Guv McGoofy

Shame on Jim McGreevey ! Talk about your classic self - absorbed, me - first baby boomer. As if his terrible tax and spend Liberal tenure as Governor of New Jersey wasn't bad enough, he now writes a tell - all book about his confession and "coming out" and how he lived a lie beforehand. This is just great. First he screws the tax payers of New Jersey, and now he screws his former wives as well as his children in public.

This guy is a disgrace. He says he knew he was gay from the time he was six or seven, and that he tried to fight it. He fought it so hard that he married not one, but two woman and fathered multiple children. Now he claims to have found his courage and that at last he is out of the closet and living his true life. By the way, this new life includes his living in a mansion with his gay lover, while the life of his second wife, the former first lady of New Jersy is in ruins.

His crowning glory as it were, was his recent appearance on "Oprah". This was a sickening spectacle. Why Oprah thought this guy's story was worth telling is beyond me. To subject his wives and children to this spectacle in front of a national audience is a disgrace. Furthemore, now way this episode should have aired in the middle of the afternoon when kids are watching TV.

Memo to Oprah, why don't you have productive Americans such as Shad Helmstetter who help others lead richer and fuller lives, on your show. No can't do that, it's a liberal show after all. It reminded me of the time last year when Oprah had a show honoring African -American women of high achievement. Not surprisingly, the highest achieving African - American woman of all time, Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice was nowhere to be found.

I guess you can't just blame Oprah though. All over the dinosaur media, this guy is treated as a hero. What courage, they all spout. But how wrong they are. Courage is quietly fighting temptation everyday in the face of tough odds, and praying for redemption. I would also reserve the word courage for our military men and women bravely fighting this war on terror.

It's scary when you compare McGreevey's selfish act to the most unselfish act in the history of the world, the Crucifixion. The voluntary giving up of an innocent life so that the world may be saved. It's even scarier when you compare the dinosaur media's response to these two polar opposites. McGreevey is cheered as a hero as noted above, while Mel Gibson was trashed and viciously attacked as was his epic film "The Passion of the Christ."

A few years ago in National Review, Bill Buckley wrote an article lamenting the absence of shame. The gist of the article was that in years past, most people would abstain from certain behaviors because they would be ashamed should they be caught. Not so nowadays, as the McGreevey story so aptly illustrates. How right Buckley was as usual. What a damn shame !

Hugo Chavez - Devil Incarnate

Hugo Chavez' horrific speech at the U.N.was typical of the diabolical creep he is. They say that the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist. His second greatest trick was to call everyone else a devil to take the spotlight off of himself and to trick the gullible, like liberals. Chavez understands this second principal, and I suppose you have to give him some credit for that. What is sad and pathetic is that Chavez knew he could get away with such a speech in New York, because he knew he would get cover from liberals(who think the same thing but are afraid to use such strong language close to an election); as well as the liberals' pathetic waterboys, the dinosaur media. Liberals don't call the President the devil only because they have fallen prey to the devil's first trick, and believe he doesn't exist. As Rush would say,liberalism is their religion and abortion is their holy sacrament. I would also add that moral equivalency is their god.

What is clear is that evil attracts evil in the pursuit of destroying good, even if the conniving evildoers hate each other. Witness what Nazi Germany and Communist Russia did to Christian Poland on September 1,1939. The fact that Hitler and Stalin later fought each other did not make one of them good. Nor did the decison of the West to accept Stalin as an "ally" in their pursuit of destroying Nazi Germany.

Similarly, today we see the joinder of Communist dictators and Islamo -Fascists who both seek to destroy the USA, the West and the Free World. The fact thay they will turn on each other after they destroy us is of no solace to this father of four. What is even more maddening is that today's major evildoers have the support of Liberals and the dinosaur media. Mona Charon aptly calls them "useful idiots."

I say it's time to take action before it's too late. Now we know why Pat Robertson was mocked and criticized so roundly for his statements about Chavez. The answer is because the dinosaur media knew he was right about their pal. Reverend Robertson knows that a President who is elected by people casting ballots while staring down the barrel of a gun, is not freely elected. Nor is a President freely elected if there is only one party in the entire country and one candidate on the ballot.

Let's cut the crap about this policy against assasination of foreign leaders and put a silver bullet in this werewolf President's brain. After, all isn't this what we pay the CIA to do? After that, let's take out old man Castro and not let him get away with dying a natural death. Venezuela and Cuba along with North Korea and China are all fronts in the war on terror. Let's face it, they are all in bed with the Islamo - Fascists.

If the Liberals/Roosevelt Administration had properly won WWII and let Patton take out the Soviets, we wouldn't now be fighting WWIII. As the great general himself said, the politicians always leave us with one more war to fight. We can't afford such a mistake today. The future of our children depends upon it.

