Our new best friends, the Taliban, are not terrorists...

Oh heavens no.  So what do you call it when they murder three Americans?  A friendly dispute?  A hissy fit?  Agreeing to disagree?

Boris Johnson explains terrorists' motive

It's all about sex.  It's as good an explanation as any.

An offensive e-mail leads to lawsuit

Whatever ever happened to freedom of speech?

This could be from an Alec Guinness movie

Little old lady with bobbies

Fidel Castro does not trust the United States

Well, fancy that!

Some stupid ideas, beloved among the American people

Chicken Little & Friends--also known as the Mainstream Media--are terribly worried about anti-Muslim backlash.

It used to be that the media would at least wait a day before sweeping the latest victims of Muslim terrorism into the trash to refocus on the looming “anti-Muslim backlash” that never actually comes.
The increase in Muslim terrorism however has made it risky for the media to wait that long. 24 hours after a brutal Muslim terrorist attack, there might be another brutal Muslim terrorist attack which will completely crowd out the stories of Muslims worrying about the backlash to the latest Muslim atrocity.

Some bad ideas just will not die but are beloved by the American people.  Here's a partial list:

The idea that Che Guevara is glamorous and heroic; part B of this idea is the notion that Fidel Castro is a hero, despite his 30 some years of unrelieved thuggery.

The idea that unnamed and unidentified people are putting razor blades and poison in Halloween candy.

The totally unsupported notion that Obama is intelligent.   I am not privy to conspiracy theories about his birth.  O was born in the USA, all right.  Thousands, if not millions of stupid people are born in the US, including him.

The idea that Islam is a religion of peace; the corollary, that if we just show these villains and murderers love and understanding, they will like us and treat us right.

The idea that religious creeds are not susceptible to political pressure.  Tell that to the Mormons, who found it prudent to abandon their beliefs in multiple marriage after these were proved not to play in Peoria.

Meanwhile, can we abandon the notion that Islam is a religion of peace?  These people have been getting on our nerves since the Presidency of Thomas Jefferson.  Remember the shores of Tripoli?  We took care of them then, now lets roll up our sleeves and teach them a badly needed lesson.

If you have tears,

prepare to shed them now.

Celebrate Andrew Jackson!

An American victory!

Pollce "strike"

Police prefer the low-hanging fruit.  Examples:  You and me.  It's only rational for cops to arrest old ladies who won't give them any lip for speeding on an otherwise empty highway; it's a whole lot safer for them.  Trying to intervene in a crime being committed by a young strong black man is likely to get someone hurt.

 I will concede that the murder of two innocent patrolmen was a heinous crime.  I will further admit that the grand juries in both Ferguson and New York did their duty as specified by law, and that Al Sharpton et al are a disgrace to the good name of rabble-rousers who have brought a lot of grief to the body politic.

So the police in New York City are withholding their services.  They are not "on strike" because striking is illegal.  They are showing up for work but not doing anything.  They will be out there, neglecting their duties.  So, you will no longer have your car towed if you stay overtime in a parking spot--bliss!

There is a downside to this, though.  New York will become like San Francisco, a place where the homeless use public fountains as toilets, panhandle aggressively, and menace harmless pedestrians with their threatening demeanor.  The squeegee men will be back, offering their unwanted attentions to motorists.  This will return the quality of life to the pre-Giulani area, while the New York Times laments the ungovernablity of the city and demands smaller classroom and higher pay for teachers in order to attack the "root causes" of crime. Tourists will flee and businesses will struggle.

I think we need to rethink what we want from policing. Are the police a source of revenue, like bingo games in church meeting rooms?  Or are they employed to protect the public?

Happy New Year!

Chanukah song

Now that Chanukah is on its last gasp, can I mention that the Dreidel song is the most uninspired and boring song ever foisted on a religion.  No wonder there are so few of us, if that's the best we can do!

The dreidel game, on the other hand, is some kind of Jewish Candyland.  Not worthy of us, my brothers.

Lucky ape

This ape has more rights than you do.  For instance, it doesn't have to pay taxes. Or buy health insurance.

