, WV

Strange Bedfellow

By Rick Robinson copyright ©2012Rick Robinson First Electronic Edition All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any other form or for any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording or any information storage system, without written permission from Headline Books, Inc. Headline Books, Inc. P.O. Box 52, Terra Alta, WV 26764 Tel/Fax: 800-570-5951 Email: mybook@headlinebooks.com www.headlinebooks.com www.AuthorRickRobinson.com Front Cover by Kevin T. Kelly www.kevintkelly.com

To Jim and Mary Bunning (and all of the candidates I have worked for over the past 30+ years)

Introduction No one is really sure where the phrase “politics makes strange bedfellows” originated. Remarkably, it wasn’t whore-hopping, dethroned New York Governor, Elliott Spitzer.

Some say it originated in early Europe, when the bedroom was the safest place to talk about the matters impacting the fiefdom. Shakespeare used the phrase (kind of) in a play, but it was about sleeping with a monster – again reference Elliott Spitzer.

In any event, in American politics, the line about “strange bedfellows” has become the phrase most often used when adversaries come together on an issue – President Obama playing golf with Speaker John Boehner, for instance.

Or, Nancy Pelosi getting into a hot tub with … ugh, sorry about the visual.

I chose this title because I guess that I’ve spent a lifetime as someone’s strange bedfellow in politics. I always let my opinion be known – friend and foe alike.

Sometimes even politicians I supported could not figure out if I was for them or against them.

I worked my first political campaign in 1977 – Barry Caldwell for State Representative, 66th Legislative District in Kentucky. I was 19 years old and the candidate I worked for only had a few years on me. With a nominal campaign crew, Caldwell won the Republican primary, but in the general election missed knocking off a 20 year incumbent by 16 votes. I was devastated by the outcome, but hooked on politics.

Since that first campaign, I’ve worked for Presidential contenders and people who simply wanted to change the makeup of their local school board or city council. I’ve spend election cycles knocking on doors until my knuckles hurt and read poll numbers until my eyes bled. You’ve never really worked a campaign until you’ve been chased by a dog while walking door to door or had to get a tetanus shot for some campaign trail mishap.

After a few years of working on campaigns, my friend Jim Bunning won an election for United States Congress and invited me to go to DC with him as his Legislative Director. The six years that I worked on Capitol Hill for Jim may have been the greatest of my career, spending my days wandering around the US Capitol and actually getting paid for the privilege. I dedicated this collection of columns to Jim and his wife Mary for giving my wife and I that opportunity.

In 1998, I got it in my head that I’d make a good Congressman. The voters of the Fourth Congressional District had the good sense to tell me I was wrong.

My loss in a Republican primary for Congress in 1998 had a great impact on how I choose to express my political views. Prior to running, I spoke out in an effort to get people to agree with me. Suddenly, with no personal political future on the horizon, I began to express my views in a manner that was aimed at stimulating debate.

That’s when I started writing…first novels, then political columns.

When my first novel was published, I ran into my old Eastern Kentucky University pledge brother, Steve Lyons, in Boston. Although separated by distance for many years, Steve and I took up like it had only been days since we had last seen each other at the Phi Delta Theta house out on Red House Road in Richmond. Steve was publishing One New England and encouraged me to start writing a column for him.

For a while, I was the “token conservative” at ONE. I think the only reason he kept me around was to read the amusing hate mail I got from his readers.

Thanks to Steve for teaching me how to write a column. I’ll leave the hate mail for your archives. YITB. I owe a big debt to several folks that helped teach me about writing columns. Don McNay at the Huffington Post helped a lot – I promise to not tell Ms. H that you helped a conservative. PJ O’Rourke encouraged me to do try this writing gig year’s ago and I should have listened. Thanks also to Pat Crowley , Marcus Carey and Dennis Hetzel for their input.

A year ago, my friend and fellow author, Rod Pennington introduced me to Tucker Carlson, publisher of the Daily Caller. The introduction led to a regular column in the Daily Caller. A huge shout out to Tucker and my DC editor, Peter Tucci, for giving me an outlet for my writing that was more in-line with my political views.

Others have asked me to write a column here and there. Shotgun Life actually asked me to write about my experience in clay pigeon shooting (a mistake for them, but a fun article for me). I also write a regular piece for Northern Kentucky Magazine. Thanks to Dianne Gebhardt-French for giving me a free slate when talking about my home town.

Thanks as always to my publisher Cathy Teets and all the great folks at Headline Books. Debbie McKinney worked that first campaign with me in 1977 and now is my publicist. She’s sold politicians for the last 30 years, why not an author. Kevin Kelly put together another great cover with the photo assist from Sheri Besso. My wife Linda and Jeff Landen try their best to keep me from writing stupid things, or at least from writing them stupidly. Read on and you can judge for yourself how well they performed.

Rick Robinson Ft Mitchell, Kentucky December, 2011

Index Chapter One – Things That Make my Head Explode Chapter Two – Occupy a Job Chapter Three – People Along the Way Chapter Four - Purely Politics Chapter Five – Desperately Seeking Despots Chapter Six – All Politics are local

Chapter One Jane Fonda, Purple Nurples and Other Things That Make My Head Explode Home shopping with Hanoi Jane Originally published in the Daily Caller

On Saturday, Jane Fonda was scheduled to pimp her new book on the QVC Network when company executives suddenly cancelled her appearance.

The explanation for why Fonda’s segment was cancelled depends on who’s answering the question. A spokesperson at QVC stated that a scheduling conflict had caused Fonda’s snake-oil sale to be axed. Fonda is skeptical of QVC’s response. She claims that top network executives caved to unnamed “extremists” who were pressuring the network to cut Fonda’s segment because of her liberal political activism.

I have to admit I’ve never watched the QVC network. In preparation for writing this column, I actually had trouble finding its position in my local cable line-up. As best I know, my family has never bought anything from QVC. However, the network’s decision to cancel Fonda (for whatever reason) has me tuning in and searching the screen for something to buy in sincere appreciation.

In response to QVC’s action, Fonda complained that people were spreading lies about her. “I have never done anything to hurt my country or the men and women who have fought and continue to fight for us,” Fonda said.

Fonda’s new book (unnamed here because I don’t want anyone to buy it) is reportedly about aging and the life cycle. The book better have some memory

exercises, because Fonda’s recollection of her actions during the Vietnam War indicates that her mind is slipping.

Hanoi Jane Most Americans do not have a problem with the fact that Jane Fonda was an outspoken critic of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. Many shared her view. But, the manner in which she expressed her opposition was beyond the pale and did hurt the men and women of our military.

In 1972, at the age of 35, Fonda traveled to Hanoi as a guest of the government of North Vietnam. Photographs of her smiling behind the trigger of an enemy anti-aircraft gun, which was seemingly aimed at American planes, opened an ugly wound that remains unhealed all these years later.

After American prisoners of war claimed that their captors were torturing them, Fonda labeled them as “hypocrites and liars.” She called the POWs professional killers and war criminals. The joyful enthusiasm by which she made these claims was what so many people found unforgivable.

Some may argue that Fonda apologized for her transgressions and should be forgiven. I encourage those folks to go back and re-read the so-called apologies.

They were conditional and shallow. Fonda may be sorry that she’s hated by so many for what she did, but her words indicate that she is not at all sorry for what she said or how she said it.

On her website, Fonda blamed her QVC rejection on “some well-funded and organized political extremist groups.” Or, maybe, the fault is with Fonda herself for failing to understand that the pain she caused in 1972 will never properly heal.

The freedom of speech is our country’s most basic right. It gives people like Fonda the privilege to make inane statements that will never be forgiven by a segment of our society. The right to free speech even grants Fonda permission to blame reaction to her callous behavior on some invisible right-wing conspiracy.

Of course, what Hanoi Jane has failed to recognize is that our country’s right to free speech also gives QVC viewers the opportunity to call the network and complain

Can the free market work for a commie?

In a 1970 speech, Fonda told college students, “If you understood what communism was, you would hope, you would pray on your knees that we would some day become communist.” At another college stop she added, “I, a socialist, think that we should strive toward a socialist society, all the way to communism.”

It is amusing that the woman who once declared that she wanted America to move to a socialist system is now whining that the country’s capitalist market is not working for her personally. She probably needs to rethink her outrage.

If America had followed Fonda’s vision and become a communist nation, our government leaders would have canceled her appearance. Cancellation is the least onerous way that communist leaders would have dealt with someone who they considered a traitor.

Men and women have landed in prison in Cuba and China for actions far less offensive than Fonda’s 1972 trip to Hanoi.

And this weekend, instead of communist leaders becoming involved, consumers knocked Fonda off the air. The people who watch and utilize QVC voted with their pocketbooks.

I must close this rant, because I’ve found QVC on my cable system and I have just seven minutes left to buy a Technique Hard Anodized Dishwasher Safe 18×12 Barbecue Grill Pan for only five easy payments of $9.99 — shipping and handling included.

Maybe I’ll buy one and have it delivered to Fonda. It’s probably good for preparing the crow that she finds herself feasting upon this week.

Bailout NPR now!

Originally published in the Daily Caller

Most folks fifty or older fondly remember the ritual of the family dinner. They remember them because, what with working late and rushing kids to and from school events, they rarely have family dinners themselves.

Dinners containing items from all the food groups have been replaced by McDonald’s Happy Meals.

In the 60s and 70s there used to be real conversation around the dinner table … at least until 6:30, which was when the national news came on. Then the only television in the house, resting on a rickety metal stand, would be wheeled around in order to allow Walter Cronkite or Huntley and Brinkley to chat with the family.

When the news was over and the kids ran out to play, parents had coffee while reading the afternoon edition of the daily paper. Opinions were formed on evening walks where adults actually discussed real issues with other adults.

Today’s media marketplace has changed dramatically. It should not be surprising that the majority of adult Americans probably can’t name a single network news anchor. Most evenings, while the kids are in the back seat of the mini-van snarfing down pre-soccer practice French fries, their parents are listening to Toy Story on the DVD for seemingly the seven hundredth time.

Times have certainly changed.

The new media marketplace For years, Kentucky politicians hated to get a phone call from Al Cross, a tough political reporter who crafted questions with the skill of a master chef preparing a five-star meal. Today’s Bluegrass politicians are thankful that Cross is no longer reporting on the daily political beat. He is the Director of the Institute for Rural Journalism at the University of Kentucky, a group with the mission of insuring that weekly newspapers don’t go the way of Huntley and Brinkley.

Two years ago, while preparing for a panel on media and the 2008 election, Cross planted a very simple theory in my head about opinion and the 24-hour news cycle.

According to Cross, in the glory days of nightly news, Americans watched television and read newspapers in order to form opinions. Today, they form an opinion first and then choose a news outlet to reinforce their pre-established

political point-of-view. There are so many resources to choose from that traditional news sources are becoming more and more irrelevant.

I believe that the decline in print media can be laid squarely at the sex-poodle paws of Al Gore (a theory not supported by Cross, or anyone else for that matter). Had Gore not invented the internet, Crate & Barrel would still be buying advertising in my hometown newspaper instead of the Daily Caller.

Which brings us to …

Juan Williams and the NPR bailout This past week America has been engrossed with National Public Radio’s axing Juan Williams. Radio stations fire talent every day. As outrageous as the firing may be, incompetence on the part of NPR’s executive leadership team is not unlawful.

Except NPR isn’t just any radio station. It’s a corporation funded, in part, by tax dollars.

If left to find its own sources of revenue in today’s opinion-driven, multi-media marketplace, NPR would likely die a quick death. Advertisers won’t buy time on progressive talk radio. If they did, Al Franken would still be making jokes on radio, instead of the floor of the Senate.

So, if the government is going to fund NPR, let’s just call that funding what it is…a bail-out of radio journalism.

The government bailed out Wall Street, banks, and the automobile industry. Hell, maybe they should bail out radio journalism, too.

And while we’re at it, my publisher would like to have the government buy all my unsold novels, bundle them up and sell them on the secondary market. We can call it “Cash for Consonants” – the government will throw in the vowels for free.

If you compare the annual NPR bailout and the journalists employed by those funds to the cost per job created by the President Obama’s various stimulus packages, it’s probably a good deal.

Or, not. A friend of mine told me the other day that, although he felt no ill will for Juan Williams, he had no tears for him either. Juan has a new seven figure job at Fox. My friend is a former print journalist who wrote for a newspaper that went belly up.

Super Bowl XLV – the year the NFL jumped the shark Originally published in the Daily Caller

In 1977 my world changed.

In three short weeks, one of the greatest shows of my youth, Happy Days, suddenly seemed silly. The spin-off from the movie American Graffiti had been the best series on television for four seasons. Everyone at my school tuned in to see the exploits of Richie, Potsie, Ralph Mouth and the Fonz.

Happy Days opened its fifth season with a three-part episode in which Fonzie, clad in a bathing suit and leather jacket, jumped over a shark on water skis.

Happy days went on for another six seasons, but for us true fans, Happy Days was done.

Over time, “jumping the shark” became the new term for describing the episode when a television show had reached its peak and started down hill.

Super Bowl XLV will be remembered as the year that the NFL jumped the shark.

No one will remember it was a great game The Super Bowl shark jumping began with Christina Aguilera’s self-indulgent singing of the National Anthem. At least I think it was the National Anthem. There was so much warbling and blown words that, for all I know, Aguilera could have been singing “Pants on the Floor.”

Note to singers – the National Anthem was written as a march. Few performers can sing as R&B, jazz or some other genre and make it sound good. The performance of the National Anthem is not about you. Your audience doesn’t give a damn about your stunning vocal range.

Singing the National Anthem should be someone’s chance to pay humble tribute to a nation which values freedom so much that it has allowed the likes of Christina Aguilera to become famous. Next time, the NFL needs to find someone who will sing the damn song and get off the stage.

The shark jumping didn’t end with Christiana Aguilera. This year’s Super Bowl seemed to be a lot of commercials and a concert which happened to be interrupted by a very good football game. Last night, the NFL seemed far more concerned with generating advertising revenue from Clydesdales horses and talking babies than letting an offense find a rythm.

The half-time show, with people dancing around a stage wearing illuminated boxes on their heads, actually had me longing for Up With People. If you are young enough to have enjoyed the half-time show, please ask your parents about Up With People.

And, finally, the ultimate shark jumping moment came when Commissioner Roger Goodell presented the Lombardi Trophy to the Green Bay Packers and recognizing fans of the NFL. Fans better have enjoyed the game, because if there is a labor lock-out in the fall, it’s the last game they’re going to see for a while.

15 Days until pitchers and catchers report The only good thing about Super Bowl XLV was that it marked a definite end to the 2010 (and possibly the 2011) football season.

Okay, in 1990, the Padres did allow Roseanne Barr to sing the National Anthem, but San Diego was the home of Ted Williams. We let them up and made them promise to never let her near the ball park again.

We’re born again and there’s new grass on the field. Pitchers and catchers report to spring training in two weeks.

During the 2011 World Series, no rallies will be stopped for television time-outs.

And, no games will be postponed for 45 minutes after 4 and ½ innings to set up a stage for people to dance around with illuminated boxes on their heads.

Go Reds!

If the Reds make the World Series this year, I will have a party. However, I’ll only invite people who actually want to watch the game.

Fake boobs and gay marriage Originally published In One New England

So, did you hear what Miss California, Carrie Prejean, said during the Miss USA competition?

In what is arguably one of the top 25 or 30 female beauty pageants in the world, the Miss USA Contest, Carrie Prejean stood just one question away from hoisting the cubic zirconium crown atop her bleached blond head. Then, suddenly, from out of nowhere, she was asked her thoughts on same-sex marriage by a gay judge.

Before I proceed, I must ask a question lingering on the minds of straight men everywhere. With all of us who would pay to spend the evening looking at 50 women in bathing suits, why pick a gay guy? But, I digress.

When Prejean was asked her views on gay marriage, she replied: “I'm a Christian. And so, although I try not to have my religious beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do believe that tradition, and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman.”

That’s what Carrie Prejean said. No wait a minute. I’m sorry. That wasn’t a quote

by Carrie Prejean. That was a quote by Barack Obama, the man determined by New England and the rest of America to be qualified to hold the office of President of the United States.

Let’s see, so what did Miss California say that was so awful? Alright, here it is.

When asked her views on gay marriage Carrie Prejean said: “Marriage has got historic, religious and moral content that goes back to the beginning of time, and I think a marriage is as a marriage always has been, between a man and a woman.”

That simple quote has Carrie Prejean in a whole world of trouble. Oops. Sorry, I messed up again. That wasn’t Carrie Prejean’s quote either. That’s a quote from Hillary Clinton, the woman determined by President Obama and the Democratic controlled Unites States Senate to be qualified to represent America worldwide as our Secretary of State.

I could go on with quotes from a whole bunch of other liberals, but I think you get my point.

In fact, Carrie Prejean said: “We live in a land where you can choose same-sex marriage or opposite marriage. I think in my country, in my family, I think that I

believe that a marriage should be between a man and a woman. No offense to anybody out there, but that's how I was raised.”

With that simple answer, Carrie Prejean went from first to second in the Miss USA competition. Instantly, she became a champion of the right and a villain to the left.

The hypocrisy of it all is amazing Barack Obama can have the view that “marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman” and be President.

Hillary Clinton can say that “marriage always has been, between a man and a woman” and no one raises their voice at her confirmation hearing in the Senate to become Secretary of State.

But for some reason, Carrie Prejean can’t say the exact same thing and let men to stare at her in a bathing suit.

Unlike Obama and Clinton (who remember share with Prejean the same world view on gay marriage), Prejean has been labeled as “anti-gay.” In an effort to raise the bar on political debate, liberal icon, Bill Maher called her “dumb.”

On the other side of the political spectrum, Prejean has become an instant star of the neo-con right – some kind of curvy Newt Gingrich without the hair helmet.

Some are even suggesting that Prejean should get into California politics.

Of course, suggestions of Prejean’s entry into politics are as funny as Maher’s comments are sad.

She’s not dumb, but her answer to the “gay question” hardly qualifies her as the second coming of William Buckley, either.

What has been lost in all of this stimulating debate is that both sides are wrong on the issue of gay marriage.

Maine - Dirigo The right (along with Obama and Clinton mind you) have couched marriage in terms of religion. Wrong. In America, it isn’t. Marriage is statutory. It always has been. The state legislatures of this country decide on a state-by-state basis who can (and can’t) get married. And those laws vary widely without any reference to religious dogma. Just ask any 13 year-old, first cousins who need their parents’ signature to pro-create a family of single eyebrow progeny.

The left, on the other hand, would like a federal law mandating same sex marriages. Be careful what you wish for. If Washington can decide who is allowed to be married, they can also decide who is allowed to get divorced. I scarcely think that anyone wants that fate twisting in the political winds of whoever wins the White House or Congress.

Remember that the standard bearers of the left – Obama and Clinton – oppose same sex marriage anyway.

While all of the stimulating debate on Carrie Prejean has been taking place on cable television, several state legislatures have been taking up the issue. New England is leading the way. Last week Maine became the fourth New England state to approve gay marriage. The governor of New Hampshire has a similar bill currently sitting on his desk.

So, let’s keep marriage the way it’s been for the last 233 years of our country – in the hands of states. Maine’s motto is Dirigo, which means “I Lead.” If you want a state to approve same sex marriage, lobby and win. Hell, get those 13 year old first cousins to join you at the state capitol for the bill signing.

Just don’t allow the Federal government yet another intrusion into our personal lives.

Personally, I am in favor of allowing gays to marry. It may never happen in my home state of Kentucky. To my friends who are gay and want to be married, hell, I’ll drive you to Maine for the ceremony. I hear it’s pretty there this time of year.

And for God’s sake, please allow Carrie Prejean her 15 minutes and no more. I support her right to speak out, but the outrage of the left is giving her a campaign platform. Then again, maybe she should run for office. It sure wouldn’t be the first time we had fake boobs in politics.

New England restricts free speech, conservative thought and purple nerples Originally published in One New England

New England, the home of independence, liberty and freedom, has lately gotten on a horse so high that Paul Revere himself couldn’t climb up in the saddle.

Issue One – purple nurples, tittie twisters and wet willies banned in Connecticut.

According to a CBS affiliate in New York City, parents of children at a Milford, Connecticut middle school all received letters informing them that the school had adopted a “no-touching” policy for its students. Kids at East Shore Middle School may no longer touch, hug or engage in any kind of horseplay. Rebel children who tempt the policy with as much as a high-five face expulsion.

The policy was instituted by over aggressive school officials because of an undisclosed “groin injury” at the school.

I blame the incident on the young victim’s father. He obviously never explained to his son that when asked to name the family on the Beverly Hillbillies saying the words “clamp it” would result in an undisclosed “groin injury.” Such a warning is a right of passage between father and son, like peeing off the back porch together for the first time.

But does the undisclosed “groin injury” justify the new policy banning all touching?

Should we let one kid with sore balls ruin “purple nurples” for an entire generation of immature pre-pubescent males?

I think not.

It goes without saying that the following are no longer allowed in Milford, Connecticut: purple nurples, tittie twisters, ball slaps, lucky Pierres, wet willies, Indian burns (a double infraction for the politically incorrect use of the word “Indian”), pig piles, elephant humps, Dutch rubs, Bull in the Ring, 1-2-3 Freewalk, dodge ball, jungle basketball, nuggies, punch-buggies, cow bites, ear flicks, swirlies, wedgies, towel smacks, Hertz Doughnuts (hit someone in the arm and laughingly exclaim “Hurts don’t it”), ruby boobies, spit wads, pantsing, read admirals, Charlie horses … {add any I’ve missed in the comments section} Placing a “Kick Me” sign on the back of a kid’s shirt is alright, but in Milford Connecticut, you can’t actually kick him.

I will agree that Spear (a/k/a Smear) the Queer is no longer appropriate, but only because the connotation of the word has changed. When I was a kid, the word “queer” had nothing to do with sexual preference. In my neighborhood, a queer was the kid who cheered for the American League baseball team instead of the National League team.

What’s next – a similar restriction on church softball and men’s golf leagues?

Well, next is Issue Two…

Issue Two – Rhode Island school rejects diverse political thought.

According to the Provincetown Journal, William Felkner, a student at the Rhode Island College – School of Social Work, is suing the school for alleged discrimination over his political views. Felkner had several run ins with his professors over his college career regarding his failure to adopt the progressive political views of the school. One professor even wrote him that his conservative/libertarian political views didn’t “fit the profession.” Then, the same professor refused to approve Felkner’s senior project on “work-first welfare” because the professor deemed him to be on the wrong side of the issue. The school has countered by calling Felkner a difficult and fussy student.

Alright, pleadings only provide one side of a legal fight, but it’s not hard to envision this being true. Students at other schools have won similar lawsuits.

Liberal arts education should not mean that only liberal thought is allowed.

Banning diverse political thought has led to all kind of nastiness, like Nazi Germany, McCarthyism and the Bush Administration.

Ok, my conservative friends won’t like that last comment. But, it is the truth.

Which, of course, brings us to Issue Three…

Issue Three – truth is now libelous in Massachusetts In a disturbing court decision, which will for years come to be known simply as “the Staples Case,” the United States First Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the truth can be the basis for libel in Massachusetts.

It’s really a very simple case. A salesman for Staples was caught padding his expense reports. The salesman gets canned. A VP for Staples then sends out an e-mail to 1500 Staples employees stating that salesman was fired for failing to comply with company travel and expense policy. The sales guy doesn’t seriously question the factual nature of the e-mail, but sues anyway.

A three judge panel found that under Massachusetts law: “Even a true statement can form the basis of a libel action if the plaintiff proves that the defendant acted with `actual malice."'

It is said that the truth will set you free. Now, the truth will set you a court date.

In most jurisdictions libel is the false publication of a statement done for the purpose of defaming somebody. Basically, it is libelous to send an e-mail calling someone a thief if they haven’t actually stolen something. The false accusation is defaming.

Under the decision in the Staples Case, it’s defaming to call a thief a thief. Such action shows actual malice towards the thief and, you all know, we live in a world where mean now earns you a court date. If you tell the truth in Boston, don’t be mean about it.

The decision is absurd.

Someone needs to give the entire panel of judges a round of wet willies and purple nurples.

Screw civility …and the politically correct horse it rode in on.

Originally published in the Daily Caller

All the talk about civility in politics is really starting to piss me off.

Over the weekend, Teamster union chief, Jimmy Hoffa, warmed up a pro-labor crowd for President Barack Obama by whipping them into a frenzy with bitter rhetoric and a fiery call for action. At the peak of Hoffa’s speech, he anointed those assembled as the President’s army awaiting their orders.

“We are ready to march,” Hoffa declared. “Let’s take these sons of bitches out…”

Both sides of the aisle immediately jumped into action, attacking and defending Hoffa according to their respective underlying philosophical bend. President Obama, who has called for a new civility in politics, hid behind his press secretary, Jay Carney. Carney’s lame response to Hoffa’s outburst sounded like a scared parent afraid of a child that has grown too big and strong to discipline without fear of retribution.

In a world where politicians have staffers that spend hours crafting messages to be properly worded and politically correct, Hoffa’s statement was brutally honest.

Simply put, Jimmy Hoffa thinks I am a son of a bitch. I’ve been called an SOB before by people that disagree with me. I’m sure I will be called one again (probably in the comments section of the Daily Caller). I’m okay with that.

Hoffa comes from a background of uncivility and politically incorrectness.

Following the assassination of President Kennedy, the senior Hoffa refused to allow the flags at Teamsters headquarters to be lowered to half-staff. In very candid moments, the Hoffas have a way of expressing their frank political views.

It is most ways, Hoffa’s Labor Day battle cry was no different than the way Rep. Joe Wilson shouted “You lie” during President Obama’s 2009 address to a Joint Session of Congress on healthcare reform. Like Hoffa, Wilson showed his real and honest feelings.

The outrage towards the Jimmy Hoffas and Joe Wilsons of the world ignores the simple fact that America was built upon on a solid foundation of uncivil political discourse.

American political debate has historically been uncivil In 1776, Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet entitled Common Sense that was distributed to American colonists to set forth the case for independence. Paine was anything but civil to the British Monarchy.

“One of the strongest natural proofs of the folly of hereditary rights in Kings, is that nature disapproves it,” Paine wrote, “otherwise she would not so frequently turn it into ridicule, by giving mankind an ASS FOR A LION.” While England’s Prince Charles has been labeled things much worse, Paine calling the King an ass was considered incendiary at the time And if you think that Thomas Paine saved his scorn only for England, he once wrote that George Washington was treacherous in private friendship and a hypocrite in public life.

Benjamin Franklin was also publically called a hypocrite, but his accusers threw in “crafty and lecherous” just for good measure.

Politicians have always quarreled uncivially amongst themselves. U.S. Grant declared that James A. Garfield had the backbone of an angleworm. Woodrow Wilson said Warren Harding had a “bungalow mind.” And, more recently, Jimmy Carter promised to whip Ted Kennedy’s ass in a threatened primary challenge.

Uncivility has often been the cornerstone by which the media attacked politicians.

The Chicago Tribune called Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg address “so slipshod, so loose-jointed, so puerile, not alone in literary construction, but in its ideas, its sentiments, its grasp.”

Harpers Weekly wrote that Lincoln was a “filthy story-teller, despot, liar, thief, braggart, buffoon, usurper, monster, ignoramus Abe, old scoundrel, perjurer, robber, swindler, tyrant, field-butcher and land pirate.”

In that context, being called a son of a bitch by Jimmy Hoffa or a liar by Joe Wilson doesn’t seem all that bad.

Civility is the new political correctness If Americans were so interested in civil political discourse, the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour would have been the highest rated news show in the history of television. The viewers garnered by the nightly cable news shows indicate that we enjoy the long-standing history of our nation’s rough-and-tumble, bareknuckled political fights.

One has to wonder what exactly is behind the call for a new civility.

Just like the political correct movement of the past decade, civility is becoming a buzz word that forces public figures to mask their true views and opinions. Such new rules will give politicians an abstract moral basis to tell voters what they want to hear rather than what they truly believe.

Politicians do not offend me when they tell me what they really think.

Call me a liar. Call me a son of a bitch. Just don’t give the son of a bitches I vote for another reason to lie to me.

Casey Anthony: praise for an imperfect system Originally published in the Daily Caller

I spent last week in New York City at Thrillerfest, a reader’s convention for lovers of the genre of thriller novels. It is a wonderful annual gathering where readers get to meet their favorite authors and authors get to break bread with their fans and colleagues.

Attendees of Thrillerfest spent their days last week listening to one-on-one author interviews with the likes of such greats as R.L. Stine (“Goosebumps”), Ken Follett (“Pillars of the Earth”) and David Morel (“Rambo First Blood”). Panel discussions and book signings filled the remainder of the days.

Everywhere I turned, my fellow authors (and most people in the Big Apple for that matter) were talking about the most intriguing story of who-dunit in years – and I’m not referencing Jeffrey Deaver’s brilliant new treatment of James Bond in 007 Carte Blanche.

The main thing people were talking about last week was the Casey Anthony verdict, a topic I discussed with Sean Hannity as a guest on his “Great American Panel.” I was relieved when Sean and I shared a similar opinion of the verdict.

We both believe that Casey Anthony probably had something to do with the death of her daughter, but that the state failed to legally prove such involvement.

No author at Thrillerfest would have tried to write the Casey Anthony story as fiction because the outcome would be too hard for a reader to believe.

My love/hate relationship with the Casey Anthony verdict When I was a second year law student, my criminal procedure professor went to great lengths to explain the four reasons for punishment: deterrence, rehabilitation, incapacitation, and restoration. I had to fend off a tide of liberal outrage when I suggested that there was a fifth purpose – retribution.

I reasoned that in order for an authority to enforce the social contract, society must feel that evil people are not only punished, but made to suffer for their wrong doing. There are some people for whom the thought of punishment will never be a deterrent. When that person commits a particularly heinous act, civil society demands a pound of flesh in return.

Want for retribution is often the most powerful emotion that makes society believe in its justice system.

Such it is with those who are attacking the system over Casey Anthony – no retribution, no justice.

Most people will not even force themselves to imagine what it feels like to lose a child. The thought is too damn painful for most parents to even consider. Only a narcissistic sociopathic whore would hit the party trail and get a tattoo following such a tragedy.

As a father of three beautiful kids, I have to admit that I personally want justice for Caylee Anthony in the form of retribution against her mother, Casey.

But because I believe in the Rule of Law, I am willing to accept the verdict knowing that punishment is only for those who are convicted in our system.

As irrational as it sounds, in order for our system of criminal justice to work, the application of rights focus more on the accused than the victim. It is nauseating to realize that Casey Anthony was afforded legal privileges not given to her dead daughter.

The United States criminal justice system is a repulsive system of rights afforded to vile people. It is hideous, gross and contemptible – at least until someone is wrongfully accused. Then it becomes the only one in the world that allows an innocent person to walk free. In that instance, it greatest in the world.

