Couldn't Decide What To Write About

There’s a lot going on and I only publish once a week. Each of the following deserves a column by itself, but a few short observations are in order.

SYRIA - It might have made sense to intervene six months ago before rebel leaders became dominated by al Qaeda. Now we have radical Shiite Muslims allied to Iran (the Bashar Assad regime) fighting radical Sunni Muslims allied to al Qaeda (the rebels). Our enemies are killing each other and that’s a good thing. It makes no sense to do anything now, unless it’s to give weapons to both sides.

CHICAGO - Thirty shot, seven killed over Father’s Day weekend by fatherless young black men. Remember how the late Senator Moynihan (D-NY) described what was happening in the black family in 1965? I do - fathers abandoning their children who are then condemned to poverty. President Johnson’s “War on Poverty” made it worse by subsidizing single mothers as I observed last week. Now it’s epidemic in whites as well. Thirty shot, seven killed in a city with some of the strongest gun control laws in the whole country. And Obama spent twenty years there as a community organizer? We know what doesn’t work for Chicago - Democrat rule for 83 years in a row. Maybe they’ll try something else, like pre-sixties values perhaps?

OBAMACARE - The “Affordable Care Act” is drastically raising insurance premiums in many states, including here in Maine by 40%. Forbes reported that Ohio’s will go up 55-85%. The president promised that rates would go down, remember? Medical schools report a severe shortage of primary care doctors, especially in rural areas like here in western Maine where I live. The good news is that more doctors are eschewing health insurance altogether and dealing in cash - and that’s driving down costs: $3 for a cholesterol test instead of $90 and $400 for an MRI instead of $2000. Prior to WWII almost all medical transactions were that way - no middle man. Time to go back?

POLITICAL CORRECTNESS - It’s way out of control. The federal government is snooping into virtually everything Americans do in the name of protecting us from terrorism. And from where does most terrorism come? Muslims, obviously, yet mosques in the US - where homegrown terrorists breed - have been off limits to FBI investigators thanks to a lawsuit by CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) and the ACLU. CAIR was an un-indicted co-conspirator in a Dallas , Texas terrorist-funding case. No wonder they missed the Tsarnaev brothers. What’s next? Exempt Muslims from searches at airports? Sometimes I wonder if we're too stupid to survive.

DON'T ASK, DON'T TELL - It’s been repealed for homosexuals in the military, but now it’s driving Christians and conservatives into the closet. Master Sgt. Nathan Sommers, a 25-year Army veteran and conservative Christian based at Fort Myer in Washington was ordered to remove Republican, anti-Obama bumper stickers like “Political Dissent is NOT Racism,” “NOBAMA,” and “NOPE2012” from his privately-owned car and disciplined for reading books by conservative authors like David Limbaugh and Mark Levine. “Tolerant” progressives are the most intolerant of all.

MAINSTREAM MEDIA - They’re back to “see no evil” mode. Last week neither CBS nor NBC had a single story on the Obama Administration’s IRS Scandal targeting conservatives. ABC’s George Stephanopoulos was interviewing John Boehner and asked one question about it June 11th. That’s why I was so surprised when on last Sunday’s “Today Show” NBC’s ultra-liberal apologist Andrea Mitchell declared that the American people have lost confidence in their government. That really surprised me. It’s quite true, of course, but I almost fell over to hear her say it. CBS’s Scott Pelley declared: “what were offering at the evening news is, within 30 minutes we’re going to tell you about the 12 most important things that happened in the world.” I don’t think so Scott. Not after your network muzzled Sharyl Attkisson’s reporting on “Fast and Furious” and the Benghazi scandal.

PORTLAND PARADE - Channel 13, the local CBS News outlet in southern Maine, announced the 7th annual “Dyke March” on Congress Street to kick off the 27th annual “Southern Maine Pride Parade and Festival” weekend in downtown Portland. It being only ten minutes from our South Portland house, this country mouse from the woods of Oxford County drove over to take in some urban culture. Watching from the sidewalk, it was over in two minutes. In front of the large “Dyke March” banner were “Dykes on Bikes” revving their deafening Harleys. Following were lots of husky women, one topless, and a sign declaring “Homophobia is Patriarchy’s Crutch.” That was it; I was home before eight.

BUCKET LIST - I skipped the rest of the “Pride” weekend festivities, bicycled around Peaks Island with my wife the next day, and crossed it off our bucket list.