Posted on 06/07/2010 9:01:48 PM PDT by jazusamo
Random thoughts on the passing scene:
All sorts of "global warming" advocates have all sorts of ideas for cooling the planet. I would be happy if they would just cool the rhetoric.
A newspaper headline said: "U.S. Growing Impatient with Iran." Boy, won't that scare them to death? If they keep going, and make enough nuclear bombs to blast us to smithereens, we will go to the United Nations and get a resolution passed, condemning their actions-- or, if the U.N. won't go that far, deploring their lack of cooperation.
Contrary to what has been widely believed, scholars say that Neanderthals had bigger brains than we have. Why did they become extinct then? Maybe they got too smart for their own good.
When someone in New York says, "Excuse me, sir," you know that you are really old.
Umpire Jim Joyce, who publicly admitted that his wrong call cost pitcher Armando Galarraga a perfect game, and Galarraga himself both exhibited grace in the way they reacted to the situation. How long has it been since anyone has done anything that called for the word "grace"?
When you consider what an enormous windfall gain it is to be born in America, it is painful to hear some people complain bitterly that someone else got a bigger windfall gain than they did.
After North Korea torpedoed a South Korean ship, killing 46 sailors, was there even one-tenth the outrage that is ringing out loudly around the world because of 9 deaths that resulted from Israeli commandoes intercepting a ship heading for the Gaza strip?
In political rhetoric, "comprehensive immigration reform" means amnesty up front and promises of border control later-- promises that have not been kept in the past and are unlikely to be kept in the future. Anyone who is serious, as distinguished from political, knows that you have to control your own borders before you can even have an immigration policy that means anything in practice.
Even though some people say we are living in a "knowledge economy," we are living in a political atmosphere in which ignorance has more power than ever. Washington politicians who have never run any business are telling all kinds of businesses-- from automobile companies and banks to hospitals and insurance companies-- how they have to run their businesses. This is the golden age of ignorance in power.
Electrical cords seem to be very sociable. Whenever there are two that are near each other, they almost always seem to get intertwined.
It is one of the signs of our times when people in the media ask how some of our home-grown terrorists could "turn against their own country." This was never their country-- and giving them citizenship papers will never make them or anybody else a real citizen, in the sense of someone loyal to this country.
Even experienced politicians would have a hard time coming up with a more grossly misleading phrase than "the Middle East peace process."
We cannot recapture the past, but sometimes it can recapture us-- if we are not careful.
Just as the American left has adopted blacks as mascots, so the international left has adopted Palestinians as mascots. In both cases, the actual well-being of the mascots is not the point.
Mascots exist to be symbols for others. In all the years when the Arab states controlled the area that Israel took over after the 1967 war, nobody cared what happened to the Palestinians, much less offered them a homeland.
Whether Barack Obama is simply incompetent as President or has some hidden agenda to undermine this country, at home and abroad, he has nearly everything he needs to ruin America, including a fool for a Vice President.
We have now reached the truly dangerous point where we cannot even be warned about the lethal, fanatical and suicidal hatred of our Islamic extremist enemies in our midst, because to do so would be politically incorrect here and, in some European countries, would be a violation of laws against inciting hostility to groups.
“Even though some people say we are living in a “knowledge economy,” we are living in a political atmosphere in which ignorance has more power than ever. Washington politicians who have never run any business are telling all kinds of businesses— from automobile companies and banks to hospitals and insurance companies— how they have to run their businesses. This is the golden age of ignorance in power.”
YES! I call it The Dumbing-Down of America. The self-serving education establishment, marijuana, rock music, rudderless parents and a really poor example in national leadership have turned a halfway decent electorate into a herd of ignoramuses.
The primary qualification by an illegitimate and unqualified president for all his czars, cabinet members and Supreme Court nominees has been that they have no experience, accomplishments, ethics or abilities. Like him.
These days, I often wonder that myself.....
“When you consider what an enormous windfall gain it is to be born in America, it is painful to hear some people complain bitterly that someone else got a bigger windfall gain than they did.”
BUMP!!
For now anyway.
Love Thomas Sowell.
Oh, thank you for posting this article. When I got to this point I thought to myself, “thank God”. I have had that EXACT same thought playing over and over in my head with the latest two NJ suspects. Sometimes I think I'm the only one who thinks these things. It's so comforting to know that someone I admire in the extreme is having the same thought. Whew!
“When you consider what an enormous windfall gain it is to be born in America, it is painful to hear some people complain bitterly that someone else got a bigger windfall gain than they did.”
Yes, but are people who are frustrated at not finding a job to be included in that group?
I don’t think he was talking about jobs. I think he was talking about being born a minority and demanding that the playing field always be equal no matter what. (Enabled for decades by the Democrats!!)
Dr. Sowell has ‘risen above his circumstance’ quite nicely. Others won’t based upon their attitudes. And really, it’s something you’re born with or you learn from your family. You can’t just change your attitude on a dime.
And you make your own luck in this world, IMHO. I’ve had periods of unemployment, too. Always ended up in a better place down the road. :)
“And you make your own luck in this world, IMHO. I’ve had periods of unemployment, too. Always ended up in a better place down the road.”
May experience never teach you differently.
Some periods of unemployment extend to the grave, despite determined efforts to find a job.
You’re just a regular bucket of sunshine, aren’t ya? LOL!
“You’re just a regular bucket of sunshine, aren’t ya?”
Seems to me that the goal is to endure adverse fortune with grace and fortitude, not to maintain a sunny outlook by denying reality.
Of course, many of us fall short of that goal, at least part of the time. When that happens, a bit of whining seems therapeutic.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.