Turkeys, Turkeys, and More Turkeys

Turkeys, Turkeys, and More Turkeys
Friday, April 6, 2012
by Burt Prelutsky

In a recent article, I wrote about a rogue turkey named Tom who had terrified the liberals on Martha’s Vineyard in much the same fashion as outlaw motorcycle gangs were often depicted terrorizing towns and vacationing families in a spate of lousy movies during the 50s and 60s.

In the aftermath, I heard from a number of readers who, like Ben Franklin, insisted that turkeys were a very intelligent bird. I wrote back to let them know about my wife’s Nebraska uncle who raised turkeys until the day of a huge rainstorm, when the entire flock drowned while staring at the sky with their beaks wide open. I then heard from several hunters who didn’t doubt my veracity, but explained that there was a world of difference between wild and domestic turkeys.

Wild turkeys, they assured me, had not had their brains and survival instincts bred out of them.

After mulling it over, I concluded that the gulf between the two types of birds was similar to that which exists between liberals and conservatives. Liberals are terrified of guns, cigarette smoke, salt, sugar, meat, Republicans, photo IDs for voters and talk radio; what doesn’t concern them are abortions on demand for 14-year-olds, jihadists, illegal aliens, illegal drugs, a $16 trillion national debt, public sector unions, the gutting and neutering of our military, an energy policy that seeks to demolish our oil and coal industries while blowing billions of tax dollars promoting the president’s cronies in the solar panel business, a nuclear Iran and a left-wing community organizer in the Oval Office.

It figures that while liberals in and out of Congress tar Tea Party members and Fox News viewers as partisan rubes, bigots and traitors, they trumpet the NY Times, the alphabet networks and such venues as the Daily Kos, the Huffington Post and Media Matters, as examples of honest and objective news reporting.

Perhaps the most appalling of them all is Media Matters, which enjoys the status of being a tax-exempt, non-profit, enterprise, passing itself off as politically non-partisan. The mere fact that George Soros underwrites it should provide sufficient proof that it is about as non-partisan as Jay Carney. Initially, Mediocre Matters, as it’s is known in certain circles, was the illegitimate offspring of MoveOn.org and the New Democrat Network, and was housed in office space provided by John Podesta, the former chief of staff to Bill Clinton. By and large, its staff members cut their teeth and sharpened their claws working for the likes of John Edwards, Wesley Clark and Barney Frank, aka the Axis of Evil.

Further proof of its true nature is that, without sticking its tongue in its collective cheek, the group identified Dan Rather as a non-partisan anchorman and claimed with an equally straight face that the majority of America’s newspaper editorial writers are -- hold on to your hats! -- conservatives.

The question that springs to mind is where the heck do I go to obtain my tax-exempt status? Heck, I’m twice as politically neutral as George Soros.

I have come to the conclusion that the late Tim Russert was a world class practical joker. Why else would he have decided that conservative states would be designated red and liberal states blue when, for about 90 years, the world recognized that red was the color of choice for communist and socialist nations and their flags?

It made as much sense to suggest that California and Massachusetts should be considered blue and Utah and Oklahoma should be labeled red as to suggest that traffic signals should be reversed so that green means stop and red means go.

When Nancy Pelosi said that ObamaCare would have to be passed before anyone would find out what was tucked away in its 2000-plus pages, she wasn’t just whistling “Dixie.” It now turns out that, beginning in 2013, ObamaCare imposes a 3.8% tax on unearned income, which could apparently apply to proceeds from the sale of single family homes, townhouses and co-ops. In other words, even if you’re lucky enough to find a buyer for your $300,000 home, the feds will cut themselves in for $11,400. Combined with the 6% ($18,000) fee the realtor would receive from the sale, you just might decide to stay put and ultimately use the house as your crypt, thus saving your kids the cost of a burial plot and coffin.

Finally, having always wanted to have a natural law carry my name, in the way that various such laws are credited to the likes of Murphy (“Anything that can go wrong, will”) and Parkinson (“Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion”), I take pride in introducing Prelutsky’s Law (“A period of idleness will expand to meet the length of time that unemployment compensation is paid”).
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To read another article by Burt Prelutsky, click here.