Our society hates verdicts like those in the Casey Anthony trial, but must accept them as the wicked price we pay for a system that is based upon trying its best to insure that someone wrongfully accused isn’t in the cross hairs of society’s primal desire for retribution.

The system may be imperfect, but it is not broken To those who have wrung their hands this week that the system is broken, it certainly is not. Nevertheless, the Casey Anthony verdict points out two imperfections in the system.

First, statistics show that juries are generally unlikely to return guilty verdicts in capital murder cases when the defendant is female. If the prosecution can be faulted for anything in the Anthony case, it may be seeking the death penalty against a female when the underlying evidence was all circumstantial.

While media coverage prior to Casey Anthony’s indictment may well have forced the prosecutor’s hand politically, it was a bad decision that overshadowed the entire case. Had the death penalty not hovered so large over the entire case, the jury might have returned a different verdict on the lesser charges.

Secondly, OJ Simpson prosecutor Marcia Clark made a very good point last week when she wrote that juries are trending to confuse “reason for doubt” with “reasonable doubt.” The Casey Anthony legal team threw out lots of reasons to doubt. Whether any should have given rise to the legal standard of “reasonable doubt” will be debated for years.

Many have argued that “reasonable doubt” has been elevated by the so-called “CSI Effect” where jurors expect evidence presented at trials to fall neatly into place. However, after watching closing arguments, putting Gary Sinese himself on the stand may not have been able to save the prosecutors case against Casey Anthony.

Its silly season in America Originally published in the Daily Caller

It’s that special time of year when leaves are turning beautiful shades of orange.

The fresh smell of fall is in the air and each morning is met with frost on the pumpkin patch.

And, of course, ever day some candidate running for some office somewhere in America is doing something really, really stupid.

It’s the political silly season and, like watching an impending train wreck, Americans just can’t look away. We feel compelled to watch.

Novice sports fans watch ESPN’s Top 10 plays of the day. But true sports fans look forward to Friday’s Not Top 10.

Thus, for all true political junkies, here are the Not Top 10 political plays of the 2010 Silly Season.

10. She Turned Bill Mahr Into A Newt – So if Christine O’Donnell weighs the same as a duck, then she’s made of wood … and therefore … a witch.

9. Joe Biden/Nancy Pelosi/Harry Reid – Has there been a funnier triumvirate since Larry, Curly and Moe? Nancy argues that free condoms, unemployment benefits and food stamps are economic stimulus. Harry has a pet and Joe wants to strangle all Republicans. Nuck. Nuck. Nuck.

8. The Most Painful 3 Minutes in Television History – Under indictment for sexting photos of his junk to a college student (a charge his attorney called “flirting”), the illusive Alvin Greene tried to bolster his long-shot bid for a US Senate seat in South Carolina by answering every Lawrence O’Donnell interview question with “DeMint started the recession.” Even funnier than the interview is that O’Donnell – no relation to Christine or anyone in her coven – endorsed Greene following the interview.

7. The Aqua Buddha – GQ runs a story from an anonymous source claiming that in college Kentucky Senate candidate Rand Paul was a pot smoking, Aqua Buddha worshipping, kidnapping member of a secret society. Determined to make sulfuric acid from lemonade, Paul’s opponent, Attorney General Jack Conway, runs the most offensive ad of the campaign season questioning Paul’s faith and gets whacked by the left.

6. Barney Interuptus – Whatever you do, don’t interrupt Barney Frank. Barney told his constituents at a town hall meeting to shut up. Barney has repeatedly told his opponent, Sean Bielat, to quit interrupting him. Be warned that if you interrupt

Barney too often, he’ll send his partner, Jim Ready, over to your house to photograph and heckle you.

5. Hicks Wanted – A casting call for a West Virginia advertisement looking for actors with a “hicky blue collar look” leaves RNSC staffers feeling like Ned Beatty in Deliverance.

4. She Blew My Nose and Then She Blew My Mind – Virginia Congressional candidate Krystal Ball (no, that’s not the joke) was photographed performing oral sex on a red dildo strapped to the nose of her antler wearing ex-husband. Ball is a single issue candidate who’s running to enact a federal ban on the manufacture of cell phone cameras.

3. Moonbeams over Havana – Jerry “Moonbeam” Brown spent a couple hours in a limo touring Havana with Fidel Castro and California voters are concerned whether he booked the trip with a legit travel agent.

Really? Jerry Brown spent a leisurely day with Fidel Castro, a murdering Communist dictator, and Californians are concerned that he didn’t use the Expedia gnome to book his hotel room.

Moonbeam needs to move to Florida, put his name on the ballot for Mayor of Miami and get his self-righteous ass kicked in Little Havana.

2. Springtime for Hitler – After a long day of goose-stepping with his SS Panzer re-enactment unit, Congressional candidate Rich Lott enjoys kicking back with Toledo’s other blue-eyed, blond hair Eichmenn youth with a cold beer and a shot of Jagermeister. To be fair, Lott said he doesn’t subscribe to Nazism, but once took an Adolph on the golf course (two shots in the bunker).

1. Truth in Advertising – Rich Whitney is a third party candidate for governor in Illinois who had the “n” dropped off his name on touch screen voting machine ballots. Thankfully, he’s not running for office against Alvin Greene.

Glen Beck is “right” on gay rights Originally published in the Daily Caller

The revelation that former GOP chairman Ken Mehlman is gay was as shocking to the Republican inner circle as was the news that Lincoln had been shot. Sorry, tell us something we haven’t known for years.

Nevertheless, this non-event, and the stories that were written about it, come at a key time, a time when many on the right find themselves struggling as much with their own views on gay rights as Mehlman did with coming out.

The issue is being brought to the forefront, not by Mehlman, but by icons of the political right. Recently, invoking the principles of Thomas Jefferson, Glenn Beck shocked Fox listeners by stating that same-sex marriage was not a threat to this country. Ann Coulter drew headlines for accepting an invitation to give the keynote address at a gathering of gay conservatives.

The actions of Beck and Coulter have outraged social conservatives. But their actions, whether viewed as “pro-gay” or simply “live and let live,” are nothing new for many conservatives who, over the years, have stood for individual rights.

Barry Goldwater, who once told a reporter that every Christian should line up and “kick Jerry Falwell’s ass,” supported gays in the military. Goldwater noted that gays had served honorably in the military since the time of Julius Cesar and further quipped: “You don’t have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.”

Shortly after saying that, Goldwater died and presumably waited at the Gates of Heaven for Falwell’s arrival.

Time for the left to embrace Beck “I’m a Christian. And so, although I try not to have my religious beliefs dominate or determine my political views on this issue, I do believe that tradition, and my religious beliefs say that marriage is something sanctified between a man and a woman.”

These were the words of Miss California, Carrie Prejean, at the 2009 Miss USA beauty pageant.

Psych. Just kidding. Those are the words of Barack Obama from the 2008 campaign trail. No one really paid attention to Obama’s quote at the time because his primary opponent, Hillary Clinton, had the exact same position.

Obama got elected and immediately appointed Hillary Clinton as his secretary of state. At Clinton’s confirmation hearing, there was not a single question about her position on gay rights.

But, Prejean herself was demoted to runner-up at Miss USA and labeled “dumb”

by Bill Maher. Go figure.

Between a beauty contestant, on one hand, and a president and his secretary of state on the other, one struggles to determine which set of boobs was more divisive.

Is Obama to the right of Beck, or vice-versa?

Both the right and left couch their opposition to gay marriage in terms of religion, despite the fact that marriage is, and has pretty much always been, statutory.

The state legislatures of this country have ruled on a state-by-state basis who can (and, by implication, can’t) get married. And those laws vary widely without any reference to religious dogma. Just ask any 13-year-old first cousins who need their parents’ signatures to procreate a family of single-eyebrow progeny.

Ignoring the statutory basis for marriage has caused confusion between the political right and the political left.

The political right, in the instance of gay marriage, should be defined by those conservatives and libertarians who clamor for states’ rights. In the traditional conservative model of federalism, each state would be free to define marriage any way it likes.

Unfortunately, too many of these erstwhile conservatives clamor for states’ rights with great vigor, until some liberal state legislature disagrees with them on the substance of the legislation that is passed. That has led many of them, ironically, to adopt the political left’s position on states rights — that is, an endorsement of federal mandates overruling state action. In this case, a federal ban on samesex marriage.

Beck is on the “right” on this issue and should invite Obama and Clinton over.

Chapter Two

Occupy a Job Occupy Wall Street becomes the gift that just keeps on giving

Naked zombies on Wall Street Originally published in the Daily Caller

Wall Street has been besieged by protesters that believe the future of America rests on their ability to cover their faces with zombie make up and carry signs with their clothes off.

New Yorkers have not seen this many blank faces in one place since “Taller Than a Dwarf” starring Matthew Broderick closed on Broadway after only ninetythree performances. Major news outlets in the Big Apple are covering the protests like they have never before captured the undead on film, except at Shea Stadium.

The whole scene is quite exciting, in a New York sort-of-way. A topless woman carried a sign that read: “I DIDN’T SAY LOOK, I SAID LISTEN.” I looked.

To date, the protest is as unorganized as tunnel traffic at rush hour, but that.just changed.

Union leadership is now moving to co-opt the demonstration and has sent their troops marching to demand “right to work legislation” in order to create jobs – just kidding. I wanted to see if you were paying attention. Some college students walked out of class last night and, in-sympathy with the Wall Street protesters, headed straight to a fraternity kegger.

And, of course, what would a left-wing protest be without Michael Moore (other than several hundred pounds lighter). Moore showed up, and on cue, cried for the cameras … meaningless tears from a man that rolls around in his movie profits like a chunky Scrooge McDuck.

While these left-wing rowdies articulate no coherent agenda, they all want “change.” For that reason, former White House lightning rod, Van Jones, multiple union leaders, MoveOn.org and an ox cart of others are struggling to take control of the protest.

The first change someone should demand is for the protesters to wash their faces and put their clothes back on. It’s hard to take naked zombies too seriously.

Timing Good For Tea Party The attack of the naked zombies on Wall Street comes at a relatively good time for the Tea Party movement.

Recent poll numbers indicate that the favorable/unfavorable ratings for the Tea Party have flip-flopped. Once popular enough to change election outcomes, more Americans today have an unfavorable image of the movement than favorable.

One could argue that these numbers have turned because of the media coverage of the Tea Party, but that is beside the point. The fact is that, for whatever reason, many Americans seem to be tiring of the Tea Party.

Political thought has always been defined by debate on the extremes. Now, with the Occupy Wall Street crowd establishing the boundary on the left, the Tea Party has a foil. With naked zombies as a contrast, the Tea Party’s poll numbers are likely to flip-flop again – provided the Tea Partiers keep their clothes on.

Several nights ago, an NBC reporter updated the Occupy Wall Street story on site, sharing the intense details while a young zombie danced in the background.

Suddenly, that crazy old coot down the street that dresses up in a three-cornered hat and blathers on-and-on about excessive government spending doesn’t seem all that kooky.

Now, when Bill Mahr calls Tea Party protesters “just a bunch of stupid cultists,” they can respond by saying, “but we’re not naked zombies.”

They have met the enemy and he is them The most humorous aspect of the Occupy Wall Street protest is not the naked ladies or the dancing zombies. Instead it is that the left is protesting the evil establishment without acknowledging that the left is, in fact, the establishment.

The Attorney General ignoring the crimes they allege is one of them. The Senate that has not taken up the legislation they desire enacted is controlled by them.

Their President is raising money from the people they despise. * The protesters better watch out. If “Throw the Rascals Out” becomes a unifying cause for Americans in 2012, the naked zombies lose.

One sign in the crowd on Wall Street read: “We are the change we want to see in the world.”

Not really. The naked zombies are just a new face on one of two extremes that America gets to choose from in the next election.

* By the term “them” and “their” in this paragraph, I am referring to the left, not zombies. Any evidence that Attorney General Eric Holder and Leader Harry Reid are zombies is purely speculative.

Occupy Santa Land declares victory Originally published in the Daily Caller

NORTH POLE — After two months of protests, members of the movement “Occupy Santa Land” declared victory today when the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) imposed a 15 cent use tax on all Christmas trees sold over the holidays. Meeting the demands of the protesters, funds raised from the tax will be used to redistribute toys from certain children that had been predetermined by their social upbringing to be nice to those forced by their environment to be naughty.

“This is a victory for all the children of the world,” declared Occupy Santa Land organizer Olag Vissolov. He went on to say that it was patently unfair that nice children received preferential treatment from Santa Land. “Reserving material rewards for only good boys and girls is un-egalitarian. Presents should be distributed to all children without a discriminatory determination by a rich fat man as to their annual conduct.”

“Santa claims to check his list twice,” said Vissolov, an unemployed elf with a degree in art history. “But the very fact that there is a list which can be changed at the discretion of a corporate-like enterprise without governmental oversight smacks of elitism.”

The protests began when so many children began behaving badly that Santa Claus asked the elves to take a pay cut in order to continue toy production. When the leadership of the National Association of Elf Workers (NAEW) Local #223 refused to negotiate with Santa, nearly a third of the elves in Santa’s toy workshop were laid off.

Within days of the lay-offs, elves began encircling Santa’s workshop, threatening to shut down Santa Land. They claimed Santa was corrupt and making far too much money. Statements by Santa describing how he had worked a lifetime to develop a distribution system that delivered toys to good girls and boys seemed to fall on deaf pointy ears.

With some of the elves dressed as little zombies, the protests at times became violent. Mrs. Claus was shoved down a flight of steps while trying to leave a seminar on the impact of toy free market economies.

Occupy Santa Land — time to share the milk and cookies

From the beginning of the protest, it was unclear precisely what the participants of Occupy Santa Land were demanding. The signs being carried by the diminutive protesters covered a wide gambit of issues.

One sign demanded that Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer be excluded from this year’s Reindeer Games until his bright red nose was inspected by the Environmental Protection Agency. Another shamed the entire Santa Land operation over the discovery of the “Island of Misfit Toys” and the subsequent cover-up by led by Bumble, the Abominable Snow Monster of the North.

Although they have offered no scientific evidence to back up their claims, many of the protesters believe that reindeer discharge from Santa’s annual worldwide jaunt is a major factor contributing global warming.

The mainstream media has drawn criticism for failing to report much of the negative acts of the Occupy Santa Land protesters. Pictures of signs calling Yukon Cornelius a “Nazi” have only appeared on random right-wing blogs.

Michael Moore showed up in support of the elves, but was quickly removed from the view of cameras when he ate a reindeer.

Fox News commentators and talk radio hosts have criticized other news outlets for having harsher coverage of the Peppermint Tea Party than the Occupy Santa Land movement.

Christmas Tree tax tax not supported by all elves While the elves participating in the Occupy Santa Land protest cheered the USDA’s Christmas tree tax, others in the elf community opposed the move for creating social warfare between classes of good and bad children.

“It’s just not right,” said Hermey, DMD, a local elf dentist. “Our entire system is based upon rewarding good behavior. Count me as part of the one percent that believes a redistribution of toys without regard to conduct is communism.”

A high-ranking executive of Elfbody Coal Company refused to talk on the record but suggested that the tax further breaks down the line between good and bad.

He said that the tax will be devastating to a company like his that mines lumps of coal to be placed in the stockings of bad children.

“When children started watching HBO and playing video games with hookers in them as characters, we had to hire extra elves for our coal mines,” the spokesman said. “What am I supposed to tell their tiny families now?”

President Barack Obama has said that he understands the frustration of the protesting elves. With the line being further blurred between good and bad,

Presidential Press Secretary Jay Carney was asked what President Obama wanted from Santa this Christmas. “Four more years,” Carney replied.

Hannah Montana Occupies the Mouse that Feeds Her Originally published by the Daily Caller

Finally, Occupy Wall Street has a voice.

After months of irrelevant banter and confusing rhetoric, someone is ready to lead. Different organizations have attempted to gain control of OWS, but now the destiny of the movement is clear. A voice for Occupy Wall Street has stepped up.

It’s time is now.

Ladies and gentlemen … Miley Cyrus.

Yes, Miley Cyrus has offered her support for Occupy Wall Street. This week on her web site, the social conscience of a generation released a video “dedicated to the thousands of people who are standing up for what they believe in.”

The video posted by Cyrus edits Occupy Wall Street video clips over her song Liberty Walk from the CD Can’t be Tamed – available at Best Buy (NYSE-BBY) for $9.99.

Someone needs to take Miley aside and explain to her that the only reason she is relevant is because she made a shitload of Wall Street dough off the Hannah Montana franchise, a fictitious corporate nom de plume created for her by Disney (NYSE-DIS). Without The Mouse’s creation of Hannah Montana – movie available at Target (AMEX-TDTF) for $8.19 – Miley Cyrus would be covering Achy Breaky Heart in the lobby of the Hampton Inn (NYSE-HIL) in Ashland, Kentucky.

Occupy Wall Street – sponsored by ….

I have no particular animosity towards Miss Cyrus. Last week at her nineteenth birthday party she admitted to being a “stoner.” This was following an earlier video of her smoking “legal” pot from a glass bong. For those that went to college in the 70s – a generation one toke away from being an entire graduating class of Lindsay Lohans – her smoking habit is almost endearing.

Miley Cyrus’ support for Occupy Wall Street points out the absurdity of the entire protest. In June, M Magazine declared Miley Cyrus to be the richest teen in the world and placed her personal wealth at $120,000,000.00. That’s a lot of zeros for someone that wants to show support for people that hate greed.

Don’t blame Miley Cyrus for the hypocrisy of OWS. Just peruse the pictures from the various OWS locations. Participants in the Wall Street bash-a-thon are drinking Starbucks (NASDAQ-SBUX) coffee, talking on their Apple (NASDAQAAPL) iPhones and searching the internet on the Hewlett Packard (NYSE-HPQ) lap tops.

The fact of the matter is the Occupiers – just like Miley Cyrus – are addicted to corporate America. The irony of people protesting greed while drinking $5.00 cups of coffee is priceless. The great philosopher, Pogo, once said, “We have met the enemy and he is us.” Of course, after he said that, Pogo was fired and is now living in a tent in Zucotti Park.

The thought that protesters support the very system they despise must send a chill right through their North Face (NYSE-VFC) jacket and Ugg boots (NASDAQGS).

Somewhere in Seattle, Howard Schultz, the CEO of Starbucks is looking at a picture of a protester drinking a cup of his coffee and laughing his ass off.

Send your contributions c/o Elvis On the same day the crown princess of Disney released her protest video, Elvis Costello did something that really mattered.

In a disagreement with his record label over the pricing of his newly released box set, The Return of the Spectacular Spinning Songbook, Costello asked his fans not to shell out the $225 asking price. “We at www.elviscostello.com find ourselves unable to recommend [it] as the price appears to be either a misprint or a satire.”

Costello goes on to recommend that his fans purchase the re-mastered works of Louis Armstrong. “Frankly the music is vastly superior,” he writes.

Elvis Costello is willing to take a financial hit for his views. It may be because when he was Miley Cyrus’ age he was working day jobs to help support his music career. His 1977 classic, I’m Not Angry, is about his job at Elizabeth Arden (NSDAQ-RDEN).

In the end, Elvis Costello’s simple post on his web site had a real impact on corporate greed. Miley Cyrus’ video helped sell more Hannah Montana skateboards – available at Walmart (NYSE-WMT) for $27.99.

The fifteen minute time clock starts running on people like Miley Cyrus far too often. I’d rather know more about how Elvis’ record label responds. It all just makes my head hurt. I wonder if they have Hannah Montana aspirin at Walgreens (NYSE-WAG).

Chapter Three People Along the Way

Sure Gonna’ Miss the “Lizard” Originally Published in the Daily Caller

In July of 1958, Jim Bunning walked into Fenway Park and did what was seemingly impossible – he threw a no-hitter against Ted Williams and the Boston Red Sox. Some say that Ted Williams was the greatest hitter ever (I’m one of those).

People who watched Williams play say that he could pick up the spin of a baseball when it rolled off the pitcher’s fingers. Bunning’s side-arm delivery made it tough for hitters – Williams included – to see that ball rotation. According to Williams himself, Bunning was the only pitcher to strike him out three times in a single game.

Bunning (known then to his fellow pitchers as the “Lizard” because of the way he slithered in and won ballgames) and “Teddy Ballgame” were fierce competitors.

In 1957, Bunning had won 20 games and Williams had narrowly missed a second .400 season. On that hot Boston evening in 1958, Bunning won the battle, allowing three base runners, but no hits. He had to face Williams for the final out.

After baseball, the two Hall of Famers found common ground in Republican politics and became fast friends. When Williams was in the bottom of his personal ninth, Bunning visited him in Florida. They spent the day together talking politics and baseball.

Before they parted company for the final time, Williams revealed that, on the night of the Bunning’s Fenway triumph, the Red Sox bench had been picking up the catcher’s pitch signs. That night, Ted Williams and the rest of the Boston batters had known every pitch that Bunning had tossed at them and they still couldn’t hit him.

In baseball, fierce competition gains respect. In politics … well … not so much.

Jim Bunning was first elected to the United States Congress in 1986 to represent Kentucky’s Fourth Congressional District. He didn’t win because he was warm and fuzzy. Bunning didn’t always tell voters what they wanted to hear.

In an era when elected officials had a tendency to shift directions according to the cross-tabs of the latest public opinion poll, Bunning always stood on his own ground.

Like in baseball, Bunning earned a reputation in politics for throwing high and tight. He was not afraid to tell the leadership of his own party when he thought

they were wrong. His battles with the Senate GOP leadership are just the latest examples of Bunning’s ability to throw a political brush back pitch.

In his first term in Congress, because of loans being made to countries with nonmarket economies, Bunning bucked President Reagan and fought the reauthorization of the World Bank. Despite a personal call from the Gipper himself asking him to relent, Bunning held his ground.

In recent years, while others fawned at the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve, Bunning declared that the Emperor had no clothes. Bunning’s relentless questioning of Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernacke over the past 20 years has provided more C-SPAN highlight footage than an ESPN Espy awards program.

Bunning’s hard-nosed tactics didn’t always win Bunning all-star bids. Ted Williams respected Jim Bunning’s competitive nature. Many politicians often take their politics far too personal.

It’s tough for pitchers to give up the ball This week current and former staff held a retirement party for Jim Bunning. Most at the dinner never expected the day to actually arrive. As in baseball, we all expected the Lizard to slither in and somehow win just one more race.

Unfortunately for Bunning, near the end of his second term, Senate GOP leadership wouldn’t dive for fly balls in the 9th to keep him in the game.

When Bunning had announced that he was not running for a third term in the Senate, he did so with a simple press release. There was no big press conference or a Senate floor speech. Pitchers hate to give up the ball, but Jim Bunning did so on his own terms.

In his storied baseball career, Jim Bunning hit 187 batters. The only modern day pitchers to plunk more batters are Randy Johnson and Tim Wakefield. Ben Bernake and Senate GOP leadership may not miss that style of political play, but I sure will.

A tale of two P.J.s Originally published in the Daily Caller

Don’t Vote – it just encourages the bastards, the latest offering from conservative humorist P.J. O’Rourke, is a real page turner that will keep you up at night.

That opening blurb may lead one to believe that the former editor of National Lampoon has switched genres and is now writing novels. Not to worry O’Rourke fans, P.J. is still pontificating political thought from the laugh-a-minute view of the libertarian right.

Nevertheless, while reading Don’t Vote, be prepared to turn pages (over in dogeared fashion marking passages you want to refer back to later). And you will stay up at night…not reading, but thoughtfully pondering what O’Rourke has written.

Over the past several decades there seems to have been a change in O’Rourke’s writing, or maybe better put, a change in the topics he has chosen to write about. The youthful stories in Lampoon and Rolling Stone are behind him.

O’Rourke’s move to headier topics has been coming on for a while. His book On The Wealth of Nations is an excellent interpretation of Adam Smith’s 18th century classic. Similar to this new book, On Wealth should be read with a yellow highlighter in hand. My copy has more marks and highlights in it, then, well, the actual copy of Wealth of Nations that I read in college.

Life-long P.J. fans need not worry. The classic O’Rourke wit is still there.

In explaining the Bill of Right’s, O’Rourke states: “The First and Sixth Amendments are straightforward enough, reassuring us that we may pray (OMG!), Twitter, kvetch, and be tried in the same court as O.J. Simpson.”

But on the whole, O’Rourke’s substance in Don’t Vote is much deeper.

Parliament of Whores It has been 19 years since P.J. O’Rourke penned Parliament of Whores, his classic book on American government.

Pull Parliament off the book shelf and dust it off. A simple review of the chapters will indicate that t was written at the time of a banking bailout, activism from the ecological elite, a housing crisis and extreme concern about the financial well being of social security.

In other words, not much has changed in Washington over the past two decades.

What has changed is O’Rourke’s treatment of these topics.

Like so many books on American political thought, O’Rourke begins Don’t Vote with a discussion on freedom, liberty, positive v. negative rights, the nature of man and how all of that relates to the Founders.

You may not realize it but the Founders chose to follow John Locke over JeanJaques Burlamaqui and Samuel von Pufendorf, because “Locke” was easier to spell.

Then, O’Rourke goes on to tackle the issues of the day.

Climate Change: “There’s not a goddamn thing you can do about it.”

Bailouts: “The advantage of a tax abatement over a stimulus plan is that, instead of idiots in Washington spending your and my money, us idiots get to spend out own.”

Health care: “My suggestion for health care reform is that we skip lunch and quit picking on sick people.”

Gun control: “With the economy being like it is, I call my .38 Special ‘the MasterCard of the future.’”

Interestingly, O’Rourke has his problems with Barry Goldwater, but Don’t Vote follows a similar pattern as Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative … except Don’t Vote is written for a generation who, on occasion, will drop the f-bomb into polite social conversation.

The new William Buckley?

In Parliament of Whores, O’Rourke was a humorist who happened to take on the topic of government. In Don’t Vote, P.J. becomes a Fellow at the CATO Institute with a sense of humor. He has elevated his game and, in the process, ours too.

William Buckley once said that “liberals want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”

Read Don’t Vote and then give it to a liberal.

The evolution in the writing of P.J. O’Rourke is that he is the William F. Buckley of our generation.

Remember the staff of Congresswoman Gifford Originally published in the Daily Caller

On Saturday, January 8, 2011, Gabe Zimmerman, a Congressional staffer for Rep. Gabrielle Gifford passed into the Hands of the Father. Two fellow staffers, Ron Barber and Pam Simon, were injured and are in the hospital.

I did not know Gabe Zimmerman and I have never met Barber, Simon or anyone on Congresswoman Gifford’s staff. But as a former Congressional staffer myself, I did not have to know Zimmerman and his colleagues in order to know a lot about them.

Working for a Member of Congress puts a person in a special fraternity of people who go to work each and every day trusting in the system and hoping that their work is making a difference. It doesn’t matter whether someone works on the Hill or back in the District, a Congressional staffer remains a staffer forever.

A staffer not only supports their Boss, but they also live vicariously through them.

When the Boss is on television, the staffer watches. When the Boss passes legislation, the staffer stands on the sidelines and cheers. It’s the staffer’s job to get the Boss’ name in the newspaper, not theirs.

Staffers may leave the employment of Congress, but membership in the fraternity is forever. They are proud of what their Boss, with staff help, has accomplished.

When current and former staffers meet they offer a similar greeting: “Really?

Who did you work for?” And when they leave for other jobs, they hang autographed pictures of them and their Boss on the walls of their new office.

Thoughts of violence against the Boss are always in the back of the mind of a Congressional staffer, but it doesn’t stop them from doing their jobs.

Staffers believe.

They believe in their Boss. They believe in the institution of Congress. And they believe that they are making a difference.

To all the staffers who were at the scene, all of us current and former staffers are proud of you.

To Ron Barbour and Pam Simon, we all pray for your recovery.

To Gabe Zimmerman and his family – Peace.

And, to all our colleagues on the staff of Congresswoman Gifford and their families, we current and former staffers hope that you will be comforted in a way that can only flow from the Grace of God. Know that there are literally thousands of us who are feeling your pain and asking that you lean on our thoughts and prayers for strength.

Keep Gabe Zimmerman in your heart for a while Originally published in the Daily Caller

The endless drone of today’s news cycle often has a way of desensitizing the events of the day to cable-television viewers. Stories are repeated with such frequency and on so many channels that the person sitting at home watching can become numb to the emotional connection underlying the accounts being relayed to them on the screen.

Whether it’s a major 9/11 seismic-type event that effects the entire country, or a single slaying that gets picked up as the cable-news murder de jour, continuous coverage of these events can eventually causes the shared eyes of America to glass over.

I sense that is already happening with viewers regarding coverage of last week’s assassination attempt upon Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords.

The jab and parry of a blame game started literally before the bodies of the deceased had been removed from the parking lot pavement.

Like many current and former Capitol Hill staffers, I took the events which transpired in Arizona last weekend very personally. A Congressional staffer, Gabe Zimmerman, lost his life. He was one of us… a staffer. His death caused us staffers the same kind of grief that firefighters and police experience when one of their own is killed in the line of duty.

Pardon us if we’re not quite ready to move on to the ensuing national debate quite yet.

Upon learning that he was dying of cancer, Warren Zevon penned a song entitled Keep Me in Your Heart for a While. Before we move along to the argument of what casued the tragic events in Tucson, some of us need a little more time remember those who gave their lives and keep them in our hearts for a while.

For me personally, I needed to know a little more about Gabe Zimmerman.

Who was Gabe Zimmerman?

The news outlets have given us some basic information about Gabe Zimmerman, but they have only scratched the surface. Repeatedly, we’ve been told that Zimmerman was the 30 year old Director of Community Outreach for Congresswoman Giffords and he was just recently engaged to be married.

Piecing together various print media reports reveals that Game Zimmerman was a remarkable young man full of the ideals that drive someone like him to go to work for a Member of Congress.

Zimmerman got his start as a staffer doing constituent services. For those nonstaffers reading this column, this means Gabe was the person who would have spoken to your grandma had she called Giffords’ office with problems about her Social Security check.

Good constituent service is the foundation of any Congressional office. The job is more than helping people navigate the federal bureaucracy. On a very basic level, the job involves making people believe that government does what it is supposed to do for them personally. Constituent service is a one-on-one delivery system for the entire federal government.

Doing constituent service was perfect for Gabe Zimmerman. He had a background in social work. More importantly, he had the good nature and natural empathy to do the job well.

If your grandma would have called Gabe Zimmerman about her Social Security check, he would have fretted until she got it.

Additionally, Gabe Zimmerman had no problem about being a front-line link between Congresswoman Giffords and many of her Tucson constituents. He had organized the “Congress on the Corner” event where he was killed.

By all accounts I have read, Gabe Zimmerman was truly loved by the constituents he served.

And, apparently, loving Gabe Zimmerman wasn’t a hard thing to do. “Nicest guy in the world,” was how a high school classmate described him. A college acquaintance described him as passionate about life and said that being his friend was the only thing you could do upon meeting him. Giffords’ former campaign chairman said that Zimmerman was “as close to a purely good human being” as he had ever known.