Lileks is getting his sea legs again

Lileks had gone from a daily joy to a matter of routine (and, at times, even drudgery), but lately he is back in the saddle. Today's effort is Exhibit A (the permalink is above). Go to the later part of the column if you want to skip the missing school bus and housecleaner stuff (although there is good stuff therein). If you do skip the earlier parts, here's my favorite part, because it resonates deply with me:

I just recall the grim Soviet-flavored mood of people in DC, the sullen indifference, and it makes me glad again to live here. I forget sometimes what an effect it has on your mood when everyone’s generally pleasant. From Hell’s Heart, I Glare At Thee gets old. Immediately.

Here is where he kicks into high gear:

The formulation seems simple: The continued existence of problems at this late date in human history implies that we’re regressing. We’re screwing up, we’ve lost it, and we wander confused amongst the morass of the malaise and vice versa. Hard times, brother. Hard times. I’m not saying they should pretend we live in the Republic of Happy Bunnies Who Pee Champagne, but for God’s sake, sometimes you’d think the bread lines snaked from the Hoovervilles to the soup kitchens again. I’m probably confusing the sugar-coated recollections of early youth with actual history, but I grew up with a sense of optimism and confidence in the country. That really makes me sound like Mr. McFartus shakin’ a whittlin’ stick at the jaunty-hatted younguns, I know. But the icons in my dim early youth, either by absence or presence, were JFK and Humphrey. They weren’t defeatists, and they didn’t give off that rank stink of anger.

Of course, someone who's angry about different things is always unbalanced, right? I’m sure I’m regarded as a delusional tool because I worry more about Islamicists than global warming. But it comes back again to that theme I blathered about a few weeks ago, the idea of the eternal adolescent strain in American culture; to the adolescent, the cynic is the truth-teller. The optimists are the fools. (It takes an adolescent to think that people who believe in nothing are the best judges of those who believe in something.) It’s all a pose, for the most part, but after a while it feeds on itself. Pessimism produces its own coal, stokes its own furnaces. Optimism is harder. Optimism takes work. You have to roll your own.

Hah! The iPod just kicked on that fine messy song “Tubthumping.” I get knocked down. But I get up again. I get knocked down. But I get up again. You’re never going to keep me down. That's the spirit, ya commie buskers! I don’t listen to that song and wonder “what has he done to get knocked down?” I salute the boozed-up shouting chanty brio of the sentiment, which is the distant cousin of Cagney snapping of "I'm a Yankee Doodle Dandy." Really. Chest out, chin high, eyes bright, up yours if you're heart can't find the tinder to shout hoorah. Look: there’s always a place for the bitchers, the carpers, the griefers, the snipers, the angry marginal sorts flinging poo from the cages of their own beliefs. But it’s not the pessimists who will save the West. It’ll be those who believe the West is worth saving, and not because it is the least horrible option whose defense must be prefaced with endless apologies, but because it really is the best hope we have. Would you rather be a libertarian in China? A Christian in Sudan? A Zoroastran in Iran? A lesbian in Saudi Arabia?

But - but we supported the Shah, and -

Yes. Interesting how supporters of the Shah didn't storm our embassies or wage a 30 year Death-to-America campaign after we cut the Shah loose. Reset the hands. We can argue about all manner of strategies now, but there's one division that counts more than any other, and it’s fundamental and pervasive. Pessimism or optimism.One’s very satisfying. The other’s hard. I’d say we don’t have any choice, but we do, and that choice may undo us yet.

May, I said. I’m naturally pessimistic, and I hate it, and fight it. Cautious optimism: methadone for cynics.

Two garbage bags

A little football-inspired humor to get ready for the season...

A little old lady was walking down the street, dragging two plastic garbage bags with her, one in each hand. There was a hole in one of the bags. And, every once in a while, a $20 bill was flying out of it, onto the pavement.

Noticing this, a policeman stopped her. "Ma'am, there are $20 bills falling out of that bag."

"Damn!" said the little old lady. "I'd better go back, and see if I can still find some. Thanks for the warning!"

"Well, now, not so fast little lady," said the cop. "How did you get all of that money? Did you steal it?"

"Oh, no," said the little old lady. "You see, my back yard backs up to the parking lot of Lambeau Field. Each time that there's a game, a lot of fans come and pee into the bushes, and right into my flower beds! So, I go and stand behind the bushes, with a big hedge clipper. And, each time that someone sticks his little thingie through the bushes, I say, "$20, or off it comes!"

"Hey, not a bad idea!" laughed the cop. "OK, good luck! By the way, what's in the other bag?"

"Well," said the little old lady, "some guys think I'm bluffing."

Thanks to prolific e-mailer John Carroll for this one!