May 16, 2012
by Burt Prelutsky
One of the nicest thingsabout being a conservative is that you don’t have to say really stupid things just to establish your bona fides the way that liberals do..
For instance, ever since 1987, when Al Sharpton came to prominence by trashing the NYPD on behalf of teenage liar extraordinaire Tawana Brawley, he has spent a quarter of a century shaking down corporations just like his pal Jesse Jackson, threatening boycotts if he isn’t paid the customary 30 pieces of silver; neglecting to pay his income taxes; and inciting violence which, on more than one occasion, has led to black mobs killing New York Jews. But, during a recent appearance on The Factor, Geraldo Rivera insisted that Sharpton is a great civil rights leader.
Compared to whom, I wish Bill O’Reilly had asked. Louis Farrakhan? David Duke? Eric Holder?
The fact is, when you look at the likes of Sharpton, Jackson, Maxine Waters, Hank Johnson, Sheila Jackson Lee, Frederica Wilson and the various officers of the NAACP, you realize that “civil rights leader” has become an oxymoron which should never be uttered in polite society.
Denise Ilitch, the daughter of Little Caesar’s founders Mike and Marian Ilitch, hosted a one million dollar pizza party in Detroit as a fund-raising event for Barack Obama. When someone asked her if pizza was really going to be the entree, she said it would, “But we’ll be serving it on sterling silver plates.” That’s what Obama’s left-wing one-percenters call getting in touch with their inner ninety-nine percenters.
In any case, conservatives, the next time you feel like ordering a Little Caesar pizza, you might wish to keep in mind where your money is going.
When I heard Jay Carney insisting that a leader “must be judged on his actions, not his empty words and promises,” I wondered if he had begun drinking on the job. Then I realized he was referring to Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, not to Barack Obama. By the way, am I the only person who has begun to regard Mr. Carney as our own Baghdad Bob?
Recently, when the giant lottery reached $600 million, I was one of those people who purchased a lottery ticket. When I didn’t win, I actually breathed a momentary sigh of relief. I simply couldn’t imagine how I would have dealt with such an enormous amount of money. I mean, you can’t simply stick it under your mattress. Overnight, you have to start dealing with financial advisors and accountants, setting aside great chunks of time to meet with these people and make major decisions about where to put the dough and when to move it, not to mention all those people who suddenly show up, promising to be your best friend if only you’ll write them a check.
Simultaneously, along with the realization that I am simply not equipped to deal with that sort of financial responsibility, it occurred to me that neither is Obama. That’s why he has added nearly six trillion dollars to our national debt, and wants to keep adding to it. It isn’t just because he is a left-wing ideologue who sees our tax dollars as an easy way to bribe people to vote for him, but because he actually can’t get his head around the fact that a trillion isn’t just, say, ten times as much as a billion; it’s a thousand times more. A million dollars is $1,000,000, and a billion is $1,000,000,000, whereas a trillion is $1,000,000,000,000!
That’s why he’s being so foolish and irresponsible when he suggests that raising income taxes on those earning the first number will drastically lower that last number. It would hardly make a dent even if he raised the tax not to 40 or 50%, but even all the way to 100%.
Finally, I don’t blame the spending scandal at the General Services Administration (GSA) on Obama in quite the same way as some conservatives. I have no reason to believe that Obama knew that the clucks at the GSA went to Vegas to party and wound up spending $3,200 of our taxes on a mind reader, $7,000 on sushi, $75,000 on a team-building exercise which consisted of building a bicycle or $147,000 on airfare and hotels.
I mean, sure, maybe he would have known if he’d spent $3,200 on a mind reader. The reason, though, that the buck, or rather bucks, stop at Obama’s desk is because he and his wife have squandered so many millions of our tax dollars on vacations for themselves and the kids; on galas that give them the opportunity to rub shoulders with left-wing celebrities; and on thinly-veiled re-election events being passed off as non-partisan forays into swing states; that he’s setting an example of fiscal profligacy for the knuckleheads at the GSA and everywhere else in his administration.
After all, whether we’re talking about a business or a country, it’s naïve, even churlish, to demand that the employees behave more responsibly than their boss.
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To read another article by Burt Prelutsky, click here.
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