A colleague in Giffords’ office said Zimmerman was “wise beyond his years and dedicated and loyal and determined.”

Dedicated and loyal and determined In today’s political world almost any expertise can be purchased. Candidates pay consultants to run polls and design promotions. It used to be that volunteers got the campaign mail out the door via “Lick ‘em, Stuff ‘em and Stamp ‘em” parties.

But today, even campaign mail is pushed out the door by vendors.

There are things, however, which politicians cannot purchase in the political marketplace.

Dedication cannot be purchased.

Loyalty cannot be purchased.

Determination cannot be purchased.

Gabe Zimmerman was invaluable to his boss because he possessed these three traits. For living a life of dedication, loyalty and determination, let’s keep Gabe Zimmerman in our hearts for a while.

------------------------------------------------------Post Script – It has come to my attention that Zimmerman’s alma matter, UC Santa Cruz, has established a scholarship fund in his honor. You can learn more about the fund by clicking here http://news.ucsc.edu/2011/01/zimmerman-fund.html

How Ted Williams Changed the World Originally published in One New England

It’s silly season in America.

With political pundits counting down the days until the 2008 Presidential election, the candidates are doing all they can to garner a vote here or there. Their level of pandering and groveling borders on the absurd.

As candidates continue this battle, for some unknown reason, celebrities feel the need to weigh in on the battle. Apparently, the candidates and their campaign machines feel that the voters are so shallow that appearing on stage with a well known celebrity or sports figure will somehow make them seem more common.

Families across America were on the edge of their collective seats in this campaign until they found out who Lindsay Lohan was supporting to be the leader of the free world.

On the other hand, Stephen Baldwin’s declarations that he will leave the country if Obama wins has many loyal Republicans considering voting Democratic on the sole hope that when he leaves, he’ll take his brothers with him.

The dream of disappearing Baldwins notwithstanding, my general observation from three decades in politics is that endorsements don’t really matter. Voters pay attention to the Baldwins and Lohans of the world, but only for some intrinsic entertainment value. They do not shift great blocks of voters.

Of course, there are exceptions to the rule.

The greatest exception was when the largest of figures, Ted Williams, came home to New England and changed the course of the 1988 Republican Presidential primary by walking the streets of New Hampshire with his old military buddy, then-Vice Presidnet George H.W. Bush.

As Vice President under President Ronald Reagan, George Bush was the presumptive favorite in the 1988 to gain the GOP presidential nomination. He had spent eight years carefully planning his run and a victory was presumed by most party leaders and political pundits. His aides had declared him invincible.

After all, before being chosen as the Veep nominee, Bush had beaten Reagan in Iowa eight years earlier. Nearly a decade of service as Vice President should have solidified his position in the first Republican primary and set the stage for an easy victory.

Vice President George Bush had failed to recognize that his party had changed over his two terms at the White House. The divide in the party left an opening for

others to claim that they had the conservative credentials to serve Reagan’s third term. Although Barry Goldwater was supporting Bush, Senate Leader Bob Dole and Congressman Jack Kemp were splitting the old Goldwater wing of the party.

The man who had declared that he was Constitutionally in charge at the White House when President Reagan had been shot, General Al Haig, went after the pro-hawk, anti-commie Republicans. And, a television minister, Rev. Pat Robertson, challenged all of them with something he called his “Christian Coalition” of Republican voters. Former Delaware Governor Pierre “Pete” DuPont added confusion to the mix.

Eight years earlier Bush had won Iowa and declared that “Big Mo” was behind him. However on a cold night in DesMoins in 1988 his aspirations to become President were in jeopardy. Bush got beat by Dole. Not only did he get beat, but he finished a disappointing third behind Robertson.

The political sharks were circling when George Bush flew to snowy New Hampshire. The once invincible candidate for President had finished third in Iowa and was behind in the polls in New Hampshire. The Union Leader endorsed Pete du Pont and, its longtime Publisher, William Loeb, called Bush a wimp.

If Bush lost New Hampshire, the campaign was over.

In steps Ted Williams.

George Bush had met Ted Williams while they trained together as Naval aviators at the Chapel Hill Naval Air Station in 1942 before being assigned to duty in WWII. There are many stories as to how Ted Williams came to fly to New Hampshire during the second week of February 1988. Some say that the Bush campaign sent for him. Others say that he went on his own accord.

The way the story was told by an old DC lobbyist who met The Splendid Splinter at Logan Airport, Williams came on his own. In fact, according to Capitol Hill bar lore (which in DC is as good as any volume found in the Library of Congress), Williams came on such short notice that the pair had to stop at a Sears store to pick up a heavy jacket for Williams to wear to a Bush rally later that day.

Williams arrived backstage at the rally before the Vice President’s motorcade.

When Bush did arrive, he was clearly agitated by the results in Iowa and uncharastically chewing out a staff member. Then a figure larger than New England itself caught his attention.

“Any problems, Mr. Vice President?” asked Wlliams.

“Not now,” smiled Bush in reply. “Everything’s going to be fine now.”

The warm up speeches were in progress when Ted Williams strode onto the stage. Without even a simple introduction, the crowd went wild – standing, cheering, chanting for several minutes as Teddy Ballgame looked around the auditorium and soaked in the adulation. He was never formally introduced. He didn’t have to be. Everyone in the crowd knew who he was.

He gave a simple introduction of Bush and with that introduction, the momentum of the entire election changed. Big Mo was now truly with George Bush.

For the next week, everywhere Bush appeared, Williams was at his side. They went to a dog sled race in Laconia. At fishing show in Manchester, Bush said that he might as well not have existed. Wherever they went Williams drew huge crowds and asked them to vote for his old pal George Bush.

Bush won New Hampshire by 9 points over Dole and went on to win the Republican nomination.

Did Williams come on his own to New Hampshire in the winter of 1988, or was he summoned there by the Bush campaign. The office of President Bush would not confirm or deny either story. Perhaps that is best. Let the legend live on.

My afternoon with Olympian George Quigley Originally published in Shotgun Life Magazine

The picture which the folks at Shotgun Life have used to introduce me to you ought to tell you something. All the people profiled in this fine publication are pictured holding their favorite shotguns. My profile picture has me holding up a beautiful lake trout which I caught on the Niagara River cutting the border between New York and Canada.

What that has to do with clay shooting is what my story is all about.

Fishing (or at the least brackish lake water associated with it) is in my family's blood. My dad had hunted when he was a young man, but by the time I was born he was afflicted with horrible arthritis. So, instead of hunting, he taught me how to shore fish at a young age. On my mom's side, I had an uncle for which fishing was his life. Just to be able to fish on a daily basis, he spent his twilight living with a Seminole Indian tribe in the Everglades.

So, fishing is one of my sports of preference. Although, the way I fish, calling it a sport is an insult to sportsmen everywhere. I spend more time choosing my cigar for the day than I do choosing my lures. Quite honestly, it's the quiet and solitude which I enjoy about fishing. Catching a fish is a side benefit.

One of my regular fishing companions, Lytle Thomas, mistook my love of fishing for being an all inclusive outdoor sportsman. Lytle spends his weekends hunting things with and without a pulse.

"I'm running a charity sporting clays shoot next week at Elk Creek," Lytle said excitedly to me one day. "I signed you up to shoot in my fivesome."

"I haven't shot since elementary school," I replied, hoping that would end the conversation.

"Yeah, I know," he persisted. "You told me about it. Remember? You won a shotgun for breaking clay pigeons. It's like riding a bike. You'll be fine."

Lytle was only half right. My bragging was catching up with me. My dad had taken me to a youth shooter's safety clinic when I was a kid. After a lecture from a local 4-H volunteer on safety (don't ever point a gun at anyone except your calculus teacher), everyone got a turn at the range. Clays were going to be thrown out for us to shoot. The prize for the most clays hit, winner take all, was the shotgun we were using. I missed the first one and then hit all that were served up. My dad was proud (although I do remember overhearing him explain to my mom that I had my eyes closed on each shot).

Dad had visions of some kid in my class with buckshot marks on his face from me trying to shoot rats along the river banks and convinced me to trade the shot gun to a neighbour for a baseball bat and glove or something. Dad was a smart man.

"Anyway, it's a celebrity shoot," Lytle snapped me back to reality. "Our celebrity is George Quigley."

I gulped. I knew just enough about clays to understand that George Quigley was an Olympic shooter. But the thought of spending an afternoon with any athlete who is the best in his sport intrigued me. I accepted the invitation.

"Great," Lytle exclaimed and told me the real reason for the invite. "My boss is also in our group and he sucks. I put you on my team so that he'll have someone to beat."

George Quigley is a legend around my community. He is one of the best known ambassadors of shooting in the world. He and his dad are both nationally ranked.

George, Jr. was on the United States Olympic Skeet team which finished 6th in the 1996 Games in Atlanta. He won a gold medal at the 1994 World championships in Cairo.

On the day of the celebrity sporting clays event, I showed up at Elk Creek Hunt Club in Owen County, Kentucky - the home of this year's US Open. Lytle had loaned me a 12 gauge Beretta 682 Gold E to use for the day. In the parking lot he told me that it was bored and ported to reduce recoil and declared that I was going to use 1 ounce loads of number 8 shot rather than the standard 1 and 1/8th ounce loads.

I pursed my lips and nodded a knowledgeable nod. I had no earthly idea what he was talking about. I took the gun anyway.

After a quick refresher on gun safety in the pro shop where we watched a Dick Cheney speech, I headed to the course.

I looked for Quigley, but didn't have to really search the crowd. At 6'5" and around 250 lbs. he stood out. And, he was the only guy at the practice range who was actually shooting. Everyone else was just standing around watching him.

"Pull," he'd shout and two clays would fly out. He'd shoot twice and both clays would explode. "Dead Pair," he'd say as the crowd applauded.

I decided to wait to introduce myself.

I showed up at our first station. All the men in my group (including Lytle's boss) were dressed in gear appropriate for a shooting event - ammo vest, shirts with padded shoulders, and orange hats. Suddenly my ensemble of a Bass Pro Shop

baseball cap and "Fishermen do it With a Lure" tee-shirt didn't seem like such a good choice. These guys were serious.

I retreated to what I normally do when I'm intimidated - I became a smartass.

"This clay pigeon thing sounds like fun," I said approaching the Olympian Quigley with my hand extended. "I hear they are good eatin' when grilled."

Lytle shot me a WTF look.

Quigley just stared at me. "Oh God, he's pissed," I though to myself. "I've just insulted the king and his own sport. This is not a good start to the day."

Then, Quigley smiled a rather sly grin. "They're a lot more tender if you boil them first."

He was as nice of a guy as everyone had said.

I stepped onto the shooting platform, took my first two shots and missed both targets.

Quigley stood behind me shaking his head. He gave a quick beginners lesson on how to balance my feet and gave me a better way to position my shotgun on my shoulder.

"And your eyes," he said.

"Yeah?" I responded.

"Try opening them."

What the hell? It had worked the last time.

As I proceeded to each successive station, my shots inched closer and closer to a target. Although I have to admit, I didn't particularly care if I ever hit a clay.

Learning to shoot was one thing. Learning to shoot under the tutelage of George Quigley was quite another. I was watching one of the best and from a very close range.

What was remarkable about George Quigley was the zen-like manner in which he zeroed in on his intended targets. I make jokes about me shooting with my eyes closed, but George's approach to shooting was just that. He didn't shoot with his eyes. He shot with feeling. He and the gun were one unit. He didn't need his eyes. He shot by pure instinct.

George Quigley hit 99 clays out of 100 on that hot summer day. His only miss

was a clay that was thrown from behind him. I swear that the shot went past my head as a warning that I better start trying harder. George said it didn't come anywhere near me. Just to make sure, I started paying closer attention (and standing closer to Lytle).

I feared that George had visions that the president of the National Sporting Clays Association was waiting for him in the pro shop. Being an ambassador of the sport is one thing. But encouraging someone like me to enter the sport was enough for the Association to ban him from competition.

Whether a result of George's stellar lessons or pure dumb luck, with a few stations left, I suddenly got the hang of it. He was right; you don't shoot with your eyes. It's all feel. Each time I hit a clay, Quigley would boldly declare "Dead Pair."

Suddenly with one station left, I found myself tied with Lytle's boss. I had the distinct possibility of not being the worst shooter in the match. Lytle glared at me.

His whole point of inviting me was to lose to his boss. Quigley, knowing why I had been invited, winked at me. I went 5 for 5.

Dead Pair!

On the death of John Lennon Originally published by the Daily Caller

Today marks the 30th anniversary of the death of John Lennon.

The mention of certain world events triggers memories of where you were when you heard the news. The attack on the World Trade Center twin towers on 9/11, the explosion of the Challenger on takeoff and the assignation of President John Kennedy all seem to elicit similar reactions for people of my age.

Yesterday, my mom told me how her family gathered around the radio on December 7, 1941 to hear the awful news that the United States naval fleet at Pearl Harbor had been attacked. Later, neighbors came to my grandparents’ house to listen as President Roosevelt asked Congress for a formal declaration of war against Japan.

Today, my son watched a news retrospective on Lennon and asked if I remembered hearing the news that John Lennon had been killed.

“Of course, I remember,” I told him. I explained in detail how I was in my first year of law school in 1980, studying for class and, like many others on that night, I had been watching Monday Night Football. As the Patriots prepared for a field goal, Howard Cosell and Frank Gifford announced that Lennon’s death had just come across the news wire.

When I had finished telling my son about the day the music died, I looked up with tears in my eyes to find that he had left the room five minutes earlier to play World of Warcraft.

Two things became apparent to me. First…

Crap, I’ve become my parents Technically, becoming my parents is not such a bad thing. Although there were certainly times during my teen years that I failed to recognize it, Robert and Imogene Robinson were pretty cool. I can live with being them.

What is odd about becoming my parents is that events which have happened during my adult life are now being dealt with in historical documentaries and retrospective newscasts. That was okay for my parents’ lives. However, watching television news clips about events that I remember makes me want to go outside and chase kids off my lawn.

Last year, I attended my nephew’s wedding in Dallas, Texas. Before I headed home, I went to Dealey Plaza. I watched as parents (and grandparents) walked

younger people around the grounds, pointing here and there, while describing the assignation of President John Kennedy on November 22, 1963.

Tour guiding a tragic event is not weird in and of itself. I was in New York this past summer with my oldest son and found myself doing just that with him at the Dakota and Strawberry Fields.

But in Dallas it’s different. There is an “X” on the street where, as the traffic lights operate to allow such activity, you can stand and look back at the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository. There is a marker behind a fence on the “Grassy Knoll” where conspiracy theorists hang their tin-foil lined hats.

And, if you don’t know what that reference means, just go there. There is someone at Dealey Plaza 24/7 lecturing on the Warren Commission and all of its misgivings. When the going gets weird, the weird go to Dealey Plaza.

While the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza is one of the better “event” museums I’ve ever toured, it added to the surreal feel of the whole experience.

There’s a gift shop where you can buy a Dealey Plaza Christmas ornament (no holiday green is complete without the Grassy Knoll hanging from it) and a replica of JFK’s presidential limousine. I left when I found the trivia cards advertising “brain food.”

As I left I noticed that there was a sign on the front door of the museum warning patrons that guns were prohibited. If only Lee Harvey Oswald had used that door in 1963…

But I digress to my second point, which is …

What will my kids tell their kids?

“Well kids I so well remember that fateful day. I was updating my Facebook status on my wristwatch hologram when I got a tweet from my bff that …”

For the most part, I suppose that its human nature to remember the big tragic events in history.

Personally, I remember where I was when I heard that the Berlin Wall was being torn down. Yet, I suspect that most baby boomers would have to search their memory banks for similar recollections.

How cool it would be if our kids could change the trend of tragic remembrance and speak fondly about where they were when they heard that a major international conflict was solved by politicians killing each other first…or that there was a cure for cancer.

Imagine.

Of liberty, special elections and bluegrass music … rembering Senator Robert C. Byrd Originally published in the Huntington News

The death of Senator Robert C. Byrd ends an era in the United States Congress.

The last of the old soldiers is gone.

One of the characters in my series of political thrillers is a young staffer in the United States Senate. The character is based upon a friend of mine who actually works on Capitol Hill.

The young staffer called me a year or so ago laughing so hard that he was almost unable to speak. It seems that he and several reporters had been standing just outside the Senate press gallery waiting for an elevator. When the doors opened up, there was Senator Bob Byrd. As Byrd was not one of the Members of Congress known to frequent the press room, the reporters stood shocked, not immediately moving to let the old warrior off the elevator.

Byrd lifted his cane and waved it wildly to clear a path. “Liberty coming through,” he shouted as he walked through the reporters who parted like the Red Sea. While the thought of Bob Byrd waving his cane to clear a path through a swarm of reporters was a fond remembrance I had when I learned that Byrd had died, his words have resonated with me over the last couple of days.

Liberty coming through The early debate over the replacement of Robert C. Byrd has centered around the timetable for Governor Joe Manchin’s announcement and the special election which will follow in 2012 (as opposed to this November). While most commentators have dropped the names being knocked around as the obvious choices to fill Byrd’s seat, few have analyzed the metrics the Governor should use to pick amongst those he is considering.

In fact, it would appear from the press coverage that the Governor’s only major concerns are a) appointing someone who will not challenge him in a special or general election and b) deciding whether he’d rather run himself at President Obama’s mid-term or re-elect.

If Governor Manchin would like to measure his candidates for appointment for US Senate with something more than the yardstick of his own political ambition, I would suggest that he look to the words of Senator Robert C. Byrd himself.

In a 2004 Baltimore Sun editorial entitled “Defending Liberty,” Byrd took on the George W. Bush White House for sending troops to Iraq. In closing is op-ed, Byrd wrote: “Each generation of Americans has the responsibility to renew the framer's legacy, and to make this nation shine as a lasting beacon of hope for the world. ‘Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.’ We must reacquaint ourselves with the Constitution and forge new links with our history. Congress must reinvigorate its defense of the people's liberties. Amid the sound and fury of election-year politics, all of us must take a long, hard look at the kind of country we want to leave to our children.”

If, in Byrd’s words, Governor Manchin should concern himself more with defense of the people’s liberties and less with his own career options. In the end, such a path might even lead the voters of West Virginia to support him regardless of whether he faced them in the year of President Obama’s mid-term or his re-elect.

A mountain fiddler’s last song In 1978 Robert Byrd played fiddle on a bluegrass album titled “Mountain Fiddler” with a couple of old boys from the great Country Gentleman. The album, which featured such bluegrass classics as “Turkey in the Straw” and “Cripple Creek,” will be re-released on CD later this year. For anyone under 25, an album was a vinyl disc that allowed your parents to listen to scratchy recordings of music on something other than an iPhone.

The closing song on Mountain Fiddler, “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” is a song that comforts us in a time of loss by reminding is “there’s a better world awaiting, in the sky, Lord, in the sky.”

Power grabs in the US Senate Originally published in One New England

Power.

It has many definitions. For purposes of the United States Senate, normally the definition involving the imposition of one’s will upon another is appropriate.

However, in the circumstances surrounding today’s Senate and the energy which some people are using to get there, the physics definition of power is far more appropriate.

Power is the rate at which work is performed or energy is transmitted, or the amount of energy required or expended for a given unit of time.

The power of (or the amount of energy being expended by) Caroline Kennedy, Raymond Burris and Al Franken to get to DC is more complicated than a college level physics equation.

The Palinization of Caroline Kennedy New England is a proper place. Even the rural sections of the region have a suitable air to them. The Northeast is the definition of all that is reserved.

All America has to do is hear the accent and a certain profile comes to mind. The New England accent expresses to the rest of the nation a certain conscience of eloquence that is characteristic no place else in the country.

Former Saturday Evening Post editor, Cleveland Armory, once said that “the New England conscience does not stop you from doing what you shouldn’t – it just stops you from enjoying it.”

Dignified. Proper.

Of course, say the word “Kennedy” and all that changes. Mention anything of Camelot and New Englanders start acting like a crazed bunch of Florida crackers at a panhandle Lynyrd Skynard concert.

So why has the region responded so coolly to the though of Caroline Kennedy serving in the United States Senate?

Many are turning on her because she didn’t turn out to be the proper New Englander everyone had hoped she would be. In a New Year’s Day editorial, Margery Egan over at the Boston Herald recanted her early support for Kennedy’s appointment in large part because of the pitiful interviews she has given to the press. In case you missed the coverage, in separate interviews with

the New York Times and the New York Daily News, Caroline said “you know” and “umm” more often than Uncle Teddy has ordered double-scotch on the rocks at Au Bar in Palm Beach.

Is it unfair that the opinion makers in the media are bashing Caroline Kennedy over these interviews?

Maybe.

But these are generally the same commentators who, following horrible interviews with Charlie Gibson and Katie Couric declared that Sarah Palin was unfit to serve as well.

If you were opposed to Sarah Palin, but support Caroline Kennedy, please diagram Caroline’s response to why she wants a free pass directly to the world’s greatest deliberative body: “Um, this is a fairly unique moment both in our, you know, in our country’s history, and, and in, in, you know, my own life, and um, you know, we are facing, you know, unbelievable challenges, our economy, you know.”

Is “um” and “you know” a direct object or a verb?

Too harsh? Alright then simply explain Caroline’s position on taxes: “Well, you know, that’s something, obviously, that, you know, in principle and in the campaign, you know, I think that, um, the tax cuts, you know.. .”

She sounds as bright as the girl from South Carolina in the Miss Teen America contest answering why most Americans could not locate the US on a world map.

Search it on YouTube, she and Caroline must have the same speech coach.

Sweet Caroline One gets the sense that there is something bigger at play than simply a bad couple of interviews ruffling the eloquent feathers of proper New England. There is something generational going on here.

Young people voted for Obama for change. Another Kennedy in power, simply put, is more of the same old politics which had them disenfranchised to begin with. A rich socialite anointed like royalty is not what the young Obama loyalists in New England turned out in record numbers to support. In fact, they supported Obama for reasons diametrically opposed to all that is Kennedy, Bush, and Clinton.

Those who are over 50 know that Neil Diamond wrote Sweet Caroline for the young daughter of a martyred president and revel in that fact. Those young liberals who elected Obama think he wrote it to get the Red Sox fired up in the final innings of a game at Fenway.

Which brings us to Illinois If New England has forgotten Camelot, Illinois can hardly any longer be called the Land of Lincoln.

After trying to sell the seat to the highest bidder, Governor Rod Blagojevich has appointed Rowland W. Burris to the United States Senate. This is not just any Senate seat. This is the seat being vacated by President-elect Obama himself.

Burris by all first-appearances seems to be a good man. He preceded Obama in being the first African American elected state-wide in Illinois. But the taint of being appointed by the evil man in the hair helmet has tarnished his reputation.

The Secretary of State in Illinois has refused to certify the appointment. The Supreme Court of Illinois has been asked to force the certification.

Then, on the first day of the session, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) blocked the chamber doors and refused to seat Burris as Illinois’ junior Senator.

And there’s the rub.

No one likes the circumstances. But, what right does the United States Senate have to disallow the seating of a person otherwise properly appointed under state law to serve. It is a dangerous precedent to allow the Federal Government to second-guess an issue of exclusive states’ rights. The last president from Illinois dealt with that issue.

The Congress has been grabbing up state powers for decades – the hideous kind of power, not the physics kind. The action which Harry Reid threatens is the ultimate federalization of an exclusive state right.

Seat the man.

The Chair recognizes the man from SNL! Memo to Minnesota’s Senator Norm Coleman: Dude, you got beat by Stuart Smalley. Who cares if he stole it following the actual vote. Let it go. You let Stuart Smalley contend.

Harry Reid has turned the Senate into a comedy show with his actions on the Burris appointment, Al Franken should excel in that environment. Either that, or

umm, seat, you know, appoint, umm, Caroline Kennedy, to the, umm, you know, Minnesota, umm Senate seat.

God’s speed Sen. Claiborne Pell While OneNewEngland was down over the holidays, six-term Rhode Island Senator Claiborne Pell has died at age 90. A lot was written about him over the last several weeks. He was a quirky man, but one of great principle. He was known to be one of the most polite men to ever walk the halls of the United States Senate. If you happened to have gone to school on a Pell Grant, say a prayer tonight to the man who made your education possible.

Merry Christmas Speaker Boehner Originally published in the Daily Caller

Like many, many Americans, I hate Christmas shopping. It’s not the crowds or searching for deals. No matter how hard I try, I always pick out the wrong gift.

Every year, my gifts seem to include CDs that my kids already have, and brands of scotch that my brother-in-law doesn’t drink. Several years ago, I gave my wife a chinchilla faux fur coat for Christmas. Her sister is the only one who has ever worn it.

This year, instead of handing out boxes wrapped in shiny foil paper (and the receipts for what’s in those boxes later), I’m giving everyone gift cards to nearly everyone near and dear to me. The only real gift I’m buying is for that one special person in my life who is always so hard to buy for … John Boehner.

For Speaker Boehner, I’ve picked up a couple of books for him to read over the holidays while he’s sitting around the beach working on his winter tan and preparing for the 2011 session..

Son of a Son of a Gambler by Don McNay As a kid, syndicated columnist Don McNay thought nothing about growing up in a family of professional gamblers. His father and grandfather kept their families in food and clothing via the rackets. No one, including McNay, thought less of them because of it.

After college, McNay abandoned the “family business” and became a respected financial planner. Some might say that he gambles with other people’s money, but he has a license to do so. Today, he is one of the nation’s best known consultants on structured settlements for injury victims and, interestingly enough, lottery winners McNay also writes an award winning syndicated column. His book Son of a Son of a Gambler is a collection of columns about gambling, legal and illegal.

My favorite column of McNay’s involves a phony dry cleaning business in Newport Kentucky that his father used as a headquarters for his various gambling operations. While still in high school, McNay was the manager of the front room dry cleaning operation. As the back room got much more traffic than the front, it wasn’t a tough job.

Occasionally, someone would wander into the store attempting to actually get some clothes dry cleaned. As manager of the store, McNay’s job was to take the

order and then find someone else to clean the garments. He calls it his first lesson in outsourcing.

For Speaker Boehner, Son of a Son of a Gambler is also about McNay’s insights into the stupid things lottery winners do with their new found riches, like spending it all on strippers and booze.

Speaker Boehner is sitting on the winnings of the world’s greatest lottery, America’s annual tax revenues. In the past Congress has annually spent those funds on the federal government equivalent of strippers and booze (ie, the mating habits of wooly worms).

America needs a structured settlement of our annual revenues. Boehner can use McNay’s lottery advice to keep his new majority from doing stupid things with our money come January.

The Identity Man by Andrew Klavan The second book I am going to give to Speaker Boehner is The Identity Man by Andrew Klavan. Speaker Boehner is going to really enjoy The Identity Man because Klavan puts a whole new twist on the time-honored literary topic of redemption.

In the book, petty thief John Shannon gets a second chance at life literally thrust upon him when a mysterious man kidnaps him and gives him an entirely new identity. How Shannon handles his forced redemption is tested by his own past (as well as by the fact that someone is trying to kill him).

Boehner needs to read this book very closely and identify with Klavan’s protagonist. When John Shannon gets his new identity, he is warned that he will be tempted to fall back to his old criminal ways. Part of the story line in The Identity Man is Shannon’s struggle to walk a straight and narrow path.

In this past election cycle, Tea Party voters are the not-so-mysterious people who have given Boehner his new identity. And, like John Shannon, temptation will follow him.

Speaker Boehner will likely be tempted on many occasions to fall back to the old free-spending days of Congress, the acquiescence of which got the GOP into trouble in the first place. Boehner’s story line will be whether he can force his new majority back to its core values on spending and fiscal responsibility.

Whether Boehner can lead the House Republicans to redemption, or whether they fall back to their old ways remains to be seen. Andrew Klavin’s The Identity Man teaches that the road to redemption, forced or freely accepted, is not easy.

Merry Christmas, Mr. Speaker. Enjoy The Identity Man and Son of a Son of a Gambler. Once you are done with both, put them on your book shelf. In two years you can re-read them (or leave them behind for your replacement).

I miss the good old days of political sex scandals Originally published in the Daily Caller

Remember the good old days when a political sex scandal involved real investigative reporting, slightly racy headlines and an eventual resignation in shame?

The story would break on a Monday with three confirmed sources for each allegation in the well-written article. The photographs that would accompany the initial story usually were of a politician covering his face with a newspaper or hat and a stock publicity photo of a local D.C. stripper.

After ignoring the story for a day in hopes that it would simply go away, the politician would release a written statement for publication on Wednesday apologizing to his family for his tawdry indiscretions and promising to be a better man. The press release would then quote the politician asking for the forgiveness of his constituents and declaring that it was time to move forward and finish the important laundry list of chores that he had been sent to Washington to accomplish.

The story on Thursday was usually all about the stripper. She would tell all about how she had been seeing the politician on a regular basis since he first walked into her K Street strip club three years prior. The only lewd detail that would be reported was that he wasn’t a good tipper.

On Friday, public reaction would be overwhelming, and the shamed politician would call a press conference. With his wife, family and minister by his side, he would tearfully announce his resignation.

The next Monday, everything in D.C. would be back to as normal as things can be inside the Beltway.

A few months later the cycle would start again with a new politician and a fresh stripper.

Ah, the good old says. Wilbur Mills, we hardly knew ye.

Where have all the strippers gone?

The politician of the modern-era sex scandal is like the same stupid jerk of yesterday that has let power go to his head. He is the 40-year-old virgin who has sipped the aphrodisiac of power and believes that he can get away with anything.

Instead of approaching strippers and prostitutes, however, today’s Internet-savvy politician apparently approaches random women via social networking.

Okay, Eliot Spitzer (D-NY) used a prostitute, but she was hot enough that it eventually got Spitzer a cable news show. The tens of viewers who have actually watched the show understand why Spitzer had to pay for sex.

The current dilemma of Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY) started with a photo and a tweet. One would think that the experiences of bare-chested Congressman Chris Lee (R-NY) looking for love in all the wrong places was sufficient warning to his colleagues on the Hill about shopping for love on the Internet.

Are there no strippers in New York? It appears that all these guys from New York can’t find strippers. I blame former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani (R-NY). If he hadn’t cleaned up Times Square, Spitzer, Weiner and Lee would have been able to just go to the city like normal politicians and laugh while reporters tried to find three confirmed sources that they were ever at a strip club.

Add your own wiener headline here The Weinergate story has been followed up in television and print by childish sophomoric humor related to Rep. Weiner’s phallic name. In order to get cheap laughs, late-night talk show hosts have sunk to the lowest common denominator of penis jokes.

Craig Ferguson was happy for the scandal because he could “Google ‘wiener photos’ and not get fired.”

Like most Ferguson fans, I was appalled … that I didn’t think of that one first.

The real heroes of Weinergate are the men and women of journalism who write headlines. They have not had this much fun since Tricky Dick was in the White House. “Weiner in Hot Water” and “Weiner Allows Wiggle Room” are Pulitzer Prize-winning prose for someone who has spent years writing obituary banners.

It’s late in the week and Weinergate has changed the life cycle of D.C. sex scandals. In the old days, resignation would be just around the corner. Yet, for some unknown reason, Rep. Weiner himself has decided to go on the offensive with a series of politically disastrous interviews that have highlighted his inability to properly identify his wiener.

The whole story was funny on Monday, tawdry on Tuesday, raunchy on Wednesday … and now, like a re-broadcast of Eliot Spitzer’s greatest television moments, I’m just bored.

Weiner needs staff advice from Tricky Dick Originally published in the Daily Caller

As if Anthony Weiner didn’t have enough problems in his life.

Within hours of Weiner announcing his resignation from Congress, Keith Olbermann blathered that he may hire Weiner for a talk show on Current TV. Current TV is the television network created by former-Vice President Al Gore to compete with Fox News. To say that the network has struggled would be an understatement. The corporate goal for Current TV in July is to close their ratings gap with the Home Shopping Network.

Last week, Olbermann was on the talk circuit promoting his new show on Current TV. On Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, Olbermann stated that he’d like to hire Anthony Weiner for the network’s 9:00 p.m. time-slot.

It is ironic for Olbermann to say that he wants to be on the same network as Anthony Weiner. Olbermann has made a career by being the top wiener on television. However, if Weiner is interested in personal redemption, Olbermann is not the name he needs to pull up on his speed dial.

Operator – I’d like the phone numbers for Chuck Colson and Jeb Stuart Magruder, please.

The political scandal upon which all future ones were to be judged was Watergate. The break-in and ensuing cover-up sent men to jail and caused President Richard Nixon to resign. Two of the Watergate conspirators who went to jail were Chuck Colson and Jeb Stuart Magruder.

Chuck Colson was a Special Counsel to the President and the first of the Nixon Administration to go to jail following a guilty plea for obstruction of justice. Prior to jail, Colson was a ruthless political hack that was commonly referred to as Nixon’s personal hatchet man. He authorized Nixon’s “Enemies List” and was said to be willing to walk over his own grandmother to re-elect the President.

After leaving the White House (but prior to pleading guilty) Colson read Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis and converted to Christianity. Despite being blasted in the press at the time, following prison, Colson has lived his convictions. He started a jail ministry and became a noted lecturer on the topic of ethics. His views on religion and ethics are as unwavering as had been his actions on behalf of President Nixon.

Chuck Colson’s thoughts on Anthony Weiner were expressed in a column he posted recently: “I suppose if any good is to come from the Weiner episode, it

may be that people can see where the me-centered, post-modern worldview leads us: To narcissism and to the therapist’s couch.”

Jeb Stuart Magruder, left the Nixon While House to become Deputy Director of the Committee to Re-Elect the President (“CREEP”) and met with G. Gordon Liddy over the Watergate break-ins and other covert CREEP operations. Liddy and Magruder both followed Colson to jail.

Post jail, Magruder ended his involvement in politics, earned a Master of Divinity and became an ordained Presbyterian minister. Over the years, he has spoken openly on Watergate and the lessons that others could learn from his own mistakes. Magruder’s demeanor is softer than Colson’s.

Magruder’s stint as a Presbyterian minister included leading a church in Lexington, Kentucky. It was while Magruder was the head of that church that I had the opportunity to have lunch with one of the more infamous and controversial names in Watergate history.

My lunch with Jeb Stuart Magruder (and what I suspect he might say to Anthony Weiner) In 1988, I was running in a Republican primary for a spot on the ballot to replace my old boss, Jim Bunning, in Kentucky’s Fourth Congressional District. During that time, I was having a moral crisis about spending so much time away from my family and asked a friend to set up a meeting with Magruder for some spiritual advice.

The meeting started by Rev. Magruder telling me that he didn’t “do politics” anymore and that he was only there for a few minutes. When Magruder found that the purpose of my visit was not to solicit campaign advice, his mood changed. What followed was a two hour lunch where Magruder advised me on the spiritual nature of political power.

For a time in 1973, as the Director of Richard Nixon’s inaugural, Magruder basked in the glow of being the top power broker Inside-the-Beltway. If a person wanted to be with the President on the night of the inaugural, they had to go through Magruder. His calls were taken and his messages were quickly returned.

Two months later, when Magruder began cooperating with Watergate prosecutors, he became persona non grata to those same people.

Reverend Jeb Magruder told me privately what he has said publically – that Nixon knew of the Watergate scheme prior to the break-in and that, at the time, he was mistakenly willing to do anything to protect the President and his agenda.

Magruder’s personal lessons for me were two-fold. First, he said, all power comes from God and a politician ignores this reality at his or her own peril. In 1973, Magruder believed he had power. Fourteen months later, his penance for such thoughts was a jail term which left him emotionally and financially bankrupt.

He said that upon his release from jail he understood that his only true assets in life were his family and his faith.

Secondly, even though I had gone to Magruder seeking answers in my life, he informed me that I would never find them. Only God knew the answers and He was not going to tell them to me in this life.

Magruder then instructed me that there were right questions. He said that as long as I kept asking the right questions, I could keep my political (and personal) life on the right track.

Maybe it’s just that simple Somewhere along the way, like so many Members of Congress from both parties, Anthony Weiner began to believe he had real power and quit asking questions based upon a basic understanding of right and wrong.

Before Anthony Weiner takes a call from Keith Olbermann, he needs to pick up the phone and call Rev. Magruder.

Chapter Four Purely Politics

Hello. My name is (insert your name here) and I am a political junkie Originally published in One New England

MEMO TO NEW ENGLAND: Lighten up and take it down a notch The Oak Hill General Store in Standish, Maine had a contest last week called the “Osama Obama Shotgun Pool.” Customers to the store were encouraged to put one dollar into a pool for when President-elect Obama would be assassinated.

The sign which had advertised the contest assured customers that “stabbings, shooting and road side bombs” all count in the pool.

Latest reports are that the sign is now gone and the store’s owner denies any knowledge of it (or the pool) ever existing. There is an internet call for a boycott of the Oak Hill General Store. There are less than 2,500 families in a city that encompasses some 85 square miles in southern Maine. So, there’s a good chance that people already boycott the store because they can’t find it to begin with.

Post election stress syndrome It’s hard to tell whether the wagering at the Oak Hill General Store is the result of some red-neck inspired hatred or an attempt at a post-election humor gone really, really bad. There is a fine line between Presidential humor and hatred.

Google “George Bush” and “pretzels” and you’ll find how many folks would have given a dollar to have had W’s life ended with a cheese covered soft pretzel.

The incident in Standish, Maine is a symptom of a much larger problem.

The fact of the matter is that New England is suffering from Post Election Stress Syndrome. That’s the name a shrink gives to it when their patient pays them on an hourly basis. Others simply call it withdrawal for political junkies Political junkies are easy to spot these days. They lay prone on their couches with drool coming out of one wilted corner of their mouth. Their glassy, bloodshot eyes stare at a television screen. The only sign of life in their bodies is the brisk movement of fingers on the remote control as they search frantically for one more campaign advertisement.

Sadly, no matter how diligently they search, they can not find a single scary voice warning them that America will go to hell if they vote for the wrong candidate.

They won’t admit it (not even to themselves), but they secretly long for the voice of just one candidate confirming that they approve a message…any voice…any message.

As the channel surfing continues, hands began to shake uncontrollably. Sweat pierces the brow as they babble incoherently about what might have happened if there was a tie in the Electoral College and the election had been thrown into the House of Representatives.

They will take anything to feed the campaign monkey they have on their back.

For God’s sake, they won’t leave their house for fear that they might miss the latest “BREAKING NEWS” about who will be named the Deputy Undersecretary of Tiddley Winks in the Obama administration.

New England is dealing with was the ugly post-election withdrawals of political addiction.

12 Steps to political health It’s time for people to get their political addiction under control. Bill W. didn’t have political junkies in mind when he came up with the 12 step program. But, if he were alive today, he’d welcome political junkies into his group with open arms.

Step 1 - Admit you are powerless over your addiction - that your life has become unmanageable A junkie cannot cure their political addiction until they admit to the problem.

Anyone who feels the need to explain to others why they choose between Keith Olbermann and Bill O’Reilly each evening at precisely 8:00 p.m. has an addiction.

Junkies crave political talk shows and the 24 hour news cycle. They’ll sell their spouse for a premium cable subscription which organizes all of the news channels in numerical sequential order. They don’t just want the POTUS channel on satellite radio. They need it like a crack addict needs another hit off the pipe.

If this describes you, your problem is more than simple Post Election Stress Syndrome. It cannot be solved by a simple trip to a shrink for a stiff dose of Zoloft. You have to admit that you’re an addict.

However, no one can make this admission for you. All addicts must first hit rock bottom. Each person has their own personal threshold. If you tune into Tyra Banks to form your world view, you’re close.

Step 2 - Come to believe that a Power greater than yourself can restore you to sanity No, we’re not talking about Chris Matthews.

Step 3 - Make a decision to turn your will and your life over to the care of God …or Glenn Beck.

Step 4 - Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of yourself A moral inventory is kind of like TiVo for the soul. Except, rather than copying the Sunday morning news shows for viewing during commercials breaks of the Patriots game, it’s to be done on one’s self.

New England is solidly blue. But, don’t let liberalism stop such a moral register.

Red state residents do it every day (usually to others rather than themselves – but we digress).

It’s okay for Junkies (even liberals) to admit to watching Fox News or listening to Rush Limbaugh.

Be fearless.

Step 5 - Admit to God, to yourself and to another human being the exact nature of your wrongs Come on. New England is Catholic and, thus, familiar with this whole concept of confession.

“Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. I pretended to be sick one Sunday when I stayed home to watch Meet the Press. I mean give me a break, Padre – Joe Biden was on. You never know what the hell he’s going to say on live television.”

Two Hail Marys…three at the most.

Step 6 - Be entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character Be ready for some tough love. God was not real happy about the whole Meet the Press thing.

Step 7 - Humbly ask God to remove your shortcomings This means giving up The View.

Step 8 - Make a list of all persons you have harmed, and become willing to make amends to them all

You probably need to apologize to your wife about missing your anniversary because Hannity and Colmes had a special report on that night. She can be reached through her lawyer.

Step 9 - Make direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others Or yourself… your wife was royally pissed over the Hannity and Colmes incident.

Consider a Protective Order in the final divorce decree.

Step 10 - Continue to take personal inventory and when you are wrong promptly admit it It’s going to be easy to fall off the wagon. Dr. Phil is not the answer. Don’t replace one bad habit with another.

Step 11 - Seek through prayer and meditation to improve your conscious contact with God, praying only for knowledge of God's will for you and the power to carry that out Taking God’s name in vein while swearing at George Stephanpoulos doesn’t count as prayer.

Step 12 - Have a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, try to carry this message to other addicts, and practice these principles in all your affairs All of this should take about 3 years. By then, the first Obama interim elections will be behind us. It will be just in time for the 2012 New Hampshire Republican Presidential Primary.

There’s a pool starting tomorrow at the Oak Hill General Store on the Republican nominee. Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal is at 5-1.

Rehab is for quitters.

W.W.B.G.D. (What Would Barry Goldwater Do?) Originally published in One New England

As a published author, I spend a lot of time doing radio interviews. It’s the election season and radio talk shows are looking for pundits to talk politics. And during this election cycle what could possibly be more fun than talking politics?

OK, don’t answer that question. It’s been two years since the first person declared his candidacy for the Presidency of the United States. This is the longest political campaign in history. Most people in New England are growing weary of the nightly barrage of political spin. But, I have fun doing it and it sells books.

Unfortunately, I’m not always right.

On a radio talk show a year ago I made a bold declaration on the outcome of the Democratic and Republican primaries. I told listeners in Manhattan, Kansas that Hillary Clinton could not lose and John McCain could not win.

I said I was a pundit. I didn’t say I was a good one.

But, with the fear that I might go out on an incorrect limb again, let me make a prediction on the outcome of the Presidential campaign.

Unless McCain changes paths - ITS OVER! There are fewer than three weeks left in the election. Both tickets are working to win the undecided voters who generally are those who consider themselves independent. Most things you hear and see over the final days of this race will be aimed at them.

Unless John McCain changes the path he is taking to try and get independent votes, the election is over. Tell the Obamas to start measuring the windows in the Oval Office for new curtains. McCain will lose. It’s over. He’s toast.

It is not so much that Barack Obama will win the election for President. Instead, McCain will lose it.

It has nothing to do with race. It has nothing to do with policy. Surprisingly, McCain’s impending loss has nothing to do with his choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate. The Governor did her job. She secured the Republican base. No one is really voting for Vice President anyway. Come on. Obama picked Joe Biden. You can put hair plugs on a pig, but he’s still Joe Biden.

No. McCain will lose this fall because he has voiced a message which has failed with the independent voter (and many other voters for that matter). For every new program Obama has proposed, McCain has proposed one which he declares will work better. Instead of speaking of ways to get government out of the life of its citizens, McCain has told us how his programs will make our lives better.

It is time for John McCain to remember the man from Arizona who he replaced in the United States Senate – Barry Goldwater.

Like McCain, Goldwater ran for President. In 1964, the country was still reeling from the assignation of John Kennedy and was not ready to listen to the message of limited government and personal freedom that Goldwater was preaching. It took a while, but the people eventually listened. Without Barry Goldwater, there would have never been a Ronald Reagan.

Reagan and Goldwater both had messages that captured the essence of today’s independent voter. In times like these, independent voters will be moved by the philosophy of Barry Goldwater conservatism.

Someone should manufacture one of those little rubber bracelets and print WWBGD on it. Give one to McCain and make him wear it until the election is over.

Just who was Barry Goldwater Barry Goldwater will forever be remembered for his quote at the 1964 Republican convention: “I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” What is often forgotten about that speech is the second portion of the quote: “And let me remind also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

Goldwater believed that politics was the art of achieving maximum freedom for the people. He believed that “throughout history, government has proved to be the chief instrument for thwarting man’s liberty.” Thus, he believed that politicians “first duty as public officials is to divest themselves of the power they have been given.”

The United States Constitution was the basis Goldwater used for restraining federal intervention. He believed that the Constitution created “a system of restraints against the natural tendencies of government to expand in the direction of absolutism.”

He opposed federal taxation, but understood that the government could not reduce them until it withdrew from a whole series of programs outside its constitutional mandate.

He disliked big government. “A government that is big enough to give you all you want is big enough to take it all away,” he declared.

He believed that welfare “transforms the individual from a dignified, industrious, self-reliant spiritual being into a dependent animal creature without his knowing it.”

The Tenth Amendment to the United States Constitution was reserved to the states all powers not otherwise provided for therein and should be enforced.

Many tie Goldwater to the neo-con movement in the Republican Party. He wasn’t a neo-con. In fact, he opposed many of the issues brought to the front pages by the neo-cons.

When President Bill Clinton instituted the “don’t ask/don’t tell” policy for gays in the military, Goldwater supported him. “You don’t have to be straight to be in the military. You just have to shoot straight,” he said. He added that the rights afforded Americans under the Constitution covered anything someone wanted to do as long as it was not harmful to others. “I can’t see any way in the world that being a gay can cause damage to someone else.”

For that he was a Christian, but opposed to the injection of Christianity into politics. Until the day he died, he fought the invocation of religion as a synonym for conservatism. For that, he was attacked by the religious right.

Rev. Jerry Falwell was interviewed about Goldwater support for pro-life Sandra Day O’Connor’s appointment to the United States Supreme Court. Of Goldwater’s support, Falwell said that “every good Christian should be concerned.” When told of the statement, Goldwater replied, “I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.”

Statements like that usually caused a stir around the Republican cloak room and established Goldwater as the original maverick from Arizona.

The comeback speech With less than three weeks left to go in the campaign, the press is reporting that John McCain is writing his come back speech.

Well, it is time for such a speech. In order to be successful, however, McCain must change his message from “I can run big government better than Obama” to the Goldwater approach of fierce resistance to government growth.

In his classic book on government, Conscience of a Conservative, Barry Goldwater took a stab at being a speech writer.

“It will come when Americans, in hundreds of communities throughout the nation, decide to put a man in office who is pledged to enforce the Constitution and restore the Republic. Who will proclaim in a campaign speech: I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or have failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is ‘needed’ before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents’ ‘interests,’ I shall reply that I was informed their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can.”

That’s what an old Arizona maverick would do.

Weekend reading for the Super Committee Originally published in the Daily Caller

I was wandering through a used bookstore last weekend when I found a diamond in the rough — an original edition of Barry Goldwater’s 1976 classic The Coming Breakpoint.

I had read Breakpoint in college and, as I thumbed through the pages, I vaguely recalled Goldwater’s basic thesis that an expanding federal bureaucracy was becoming the main threat to American liberty. The inside flap on the dust jacket reflects Goldwater’s warning to “the American people that we have come to a crossroads” and offers a doomsday prophecy that if the government is left to its own devices, “the glory that is America may go the way of the glory that was Rome.”

I bought Breakpoint and re-read it in one sitting, highlighting passages and making notes in the margins. Amazingly, back in the year of our bicentennial, Goldwater succinctly described the main issue going into the 2012 presidential election.

“In short,” Goldwater writes, “I am plagued with wondering whether the few can provide for the many. Now, if we say they can, we are saying that the money produced by a decreasing percentage of our population is supporting an increasing percentage of the population. If this could happen to any degree, then where is the breakline? In other words, at what point do we find that the social order can no longer change solely as the result of an expenditure of money? Or, if we admit that the social order has not changed in geometric proportion or even in direct proportion to the expenditure of money, when does the whole structure break down?”

America is long past the point where money produces a proportionate change in the social order. The coming breakpoint is here.

The courage to say no I wish I could have found additional copies of The Coming Breakpoint at the store. I would have had them shipped directly to the Joint Select Committee on Deficit Reduction for its members’ reading enjoyment during the Labor Day recess.

Back in 1976, Barry Goldwater was seemingly writing about the so-called Super Committee and what it would be called upon to do. “I must say it is difficult for me to assess the reasons why the American people — blessed as they have been with liberty and the idea that liberty and freedom are gifts from God — have

permitted the concentration of power and the restraints it places on individual action,” he wrote.

Goldwater pointed out that the problem with entitlements is that they have given “the money manipulators of Washington an almost life-and-death power over millions of Americans.”

Goldwater predicted that, under the weight of the ever-expanding bureaucracy of federal programs, “the average American wage earner and property holder will suffocate under the centralized power that our founders made such efforts to prevent.”

Goldwater understood politics. He knew that stopping the advancement of government into our lives would not be easy. And on that point, he offered some basic advice that the Super Committee should heed: You need to have the courage to say no. “If the courage to say NO is not in these places,” he said of Social Security reform, “then we are saying NO to a continuation of our strength, which has historically been our freedom.”

Spending is nuts When I finished writing the first two sections of this column, my colleague Paul Alley made a fair assessment. He suggested that a) no one in Congress remembers Barry Goldwater and b) no one on the Super Committee has the time to find, let alone read, The Coming Breakpoint.

Fair enough, but I bet they have enough time to watch a five-minute video.

Power Line, a conservative blog, recently sponsored a competition challenging its readers to submit videos that convey their concerns about the national debt.

The winner was Justin Folk’s “The Spending is Nuts.” In the video, Folk explains the federal debt crisis in a cartoon allegory using squirrels and nuts. He won the $100,000 prize for his efforts.

Folk’s video is about what happens when squirrels start borrowing nuts rather than gathering them on their own. The message is delivered so simply that even members of Congress might comprehend it.

Folk admits to being a Goldwater fan. He acknowledges that AuH2O’s principles come through in the video, “because [Goldwater] articulated the founding fathers’ concerns regarding the dangers of expanding federal power.”

Goldwater said that members of Congress need to have the courage to say NO. Folk encourages them to have the nuts.

According to a recent headline in The Los Angeles Times, the national debt is growing at a rate of $3 million per minute. That means that, in the short time it takes to watch “The Spending is Nuts,” the debt will increase by about $15 million. Even if you use expensive Hawaiian macadamia nuts (in honor of our president’s birthplace), that’s about 2.4 billion nuts — a lot more than this nation can swallow.

Who is controlling the message at the White House?

Originally published in the Daily Caller

What’s the message this week?

Anyone who has worked in any sort of political operation has heard that question and knows the drill. Someone who is up on the campaign’s polling data picks an issue likely to move voters and then builds a theme of media around it for the entire week.

I once did some advance work for a Vice Presidential candidate during the week that small business was the topic du jour. The candidate made stops at familyowned businesses where he would be surrounded by smiling non-union workers who owed their livelihood to these defenders of free-enterprise who employed them.

While the candidate was talking about policies that would enhance and enrich the lives of small business owners and their employees, talking points were distributed throughout the nation so that every elected official supporting the ticket would be on the same page.

The message of the week and the political operation behind it is Politics 101.

As Robert Gibbs took the podium each day this week in the White House Press Room he nearly frothed at the mouth complaining about the efforts of the United States Chamber of Commerce in this year’s political cycle. Vice President Biden was frothing too, but as usual, no one was really paying attention.

The question many are asking is “Why?”

When you have no message attack the messenger The Obama political operation has shown repeatedly that it is inept at crafting the message of the week. Robert Gibbs’ and Joe Biden’s full frontal assault on the Chamber of Commerce is just the latest example.

For decades, Republicans have been critical of business and how business leaders handle their political involvement.

With only a few exceptions, unions back Democrats. Business, on the other hand, often cites concerns about access on the Hill and backs incumbents regardless of party affiliation.

Unions have made ideological decisions on whom to support. Business tends to have made, well, business decisions.

The business access model of political support has led to all kinds of weird political contributions, such as House Banking Committee Barney Frank getting huge sums from banks and insurance companies.

During this cycle, however, the United States Chamber of Commerce has decided to change the game. Tossing the access model of support to the wind, the Chamber has adopted the union approach to politics and has decided to only support pro-business candidates.

Unable to combat the message, the Obama Administration sent out it’s minions to attack the messenger. That’s not a smart formula when the messenger is a couple of million businesses, 96% of which employ 100 people or less, who were pissed about the access model to begin with.

What the Chamber has discovered is that the only problem its members have with their efforts is that it didn’t happen sooner.

Forget that one fact checking organizations has said the Obama/Biden/Gibbs attack on the Chamber is “a claim with little basis in fact” or that several journalists have called the effort “McCarthyesque.” Politically, the message this week was just plain stupid.

The Obama White House has done what the Republicans could not, solidified business strictly behind pro-business candidates.

Fire Gibbs. Hire Groucho.

Apparently, the message of the week at the Obama White House is being controlled by the Marx Brothers.

In the classic Marx Brothers’ movie, Duck Soup, the nation of Freedonia is bankrupt and needs a loan from a wealthy widow to survive. The widow will only give Freedonia the money if Rufus T. Firefly (Groucho) is anointed the nation’s leader (insert your own joke about China here – my editor gives me a word limit) Groucho enters the Obama Oval Office with Chico and Harpo by his side. “What do we talk about this week?” asks the President. “Taxes?”

Joe Biden, played by Chico Marx, leans forward. “Hey, I gotta uncle that lives in Taxes.”

The President slaps his forehead. “No, we’re talking about taxes, money, dollars.”

“That’s a where he’s a from Dollars, Taxes,” interjects Biden.

Robert Gibbs, dressed as Harpo Marx enters the room honking a horn attached to his belt and whistling. He pulls a chamber pot from his oversized raincoat.

“Wait a minute,” says Groucho pacing quickly back and forth while smoking a cigar. “He’s onto something. Our message of the week is the Chamber. We’ll attack 3 million business men and women.”

“But that makes no sense,” says Obama.

“Precisely,” replies Groucho.

“Good. Then let’s go with it.”

Tea Party versus GOP Establishment – civil war or family feud Originally published in the Daily Caller

With the holidays quickly approaching, family traditions start to fill our calendars.

Trips to the mall to deliver gift lists to Santa, digging decorations out of the basement and planning the family dinner are all about to become top priorities.

For my family, nothing matches our tradition of the annual viewing of National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. After both Thanksgiving and Christmas, we head over to my sister’s house and sit around watching the exploits of Clark Griswold as he tries to rekindle childhood memories by attempting to plan the perfect holiday gathering.

My kids have seen Christmas Vacation so many times, they know all of the lines.

My oldest sister backs up the DVD so often to re-watch her favorite scenes that watching the movie usually takes up the entire evening.

Christmas Vacation is such a great movie because so many of us have attended that family gathering, which eventually turned out to be a complete and total social disaster.

Tea Partiers as the angry uncle Much is being written these days about the Tea Party’s entry into GOP politics and how “establishment Republicans” are reacting to them. Liberal pundits are calling the dust up an open “civil war.” In reality, it’s more like dinner at the Griswold’s house.

Picture the establishment Republicans sitting, as they have for years, ready to devour the annual holiday feast. Meaningless but courteous talk encircles the table. No one asks why some family members are never invited.

Suddenly, in storms the Tea Party like the uninvited angry uncle with a drinking problem. Polite dinner conversations cease as he unearths family skeletons which have been long buried or ignored.

Initially, all avoid eye contact with Uncle Abe. He’s pointing his finger and calling everyone bad names like RINO (although it is quite possible that he himself would not know a rhino if one actually stuck its horn up his butt).

After a while, some around the table decide to ignore the angry man. Others try to argue or reason with him. The in-laws disappear into the basement to watch football.

The night ends with nerves frayed, feelings hurt and all left to ponder those family secrets that make Uncle Abe mad to begin with. But you’re all family. This has happened before and it will likely happen again.

Time to get a divorce from Murkowski and Crist The entry of Tea Party activists into Republican politics is not a declaration of civil war. It is a family feud.

For the establishment Republicans, the Tea Partiers are the uninvited guests who are forcing them to deal with the fact that the decisions they have made in the past may be part of the problem, not the solution. It’s up to the GOP family to work this out, and we do so via primary elections. Those are over now.

The candidates who are out running third-party or write-in campaigns are like the in-laws who have left the family table to go down in the basement to do their own thing. They may have the same last name, but they are not related by blood. And it shows when they flip off the family and head for the recliner in the rec room.

Candidates like Lisa Murkowski in Alaska and Charlie Crist in Florida turn out to be interlopers into the GOP. They are the in-laws who have married into the family for the prestige of the family name, but then refuse to abide by family decisions.

Arrogant politicians who value their own opinions more than their constituents’ are the ones who got the Tea Partiers riled up in the first place.

The voters need to explain to Murkowski and Crist that the decisions made at the family table, like ’em or not, are final. If they are going to get up and leave the table whenever the discussion doesn’t suit them, they aren’t really part of the family. Maybe they are not the kind of people we thought, or hoped, they were. If the relationship ends in divorce, well, worse things have happened.

Murkowski and Crist, as a result of their own self-interested conduct, are no longer welcome at the family table. Just in time for the holidays, let’s send them on a permanent vacation.

Why Rand Paul Won (and Christine O’Donnell Lost) Originally published in the Daily Caller

Last week, while recovering from surgery, I pulled out my copy of The Federalist Papers and started reading.

As I skipped around the various articles, I was reminded of two things. First, the eighty-five articles written by Alexander Hamilton, James Madison and John Jay under the single pseudonym of Pablius are most brilliant, deep, and thoughtful commentary every written about American government.

Secondly, and far more importantly for me last week, The Federalist Papers were definitely not meant to be read while taking narcotic level pain killers. While reading Madison’s Article 14 on Representative Democracy the letters all appeared to dance around the page like dead-heads at a Phish concert.

I put the book away and turned on cable television. It was interesting to me that drugs made The Federalist Papers incomprehensible, but Keith Olbermann tolerable (although it occurred to me when the drugs wore off every six hours or so that Keith wasn’t intentionally trying to make me giggle incoherently).

Tuesday night, as I sat and watched election returns come in I went back to review Madison’s writings on representative democracy. Madison had a vision that, under the federal government, issues of the country would be debated “by a chosen body of citizens, whose wisdom may best discern the true interests of their country, and whose patriotism and love of justice will be least likely to sacrifice it to temporary considerations.”

If Madison had been a stand-up comic, you could almost hear the pregnant pause occur before he wrote: “On the other hand, the effect may be inverted.”

Madison’s “or not” comment is illustrative of the anger displayed at the ballot box this week. Those who voted to throw the bums out believe that today’s politicians have inverted their own personal interests with the true interests of the country.

Why Rand Paul Won A couple of weeks ago I assisted in preparing Kentucky Senator-elect Rand Paul for his first campaign debate. Prior to the prep session, I had only met Dr. Paul briefly at a social event. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect at this second meeting. But I wanted to spend this time with him in order to look into his eyes and see what made him tick.

I came away from the debate prep genuinely liking Rand Paul. He is not any of the labels placed upon him by his opponents. He is not a racist. He doesn’t hate old people or dogs (yes, dogs were an issue at one point). He’s not a college professor-type or a know-it-all.

Thoughtful beyond the normal party-generated talking points of used by other pols, Rand Paul is, what we call in politics, a true believer. He is someone who believes that he will, in the words of Madison, use his wisdom in the best interests of this country and will not be swayed by temporary considerations.

The passion for his beliefs was often what got Rand Paul into hot water. Paul doesn’t speak in made for television sound bites and likes to actually explain his answers to questions. This open discussion of issues was refreshing for Tea Partiers, but a Wes Craven level nightmare for Paul’s handlers.

Rand Paul won the debate, but not because of anything anyone told him in debate prep. He won the debate (and the election for that matter) because he spoke his mind openly, frankly, and without any though of how his campaign staff would react. He said what he believed and left the election in the hands of the voters.

In a year of people believing in their cause, Ran Paul was the ultimate true believer.

Why Christine O’Donnell Lost I make the following statements with the proviso that I’ve never met Christine O’Donnell. I am sure that she is a nice, well-meaning person, but we don’t hang around in the same covens.

Unlike Rand Paul, however, Christine O’Donnell never struck me as a true believer. Several of my colleagues who are Tea Party regulars refer to O’Donnell a “poser.”

Ran Paul believes in well thought out principles which drew Tea Party voters to his campaign. Christine O’Donnell never gave voters the same confidence of her convictions. She gave the impression that she believed that the Tea Party principles were her only path to election.

As they move forward, the challenge of the Tea Party is to find more Rand Pauls.

After I finished reading several Articles on Tuesday night, I put The Federalist Papers back on my book shelf, knowing that I will probably pull it down in two years. I’ve marked all of the good places with left over pain killers.

Invest in Jagermeister Originally published in the Daily Caller

TO: Tucker FR: Rick Re: State of the Union Date: January 25, 2011

My daughter said that you called and left a message that you had a very important pending engagement which would keep you from watching Obama’s State of the Union speech. I was more than happy to assist and take notes. Hope that your night was a success and that you scored big in the beer frame.

By the way, I trust that you remember my friends Paul, Dave, Jeff and Pat from last year’s NRA Dinner. They all dropped by my house to watch the speech and play the “SOTU Shot Game.” Every time Obama said “investment” we had to toss back a shot of Jagermeister. Jeff doesn’t drink, but promised to drive everyone home. Anyway, glad to help out. Here are my notes. _________________ 9:00 p.m. – Speaker John Boehner introduces President Obama. House and Senate leaders give Boehner a three minute standing ovation for not crying.

9:05 p.m. – Obama begins the substance of his speech by asking Congress to cooperate with him just like they did back in December when they agreed to make tax cuts that allowed businesses to write off investment… Back in a second, Pat is pouring shots.

9:06 – Obama announces that we’ve broken the back of the recession which draws a huge response from a bunch of people in the chamber who have jobs.

9:07 – China is investing in … Dave says we shouldn’t do a shot to China. Paul disagrees and says that Obama toasted them at the WH last week, we should too. Pat pours another round.

9:10 – American needs to prosper. America needs to innovate and out build everyone. The President is going to tell us how Congress can to vote us to prosperity. Business needs to invest in research…hold on…Pat line ‘em up.

9:11 – the President calls on America for to experience it’s “Sputnik moment” and announces that he’s going to launch Biden into orbit like a Russian space monkey. There is five minute standing ovation. Pat offers to invest. The rest of us drink shots.

9:16 – the President calls for investment in bio-medical research, which will be an investment to strengthen our security… rules decision as to whether the declaration calls for a double-shot. Dave is afraid we’ll run out of Jager, so Pat pours just one.

9:18 – Obama declares fossil fuel to be a thing of the past and says we should raise gas prices to pay for development of wind turbines automobiles as an investment in tomorrow’s energy…another round.

9:20 – there was some monologue about education. I might be a little drunk but I think he said that many illegal immigrants grew up as Americans.

9:25 – now he wants Congress to re-double its efforts to get faster trains or faster internet, not quite sure which. Never mind, its both. All these investments... Dave takes a shot. Paul hurles. He’s out of the drinking game but still has a shot at the Boehner crying pool.

9:26 – Simplify the tax Code and make it more simple than the last time we made it more simple, allowing us to invest. … more shots.

9:27 – it went by pretty quickly, but I think he just said the words “health care.”

9:30 – I missed a big portion of the speech here because Keith Olbermann came to my door asking if I wanted to buy any commentary. I sicked the dogs on him. I had to catch up on a couple of shots when I got back. Apparently, Obama offered to protect seniors with a couple of guys named Vinny and Knuckles.

9:48 – Boehner still not crying. My chance in winning the pool is done.

9:49 – all executive branch functions will be reorganized under one Czar and will meet on a weekly conference call every other Thursday.

9:50 – like most Members of Congress in attendance, I am starting to lose interest. Obama threatens to veto any bill with earmarks in them which are not investments. Pat is sick Dave is passed out and Jeff has taken Paul home. I pour myself a shot.

9:55 – We’ll stand with the people of Tunisia gets a standing ovation. Biden asks Boehner if Tunisia is a BFD. 10:07 – President talks about Speaker Boehner sweeping up floors in his dad’s bar in Cincinnati, reached behind the podium and shakes Boehner’s hand. I think that makes you the winner of the Boehner Crying Pool. I’ll send you my fiver tomorrow.

BTW, after the speech was over some cheese head from Wisconsin who looks like Doogie Howser issues the GOP response. He wrote a report on it called the Roadmap to Boredom

Weak tea in Kentucky Originally published in the Daily Caller

This week’s primary election in Kentucky produced all of the excitement of a three hour Joe Biden dissertation on nuclear non-proliferation. And, while there may be some comic value to hearing Biden’s speak for any length of time, yesterday’s poll results in the Commonwealth should be no laughing matter for Tea Party faithful.

Only one year ago, Senator Rand Paul (KY-R) rolled to victory in the bluegrass state on a tidal wave of Tea Party brewed enthusiasm. Paul’s election was marked by streets lined with yard signs and mail boxes filled to capacity with campaign flyers. Voters who would usually be considered outside the universe of regular primary participants flocked to the polls in record numbers.

This past week, it was deadly quiet in Kentucky. Only a few fliers landed in homes. “For Sale” signs out numbered campaign signs. A casual observer driving through Kentucky would have been hard pressed to determine that an election was even on the horizon.

The lack of candidate activity was reflected in the final vote tally. The 9% turnout in Kentucky’s GOP primary reflects the apathy that was present in the state prior to last year’s electoral Rand-slide.

If Tuesday had been the Kentucky Derby, the recap of the race for the horse named “Tea Party” would state – failed to rally.

What happened?

The Kentucky Republican primary was a three-way affair. The leader of the Kentucky Senate, David Williams, paired up with the Commissioner of Agriculture (and University of Kentucky basketball legend) Richie Farmer. The Tea Party got behind Louisville businessman Phil Moffett. Jefferson County Clerk Bobbie Holsclaw, who is a former aid to Senator Bob Dole, rounded out the field.

Williams ran a traditional campaign, bus touring the state while taking full advantage of his running mate’s legendary hoops status. They raised lots of money, sent out direct mail and went up on television. Williams might be the best stump speaker in America and he uses his talents well.

The folks who had started Ran Paul mania got behind Phil Moffett early, but that is where Moffett’s similarities with Kentucky’s junior Senator ended. His campaign never really caught fire.

Moffett had a pleasant personality – a fresh face with business experience and new ideas. He would be a great dinner guest.

Unfortunately for the campaign, Phil Moffett did not have the political zip of Rand Paul. You had to search hard to find the name of his running mate on the campaign web site.

Money did not flow and the campaign never gathered sufficient grass-roots momentum to make a move. The turnout numbers tell the story. Those who identify themselves as Tea Partier either voted for the establishment Republican, or more likely than not, stayed home.

Holsclaw and Moffett combined to keep the Williams-Farmer ticket under 50%, but there are no moral victories in politics. There are only winners and losers. On Tuesday, the establishment candidate won and the Tea Party candidate lost.

The Tea Party needs a Karl Rove Those active in the Tea Party will not like hearing this, but they need to better understand the mechanics of politics. An organized party is against everything in the movement’s wheel house. The results in Kentucky indicate how quickly the political landscape can change.

Last year, many in the Tea Party chastised Karl Rove over his comments about the electability of candidates like Christine O’Donnell. They let their distaste of politics and those who make a living at it stand in the way of campaign reality.

Today they refuse to admit that Rove was right. They are probably appalled to think that they need people like him to win.

Rand Paul “got it” last year. After winning the primary, Paul shed his initial campaign team and put together a group of seasoned political professionals who understood the mechanics of winning a fall election. There was quite a bit of friction between the hired guns and the volunteers. Paul knew he needed both and made it work.

Team Paul raised money and pushed voters to the poll on a strong message and grass roots organization. He ran a real campaign.

Good ideas are fine for think tank panel debates and crafting white papers. Good ideas don’t win campaigns. Guys like Karl Rove do.

The short window for mea culpa action Originally published in the Daily Caller

The landscape of American political thought often leaves elected officials with short time frames for “mea culpa” action which will be forgiven by our electorate.

In 1987, following the failure of the nomination Robert Bork, President Ronal Reagan nominated Judge Douglas H. Ginsburg for the United States Supreme Court. A former law professor at Harvard and a member of the Reagan Administration, Ginsburg seemed to be the perfect nominee.

Following his nomination, Nina Totenberg of National Public Radio revealed that Ginsburg had smoked marijuana during his college days. A student then came forward and alleged that Ginsburg smoked pot while he was teaching at Harvard.

The nomination was fried quicker than Charley Sheen on a three day bender.

When Douglas Ginsburg gave up his quest for the Supreme Court, something strange happened. Politicians who had also committed the previously unforgivable sin of smoking pot saw an opening. They determined that they could also admit to drug usage and the voters would forgive them too.

The political confessional was suddenly open for business.

In the days following Ginsburg’s revelation, the well of the House of Representatives resembled an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting as Members lined up to tell their stories of youthful indiscretion. People shamefully admitted that they had “experimented” with marijuana in their college days.

The voters made Al Gore and Newt Gingrich do ten Hail Marys and promise to clean out their bong after every use.

Current Members of Congress should take note that the political confessional is back in business. This moment in history offers politicians a similar short time frame for “mea culpa” action.

This time we need to admit we smoked entitlements Prior to this year, uttering anything about entitlement reform has been a death knell for politicians. There has been no quicker path to un-election than telling voters that entitlements are broke and in need of serious structural overhaul.

A plethora of events have contributed to the change in the environment and made this year different.

Watching the governments of the Arab world unravel in a swirl of camel driven protests has made all Americans aware that people, not governments, are the key to self determination. Governments are fragile and can fall.

The scenes on the nightly news seem to have been underscored by footage of union members storming the capitols in Wisconsin and Ohio demanding that their respective legislatures vote everyone wealthy.

Everyday the governors stand strong, more people seem to understand the simple fact that government is broke. The budget battle has hit home with a bunch of folks who don’t have the income to pay $3.94 for a gallon of gasoline.

In the midst of all these stories, New Jersey governor Chris Christie spoke of entitlement reform and no one called for his head. Kentucky Senator Rand Paul’s statements regarding means testing for Social Security recipients has people nodding affirmatively.

Americans don’t like the thought, but they are coming to realize that we cannot get the budget under control until we tackle entitlements. And, apparently, now is the time for action.

Every time politicians talk about Social Security they say, “No one over 55 will be affected.”

I turn 53 on Saturday – two years short of the magic number. But, if you fix the budget for my kids at my expense, I’ll forgive you.

For Portman, Fisher’s negative is a positive Originally published in the Daily Caller

In 1986, when Jim Bunning was running his first race for United States Congress, his general consultant was Lee Atwater. The race was for an open seat in Kentucky against a popular Democratic state legislator, who had some baggage.

Bunning was a former State Senator and a retired professional baseball player with a Hall of Fame career.

On the pitcher’s mound, Bunning had been known for his rough and tumble demeanor. If a batter leaned in a bit too far over the plate, Bunning was not shy at brushing him back. When he retired, Bunning was baseball’s all-time leader for hitting batters. Bunning carried his competitive nature into politics. In this first race, he wanted to throw high-and-tight at his opponents head.

Lee Atwater had a very simple philosophy about going negative in a campaign.

While attack ads were necessary to a campaign, Atwater knew that they had a detrimental effect on the candidate who was airing them. Atwater would not take any campaign negative until the candidate had earned enough positive name identification to survive the whipsaw polling effect.

Like a pitcher waiting for a sign from his catcher, Bunning waited for the signal from Atwater. And, when Bunning’s positive name identification reached a high enough number, Atwater gave the go-ahead. Bunning hit his opponent hard, won the race and never looked back.

Going negative in Ohio’s race for Senate Today, it seems, campaigns do not follow the Atwater school of negative campaigning. Negative spots are pushed on the air at the same time the campaign is trying to construct its own candidate’s public image. Often, a campaign will even lead off its efforts with a negative ad.

The case of Democrat Lee Fisher in Ohio’s race for United States Senate is a perfect example of this illogical political phenomenon. Fisher is Ohio’s Lt. Governor. Like most people who sit second-chair in state government, no one knows him. It’s likely that fewer Ohioans know Lee Fisher’s name than know the name of Ohio’s official state amphibian.

Fisher’s opponent is Rob Portman, a Republican with a political resume custommade for a race in 2010. He served in Congress from southern Ohio (where his family and their business are well known and respected) and worked for a law firm in Cleveland.

Portman’s two cabinet-level positions under President George W. Bush play very well to various factions in Ohio’s GOP base. The old party faithful know that, because Portman was Bush’s Trade Representatives, he understands world economies. Tea Partiers should be giddy overt the fact that, as Bush’s Secretary of OMB, Portman submitted a budget to the Hill that contained a workable roadmap to a balanced budget which could have been attained in five years.

Polling numbers confirm Portman’s upbeat public image.

All political logic would indicate that the Fisher campaign would build name identification with Ohio voters before hitting at Portman. Nope. Fisher’s first ad of the general election campaign blames recent job losses in Ohio personally on Portman. The ad is poorly produced and being run in limited areas. The campaign has admitted that it does not have enough money to keep it on the air through election day.

When blaming Bush is a lie Fisher’s attack on Portman is not surprising. Blaming Bush has been the only consistent message coming out of the Obama While House for nearly two years.

Portman is squeaky clean and trying to link him to Bush via trade policy may be all Fisher has to offer for a negative spot.

But Fisher needs name identification and the only time his name is even mentioned in his jobs ad is when he formally “approves this message.” And Fisher shouldn’t have even approved it. According to Ohio newspapers reviewing it, the ad is misleading.

The reality is that jobs have been lost in Ohio. But according to labor statistics, those jobs haven’t gone overseas. Ohio’s job loss has been to surrounding states. Keeping jobs from leaking to other states was Lee Fisher’s number one responsibility when he was Ohio’s economic development director. Yet, Ohio suffered its greatest job losses during Fisher’s tenure as the state’s economic chief.

Now, instead of using what little funds the campaign had on hand to build Fisher’s name recognition, they are stuck with a television ad which is getting limited air play. Newspapers are calling it a lie. No wonder Fisher is burning through campaign staff at a record pace. If any more of Lee Fisher’s campaign staff “go missing,” someone will start placing their pictures on milk cartons.

The base Democratic voter in Ohio is left with the election day choice of: a) staying home, b) nervously voting for Fisher, or c) writing-in for a spotted salamander (Ohio’s official state amphibian).

McHate crimes Originally published in the Daily Caller

The “gone viral” video showing the brutal beating of transgender woman at a McDonalds in Maryland has caused the uncomfortable issue of hate crime legislation to once again raise its head.

Videos go viral for several reasons and this one has done so for all the wrong reasons. For anyone that hasn’t seen this particular clip yet, don’t watch it unless you want to be disturbed on several levels. Stick to laughing babies and music videos.

The video shows a sick and viscous attack on a young 22 year old transgender female by two other females outside a restroom of a McDonalds’ store in the Baltimore area. McDonalds has fired the employee who chose to laugh and take pictures on a cell camera instead of interceding in the beating.

While the actual incident which triggered this sick act is, at this point, speculation.

It has apparently been established that sexual orientation of the victim played a role.

It has been reported that Maryland authorities may file hate crimes charges against the two women involved, one of whom sadly is a juvenile.

Good for them. It’s time for prosecutors to double-down on people who act with such blatant disregard to human decency. Charge them with hate crimes, battery, contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Charge them with having burned out turn signals if they think it will land them a longer sentence.

This incident, however, poses a larger question for both sides on the topic of hate crimes.

“Hate crimes” pose philosophical problems for both the left and the right Hate crimes legislation have always posed a conundrum with both sides of the political spectrum who are collective appalled by acts like those that were captured on video this week in Baltimore.

The right has generally been opposed hate crime legislation on the premise that intent should not be a factor in deciding whether an act is illegal. Bad acts are bad acts, regardless of the intent of the actor. Opponents to hate crimes legislation argue that violent crime is bad. The motivation behind the violence should not be a factor. Punish the criminals and be done with them.

The right has a point. I would not consider the beating of the young woman any less vulgar and horrendous if it had not been motivated by some latent or patent homophobia. Earlier this month, a man was killed at a McDonalds in London England after he broke up a fight there. There was no video. There was no hate involved. But the act is just as appalling.

If the right has problems with hate crimes, the left often becomes just as perplexed when discussing the issue to its eventual logical conclusion. That is, the people on the left who support hate crimes are generally the same folks who oppose the death penalty.

Apparently, they want to place a social value on the bad intent of a criminal, but only up to the point where the victim is actually killed. Death penalty for hate crimes sends the left into the same philosophical tailspin as the general issue of hate crimes does to the right.

Time for the left and right to reach a compromise on hate crimes Personally, I favor hate crime legislation. But I am a proponent for reasons that would make the heads of many liberals actually explode.

The left offers four purposes of criminal punishment: social control, rehabilitation deterrence, and restitution. I nearly started a riot at law school when I suggested to my criminal law profession that there was a fifth purpose – retribution.

Society, I explained, needed to see that their justice system was willing to extract an ounce of flesh out of criminals in order to determine that the social contract works. People feel the need to inflict harm on those who cause harm. The death penalty, I surmised, had little to do with deterrence and everything to do with retribution.

After performing CPR on my professor to restart his bleeding heart…

Hate crime motivation towards the victim has been a part of Federal sentencing guidelines for over a decade allowing a judge to increase a sentence by 2 levels.

Let’s take the enhancement one step further by simply adding the words “up to and including, the death penalty.”

Hate crimes legislation will never deter anyone from exacting violence on someone because of their particular protected class. Punishing capital hate cases with the death penalty will offer some assurances to people in those classes that the law works for them too.

Acting stupidly … Cambridge, Washington and beyond Originally published in One New England

Alright, let’s quickly rehash the facts one more time. And I do mean quickly! If you live in New England and do not know about this story, you should go back to searching the web for porn. There’s nothing for you here.

Fifty-one year old Harvard professor, Henry Lewis Gates, Jr., comes home from a trip and can’t find his keys. In order to get in, he and his driver force their way into the home. A neighbor sees what they perceive to be a criminal break-in and calls 911. Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley responds. When asked for identification by Crowley, Gates goes off like a cannon at a Boston Pops 4th of July concert. He becomes belligerent and refuses to produce identification.

Crowley arrests Gates for disorderly conduct.

Gates, who is an African-American, later accuses Crowley of racial profiling. It is revealed that Crowley teaches a police class on the evils of that illegal practice.

At a nationally televised press conference, President Obama is asked about the situation and responds that the Cambridge police acted “stupidly.” National furor follows and, the next day, President Obama qualifies his statement. The national furor doesn’t die down and the President invites Gates and Crowley to the White House for a beer.

In the words of the great philosopher, Forrest Gump: “Stupid is as stupid does.”

And there is plenty of stupid to go around President Obama acted stupidly. Let’s start with President Obama, for no other reason than he should know better. First, he responded [stupid]. Since when does an arrest for disorderly conduct raise itself to the level of response by the leader of the free world? Moreover, when compelled to comment, President Obama got the facts wrong [stupid]. He keeps it alive the next day with a weak qualification [stupid].

Professor Gates acted stupidly. Gates acts like an ass to police responding to a call to protect his home [stupid]. He calls Sgt. Crowley a racist [stupid]. He then declares that he is a victim of racial profiling [stupid].

Sgt Crowley acted stupidly. Crowley arrested a man for disorderly conduct when a citation of some sort was probably in order [stupid].

Stupid is as stupid does.

Forrest Gump was right. The arrest of Professor Henry Lewis Gates, Jr. by Cambridge police Sgt. James Crowley has all of America talking stupidly.

Liberals are using the Gates/Crowley incident to highlight racial profiling in America. However, liberals are being disingenuous in their crocodile tears for Henry Gates. The simple fact is that the Professor’s arrest was not the result of racial profiling.

Racial profiling is when a person is investigated for suspected illegal activity based upon a particular racial demographic, ie. a person is African-American or Hispanic. Attorneys call it “DWB” – driving while black. An officer pulls over a car of young black men in a white neighborhood for some subjective traffic offense and then asks to search the car. That’s racial profiling.

The Gates arrest was not the result of some subjective police action. The Cambridge police responded to the Gates’ home because of a 911 call that two African-American men were breaking into it. When police found someone fitting the description inside the home, it was proper to ask for identification.

As I write this article, the media has announced that Gates is on vacation. If the police get a break-in call this week, will they respond? And, what will Mr. Gates say then?

Liberals do not have a monopoly on stupid in the Gates arrest.

Conservatives have been using the incident to rally the right around Sgt. Crowley. These are generally the same folks who decry the police state, wail about property rights and want courts and cops to stay away from their Second Amendment right of gun ownership on the basis of defending ourselves and our homes.

Yellow flags with “Don’t Tread on Me” are popping up on porches all over the country. Those who fly those flags don’t want police showing up at their houses just because they fly a Liberty Flag. On the other hand, they must realize that racial profiling (although illegal) does exist.

A new debate on race in America Many have used the election of the nation’s first African-American president to call for a new debate on race in America. Let’s hope that as the debate ensues, it does not evolve as stupidly as it has in the last week.

Maybe we should all just sit down over a beer and talk about it.

And it’s no nay never…no nay never no more Originally published in One New England

While a large percentage of Americans spent St. Patrick’s Day at some Irish pub drinking Guinness and singing The Wild Rover at the top of their lungs, their fellow sober citizens were sitting in front of their television sets getting angry...real angry.

For all the Irish in New England who are just now coming out of their annual, green-beer induced, St. Patrick’s Day coma, it has been revealed that the United States Congress passed, and President Obama signed, a bill which included language paving the way for AIG to pay large bonuses to its employees.

Shake the cobwebs away for a minute. Yes, the company which received millions of your tax dollars just gave $165 million of it away as bonuses to the folks who screwed everything up in the first place .

Someone call the bartender back and queue the mandolin player… “No Nay Never.”

And, nowhere is the anger over the AIG bonuses greater than Connecticut, where Unites States Senator Christopher Dodd has admitted to writing the legislative language allowing the bonuses to be paid.

The top fold of the March 19, 2009, Hartford Courant features a large color photo of Senator Dodd with a headline that reads simply: “DODD’s FLIP-FLOP.” The flip-flop that the Courant is referring to is Sen. Dodd’s own wavering memory on the role he played in drafting the AIG bonus provision.

On St. Patrick’s Day, Dodd said: “When the language left the Senate that I wrote, that was not included.”

The next morning Dodd recanted: “I agreed reluctantly. I was changing the amendment because others were insistent.”

According to a later statement by Senator Dodd, the others were President Obama and his team over at the Treasury Department.

The Senator must have attended one helluva St. Patrick’s Day party at the Dubliner in Washington, DC, to jog a suppressed memory which gave rise to that admission. Of course, as the word “admission” somehow implies a voluntary disclosure, it’s probably the wrong word to use for Dodd’s actions. So let’s call it what it was…

Thrown under the bus What happened here is that the folks at Treasury threw Chris Dodd under the bus. But before anyone feels too sorry for Dodd, remember that he threw them under the bus first when he declared no memory of the AIG bonus language.

Treasury officials returned the original toss with a press leak that put the spot light back on Dodd.

To keep the St. Patrick’s Day theme going, you can call it Washington’s version of who has the biggest shillelagh.

Secretary of the Treasury, Timothy Geithner, may have won this battle of Irish fighting sticks, but the war is only two months into a four year term. Because of his own personal tax problems, Geithner is already on shaky ground on Capitol Hill. Leaving a senior Member of the majority along side the road for dead may be expedient in the short-term, bit it will have long term implications. Look for Dodd to call for his resignation sometime in the future.

Meanwhile, back at the tea party From the time that British soldiers shot into a crowd and killed 5 men at the Bloody Massacre in King Street (known to other lesser cultured Americans as the Boston Massacre), New England has been a region built on a foundation of civil disobedience. Each year, thousands of Americans come to Boston to walk the Freedom Trail in order to appreciate the historic significance of that fact.

The Boston Tea Party took place three years after the Boston Massacre, when a bunch of locals who called themselves the “Sons of Liberty” dressed up as Mohawk Indians and boarded a ship owned by the British India Tea Company.

In an act which by today’s standards of civil disobedience seems more like a college fraternity prank, they dumped several crates of tea into Boston Harbor.

Stimulate this!

Originally published in One New England

Since the inauguration of President Barack Obama, all talk in Washington has been about the economic stimulus package. It’s a good thing too.

Unemployment is rising as quickly as consumer confidence is falling. Bank foreclosures on personal residences are at an all time high. We need serious, straightforward debate on what will get this economy stimulated.

Nowhere is that debate better framed than on the Sunday morning talk shows.

These shows do not have the glam of the nightly cable shows. Instead, they are filled with government officials and idealistic pundits who talk in depth about the issues of the week. At times, the debate reaches a very high level of economic and political drama.

And then at other times…

Take Nancy Pelosi…please The House version of the President’s economic stimulus package contains $360 million in federal funds for condoms and “family planning.” On This Week with George Stephanopoulos, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi was cornered about this fact.

STEPHANOPOULOS: “Hundreds of millions of dollars to expand family planning services. How is that stimulus?”

PELOSI: “Well, the family planning services reduce cost. They reduce cost. The states are in terrible fiscal budget crises now and part of what we do for children’s health, education and some of those elements are to help the states meet their financial needs. One of those - one of the initiatives you mentioned, the contraception, will reduce costs to the states and to the federal government.”

STEPHANOPOULOS: “So no apologies for that?”

PELOSI: “No apologies. No. we have to deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy.”

Let’s make sure that we have Speaker Pelosi’s thoughts straight – free condoms will “deal with the consequences of the downturn in our economy.”

I guess that I missed that day in my college economics class.

She lied and that is the problem with Washington. President Obama can talk all he wants about change, but until people start telling the truth in DC, nothing will change.

Quite frankly, Pelosi would have garnered more respect if she would have simply told the truth about the funding. “Well, George, it was people who support government funded family planning who elected Barack Obama our president and gave us a Democratic controlled House and Senate. This is pay back. Next question, shorty.”

Many people don’t agree with the policy, but the lie adds insult to injury. With Speaker Pelosi handing out free condoms in the name of economic stimulus, they feel like they’re the ones getting screwed.

The Pelosi “Winkie Tax” The fact of the matter is that the Speaker has to lie because even the most liberal Boston Southie doesn’t want their grandchildren of tomorrow to pay for their condoms today. That is if they don’t use condoms and actually plan on having grandchildren.

Let’s do the math.

What is the price for a three pack of condoms these days? Personally, I don’t know the answer to that question. My wife won’t let me stop at that section of the pharmacy any more. So, I asked an expert and, according to a high school senior football player that lives on my street, a three pack of condoms cost $5.99.

At two bucks a rubber, for $360 million, the government can buy 180 million condoms (probably a few more for buying in bulk).

Congress uses a method to cut taxes called “pay-go.” If a Member of Congress from Boston wants to give scrod fishermen a 5% tax cut, they have to come up with an offsetting method to replace the loss in tax revenue to the Federal budget. It could be a program cut or a tax increase in another area.

If Pelosi really wants to hand out free condoms, let her offset the cost on a paygo basis. Pass a tax. She can call it the “Pelosi Winkie Tax.” A Pelosi Winkie Tax on each and every male in America could buy all the condoms that the Speaker wants to hand out like 1990s government cheese. Of course, everyone will argue that their own personal liability should be reduced.

For instance, married men will argue that the tax should be a user fee, drastically reducing their own personal tax liability.

The answer would be to charge each male in America a condom user fee based upon personal size. The Pelosi Winkie Tax will be based upon a self declaration of inches in your tax return. It will be the only time in the history of our country that taxpayers will lie in order to pay more taxes.

House passes stimulus package, Trojans stock rises like…well you know…

Then again, I could be wrong. Those rubbers have to be manufactured somewhere.

On the day the House passed its latex wrapped stimulus package, shares in Church & Dwight (CHD) which manufactures Trojan condoms were up $1.30 (2.41%) to $55.14.

Lawyering the auto bailout Originally published in One New England

With the fate of the world’s greatest economy in their hands, the United States Congress went about the task of saving America’s automobile industry.

Thank God. Americans were beginning to fear that there would be no one upon which they could rely to solve the multi-layered and complex issues which face the nation’s premiere manufacturing industry.

Smart men and women elected by popular vote sat across the table from America’s captains of industry and determined the fate of an entire sector of the American economy. These Congressmen and women brought their vast knowledge and personal experience of business, economics and interpersonal skills to the forefront as they debated the American economy and the interplay of business and labor.

Or not…

At the same time Congress was trying to save the auto industry, they were dedicating the new visitor center to the US Capitol. This construction was directly funded and overseen by Congress. It was completed years behind schedule and was hundreds of millions of dollars over budget. At the ribbon cutting ceremony, Senator Harry Reid (D-NV) opined that it was well worth the wait so he would no longer have to smell tourists in the summer.

It is time for us to be brutally honest about what happened last week in DC. Relying on the collective business acumen of Congress to save our economy is as ill advised as instructing President-elect Obama to ask Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich to chair his transition team.

Take New England’s delegation…please As much as we’d love to think that our elected officials know what they are doing when it comes to solving our economic problems, they don’t. The overwhelming majority of our elected Members of Congress don’t know diddly-squat about business or the economy.

Congressmen and women know politics. Their legislative solutions usually show as much. People don’t mistrust government because they feel legislators have illintent in their hearts. They distrust government because they have seen the

havoc which good intentioned people can bring upon issues when they formulate solutions for which they have no expertise or knowledge.

The delegation from New England in the United States House of Representatives is probably similar to those in most other regions.

New England has 21 Members in Congress. Of those, a dozen are lawyers. Five others have degrees in public administration. Two are teachers - - - a chemistry professor and a high school teacher/coach.

The leading regional player in the bailout is Rep. Barney Frank. His resume of public service is impressive. However, it’s hard to tell what Barney Frank considers his “occupation” other than elected official. While well respected in both Boston and Washington, he has never held a job not paid for with tax dollars.

Rep. Frank’s only actual business experience to date was taught to him by Steve Gobie, a prostitute who claimed to have run a male escort service from Frank’s DC apartment in the early 90s. Hey, supply and demand is supply and demand.

Nevertheless, Barney Frank is one of the Members from New England with a law degree.

Lawyers are not good businesspeople. They are not good at business because on the first day at law school, the school informs students that when they graduate they are going to know “how to think like a lawyer.”

Law schools get young minds to “think like lawyers” by using a teaching technique called the “Socratic Method.” The procedure is named after the classic Greek philosopher Methodicus. A law professor (defined as a lawyer not ever allowed into a courtroom) asks several students to stand and then fires questions at them in rapid succession, often pitting one student against the other. Rather than lecturing the idea is to get the students to come to the answers themselves.

It goes something like this.

Professor Snottylaw: Mr. Robinson, please stand.

Me: Yes sir.

Professor Snottylaw: What did Justice Ginsberg say about inbred timber wolves in the case of Jones v. Jones?

Me: I don’t know sir. I stayed up too late last night playing Pac-Man and drinking longnecks at Herb and Thelma’s.

Professor Snottylaw: Ms. Lyons, do you know the answer?

Ms. Lyons: No sir, I was getting drunk with Mr. Robinson.

OK, maybe I’m not the best example to use when explaining the Socratic Method. But, I know that law schools do not teach aspiring lawyers a single thing about manufacturing efficiencies or market shares.

Law schools teach students that smart lawyers hire other people to run the business side of their practice. Somehow when lawyers get elected to Congress they change and immediately develop the knowledge necessary to redesign an entire industry.

Emily’s List (of employees) There are exceptions to the rule. Many older veterans of the battles on Capitol Hill will look to Members who have met a payroll to lead their fights.

You’ve got to wander around the Halls of Congress quite a while to find a Member from New England who meets that simple requirement.

There appears to be only one person in the New England House delegation who has ever met a payroll. That person is Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro from the 3rd District in Connecticut. DeLauro is the former Executive Director of Emily’s List, a political organization whose sole mission is to elect pro-choice women to Congress.

Emily’s List is not a typical “business” in the steel mill/assembly line meaning of the term. They sell their mission instead of widgets, raising political contributions to elect others to Congress. Nevertheless, Emily’s List is a business which required DeLauro as it’s the Executive Director to raise funds to meet a budget and pay salaries.

An annual hike in health care costs affects Emily’s List the same as any other business. An increase in HR expenses means a budget adjustment somewhere, or the ability to get the product to market diminishes. At General Motors the product is automobiles. For Emily’s List the product is candidates.

In addition to DeLauro’s non-legal experience, she spent a year studying at the London School of Economics. To top it off, she’s a cancer survivor. That means she’s got more guts than the lawyers too.

The lawyers in New England voted in favor of the bailout. DeLauro did too.

I hope that Barney Frank followed her lead and not visa versa.

But then again what do I know. I’m just a lawyer.

Can Jay Townsend be this year’s George Nethercutt?

Originally published in the Daily Caller

A skim of the headlines from 1994 indicates that it was a banner year for cultural icons.

1994 began with Lorena Bobbitt being found not guilty by reason of insanity for performing surgery without a license. The headlines went steadily downhill from there. Tonya Harding made her initial entry into reality television when her husband, Jeff Gillooly, was involved in getting Nancy Kerrigan’s leg whacked prior to the winter Olympics.

Millions of Americans were glued to their television sets as Al Cowlings paraded O.J. Simpson all around Los Angeles in a white Ford Bronco.

The year did have its moments when there appeared to be good karma in the world. Bryon De La Beckwith was finally convicted in the murder of Medger Evers, serial killer John Wayne Gacy was executed and George Foreman became the oldest man to ever win the world’s heavyweight boxing title.

But as cultural icons of 1994 go, who could ever forget George Nethercutt?

Who the hell is George Nethercutt?

You can’t swing a Gillooly around these days without hitting someone who is comparing the mood of the Tea Party movement to the voter discontent of 1994, when Republicans took over the House and Senate for the first time in four decades. In the 1994 mid-term elections, there was a 54 seat swing in the United States House of Representatives.

No victory in 1994 was larger than George Nethercutt’s defeat of Speaker Tom Foley.

Foley had served as a Democratic Congressman from Washington’s Fifth Congressional District since 1964 and, in 1989, he had become Speaker of the House. When Washington voters passed term limits at the ballot box, Foley filed suit against the measure. The disposition of the electorate was set and, the next time they had the chance, voters term limited Foley at the ballot box in favor of Nethercutt.

In 1994, George Nethercutt became the first candidate to unseat a sitting Speaker of the House in a re-election bid in over 130 years.

As pundits sit around comparing this election cycle to 1994, the question is: “Who will be this year’s George Nethercutt?”

A group of Republicans in New York hope they have the answer.

Is Chuck Schumer’s time up?

While 24-hour election coverage was all focused on who would (and should) win in other races, New York’s Jay Townsend was quietly going about the business of getting the chance to face Senator Chuck Schumer in November. While others were arguing about Delaware, Townsend was giving a victory speech in New York.

No one can really blame the pundits for ignoring the New York Senate primary.

Chuck Schumer has won election in New York since he first ran for Congress in 1980 and has a ton of cash in his campaign kitty. Jay Townsend is unknown and is operating his campaign on a tight budget and elbow grease. All conventional political wisdom says that Townsend has no chance.

But, 2010 is not a conventional election year.

Townsend’s primary victory was impressive. A record number of GOP primary voters turned out and gave him the nomination. In order to win the big one, Townsend has to keep voter excitement at a fevered pitch. Outside of New York City, Schumer’s approval ratings are under 50%. Much like Nethercutt’s bid to unseat Foley in 1994, Schumer’s current big lead is built on numbers that are thin.

Jay Townsend’s background as a campaign consultant showed through in his primary victory. He did an awful lot with a little bit of money. But, in the general, Schumer will have more money than God (or maybe even Donald Trump).

Townsend is a Tea Partier without the financial base of Kentucky’s Rand Paul or the media sizzle of Delaware’s Christine O’Donnell. If the media continues to ignore Townsend’s candidacy, money will remain his greatest challenge.

For the big upset to occur in Schumer’s reelection bid, the GOP has to engage.

The mood in the electorate is right for Townsend to score a George Nethercuttstyle upset of Chuck Schumer. National party leaders have to recognize this and get into New York as quickly as possible.

If those things happen, Jay Townsend could become the biggest swinging Gillooly of 2010.

No Fear, but plenty of loathing in Las Vegas Originally published in the Daily Caller

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream is Dr. Hunter S. Thompson’s definitive novel. It’s a modern-day classic which should be on the reading list of every incoming college freshman. Some of their parents should pick it up and read it again.

In the book Thompson tells the tale of Raoul Duke and his attorney, Dr. Gonzo, as they visit 1970s Las Vegas to report on a motorcycle race. The purpose of the trip is lost via excessive drugs use and a discussion of the decline of American civilization.

Everyone has their favorite line from Fear and Loathing. My personal favorite comes at the beginning when Duke is driving across the desert in a convertible.

With Gonzo sleeping in the seat next to him, Duke battles with large screeching bats that keep dive-bombing the car. Duke wakes Gonzo to drive. “No point mentioning the bats, I thought. The poor bastard will see them soon enough.”

What happens in Vegas … … stays in Vegas.

Nearly 40 years after Duke and Gonzo drove the Strip, those words are seared into the minds of gamblers and non-players alike. A lot of money has been spent on that ad campaign. The problem with the ad is that it fails to point out that there isn’t much happening in Las Vegas these days. I was there this week and you could roll a $50 chip down the main corridor of most hotels without anyone stomping on it.

Las Vegas is a tourist town that depends almost entirely on the number of people that walk up and down the Strip every day. The decline in the number of people taking that stroll to 2005 levels has hit hard.

Before President Obama advised Americans to stay away from Sin City, he should have checked the web site for the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce.

Tourism matters so much in this towm that you can actually book a vacation via the Chamber’s web site. Here, they are still pissed about the President’s warning.

More importantly, Obama’s comments soured an already dismal economic mood in Nevada and set the stage for Sharron Angle’s challenge of Majority Leader Harry Reid.

All politics are local I spent this past week in Las Vegas and, as I am prone to do when I visit cities, I found a nice Irish pub. There, over several Guinness, I befriended a cardcarrying union bartender, who would probably rather not have his name printed in this publication. I’ll call him Gonzo. Gonzo gave me a new perspective on the Reid/Angle race.

America has been watching the Reid/Angle battle with big picture issues in mind.

My discussion with Gonzo the bartender confirms the old campaign adage that all politics are local.

Gonzo believes that Reid has lost touch with Nevada voters, caring more about being Senate Leader than the people he represents. To many voters in Nevada, the big picture doesn’t matter. They simply feel that Reid has made no difference in their lives.

I probed further.

In short, Gonzo explained, Reid has failed to bring home the kind of pork that one would expect from a Majority Floor Leader. Tea Partiers are energized about Angle, Gonzo explained, but Reid’s base is disillusioned because they think he’s ineffective for Nevada.

It’s simple politics. Spending is pork only when it’s for projects in some state other than your own. In your own state federal spending is an effective return of tax dollars. As the home state of the Senate Leader, Nevadans expected more.

Gonzo thinks that the lack of sufficient pork may keep Reid’s base at home on election day.

Not that Gonzo is thrilled about voting for Sharron Angle. Both candidates have the ability to misspeak on the campaign trail and sound … well … stupid. Gonzo, in fact, predicted that the candidate who puts their foot in their mouth last will lose.

I left the pub with my head spinning. If Gonzo is right, Reid might lose because he hasn’t brought home enough pork, not visa versa. I felt dizzy at Gonzo’s revelations … like large bats were dive bombing my head.

Non-essential employees win big in the budget battle Originally published by the Daily Caller

“Non-Essential” Federal employees breathed a collective sigh of relief last week as President Obama and Congressional leaders reached a compromise on a budget plan that averted a government shutdown. Pity was shown upon workers who were sparred the embarrassment and family dishonor of being labeled “nonessential.”

While “non-essential” Federal workers won big in the battle, DC area movie cinemas lost just as large. Imagine the revenues that would have been generated at cinemas if those same Federal employees had flocked to theaters. Malls would be filled with people who would rather go to the movies than stay home and admit to their spouses and children that they were “non-essential.”

I’ve lived and worked in DC and know a lot of them. Many could have car pooled.

Of course, there were other winners and losers in the budget battle…

Winners President Barack Obama – Barack Obama may love to shoot hoops, but in the budget battle of 2011 he quarterbacked a perfect naked bootleg for a score.

Obama started the year by faking to the left that there would be no spending cuts, promising to shut down the government rather than bend to those crazy wing-nut Republicans. Then in a brilliant move, without any protection on his flank, he backtracked and sprinted hard to the right, taking credit for the budget cuts that Speaker John Boehner demanded.

Obama learned the slippery move from Bill Clinton, who ran the same play on welfare reform on the 90s. Clinton fought to kill welfare reform all the way through Congress before signing it into law at a big Rose Garden ceremony at the White House.

As unbelievable as it sounds, a weekend poll indicated that more Americans think that President Obama is more responsible for implementing the budget cuts than House Republicans. Expect to see budget-cutting, Tea Partier Obama in campaign ads in the spring of 2012.

Speaker John Boehner – There is a lot of debate about how Speaker John Boehner fared in the budget mess. Some are wrongfully judging him based on the final tally of the budget cuts he negotiated. While the Speaker didn’t get the deal many in his party desired, no one bolted on him either. Boehner’s ability to

get the best deal he could, and still keep the caucus together, solidifies his place as the top Republican in DC. First Term Tea Partiers - Who says freshman can’t get anything done in DC?

Losers Nancy Pelosi – The former Speaker may have been the only non-essential Federal employee who ended up a loser. As the budget battle heated up, Pelosi headed off to give a speech at Tufts University in Boston.

Being cut out by a President in your own party is nothing new in Washington.

House Democrats are learning that minority parties often don’t matter. When the Democrats controlled the House in the 80s, Reagan was constantly going around the House GOP leaders and dealing directly with Speakers Tip O’Neal and Jim Wright. But Pelosi showed poor form by simply walking away from DC in the middle of the battle. This won’t sit well with a caucus was already split on her election as Minority Leader.

Maybe Pelosi is hoping that Tufts will find her an “essential” position following the next election.

Harry Reid - Two words…”cowboy poetry.”

Every Republican running for President – Sorry boys and girls, President Obama just pinched your campaign platform. You can talk all you want about budget cuts, he’s now going to run on a record of it. And with the help of the media, he might just pull it off.

It’s going to be hard to grab the budget ax from Obama now that he stole it from you. Hail to the Thief.

Democrats who still dream that Hillary Clinton will challenge Obama in 2012. Say goodnight Gracie.

Of Roger Clemens, anti-trust laws and liars in Congress Originally published in the Daily Caller

Last Thursday, Americans sat fixated as a banner across the bottom of their television screen announced that the government was about to hand down indictments for Congressional lying.

Crowds of citizens gathered on Times Square in New York City, waiting for the definitive scroll of the news ticker. People congregated in front of appliance stores, their noses pressed to the plate glass of Main Street windows, watching the pictures on the other side with breathless anticipation. Finally, someone was going to be held accountable by the figurative hands of government for lying to us all these years.

“George Bush,” shouted the Democrats as the shook their fists in anger. “George Bush will be indicted for fibbing to us about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”

The Republicans countered with similar rage. “No, the indictments will be against Charlie Rangel and Maxine Waters. Justice is ours. Drain the swamp.”

When the 6 count indictment was handed down against “Rocket” Roger Clemens, Republicans and Democrats alike scratched their collective heads before heading back to their daily lives. Eyes moist with disappointment, they quickly concluded that there was nothing to see here.

The only people left in front of their television sets were confused Libertarians, who were asking: “Who the hell is Roger Clemens?”

Jurisdictional balk The “Man Bites Dog” headlines about Roger Clemens relate to a Congressional soap opera which began in February, 2008. Under oath, the Rocket swore that he had never used performance enhancing drugs. Mrs. Rocket, Debbie Clemens, on the other hand, was thrown under the investigative bus when it was revealed she had received HGH injections.

Not so fast, countered Clemens’ trainer. He told the Congressional Committee on Meaningless Investigations that he had shot steroids and HGH into both of their backsides.

Not since the Clinton impeachment trial had Congress discussed offending butts with so much vigor.

Okay, we get it. Someone is lying.

The indictment of Roger Clemens, however, is built on an unstable Constitutional foundation. The introductory paragraph of the indictment states that Major League Baseball “operates in interstate commerce and foreign commerce and is subject to the jurisdiction of the United States Congress.”

Not according to Congress and the Supreme Court.

In 1922, a rogue baseball league sued the National League for violating the nation’s anti-trust laws. The United States Supreme Court held that baseball was exempt from those laws because it did not constitute interstate commerce.

Decades later, faced with the opportunity to reverse itself, the Supreme Court refused. Instead they literally tossed the ball back to Congress, who has repeatedly balked at overturning the Court’s judicial conclusion. In the eyes of two branches of government, unless a ball park rests on a state boundary that a base runner must cross running out a ground ball, baseball is not interstate commerce.

Clemens has been indicted for his comments before an institution which denies jurisdiction over the game he played.

That brings us to the real Constitutional issue, which is …

Who cares?

America’s economy remains on the Disabled List. Jobs are being created at a rate of just under 2 each week. Bin Laden is still at-large and Joe Biden is still Vice-President. With all due respect to Congress’ obsession with the asses in the Clemens family, there should be other issues at the top of their legislative batting order.

And the next time Congress tries to explain how legislation will be good for America, how about they take an oath first. If Congressmen and women were subject to perjury charges every time they went to the floor of the House to speak and vote, daily sessions would consist of the presentation of the Mace followed quickly by a Motion to Adjourn.

In the end, Congress should not be the institution we designate to protect the integrity of baseball. That job is up to us fans – who use the money we earn in interstate commerce to buy overpriced beer and game dogs.

2011 - The year in review Originally published in the Daily Caller

Alright, with only seven days gone by in 2011, it does seem a bit early for a “Year in Review” column. But, so much has happened in the last week, it seems a shame to wait 51 more weeks before reflecting on all these stories. After all, only one of those will be the foundation of next December’s review columns.

The snowstorm that ate New York shut down the Big Apple for days and business on the eastern seaboard nearly came to a standstill. In fact, had it not been for the alcohol purchases made by on-duty New York City sanitation workers, commerce would have come to a complete halt.

New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was criticized by some of his constituents for watching the entire snow storm on the Weather Channel from a special cable hookup inside a secret lair in Cinderella’s Castle at Disney World. Interestingly, poll results released this week saw Christie’s national numbers skyrocket.

Apparently, most Americans understand that no one really wants to be in New Jersey even during good weather, so they are rewarding him in the polls for his good judgment to stay away – a fortiori – during the bad.

Haley Barbour used his gubernatorial powers to suspend the prison sentences of sisters Jamie and Gladys Scott. The siblings had been in jail serving life terms in Mississippi since 1993 for stealing about the amount of money necessary to purchase two venti vanilla lattes at a Starbucks. The suspensions were issued on the condition that one sister give the other a kidney. In doing so, Barbour set the stage for a Presidential run in two years. He can now run on a platform that, when elected, he will not trade pardons for contributions to his Presidential Library Fund, but that pardons will always be available in exchange for body parts.

In Nevada, a comatose school girl who had been tragically injured when she was hit by a car on her way home from school was visited in the hospital by a police officer. He was there – get this – to give her a ticket for jaywalking. No punch line could be written to emphasize the absurd stupidity of this story.

And of course there was our own Tucker Carlson, dog loving publisher of the Daily Caller. He went on Hannity to clarify his previous televised statement indicating that Philadelphia Eagles quarterback Michael Vick should have been executed for his crimes against canines. When pushed, however, Carlson did state that Vick should have been required to give one of his kidneys to a dog as a condition of his return to the NFL. But, despite all of these gripping news stories which held the nations attention for as long as it took for the Scott sisters to drink a Starbucks vanilla latte, the story

of 2011 was (and will continue to be for the remainder of the year) the transfer of power in the United States House of Representatives.

2011 – the year of the House GOP John Boehner’s term as Speaker of the House of Representatives wasn’t a day old before battle lines were being drawn on newsroom floors. Cable news is already fixated on Speaker Boehner and his merry band of House Republicans.

Commentators are not likely to lose this focus anytime soon.

No matter what else happens this year, anywhere in the world, cable news will insure that every story will contain a news connection to the GOP controlled House. Fame or blame on any given story will simply depend on which network a viewer decides to follow.

Consider the news coverage when the US Department of Statistical Stuff releases its annual report on the number of children injured while playing Mumblety Peg, a childhood game wherein children throw pocket knives at each other’s feet (made popular in the Mark Twain classic The Boy for Calaveras County With 7 Toes).

MSNBC will cover the story by blaming the Republican controlled House for cutting the federal funds used for pocket knife awareness programs. Keith Olbermann will go so far as to make Speaker John Boehner his “Worst Person of the Day” for failing to support a bill mandating a five day waiting period on the purchase of a pocket knife.

Fox News will cover the Mumblety Peg story by interviewing Speaker Boehner, who will point out that the number of Mumblety Peg injuries were actually higher during the Carter Administration. With tears welling in his eyes, Boehner will reassure viewers that his Republican controlled House understands the mandate they had been given, when the American people went to the polls and voted that they no longer wanted any government interference in the operation of Mumblety Peg leagues.

Last year’s Mumblety Peg national champion will have a guest spot Hannity’s Great American Panel and challenge President Obama to a game of pocket knife tossing on the lawn of the White House. For that challenge, by the way, Chris Matthews will call for an immediate investigation by Homeland Security.

So, Speaker Boehner’s job in 2011 is to understand that 2011, for good or bad, will be remembered as the “Year of the GOP Controlled House.” The whole year will be a game at “Six Degrees of John Boehner. He can bend in the political breeze to the commentators and pundits. Or, he can remain laser sharp in his focus, moving only that legislation which he truly believes will get the nation back on the right track.

The up side is that Speaker Boehner gets to spend the next 51 weeks writing his own year in review. (Note to Speaker Boehner – the whole story will read better if you agree to give Nancy Pelosi a kidney).

Chapter Five Desperately Seeking Despots

Castro chic Originally published in the Daily Caller

Every so often in American pop culture, “retro” becomes the style.

And whenever “old” is “new,” people beat a path to second-hand clothing stores and the internet for an authentic look. Type the word “retro” into e-Bay and 212,656 items of clothing appear for sale, including several vintage 1970s leisure suits.

I take great pride in the fact that I never owned a leisure suit. They were ugly in the 70s and I do not care to wear them now (note — I did own a really, really cool green leather jacket).

Despite the high degree of plain old ugly that gets rolled out as retro, many people still feel the need to look back on the styles with some nostalgia. We all occasionally pop an amnesia pill that makes us forget how un-cool we actually were in high school and college. Blame it all on television. Few really had the cool youthful experience of “The Wonder Years” and “That 70s Show.”

Unfortunately, it seems that politics has a similar retro-recycle phenomenon for aging world leaders. When old politicians give interviews, the public has a tendency to romanticize them. People often forget why they despised these old despots in the first place.

And, like ugly, paisley-print, wide ties, Cuba’s Fidel Castro seems to wander in and out of political chic every few years.

Castro is a hot topic again After writing an article on the Middle East, Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic got a call that Fidel Castro would like to talk to him. Goldberg went to Havana and spent a couple of days with the old coot.

Goldberg’s series of well-written articles are being posted on The Atlantic website and are worth reading. Castro met with Goldberg for a series of interviews. The aging dictator provided so many shocking quotes that the series could easily go on for a week and still make national headlines each day.

In the first article, Castro is quoted as saying that Iranians should quit being antiSemitic. In the second article, set at a dolphin show, Castro acknowledged that the Cuban model doesn’t work anymore.

In the days to come, these articles may be followed by editorials praising Fidel Castro for his “statesmanship.” The articles by Goldberg, however, should be taken as nothing more than insight into an historical figure. They don’t change the fact that the repressive Cuban government, which apparently doesn’t work anymore, was molded by Castro’s own bloody hands.

As many as 18,000 Cubans were executed by Castro’s thugs. Another 7,000 died while being held as political prisoners. Over 50,000 have drowned trying to escape.

Before romanticizing the good old days of Fidel Castro, let’s remember what he and his government have done to the good people of Cuba. Castro can give all the “retro” interviews he desires, but human suffering is his legacy. Castro was and remains evil. No death-bed pronouncements can save

Porno para Ricardo I am hoping that Fidel reads this column and asks me to fly to Cuba. Instead of going to the dolphin show to hear him apologize for some other past atrocity, I will insist that we go to the small apartment where Gorki Águila and his father reside.

Gorki Aguila is the front man for the punk rock band Porno para Ricardo. The band started out in the Cuban mainstream, and even got their music videos played on state-run television.

As their popularity grew on the island, Gorki Aguila became bold with the band’s lyrics and began attacking the government. Think of him as a Latino Johnny Rotten.

The lyrics sung by Porno para Ricardo are mild by American standards. But in Cuba, singing “No more lies, old man” is treason. It’s earned Gorki Aguila two arrests — the last one for the unfathomable crime of “public dangerousness.”

Porno para Ricardo is now blacklisted throughout Cuba. The only place they play is a small room covered with egg cartons in papa Aguila’s apartment. They record there once a week and copy their CDs by hand for underground distribution.

So when Fidel Castro invites me over for a drink, that’s where I want to go. If Customs lets me bring my Strat, I might even join in. Whether or not Castro’s a fan of punk rock, he won’t like what he hears.

Mubarak - the devil you know is still the devil Originally published in the Daily Caller

This week television news has been filled with graphic images of violence and turmoil as Egyptians who want to toss President Hosni Mubarak out of office clashed with pro-Mubarak supporters in the streets of Cairo.

Protesters riding camels and swinging clubs at the heads of opponents make the surreal scene seem a bit like Lawrence of Arabia meets The Running Man. The whole dust-up is coated with a vicious layer of anti-American sentiment.

While American tourists fled for safety, American press poured in to cover the action (and then untypically, joined those tourists fleeing).

Back home, television pundits and politicians took all those images worried aloud about the role Muslim Brotherhood was playing in the violence in Cairo. Over and over again, Hosni Mubarak was referred to as an imperfect leader, but “the devil we know.”

And therein lays the rub. The premise of dealing with the devil we know seems to be a glaring institutional flaw in American foreign policy.

The devil you know is still the devil.

History repeats itself On August 3, 1969, Richard Nixon became the first American President to set foot on Romanian soil. He spoke glowingly of Romania’s President, Nicolae Chaucescu and promised to open an embassy in Bucharest.

Nixon saw Chaucescu as a socialist who was independent of the Kremlin. The visit was to advance Romania’s open-door policy towards the United States.

Such relations benefitted Nixon in fighting the Cold War and bettering relations with other Warsaw Pact countries.

Late in Nixon’s second term, he gave the Romanian president a Buick Electra 225 as a state gift.

The Nixon White House (and those that followed) ignored the fact that Chaucescu prospered while his people wallowed in poverty. His private police, the Securitate, were vicious evil thugs But, Romania remained friendly to the United States. So, for two decades our leaders politely ignored the fact that Chaucescu’s reign brought terror and suffering to the common people of Romania.

Twenty years after Nixon’s visit, in December of 1989, a popular revolt led to the overthrow of the government. Nicaole Chaucescu and his wife, Elena, were executed.

The Buick Electra was sold at auction in 1999.

Nations-building 101 There is something which needs to change here and it is not Hosni Mubarak. It is, in fact, US foreign policy. It is time that we understand that we suck at nation’s building.

We cannot support countries led by despots who’s actions would never be accepted by our own people.

The United States needs to either: a) quit propping up every tin-pot dictator in the world on the false hope that when they purchase American products life will change for their oppressed people, or b) quit crying crocodile tears when groups like the Muslim Brotherhood incite victorious revolutions.

Egypt has been under a formal “state of emergency” since Mubarak came to power following the assassination of Anwar Sadat. This has allowed him to imprison his political opponents without any due process whatsoever and restrict personal freedom of Egyptians at his personal whim.

Americans would never put up with these restrictions on our will. Why do we expect others to comply?

It should not be any surprise that the Mubarak Administration is going the way of Chaucescu … or the Shah of Iran … or Noreiga … or Marcos …

No posting about Alan Gross on EcuRed Originally published in the Daily Caller

The founding of the web site EcuRed as Cuba’s newest propaganda tool reaffirms one historical fact of comparative international politics, which is, Communists suck at naming things.

The point is understandable. Communists were never schooled in the capitalistic skill of marketing. The Soviet Union never had a “branding” initiative at the Polit Bureau.

EcuRed was created by – get this name – the Youth Club of Electronics & Computers of Havana. The name of EcuRed’s founding organization conjures up visions of young people in uniforms, each gazing into a single laptop computer on a desk in an otherwise barren office. If they wanted that effect, they simply should have named themselves the Internet Brown Shirts.

Of course that is a silly suggestion. The domain InternetBrownShirts.com has already been reserved by the FCC. In essence, EcuRed is, with a few exceptions, the Cuban version of Wikipedia.

Each article on Wikipedia notes that material posted without a source may be removed. EcuRed has a similar process for removing posts, but in the Castro tradition of free speech, it is the poster who is likely to be removed…literally…permanently... forever.

Even by the lax standards of internet reporting, EcuRed is a sham. Even bloggers on birther web sites would scoff about how the EcuRed articles are baseless and biased. But, EcuRed is a propaganda tool with the potential to reach more people than Pravda, the official newspaper of the Soviet Union until 1991.

The greatest evidence that this new web site is a propaganda tool of the Castro regime is the fact that there is no EcuRed listing for Alan Gross.

The sad & strange story of Alan Gross Alan Gross is a 60 year old American U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) contractor who has been wasting away in a Cuban jail for over a year, despite having never been formally charged with any crime.

A husband and father of two daughters, Gross worked for a company in Maryland that gave him a portion of their USAID grant to deliver cell phones and computers to Cuba’s Jewish community. He had made five trips to Cuba in nine months distributing equipment and, according to an article in the Washington

Post, had “also helped the Cubans download music, Wikipedia and the Encyclopaedia Britannica off flash drives.”

As he tried to leave the island in December of 2009, Gross was arrested.

Although he has never been charged with any crime, it is alleged by Cuban officials that Gross is an American spy.

International opinion on Alan Gross varies. He’s been labeled both a patriot and a puppet. Many feel he is simply an unintended casualty of the ongoing U.S.Cuba stand-off.

Alan Gross may be a lot of things (naive is a good start), but he is certainly not an American spy. The CIA doesn’t train their inductees in language by giving them Rosetta Stone, which is how Gross learned the broken Spanish he speaks in jail.

And, judging from his activities in Cuba, if Gross is a trained American spy, we have a lot bigger problems here than our relations with Cuba. If Gross is on the CIA’s payroll, America needs to spend a lot more money on training.

The establishment of EcuRed this month offers an ironic new twist to the detainment of Alan Gross. In a country where internet use is restricted for most citizens, Gross was bringing Cubans equipment that would have allowed them to actually access and read EcuRed. Unfortunately for Alan Gross and his family, he has become a pawn. International sources who have met with the Castro regime have indicated that Gross has become a trading chip in Castro’s efforts to gain return of five Cuban nationals serving time in American jail for spying. The Castro regime is seeking a 5 for 1 trade.

Fidel Castro can write the EucRed profile for Alan Gross 2010 will be remembered as the year that Fidel Castro embarked on his “I Am Not A Tyrannical Despot Word Tour.” In the twilight of his life, Castro has embarked on a public relations campaign, trying to reinvent his image as a totalitarian dictator to one of international statesman Castro has apologized for the systematic persecution of gays under his watch.

He told a reporter for The Atlantic that Iranian leaders need to quit being antiSemitic. But his words, unmatched with action to date, have been meaningless.

The case of Alan Gross gives Fidel Castro the opportunity to match his words with action. Gross is ill and has lost 90 of his pre-incarceration 250 pounds. Back home, his daughter is fighting cancer. International humanitarian agencies have

called for his release. It’s time for the Castro regime to respond and send Alan Gross home.

As part of his activities this past year, Fidel Castro published several columns.

The Alan Gross situation gives him the perfect opportunity to write an article on EcuRed: Alan Gross – American contractor held prisoner in Cuban jail without charges for distributing cell phones and internet equipment. He was set free on humanitarian grounds by direct order of Fidel Castro in 2011.

It’s time for Obama to become an anti-Castro dissident Originally published in the Daily Caller

There was a time when, under the Cuban constitution, citizens were allowed to petition the National Assembly for formation of new political parties. In 1981, Andres J. Solares took advantage of his constitutional rights and began gathering signatures for formation of the Cuban Revolutionary Party.

On December 22, 1981, Solares was taken from his home by the Cuban secret service. Despite having undertaken action allowed by Cuba’s constitution, he was charged with attempting to promote a revolution. The trial against Solares was a fraud and he was sentenced to eight years in prison.

The unjust jailing of Andres Solares became a cause for human rights organizations around the world. Amnesty International once named Solares their “Prisoner of the World.” Senator Ted Kennedy and Senator Bob Dole coauthored a letter calling on Fidel Castro to free him. After serving six and a half years in prison, Solares was freed.

Today Solares believes that the Castro regime is in its final stages of decomposition. His new book, Cuba: The Disaster of Castro’s Revolution, is a dissertation on how Castro’s reign in Cuba has been “a moral, cultural and economic disaster.”

One of the more chilling chapters in Solares’ book discusses how the Castro regime persecutes free thinking. He points out that opposition to Castro exists, but “all of them, as well as their families in most cases, have suffered the repression of Castro with full intensity. Most have been incarcerated for many years, in extremely bad conditions, usually in isolation cells, and their families have only been allowed to see them very sporadically.”

The U.S. Interests Section in Havana should be a beacon of freedom It was reported last week in the Daily Caller that, under the Obama Administration, the United States Interests Section has turned its political back on the Cuban dissidents opposing Castro.

While the United States does not have formal relations with Cuba, it does operate an Interests Section within the Swiss embassy in Havana. Long considered a safe haven for the freedom fighters opposing the Castro regime, the Interests Section has been central to the battle for Cuban liberty.

It is appalling to hear from one of the dissenters that he and others in the opposition now use the European embassies to get and transmit information.

They no longer feel welcome at the U.S. home base in Havana.

When Barack Obama was running for president, he stated that his policy towards Cuba would be guided by one word – “libertad.” While stumping for votes in southern Florida he said, "The road to freedom for all Cubans must begin with justice for Cuba's political prisoners, the right of free speech, a free press, freedom of assembly, and it must lead to elections that are free and fair."

It is unclear how Obama’s decision to appease Castro at the expense of those most needing his support meets his goal of supporting “libertad.”

Obama must take Reaganesque action must Since being elected, President Obama has told Latin-American leaders that he was seeking a “new beginning” with Cuba. His Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, has called the past U.S. policy toward Cuba a failure. The Interests Section’s attitude regarding the opposition is just the latest in a line of horrible messages this administration has sent to Cuba in the name of “libertad.”

This White House should know that appeasement will not have a positive benefit to the common people of Cuba. The Obama team opposes trickle-down economics in a market economy. Surely they do not believe benefits will trickle down in a corrupt, brutal, totalitarian dictatorship?

Ronald Reagan had his defining moment in history when he stood at the Brandenburg Gate and called on Mikhail Gorbachev to tear down the Berlin Wall.

It is time for Obama to take a similar “line in the sand” stance with the Castro brothers.

President Obama needs to dust off that tough guy campaign speech and give it at the Southernmost Point in Key West. He should point to the island 90 miles away and demand freedom for political prisoners. Call for free and fair elections.

Let Castro know that nothing will change in relations with the United States until people under his grip are free to simply assemble and speak openly.

And then President Obama needs to follow up his words with action. Putting the welcome mat back out on the front steps of the Interests Section would be a good start.

Andres Solares is correct. If by action of age alone, the reign of the Castro boys is near an end. American policy now will set the stage for Cuba’s transition to freedom and liberty. When Castro is gone, America must stand ready to assist the freedom loving people of Cuba.

“Libertad”

Erin go Braugh, y’all Originally published in the Daily Caller (and a similar version was also published in One New England)

I am spending St Patrick’s Day in Boston this year. As I stand in the middle of a bar full of drunk Southies singing along with the Dropkick Murphys, I am reminded of a trip to Ireland that my wife and I took a few years back.

I grew up in a small town in Kentucky where the entire city struggled with its varied European roots. My home town had two Catholic churches – one for the Irish and one for the Germans. About a decade ago, the two congregations struggled to merge. The Germans didn’t like sitting with the Irish. I heard the Irish weren’t too happy about sitting with the Germans either.

Personally, I spent my youth in genealogical ambiguity by being told that my family tree contained branches which were Irish, Scotch, Scotch-Irish and English. Apparently, I am the classic Euro mix-breed mutt from a melting pot of lineage.

As a kid, when my town had its annual St. Paddy’s Day parade, I didn’t know whether to jump on a float with my friends or shoot them the bird and shout: “God Save the Queen.”

After spending time in Ireland, I have proudly claimed my family’s Irish heritage. I learned two things about my Irish conversion.

My feelings for the British were (and remain) strained The streets of Dublin are a maze of one-way roads that seem to bend and intersect with each other in no particular manner. On the cab ride to our hotel, I read a London newspaper. It was June 2009, the summer of Obama-love, and the newspaper was calling upon America to pass yet another economic stimulus package – this time to help kindle world trade.

I had been in Ireland less than an hour and I was already pissed at the Brits.

We took historical tours of Dublin and soon understood that the ire these folks felt towards the English was inspired by more than just the opinion page of a tabloid.

For instance, we toured the old city goal (jail), which is a shrine to the fifteen political prisoners who were hung for leading the Easter Rising of 1916. Our guide recited their names with pointed reverence.

Nowhere was the historical pissiness towards England more sharp than in the pubs of Dublin. Our first night in town, we went to O’Donohugh’s for some traditional Irish folk music. Upon being handed my first Guinness of the evening,

the bartender noticed I had pulled British pounds from my wallet. “I don’t take foreign currency,” he snarled.

The week after we were in Ireland, we headed to Ashton-under-Layne (pronounced Line) to search for the resting place of my mom’s English ancestors. The family has some old letters from 1898 wherein a solicitor informed my great-great grandmother that her last relative had died In Ashton-underLayne and had been buried at St. Peter’s.

I contacted the Vicar about visiting the family burial site. He replied that the cemetery had been turned into a soccer park.

Freakin’ Brits.

The Irish reminded me to love liberty The one thing we discovered about Ireland was that the Irish people love to talk politics. Everyone we met wanted to know our party affiliation. They wanted to know what we thought of President Obama. They wanted to know what we thought of Irish politics.

The week we were in Ireland, a great political debate was happening.

Gangs had begun to run wild in the streets of major cities like Dublin and Limerick. At the trials of these hooligans, jurors and witnesses were being intimidated, and even killed, in retaliation for acting against the gangs.

Politicians were pressing for quick action on legislation to eliminate jury trials in cases involving gang activity.

The Irish people and press all said: “slow down.”

That’s not a surprising reaction from people whose immediate ancestors were hung in the town square without the benefit of a trial by a jury.

And after reading about that gang debate, I suddenly realized the difference between us and them. Our founding fathers, who had fought for our liberty more than 200 years prior, were historical figures. They were great men, but Americans feel no personal connection to them.

The men who fought in Ireland’s struggle for independence are more than names in a history book. They are from an era where they are old enough to still be somebody’s grandfather.

To espouse a love of liberty is one thing – to die for it another.

My Irish toast to DC readers So, if you’re in Boston today, drop by McGreevy’s on Boylston. Ask for Courtney and tip her well. Then, we’ll raise a pint to the Irish love of liberty. In order to do so properly, we’ll change all of our “Th’s” to “Td’s” (ie., We’ll meet at da pub Tdursdey at tdree, tdurdy.)

“So when I die, I ask ye go, To Ireland, and tden, Take me ashes to the Cliffs of Moher, And toss tdem in the wind, I’ll one last look from way on high, And list all my regrets, Then I’ll sail on into Dublin, Where I’ll whiz on all da Brits.”

Erin go Braugh, y’all.

Pogue Mahone Originally published in One New England

Elvis Presley was the King – an American music legend who will be forever copied, but never matched.

Another original legend takes the stage in Washington, DC tonight and Wednesday as Shane MacGowan and the Pogues appear for two shows at the 9:30 Club.

The Pogues take me back to a time when music by the Ramones and the Clash filled the hallways of my college dormitory. The band produced a distinctive sound that mixed punk with Irish folk. In an industry where many claimed that it’d all been done before, the Pogues were original.

The tight recordings that the Pogues cut in the studio were brilliant. They also provided a sharp contrast to the wild concerts that the group performed live.

Usually led by a drunk MacGowan, crowds were whipped into a frenzied mob.

“Usually” is the operative word. Many times MacGowan was too intoxicated to perform.

The Pogues studio music was dazzling, but their concert performances insane.

People went to the concerts to listen, sing and wait for the train wreck that had become Shane MacGowan.

Eventually, MacGowan’s excessive drinking caused a parting of the ways between him and his band mates. He was canned. They reunited for touring, but have not recorded any new music for years.

I saw the Pogues last week in Chicago for the start of their 2011 US tour. The group has announced that this is their final lap. Despite poor reviews of recent tours, I wanted to see Shane MacGowan live.

For Elvis Presley’s final tour, fans may have seen the fat Elvis, but they still saw Elvis.

On Thursday night in Chicago, a chain smoking Shane MacGowan didn’t disappoint. At 53 years old, he shuffled on and off stage like an old man in a retirement home. But behind the microphone, MacGowan was at his best. And when MacGowan is at his best, the Pogues are a sight to behold.

The set list included all the standards. Poor Paddy, Dirty Old Town and If I Should Fall From Grace With God all resonated through the Congress Theater with foot-stomping gusto. With his penny-whistle playing original band mate,

Spider Stacy, leading MacGowan through the haze, the Pogues nailed it in Chicago If there are any tickets left to be had, go see this show.

The Pogues have been copied by the likes of the Dropkick Murphys, Flogging Molly and the Mudmen, but they remain unique. They are the originals. If anyone tries to argue otherwise, look ‘em in the eyes and tell’em “Pogue Mahone.”

ORD to LAX After the Pogues concert in Chicago, I headed to California where JM Northern Media held a gala reception at the historic Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood to honor the top independent books, music and films for 2011.

My latest novel, Manifest Destiny, was named the Best Indie Book of 2011.

Headline Books, who has published all three of my political thrillers, was honored as the Indie Publisher of the Year.

The shameless plug for my novel aside, what was really impressive about the ceremony was the quality of the musicians and film makers chosen by JM Northern Media as the best of 2011.

Katie Garibaldi and the Wallburds were recognized as the best independent musicians for the year.

The best film was an amazing short directed by twenty-one year old Cody Blue Snider entitled “All that Remains.” The film captures the manic thoughts of an aging WWII veteran suffering from Alzheimers as he chronicles his many encounters with death. The film was made for $15,000 and the part of Death was played by Cody’s dad, Twisted Sister frontman Dee Snider.

Cody Blue Snider and the others honored in Hollywood prove that indie artists defy cookie cutter production. In the tradition of Shane MacGowan (and Cody’s dad for that matter), indie artists strive to be original and unique. I predict that Cody Blue Snider will someday eclipse his dad in both categories.

When I was its Chair, the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce created a stir in our region by taking a legislative position in support of a statewide indoor smoking ban.

The announcement of the position stirred the pot of Northern Kentucky politics. It was hailed by some and cursed by others, Driven primarily by concerns over increasing health care costs, an overwhelming majority of the Chamber’s 2000 member businesses supported a statewide indoor smoking ban. Business owners opposed to such action expressed nanny state concerns about the government mandates restricted their liberty. They argued that the smoking habits of employees in workplaces should be left to the decision of individual business owners.

At the time, I was Chamber Chair and I had no vote on the smoking ban. There was no tie for me to break and I simply moderated the debate. I was glad for that role, because I was truly conflicted. My basic free market and libertarian political tendencies were being offset by the concerns being raised by my instincts as a fiscal conservative.

In large part, the free market has taken care of smoking in Northern Kentucky’s workplace. One would be hard pressed to find an office building where smoking is allowed. Factory floors are mostly free from cigarette butts. And, there are plenty of smoke-free restaurants and bars.

It is hard to argue with the libertarians who support the right of individuals to choose to screw up their own health by smoking. On the other hand, anyone who claims to be a fiscal conserve should be wary when those same people want the government to pay for the consequences of their choices. In essence, don’t scream about the nanny state and then ask Mary Poppins to pony up her tax dollars to pay for your iron lung.

The legislature never voted on a statewide indoor smoking ban and the issue went away for a while. It popped up in the primary election, but only briefly. The fiscal courts in Northern Kentucky are where the action on the issue has taken place.

Kenton County Fiscal Court passed an indoor smoking ban. Campbell County passed a similar measure, but later repealed it. Boone County never took it up.

Once the smoking ban took effect in Kenton County, something remarkable happened … nothing. Jackbooted thugs are not prowling local bars and restaurants in search of smokers. A conference to explain the regulations to local business owners was cancelled because no one signed up. Not a single

business has failed. In fact, one restaurateur who opposed the ban says that his business traffic is up since his place of business was ordered smoke-free.

I am going to propose a new legislative position for potential Chamber support that addresses all of my philosophical concerns. Give away free smokes to anyone that wants them, but cut all Medicare/Medicaid funding for smoking caused health problems. I’m no numbers guy, but I think it’ll be cheaper.

When holidays go from Hell to Heck Originally published in the Daily Caller

I first met P.J. O’Rourke in 1988 following the release of Holidays in Hell. P.J. was Washington’s hippest journalist, writing for Rolling Stone Magazine. Holidays in Hell was his personal account of conflicts that he had covered in the shitholes of the world. Making points with his biting humor, he wrote about places like Lebanon, El Salvador and Korea.

The Wall Street Journal blurbed Holidays in Hell by labeling P.J. O’Rourke “the funniest writer in America” — although it is completely fair to ask what the WSJ knows about humor.

When my wife and I met O’Rourke, we were working on Capitol Hill. The fact that we had a young son made our lifestyle somewhat foreign to his point of view.

One time when we had dinner together, P.J. was planning a trip to Pakistan and we were planning a trip to Disney World.

But that was then and this is now. My son just graduated from college, and the Republican Party Reptile is now married and has young kids of his own. My wife and I went to Ireland last year. P.J. and his family went to Disneyland.

Revenge is a dish best served in a souvenir sippie cup with a lid that has black mouse ears.

Holidays in transition Just released, Holidays in Heck is P.J. O’Rourke’s sequel to Holidays in Hell.

While the two books are distinguished by their times and O’Rourke’s evolving position in life, they are connected by P.J.’s never-aging humor.

My favorite chapter from Holidays in Hell relates to the 36 hours O’Rourke spent in Managua at a time when Nicaragua was the hot bed of foreign policy debate.

“Is Nicaragua a Bulgaria with marimba bands or just a misunderstood Massachusetts with Cuban military advisers?”

In 1987, whether to send aid to Nicaragua’s anti-communist Contras was one of the most important issues facing the United States Congress. Today many members of Congress would be hard-pressed to pick out the nation on a globe.

But at the time, a politically charged O’Rourke finished his visit to Managua by drinking heavily at the home of the American ambassador and calling for a U.S. invasion of Nicaragua.

In Holidays in Heck, O’Rourke invades Disneyland, goes skiing in Ohio and takes the family with him on a business trip.

Oh my, how holidays change.

From commies to artists One fun thing about Holidays in Heck is that P.J. O’Rourke’s vacations are now a lot more like mine. When he swipes at a topic, it’s one to which most parents can relate.

For example, P.J. takes the venom he used to feel for Daniel Ortega and the Nicaraguan Sandinistas and turns it loose on modern artists.

“I assumed modern artists were all members of the great bohemian turkey flock of ardent individualists, looking up with beaks uniformly agape at identical high ideals of world peace, economic justice, ecological harmony, and governmental funding for the arts. Before my visit to the Biennale I supposed that all artists thought alike. It never occurred to me that they didn’t think at all.”

O’Rourke’s 2008 visit to Disneyland with the wife and kids turns into a dissertation on the updating of Tomorrowland. “According to Disney, the shape of things to come takes shape at Pottery Barn, with a quick stop at Restoration Hardware for classic ‘future touches’ and a trip to Target to get throw rugs and cheap Japanese paper lanterns.”

And some O’Rourke advice on taking your kids on a business trip: avoid hotels and stay in apartments. “You do not want to get to the point where the room service waiter ditches his tray outside the door and runs down the hall heedless of his tip rather than face your kids.”

I loved Holidays in Heck just as much as its prequel. P.J. is helping us all get older. I’m just not sure that I’m ready for to the final installment in the trilogy …

Holidays in Hospice.

Castro’s new BFF Originally published in the Daily Caller

Both the left and right have been struggling to deal with the philosophical consequences of Hosni Mubarak’s fall from power in Egypt. Much of the right’s discussion has focused on the role the Muslim Brotherhood is playing in the dayto-day events of the Middle East.

Two months ago, most Americans had never heard of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Today, due to extensive news coverage of the events in Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood probably has better name recognition than most Republican hopefuls who are looking to challenge President Obama in 2012.

So much is being said about the Muslim Brotherhood, in fact, that pundits on the right are ignoring a philosophical quandary that those on the left may not be able to reconcile.

Before pointing out the left’s Catch-22, I should note that I have no disagreement with the basic premise that Hosni Mubarak was an evil leader. I’ve previously written in The Daily Caller that one of the institutional flaws of American foreign policy is that when American leaders deal with the devil they know, they’re still dealing with the devil.

Every president in my lifetime, Republican and Democrat, has looked the other way when leaders who are friendly to America abuse their own people.

Deference to leaders who violate basic human rights is a defect of US foreign policy that needs to change.

But, the fact that American liberals are absolutely giddy over the fall of Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak leaves them with a complicated moral dilemma. That is, the left relates a standard to Hosni Mubarak in Egypt that it refuses to apply to the Castro boys in Cuba.

Let my people tweet When the uprising in Cairo was in its early stages, Mubarak ordered the shutdown of the major vehicles of international communications being used by the rebels. The Internet was blacked out. Cell phone towers were immobilized.

Social networking sites, such as Twitter and Facebook, became impossible to use.

America took a firm stand. “Government must respect the rights of the Egyptian people and turn on social networking and [the] Internet,” Obama said.

And the president was right to call for such action. Open and free communication amongst people is a key to them achieving self-determination. In this day and age, worldwide direct contact can be instantaneous. And, as we’ve seen in Egypt, the tools of friendly interaction can become ploughshares of liberty.

When it comes to communications, Egypt is far freer than Cuba.

In Cuba, cell phones and the Internet are rarely available to common people.

American Alan Gross has been charged with crimes against the government for trying to connect Cuban Jews via the Internet.

Last week, one woman was arrested and another beaten by Castro’s goons at Our Lady of Regla Catholic Church in Havana for offering prayers in support of political prisoners. It’s hard to think in terms of “tweets” when women are being beaten and arrested for praying.

The anti-Castro dissidents of Cuba used to rely on the United States Interest Section in Havana to communicate with the outside world. Today, the Obama administration’s policy is to shun anti-Castro Cubans and discourage use of our Interest Section.

In response to the oppression in Cuba, the Obama administration eased restrictions on travel and money transfers to the island.

The cheering that the left has given to the Obama administration for the president’s stance in support of liberty in Egypt has fallen deafly on the ears of oppressed Cubans.

The Obama Doctrine Thus, the Obama Doctrine has a two-pronged approach to dealing with despots.

The dividing line is seemingly based on whether the oppressive leader in question has a pro- or anti-Western bias.

The first prong of the Obama Doctrine, utilized against the pro-US government in Egypt, is to support people in their self-declaration of freedom. I agree with this portion of the Obama Doctrine.

The second prong of the Obama Doctrine, which offers friendship to leaders who hate us, is what stirs my ire. Courting an anti-Western despot like Castro by sending flowers, chocolates and plane loads of cigar-smoking tourists will not help the people of Cuba in their quest for freedom. Cuba is an island where hope for change is not enough.

The left trumpets President Obama’s hard-line tactics in support of human rights in Egypt. Yet they look silently at their shoe laces when asked why those same

hard-line tactics are not employed by this administration in its dealings with Cuba (and other left-leaning anti-US leaders).

Evil is evil and must be dealt with in a consistent manner.

A short note on Alan Gross It has been reported in the press that, after being held illegally for over a year, American Alan Gross has finally been charged with a crime. Cuban authorities are seeking a 20-year prison sentence against him. Speculation on the motives behind the indictment runs the political gambit.

One side believes that the indictment of Alan Gross is a straight quid-pro-quo with the Obama administration, done in return for the easing of sanctions. If this is true, expect Gross to plead guilty and then, somewhere in the near future, be released and sent home to America on humanitarian grounds.

People on the other side of the debate argue that Castro has returned Obama’s act of charity with a diplomatic slap in the face. If this side is correct, Cuba will continue to hold Alan Gross until the Cuban Five are released from American jail.

National Hug-a-Commie Week Originally published in the Daily Caller

This was National Hug-a-Commie Week in Washington, D.C., a festive seven days of celebrating human rights abuses and political repression.

To kick off the national festivities, President Obama eased travel restrictions on Cuba. Apparently, the president felt that appeasing the Castro regime would be a good tie-in to the 50th anniversary of the inaugural speech of President John Kennedy, the man who imposed the restrictions on Cuba in the first place.

The week was capped off with a state dinner honoring the Chinese president (or dictator, as properly titled by Sen. Harry Reid) Hu Jintao. The invitation list for Obama’s third state dinner included Barbara Streisand and Jackie Chan.

Noticeably absent from the state dinner invitation list was Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo. While the guests at the While House munched on surf and turf, Liu Xiaobo was rotting away in a Chinese prison.

Even Tareq and Michaele Salahi, who infamously crashed President Obama’s first White House state dinner, could not have gotten Liu Xiaobo through the front gate.

President Hu feigned not understanding the English-to-Chinese translation of questions asked of to him by reporters about Liu Xiaobo and China’s history of human rights violations. Hu did understand “bon appétit.”

Left appeasement or national policy shift?

Many Americans are at a total loss to understand the nature of the actions taken this week by the Obama administration towards China and Cuba, two sovereign jails which present themselves to the rest of the world as countries.

Some argue that President Obama is merely appeasing the American left. It has been constantly reported over the last several months that Obama’s base is unhappy with his performance. Coddling to the Hu and Castro regimes tosses the left a philosophical bone.

But others perceive that President Obama actually believes that “Communist conciliation” is, in point of fact, the proper approach to get China and Cuba to address the oppressive nature of their respective governments.

I am not sure which argument is more disturbing.

I was in Miami recently when Sen. Marco Rubio addressed the annual meeting of US-Cuba Democracy PAC. His comments that day were aimed at Cuba. But when he spoke of changing American trade policies with Castro, he could have been speaking about American trade policy with China, as well.

Senator Rubio simply stated that it was them (not us) who should be changing policy.

The implicit policy of several prior U.S. administrations has been to keep the pressure on tyrants like Hu and Castro, who chronically violate basic human rights under the guise of governmental autonomy. Obama’s switch to a velvet glove approach will not bring reform. It will only embolden them.

Hats off to Congressional leaders (both Republicans and Democrats) who did not attend the state dinner and who pressed President Hu for answers when he attended a session with them on Capitol Hill. I’d bet he understood the questions that time.

This week, Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid hit Hu hard with their rhetoric. Republicans John Boehner and Mitch McConnell snubbed an invitation to break bread with Hu at the White House. Finally, America has the bipartisan agreement it’s been seeking from Congressional leadership.

Let’s hope that all four maintain a similar common tone when hearings are held, and debate is had, on Obama’s easing of economic sanctions on Cuba.

Rethinking state dinners Perhaps President Obama should have thought through his state dinner strategy with his Chinese guest.

Maybe he should have had comedian Mike DeStefano host: “I went to a Chinese restaurant…They had a suggestion box, so I wrote ‘Free Tibet‘.”

Or, speaking of Tibet, maybe Obama should have hosted a state dinner for His Holiness the Dali Lama when he visited D.C. last year. The Lama did get an appointment with Obama, but afterwards he was escorted out the back door normally used to take trash to the official While House dumpsters.

Oh well, hope you had a happy Hug-a-Commie Week. On the up side, First Lady Michelle Obama did look stunning in red.

Chapter Six

All Politics are Local

Election time for Northern Kentucky Originally published in MKY Magazine

In 1977, while a student at Eastern Kentucky University, I worked in my first political campaign. The candidate was Barry Caldwell and he was running in a primary for the state legislative seat in Kentucky’s 66th District. Caldwell was student at Chase Law School and not that much older than me.

With a small band of inexperienced – but loyal – campaign workers, Barry Caldwell won the primary, but lost in the fall by a mere 16 votes. He ran again in two years and won.

Over the next thirty years, election day became my favorite holiday. I signed up for more political campaigns than I care to remember.

Elections became ritualistic. I’d put up signs for one candidate in the spring primary and walk door-to-door for another in the fall. Most election days were spent working the polls and then finding the celebration parties of the victors.

Many things changed in Northern Kentucky over my three decades of campaign involvement. Possibly the biggest political changes for our regions is our stature in Bluegrass politics.

When I started in politics, there was little chance of a Northern Kentucky candidate winning a statewide election. Since then, Jim Bunning and Trey Grayson have both done it twice.

Northern Kentuckians have played key roles in the administrations of several governors. Our elected legislators have held leadership positions in both chambers of the General Assembly. Candidates from other parts of the Commonwealth look to Northern Kentucky as a place they need to win in order to capture a primary or general election victory.

Primary election season is upon us. The general will follow closely behind. And, like presidential wannabes who flock to Iowa every four years, we’re going to be hit with a steady flow of people knocking on our doors to ask us for the privilege of serving in statewide offices. Let’s think long and hard about what we want to ask them before they leave our front porch.

Here are the five questions that I have taped to the back side of my front door to ask when candidates come to my house.

1) Where is Rabbit Hash?

What? Never heard of it? Come back when you know more about Northern Kentucky.

2) Exactly what do you intend to do to insure that the Brent Spence Bridge is replaced in my lifetime?

Tell me that the bridge is a federal issue and I’ll slam the door in your face. Tell me that you’ll start putting aside budget funds to pay the state’s share of Brent Spence replacement cost and we can move on to the next question.

3) And while we’re talking money … cut and slash all you want. But then tell me how you will prioritize spending to draw jobs to Northern Kentucky.

You’re answer better understand that we’ve been the economic engine that has driven the state over the last decade and we’ll be the region that leads the Commonwealth out of the recession.

4) How do you eat your goetta?

No, it’s not a German style of rabbit hash. How a person likes their goetta says a lot about them. Stop by the Colonial Cottage in Erlanger next time you’re in town and they’ll give you lessons.

Happy election day! As they say in Chicago … vote early and vote often!

Coming of age Originally published in NKY Magazine

I grew up in a household where my parents constantly told stories about the rich history of Northern Kentucky.

At dinner my dad would spin tales about local jockey Eddie Accaro and tell me how UCLA basketball coach John Wooden got his start at Dayton High School.

Mom described to me how she used to go to the Lookout House where she met the local boss of bosses, Jimmy Brink.

Nearly every night, we would listen to Bob Braun records on the Motorola.

Through the nightly anecdotes my parents would weave, I was instilled with the knowledge that Northern Kentucky was going to be a special place to grow up, live and prosper.

It was great being a Northern Kentucky baby-boomer. We shopped for clothes at Coppins in Covington, went with our mom and dad to Latonia Race Track and occasionally crossed into Ohio for a Reds game by walking across the Southern Railroad Bridge in Ludlow.

Of course, in the days of my youth, not everyone shared my family’s enthusiasm for Kentucky’s north shore.

In those days, leaders at the Capitol in Frankfort usually treated Northern Kentucky as their geographically challenged, red headed stepchild. On the other side of the Ohio River, the people of the Queen City thought that their neighbors to the south were all hillbillies who walked around as shoeless imbeciles.

Over the years, those to our north and south have changed their attitudes about us. Kentuckians who spend their days wandering the halls in Frankfort have come to understand that we are the fuel which runs the Commonwealth’s economic engine.

Changing the mind sets of Cincinnatians was actually much easier. Once national businesses began choosing to re-locate their headquarters in Northern Kentucky rather than Cincinnati, the downtown crowd forced city leaders to take notice. The city that had previously won all of the business re-location wars was losing. Suddenly, our friends to the north were all about “regionalism.”

I’m not quite sure when it happened. But, somewhere along the way – when no one else was looking – Northern Kentucky came of age.

The growing pains of our matriculation process have been frequent and often painful. We’ve successfully weathered ugly political battles, crippling infrastructure breakdowns and an identity crisis that would make Rodney Dangerfield seem confident.

And now, we have our latest Declaration of Independence. With the delivery of the first issue of this publication, we have our own magazine.

Northern Kentucky Magazine is for all of us … young and old … those with generational familiar family names and business transplants who have arrived in the last decade or so. It’s a glossy print forum to gloat about our successes, highlight our heritage and debate our future.

Give a copy of Northern Kentucky Magazine to your favorite Ohioan the next time they visit. Just make sure they put their shoes on before they cross our river.

Enjoy.

Snuffed out by an old bridge Originally published in NKY Magazine

In the middle of a recent Friday morning rush hour, Abdoulaye Yattara did the unthinkable – he ran out of gas on the southbound deck of the Brent Spence Bridge.

Without any emergency lane available on the bridge for stopping, the 42 year-old Yattara began pushing his car across the span. A good Samaritan pulled up behind Yattata’s car and, trying to shelter him from oncoming traffic, turned on his emergency flashers. Just as Yattara approached the Samaritan’s car to thank the driver, a third car slammed into both of them.

The impact from the collision tossed Abdoulaye Yattara off the bridge. He fell 80 feet to his death in the Ohio River.

The accident presented a shocking visual to local commuters that utilize the bridge on a regular basis. The unspeakable horror was felt by every person that has dodged a car or a falling piece of concrete on the Brent Spence Bridge.

Politicians were quick to react. Kentucky’s gubernatorial candidates sprang into action and immediately called for an investigation into traffic backups at the NASCAR race in Sparta.

President Barack Obama stood in front of the bridge and cracked jokes about Speaker of the House John Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Yattara is not the first …

Sadly, Abdoulaye Yattera was not the first person killed on the Brent Spence Bridge. There have been several others that died because of the lack of emergency lanes.

The death that has remained in my memory was that of Gentry Aubrey, a 24 year old student at Chase Law School. Aubrey died on the bridge in February, 2004 in an accident that occurred days before the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce went to Washington to lobby for the funds necessary to build a new bridge. I was on that trip.

On the day we spoke to our federal officials about funding bridge replacement, the Aubrey family buried their son. “That’s the kind of life that’s snuffed out on an old bridge,” said Gentry’s step-father. “They can tell that story in Washington.”

We did … but I apologize. It didn’t work The bridge still hasn’t been built.

Because of our failure you can add the name of Abdoulaye Yattera to the list of the “kind of life that’s snuffed out by an old bridge.”

Time to end the politics …

Northern Kentuckians need to draw a line in the sand. It’s time we insist that the federal government stand by its obligation to maintain our interstate road system.

Appropriate the funds and cut the bureaucratic red tape necessary for approval.

The original Brent Spence Bridge was built in less than four years. Today, it takes twice that long just to do the studies necessary to start the actual approval process.

The time for talking is over. In fact, the next time a politician wants to talk about replacement of the Brent Spence Bridge, let’s plan the press conference during morning rush hour in the right hand, north bound lane. We’ll put the podium right in front of a disabled vehicle.

To Ban or not to Ban Originally published in NKY Magazine

When I was its Chair, the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce created a stir in our region by taking a legislative position in support of a statewide indoor smoking ban.

The announcement of the position stirred the pot of Northern Kentucky politics. It was hailed by some and cursed by others, Driven primarily by concerns over increasing health care costs, an overwhelming majority of the Chamber’s 2000 member businesses supported a statewide indoor smoking ban. Business owners opposed to such action expressed nanny state concerns about the government mandates restricted their liberty. They argued that the smoking habits of employees in workplaces should be left to the decision of individual business owners.

Still a fiscal conservative At the time, I was Chamber Chair and I had no vote on the smoking ban. There was no tie for me to break and I simply moderated the debate. I was glad for that role, because I was truly conflicted. My basic free market and libertarian political tendencies were being offset by the concerns being raised by my instincts as a fiscal conservative.

In large part, the free market has taken care of smoking in Northern Kentucky’s workplace. One would be hard pressed to find an office building where smoking is allowed. Factory floors are mostly free from cigarette butts. And, there are plenty of smoke-free restaurants and bars.

On the other hand It is hard to argue with the libertarians who support the right of individuals to choose to screw up their own health by smoking. On the other hand, anyone who claims to be a fiscal conserve should be wary when those same people want the government to pay for the consequences of their choices. In essence, don’t scream about the nanny state and then ask Mary Poppins to pony up her tax dollars to pay for your iron lung.

The legislature never voted on a statewide indoor smoking ban and the issue went away for a while. It popped up in the primary election, but only briefly. The fiscal courts in Northern Kentucky are where the action on the issue has taken place.

Kenton County Fiscal Court passed an indoor smoking ban. Campbell County passed a similar measure, but later repealed it. Boone County never took it up.

Once the smoking ban took effect in Kenton County, something remarkable happened … nothing. Jackbooted thugs are not prowling local bars and restaurants in search of smokers. A conference to explain the regulations to local business owners was cancelled because no one signed up. Not a single business has failed. In fact, one restaurateur who opposed the ban says that his business traffic is up since his place of business was ordered smoke-free.

I am going to propose a new legislative position for potential Chamber support that addresses all of my philosophical concerns. Give away free smokes to anyone that wants them, but cut all Medicare/Medicaid funding for smoking caused health problems. I’m no numbers guy, but I think it’ll be cheaper.

Death, lobsters and economic stimulus in New England Originally published by One New England

Don McNay writes an award winning syndicated column which can be found weekly at the The Huffington Post. He is an excellent writer who opines on issues as serious as the current financial crisis to those as mundane as modern music.

He is a financial planner by trade and a music geek by obsession.He starts each of his columns with a line or two from a song appropriate to the topic.

With all due respects to Don (and with sincerest apologies for stealing his style just this one time), the local New England newspapers this week screamed out the lyrics to Warren Zevon’s “Lawyers, Guns and Money.”

Mapping death in Boston It is interesting that crime was not a major issue in this year’s presidential election campaign. Only a decade ago, it was the number one issue when polling voters on the problems facing America. Now, crime polls somewhere below America’s fear that there will be another Indiana Jones sequel.

It does not mean that crime is on the decline. Newspapers are filled with stories of crime running rampant. It’s just that with the new administration transitioning to power, a war overseas and an economy in the tank, the stories of criminal activity have been moved off the front page.

While other issues have our attention, stories of crime in New England are not all that hard to find. Nowhere are those stories more troubling than in Boston. The Boston Globe has an interactive map on its web site where New Englanders can plot the locations of murders in Bean Town.

The map itself is a detailed street map of Boston with pop-up, red balloons marking the locations of the city’s 2008 murders. Click on one of the red balloons and the name of the victim pops up along with a one liner about the murder.

The map has an index associated with it where the user can get further details about the crime. It even provides links to the police blotter about the crime, as well as any Boston Globe story about the incident.

This Compass Rose of death also indicates whether a person died via gun, knife, fire or club (ouch). Call it Map Quest for wrong place, wrong time.

What is amazing about New England is that escape from the mean streets is only a short drive away. Maine may well be the safest state in America.

Illegal possession of lobsters in Maine Last week, an independent organization named three cities in Maine as the some of the safest in the country. Bangor was the 8th safest city in America. Portland was 28th and Lewiston-Auburn ranked 60th.

The Boston Globe interactive map of death stands in stark contrast to the stories announcing these rankings. New England is a region of contrast. To see the full picture, go to the newspapers in rural New England and read the police blotters and court dockets.

The Ellsworth American let its readers know that the police in this small costal Maine community gave out 40 speeding tickets last month. They even list that Officer Andrew Weatherbee had the itchy ticket finger by writing 12 of the 40 speeding tickets.

The Fifth District Court docket is also printed in the paper. It’s a list of who was drunk driving and who’s kid got busted smoking pot or drinking under age. A bad check writer got a fine of $150. The kid who got busted for possession of alcohol got hit for $200. Someone busted for possession of marijuana had to pay a bit more ($350). At the low end, someone letting their dog run loose paid a fine of $50.

All of that seems to make sense. The crimes may seem insignificant by Boston’s standards, but the fines make sense. By all logic, they seem to increase with the severity of the offense.

Here’s where the confusion comes in.

A 23 year old from Franklin, Maine was fined $136 for digging worms without a license. Longtime fishermen are probably surprised, but apparently digging up night crawlers in Maine requires licensure. This case raises a plethora of issues ripe for commentary. However, let’s not argue about the need for government oversight of worm collection or try to envision how this guy got arrested.

(Although it would be interesting to see how this guy’s lawyer defended the charge. “It wasn’t my client’s worms. They belonged to a friend of his. He borrowed his coat and didn’t even know they were in the pocket.”)

Instead contrast the fine imposed on Franklin’s mad worm digger with the one imposed on the 72 year old man from Hancock, Maine who was busted for illegal possession of lobsters. He got a $75 fine. If he got to keep the lobster, that’s not a huge fine. For a good batch of lobster, you’ll spend at least that much on butter.

It makes sense that illegal possession of pot costs the offending Maine resident more than illegal possession of alcohol. However, what value judgment is made

on paying more of a fine for illegal possession of worms than illegal possession of lobsters?

Jump starting the economy with a bang The economy may have pushed it off the front pages, but crime remains on the collective mind of New Englanders. Remember when President-elect Obama declared that when people get bitter they cling to their guns? Well, folks must be bitter as hell these days. Retail sales of guns are (pardon the pun) booming.

The Kennebec Journal Morning Sentinel reports that since October gun sales have skyrocketed. Some attribute the rise in sales to fears that President-elect Obama and a Democratic controlled Congress will crack down on private gun ownership. Others say that in hard economic times people fear the potential for increases in crime and buy guns for personal protection.

Whatever the reason, gun sales are on the rise. Sales in New England reflect the national trend. According to the FBI, government required back ground checks are way up over last year at this time. Semi-automatics and handguns are popular holiday purchases.

In Exeter, New Hampshire, one of the world’s leading gun manufacturers Sig Sauer is not only expanding its products line, but also its training academy.

Basic orientation classes, which they refer to as Handgun 101 and 102, are now available at night.

Send lawyers, guns and money.

It’s better than clinging to illegal worms.

(Yawn) Election Day is at hand for New England Originally published in One New England

There is only one week to go until Election Day. In seven days, for the first time in twenty years, America will select a President not named Clinton or Bush.

For New England, there is not much suspense in the race for President. Some pundits are calling a couple of these states “battleground” areas. The current polls just don’t bear it out. Senator Barack Obama is polling over 50% in every state in New England. A couple of states still have a great deal of undecided voters. But, if a candidate is over 50% with seven days left, there has to be a catastrophic event for that candidate to lose.

In other words, in order for John McCain to win New England, Barack Obama has to be caught with a dead woman or a live boy. Even then, he’ll probably still take a couple of states.

The northeast is solid blue. Senator Barack Obama can put all New England in his column and focus on the true battleground states.

Not that this is any surprise.

New England has been blue for the last several presidential elections. There have only been a couple of exceptions. George W. Bush took New Hampshire and its 4 electoral votes back in 2000. His dad, George H.W. Bush, was able to split New England against Massachusetts Governor Mike Dukakis in 1988. One has to go back to the Ronald Reagan landslide of 1984 to find a map of New England covered in red. That year, Reagan won every state in America except Walter Mondale’s home state of Minnesota.

So what is there for New England’s political junkies to look forward to on election night?

Well, there’s always waiting up late for the returns in Dixville Notch.

As goes Dixville Notch, New Hampshire – so goes the nation Drive to the end of the earth. Make a right and you can see Dixville Notch, New Hampshire. If you hit the Canadian Border, turn around and head back. You’ve gone 20 miles too far.

Dixville Notch is an unincorporated village of about 75 people who get fifteen minutes of fame every four years by being the first precinct in America to report presidential election results. At midnight on November 4, all the registered voters of Dixville Notch will gather at The Balsams Grand Resort Hotel and cast their votes for president.

Other precincts in New England do the same thing. But, Dixville Notch claims the longest running streak of midnight voting.

After skyrocketing to 38 voters in 1988, voter registration in Dixville Notch has been hovering around 25 for the last several elections. Generally, half of the village is registered Republican and the other half are “undeclared.” A Democrat occasionally sneaks in a registration form.

The voter excitement surrounding this year’s election has not hit Dixville Notch yet. This year, registration has plummeted to 15.

As goes Dixville Notch, so goes the nation.

Well, not really.

They did accurately predict the final ticket for this year’s presidential election by voting for Senators Obama and McCain in the New Hampshire primary. That says something as both campaigns were anything but sure shots at the time.

More telling in the primary was the fact that Republican Ron Paul went there to campaign this year and couldn’t convince anyone to vote for him.

While they may predict primary outcomes, the voters of Dixville Notch aren’t quite as accurate in the general election. In 1960, the first year of midnight voting in Dixville Notch, they voted 9-0 for Richard Nixon over Jack Kennedy. Opps.

Somebody split from the pack in 1964 and voted for Lyndon B. Johnson. Barry Goldwater’s won Dixville Notch that year 8-1.

One can only imagine the eyes darting around the room as each voter tried to figure out who had voted for that damn Texan.

Over the next four-plus decades, the kind citizens of Dixville Notch voted with the winner of the presidential election only when the Republicans claimed the White House (although they did favor Hubert Humphery over Richard Nixon in 1968 – what did they know that the rest of America didn’t?).

Will Dixville Notch stay in the Red villages of New England or turn blue?

The only way to know is to stay up late on Monday night and watch the poll report.

Seven come eleven – Sarah needs a new pair of shoes Alright, so you say that watching the returns from Dixville Notch is too boring for you. Maybe the meanderings of a small hamlet in New Hampshire are a little to parochial for the folks in Boston. Then, how about putting your money where your political mouth is and laying down a bet on the outcome.

Placing a bet on the outcome elections has become a popular wager at off-shore and internet gaming establishments. Many claim that the betting handicappers are better at calling the elections than the pollsters. The pundits say that this is an election where Americans will be voting with their wallets. Those who are literal about it may be the best gauge.

According to bookies, Barack Obama is the odds on favorite at about even money to be the next President. He’s the safe bet. If you like playing the longshot, the odds on John McCain range from 4-1 all the way up to 7-1.

Now, there’s a bet.

One web site, www.oddsmaker.com, even lists the gaming odds on a state-bystate basis. The odds for New England all lean towards Barack Obama. New Hampshire is the tightest odds where McCain is a 5-1 underdog. In Vermont, McCain is 25-1.

A London bookie has advised to play the long-shot. Put $100 on McCain to win Dixville Notch and parlay with Geoff Hoon to be the next Leader of the UK’s Labor party. Hoon is currently 33-1.

If that bet hits…well, talk about a redistribution of wealth.

New England…whatever you do, don’t call it “God’s Country” Originally published in One New England

It’s been a tough couple of weeks for God in New England. Normally accustomed to praise at this time of year for the beauty of the region’s fall foliage, he (or she) has been taking it on the holy chin of late.

Woodbury, Vermont and a New Monroe Doctrine Founded in 1817, Woodbury, Vermont is said to be named after Colonel Ebenezer Wood who was one of the men who charted the town. That may just be town lore. With all due respect to Col. Wood, it is also entirely possible that Woodbury gets its name from the community’s rough and mountainous terrain. It has more ponds and lakes than any other town in Vermont.

Whatever the reason for the name, the town’s residents soon grew tired of it and, in 1838, filed a petition with the state Legislature to change the community moniker to Monroe. The fifth President of the United States, James Monroe, had recently died. News reports from the era indicate that Monroe was held in high regard in Vermont. So, the city fathers decided to name the town after him.

Monroe is known to be the father of American isolationism. His Monroe Doctrine basically told Europe to take a hike and stay out of our business. It wasn’t any great diplomatic feat. America was young and really didn’t have any ability to structure any other position on the world stage. So, Monroe promoted an anti-Brit message with the same fervor which President-elect Obama messaged the word “change.”

No one is quite sure what the late-President Monroe did to piss off everybody in the town, but they had their community’s name changed back to Woodbury five years later.

Isolationism in Woodbury, Vermont was dead for nearly two hundred years when it resurfaced again last week at the town’s small elementary school.

According to the Associated Press, the citizens of Woodbury, Vermont are embroiled in a controversy over whether the 55 children who attend Woodbury Elementary School (K-6) should be allowed to recite the Pledge of Allegiance prior to school.

It started out late last spring when the Pledge was unceremoniously removed from the school’s daily routine. A parent started a petition drive to have the Pledge reinstituted. In response, school officials began allowing the children to

recite the Pledge as a daily exercise, but not in a classroom. If a child wants to participate, they are led to the gym for a pre-home room class recitation.

According to the AP story, principal Michaela Martin said the Pledge was not allowed in the classroom because: “We don’t want to isolate children everyday in their own classroom or make them feel they’re different.” She sounds like the same woman who won’t let kids keep score at knothole baseball games.

Nevertheless, let’s make sure we understand the situation; the principal of a school which houses 55 kids in grades K through 6 is worried that students saying “under God” will make them feel isolated.

I’ve got some news for principal Martin. She lives in a community of 800 people in north central Vermont where their one claim to fame is that they have more lakes and ponds than any community in state. The crappie in any one of those ponds outnumbers the kids in her school.

If she’s worried about these kids being isolated, saying the words “under God” is the least of her problems.

The school board should pay for field trip to nearest city with a population of minorities on the right side of the number line.

Of Gays, Mormons and Sunday worship Small rural communities were not the only place in New England where God was having troubles last week. Residents of big cities had their problems with their favorite Deity as well.

People in New England took to the streets to show their support for those who feel disenfranchised by the outcome of California’s Proposition 8.

The ballot in California is regularly filled with ballot initiatives. As most already know, the initiative at issue overturned a recent California Supreme Court decision which allowed same sex marriage.

People marched last week all over the nation, including in New England.

Interestingly for New England, the marches came at the same time the Connecticut Supreme Court approved gay marriage in that state (a decision which reaffirms that requirements for marriage should remain a state rights decision).

With the only two states in America allowing gay marriage being located in New England, the chants recorded at the Boston protests sounded a bit confusing.

Leader: “What do we want?”

Crowd: “Equal Rights!”

Leader: “When do we want them?”

Crowd: “murmer …murmer…murmer” (someone raises their hand) “I thought we already had ‘em?”

While uninspired, this chant is definitely better than the old standard: “We’re here! We’re queer! And we’re not going anywhere!” Nice meter, but it doesn’t rhyme. Someone should have checked the GLBT Directory to find a poet.

Here’s the rub as far as God is concerned. Blame for the passage of Proposition 8 is being laid at the granite steps of the Mormon Church. Of the $35 million spent in support of Prop 8, Mormons gave nearly two thirds of that amount. In response, GLBT activists targeted the church and its members for protests and disrupted church services over the past couple of weeks.

A church which has fundamentalists who believe that God wants men to have multiple wives is rightfully open to questions of hypocrisy on the issue of a ballot initiative declaring that marriage is between one man and one woman. But disrupting church service leaves the GLBT community open to similar claims.

I can’t imagine the opposition gaining many votes for their cause by knocking Styrofoam crosses out of the hands of old women or by lying in the aisles of California’s Mormon churches.

Prop 8 was financially backed by Mormons, but it wasn’t passed by Mormons. It was Latinos and African Americans who voted strongly in support of Proposition 8. CNN exit polls indicate that African-Americans voted more than 2:1 in favor of the referendum.

Mormons are an easy target. By definition they’re pacifists. They’re not going to fight back.

Interestingly, many are blaming the passage of Proposition 8 on the organized opposition. They claim the campaign in opposition was poorly run and underfinanced. Supporters put their money where their mouth was and opponents didn’t (at least until it was too late).

The drama isn’t over. The outcome of the vote is being taken up by the California Supreme Court. It is hard to understand how a vote can make constitutional something previously declared unconstitutional.

Until then, if Mormons want to feel safe at worship, maybe they should go to services at an evangelical African American church.

The New England 12 step As if he/she didn’t have enough on the holy plate last week, OneNewEngland added to God’s problems in the region.

ONE’s article suggesting an AA style 12 Step Program for political junkies drew criticism for subjecting readers to “religious nonsense.” Anyone familiar with AA understands that the program is very spiritual in its nature, using faith in a higher power as a tool to fighting addiction.

ONE article was a satirical approach to political junkies and suggested a similar 12 step program.

The Editorial Board at ONE met and considered enrolling the offended reader in an anger management program. However, since such classes usually employ a 12 step approach to controlling anger, such a program for our offended reader would seem to be futile.

And, ONE would never want any of its readers to feel isolated.

Election Day Recap – Obama blowout, gains in the Congress and skinny dipping in Moose Lake Originally published by One New England

In the race for President of the Unites States, New England voted for Senator Barack Obama like he had an apostrophe in his last name and was a Southie Irish kid from one of the south precincts in Boston. “Aye, I voted for that Barry O’Bama lad. You know that he’s the third cousin of Paddy O’Toole who bar tends down at the pub?”

As had been expected (and predicted by OneNewEngland), every state in New England showed up in blue on the map of the final presidential vote tally. New Hampshire had been called a late battleground state, but it wasn’t. Obama won New Hampshire by ten points.

The Obama sweep of New England was expected. Two key issues point to just how impressive the victory was.

First, a county-by-county analysis of New England reveals that only one single county in all of New England voted for McCain.

The vote in Massachusetts was so strong that several county tallies for Obama went over 70%. Suffolk County led the way with 77.5% voting for Obama.

Eastern Berkshire County was right behind Boston with 75.2%. Outside of Massachusetts, only one county went over the magic 70% number. Windham County, Vermont voted 73.4% for Obama.

Secondly, the Obama victory had significant coattails in New England.

Democrats picked up a Senate seat in New Hampshire and won the only remaining Republican House seat in New England.

So what’s going on in Piscataquis County, Maine?

New England is dominated by blue. Peel back the electorial onion to look at the county-by county vote and the blue gets even deeper in hue. There is one anomaly in New England vote map.

Senator John McCain won the vote in Piscataquis County, Maine where they voted 4,785 (50.8%) for McCain to 4,430 (47%) for Obama. 202 people in the county (2.2%) voted for other candidates. Overall, Maine voted 58% for Obama.

Piscataquis County isn’t a historical stronghold for McCain. Mitt Romney won Piscataquis County in the Republican primary. John McCain polled a distant third behind Congressman Ron Paul.

So what’s going on in Piscataquis County, Maine?

Piscataquis County is located in the geographic center of Maine. If you’ve fished at Moose Lake, you’ve been there. And there are probably more fish in the lake than people in the county. Incorporated in 1838, the population density of the county is 4 people per square mile. Not unlike many parts of rural New England, Piscataquis County is largely white. In fact, they have more Native Americans and Asians living there than African Americans.

Maybe the electorate of Piscataquis County was distracted on election day.

You see, if you haven’t fished in Moose Lake, maybe you’ve skinny dipped there.

On election day, two men were fined $200 plus $50 in court costs each for skinny dipping in the lake in order to get a free “Skinny Dip” sandwich from the Black Frog Restaurant. A female who accompanies them into the lake was found not guilty.

According to reports, on August 23, the local Wildlife Warden was at the Moosehead Marina when he observed two naked males and one naked female making their way down a boat ramp outside the Tiki Bar attached to the Black Frog Restaurant. They dove into the lake and then emerged to towel off before enjoying their free sandwich.

The patrons of the restaurant observed the swim, as did a wedding party. The game warden used binoculars to focus on the facial features of the males and was able to identify them and their genitals to the court. When he couldn’t pick the female’s genitals out of a genital lineup, the female was found not guilty.

As this is a family publication, the reader is encouraged to insert his or her own off-color punch line here. We’ll just call it American blind justice.

Sarah Palin visited Bangor, Maine about two weeks before the election. The Bangor newspaper covered the event and a resident of the Piscataquis County attended the rally. She said that the county was supporting McCain/Palin because they “love hunting and fishing and snowmobiling” just like the Palin family.

They didn’t say anything about whether Sarah enjoyed skinny dipping for free food.

New England Dems add House & Senate seats

The Obama victory had long coattails on election day. Nationwide, Democrats added six seats to their majority in the United States Senate and twenty seats to their majority in the United States House of Representatives. Nowhere were those gains more significant than in New England.

For the northeast, it was not a numbers issue. Prior to the vote, Democrats already controlled the majority of Federal seats. However, two key races made national news.

In the New Hampshire Senate race, Jeanne Shaheen (D) and John Sununu (R) faced off in a rematch of their open seat battle from six years ago. Shaheen led throughout and ended up winning 52%/45%. It could be argued that this race had less to do with Obama’s coattails and more to do with Sununu’s voting record being out of step with the constituents he represented. Whatever the case, New Hampshire has a new junior Senator in Washington.

More surprising was the United States House race for Connecticut #4, which had been in Republican hands for four decades. There Jim Himes (D) beat twentyone year incumbent Christopher Shays (R) by a vote margin of 51%/48%.

Shays is third in a line of Progressive Republicans representing Connecticut #4 which includes Lowell Weicker and Stewart McKinney. Shays was elected to Congress in a special election following McKinney’s death from complications related to HIV in 1987.

Shays’ margins of victory had been narrowing in recent elections, but it was clearly the Obama turnout that put Himes over the top. In fact, Himes campaign plan was to convince Obama voters to support him as well. It worked.

With Shay’s defeat, New England is now without any Republican serving in the House of Representatives since the party was founded in 1854. Stewart McKinney’s son, John, is a State Senator in Connecticut and the minority floor leader there. Look for him to try and recapture the seat for Republicans in two years.

Of Phelps, Pop Tarts and Mass.’ new pot law Originally published in One New England

News flash – college age kids smoke pot and athletes use performance enhancing drugs.

Michael Phelps had his picture taken at a party while hitting a bong. Alex Rodriguez admitted to steroid use to improve his hitting.

Rodriguez used a drug that caused abnormal muscle growth and, thus, enhanced his on-field performance. Phelps used a drug which caused him to get a bad case of munchies and cotton-mouth.

A-Rod admitted to doping and Michael Phelps admitted to being a dope.

USA Swimming has suspended Phelps and Kellogg Co. terminated his endorsement contract. For Major League Baseball, A-Rod admitted to using steroids at a point in time before steroids were banned. This is one time that the Commissioner Bud Selig is more than happy to hide behind MLB’s labor agreement with its players union.

Don’t be surprised at Selig’s lack of response. Better baseball through chemicals is not anything new in the sport. Steroids may have recently damaged the image of professional baseball, but drug use has been rampant in baseball since World War II. And since WWII, Major League Baseball has been quite consistent in its effort to ignore the problem of performance enhancing drugs in the sport.

Greenies Dexedrine, an over the counter amphetamine (called “greenies” because they were sold in green capsules), entered the training room in the 1940s and were prevalent in baseball by the 50s. Not that their use at the time was new or shocking. During World War II, amphetamines were given to soldiers (particularly pilots) to keep them alert. Back on the home front greenies were bought by moms to fight fatigue and dads to fight asthma. When the boys of summer returned from Europe and Japan to their playing fields in America, they brought their new green friend with them.

The big decision on the field for the next 60 years was not steroids, but whether to “bean up” or “play naked.”

And there were wild stories of those who “beaned up.”

Stories of “special” pots of coffee “for players only” and private bottles of vitamin drinks filled with speed had been rampant in baseball for years. But the door was

first blown off amphetamine use in baseball by Jim Bouton when, in 1970, he released his classic tell-all book on the 1969 season entitled Ball Four declaring that speed was readily available on any given game day for everything from a chemical hang over cure to a manner in which to alleviate general road-trip fatigue.

MLB Commissioner Bowie Kuhn was outraged at Bouton’s book of frat house behavior, but baseball failed to formally respond.

Things got uglier in mid-1980s when a drug trial involving the Pittsburgh Pirates included allegations that Willie “Pops” Stargell would regularly distribute amphetamines to fellow team members and that Willie Mays kept a bottle of “red juice” in his locker which was a cocktail of amphetamines and fruit juice. Stargell denied the allegation and Mays angrily claimed that the “red juice” was cough medicine.

Baseball Commissioner Peter Ueberroth suspended players, but again baseball failed to offer any substantive response to amphetamine use in baseball.

Over the years, Mike Schmidt, Ralph Kiner, Dale Berra (Yogi’s son), Dave Parker, Tony Gwinn, Ken Caminiti and Pete Rose all spoke at one time or another about greenie use in baseball.

With each pronouncement of the wide-spread use of these drugs, Baseball turned a deaf-ear.

In 2003, MLB banned an herbal substance (ephedra) following the death of Todd Belcher, but left amphetamines untouched.

Finally, in 2006, following nearly seven decades of abuse, Major League Baseball decided to ban and test for amphetamines. Special bottles of red juice in the locker room were replaced by espresso machines.

Baseball’s history of sticking its collectively bargained head in the sand on amphetamine abuse offers a good explanation to those who have been scratching their heads over baseball’s failure to immediately respond to A-Rod’s admission.

Insert your own favorite pot joke here And then there’s Michael Phelps, who was photographed smoking marijuana at a party in South Carolina. He was immediately suspended from competition.

Unlike HGH or steroids, marijuana is anything but performance enhancing. As anyone who has smoked immediately preceding a college physics exam can attest, pot decreases performance (and GPA). In fact, had Phelps been using

marijuana during the Olympics, he may have stopped midway through the 200 free-style to ask for directions to the end of the pool.

Yet, USA Swimming has suspended its number one attraction, Michael Phelps, from competition. And Kellogg Co., the manufacturer of America’s #1 munchie, Pop Tarts, has terminated Phelps’ endorsement contract.

There is certainly a double standard at play. Phelps is suspended for using a performance debilitating drug, while A-Rod goes to spring training for using a performance enhancing drug. Kellogg’s terminates Phelps, while Activision kept A-Rod’s Guitar Hero spot on the air.

Dope smokers have asked for a boycott of Kellogg products, but they can’t remember why.

So what is the double-standard?

This is not about A-Rod and steroids.

Eventually, this is all about America’s changing attitude towards marijuana use.

Like it or not, fans have always accepted drug use in sports to enhance performance.

Fans are fine with the suspension of Phelps for smoking pot. Yet, fans are more upset with A-Rod for boinking Madonna than they are about him juicing up.

Massachusetts voters got it right last year when they voted for Question #2 which decriminalized possession of small quantities of marijuana. Police chiefs across the state say that the enforcement of $100 civil fines for small quantity possession is freeing up their resources for other law enforcement activities.

The new law does have a negative impact in that Boston will no longer be considered for a qualifying round in the Nathan Hot Dog Eating Contest, the finals of which are held every 4th of July at Coney Island. An eating contest is the one and only place where pot can be considered a performance enhancing drug.

Shovel-ready Politics Originally published in the Daily Caller

The national debate on the next generation of stimulus came to my backyard today as President Barack Obama held a political rally in my community to push for passage of his jobs package and used the replacement of an aging interstate bridge as his background visual.

Linking Florida to Michigan, Interstate 75 is one of the busiest roads in America.

As I-75 crosses the Ohio River between Cincinnati, Ohio and Covington, Kentucky, it is joined by another major north/south route, Interstate 71. The structure that cars use to cross the river is known as the Brent Spence Bridge.

In the president’s recent message to Congress, he called out the Brent Spence Bridge as one of the nation’s aging items of infrastructure in bad need of replacement. He’s right.

The Brent Spence Bridge opened in 1963 with an engineering expectation of carrying a maximum of 85,000 cars daily. The fact that it currently carries twice that amount of traffic is just one of the reasons it has been labeled functionally obsolete.

Because of its age, the Brent Spence Bridge is under constant repair. Even with the extra attention, drivers dodge new potholes on a weekly basis. Cars on the north-bound, lower deck must also be on guard for chunks of concrete falling from the underside of the upper deck.

As there are no emergency lanes on the Brent Spence Bridge, the driver of a broken-down vehicle literally takes his life in his hands. This summer, a good Samaritan stopped to offer assistance to a driver whose car had run out of gas on the bridge. A third car smashed into them both. The driver of the disabled vehicle was killed when he was tossed off the bridge into the Ohio River.

Sadly, that man was not the first person killed on the Brent Spence Bridge. He’s only the latest.

Linking more than north and south When President Obama mentioned the Brent Spence Bridge replacement in his remarks to Congress, people in my community were ecstatic. Backed by the business community, local officials have been working on securing the funds to move the project forward. Finally, it seemed, someone was taking the initiative to secure the funds and fast-track the process.

Well, not quite.

According to an article in today’s Cincinnati Enquirer, the Brent Spence Bridge is never actually mentioned in the president’s jobs bill. In fact, when asked about fast-tracking the project, White House Communications Director Dan Pfeiffer qualified the president’s enthusiasm by stating, “We would move it as quickly as we possibly could. But every project has to be evaluated on its merits.”

Oh, and by the way, it’s not a direct federal appropriation of funds … it’s a block of money to each state for them to determine how to spend. Of course, the states still have to come up with the 20% match required by the transportation formula.

There is not a lot of loose change lying around in state budgets these days to pay for mega-projects like multi-interstate bridge replacements.

There are plenty of good reasons to have the federal government focus like a laser beam on the replacement of the Brent Spence Bridge. Unfortunately, safety, efficiency and job creation are not the reasons that this project made its way onto the president’s radar screen today.

The Brent Spence Bridge links two very important politicians to the president’s latest stimulus package. Speaker of the House John Boehner’s home district in Ohio starts just a short trip up I-75 from the failing span. Boehner drives across the Brent Spence Bridge every time he comes home from D.C. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell represents the Kentucky constituents on the south side of the river.

In his speech, President Obama joked about the fact that the bridge was chosen for that exact political purpose. He got plenty of laughs from the crowd as he drew a steel and concrete line in the sand and challenged Speaker Boehner and Leader McConnell to step across it.

Quite frankly, most of us who dare drive across the bridge on a daily basis aren’t amused at being used as a sight gag for a campaign one-liner.

Mr. President, if you’re serious about infrastructure …

If the president is serious about his commitment to make infrastructure a device of economic stimulus, the first thing he needs to put on a fast track is eliminating the regulatory hurdles that stand in the way of a reasonable start date.

The original Brent Spence Bridge was built in about four years. Today, it takes at least that long to do the environmental impact studies necessary to start the approval process for its replacement.

As for money, if the federal government paid for repair or replacement of every interstate bridge labeled as functionally obsolete or structurally deficient, the price tag of a direct federal appropriation would be $140 billion (far less than the $447 billion overall price tag of Stimulus III).

Do those two things, Mr. President, and the workers who attended your pep rally today might start shoveling more than a pile of political bullshit.

Rick Robinson is an international award-winning author, having twice been named the International Independent Published Author of the Year. He has ranked number one in his category on Amazon and has often placed multiple books in the top 100. Rick has also been a regular humor columnist for local, national, and international publications. Rick and his wife/editor Linda live in Kentucky.

Books by Rick Robinson The Richard Thompson Series • The Maximum Contribution • Sniper Bid • Manifest Destiny • Writ of Mandamus • The Advance Man • Opposition Research The Coming-of-Age Series for Folks Who Never Came of Age • Alligator Alley • The Promise of Cedar Key Other Books • A Fish Ate My Homework • Landau Murphy, Jr. – From Washing Cars to Hollywood Stars • Killing the Curse – with Dennis Hetzel • Strange Bedfellow (Kindle only)

Books by Rick Robinson