A cute little Xmas picture

Our new best friends

Not only are we kissing up to Iran, now we are making overtures to the Castro regime.  I can't believe I'm in the same country I was born in.

 Here in the US, if someone expresses mild doubt about the feasibility of gay marriage, his life is made miserable and we try to ruin his business.  However, in Cuba, gays are languishing in prisons camp, and apparently this is okay, because no enemies on the left.

In Iran, they murder young men for being gay, but that's okay because Muslims have a different culture and we can't judge them by our standards.

IRS funding cut

I wish I could believe that this cut in funding would affect the higher-ups in the IRS, especially those who tromp on the faces of ordinary people.  But my experience of local and state government leads me to be cynical.

When my husband worked for the New York State Education Department, there was a big austerity campaign--draconian cuts were going to be made.  People feared for their jobs. In the event, they cut out two positions--for part-time charwomen.

Everyone who worked there knew there were high level employees who never did a lick of work.  Their jobs were spared, and they continued to do nothing--with annual cost-of-living raises-- until they retired on comfortable pensions.  By the way, they contributed nothing toward funding their pensions.  These were 100 percent funded by the State.  Nice work if you can get it.

No wonder everyone wants a civil service job.

I'd like to put in a word of recommendation for the novels of Gerald Petievich which deal with the Secret Service, but only incidentally with lazy and free-loading employees.

My aunts and yours

Readers of my book, "Nothing Much," have written me extensively about their aunts.  It seems my readers  have as many aunts as I do, maybe more, and these aunts have loomed large in their lives. The aunts in question are devoted to bridge (or canasta, or mah jong)and would walk over burning coals in their bare feet rather than miss their weekly game(s). They also wore large, imposing hats and loved to get together to gossip or dish the dirt.  But did any of these ladies plan to bring a card table and four chairs to the cemetery, to their mother's grave, in fact, so they could keep the old lady company while playing a comfortable game of bridge?  I didn't think so.

Tales of a locksmith

I finally got a locksmith to come to my house--and what a locksmith!  One of nature's  noblemen, when he arrived he informed me that my outside tap needed to be shut down.  He then shut it down, coiled up the hose, and deposited it in the basement.  Then he shut off the inside faucet or whatever you call the doohinky that if it freezes your pipes would burst.  This was before he had done any locksmithing at all.

I have zero sales resistance, so he managed to sell me five (5) locksets  for all my exterior doors.   They cost a lot.

He went out to his truck to get his invoices and business cards.  Meanwhile, I cut my finger trying to cut some limes in half.  I managed to drip a fair number of drops of blood on the floor in the kitchen and bathroom before the locksmith put a BandAid on my finger.

Wait--there's more, as the television pitchmen  say.  I had heated some chicken morsels in the oven and managed to eat one while he was out in the truck and nearly choked to death.   This invaluable tradesman pounded me on the back until I had disgorged the remnants of chicken, thus saving my life.

Then he took some wipes and wiped up the droplets of blood from the floor.  Did a good job, too.  Now that's what I call locksmithing!

Plum job

When I was young, I would apply for any job that didn't require math, and quite a few that did.  Editor, garment model, newsreader, office manager, I figured out I could learn the required skills in two weeks.  (Except math.)  Besides, they sounded interesting.  Who wouldn't want a job as a fitting model in the garment industry?  Or the Napoleon of a large law office, striking fear into the hearts of all the underlings and lunching with  rich lawyers?  All the jobs sounded interesting to a 20 year old with no paarticular aim in life.  Amazingly, I had multiple interviews.

Being a shy person, it was agony for me at first to go through these interviews.  But I had so many of them that I became inured to the process, and my attitude was "bring it on!" although people didn't say that in those days.  I got quite adept at presenting myself and modestly mentioning my many accomplishments, which mostly consisted of having a BA in English literature at the time.

But at last I have seen an ad for the job of my dreams: wardrobe, makeup and costume construction  for a theatrical company.   I'd be perfect for the job. As it happens, I can sew.  I made all my daughters' dresses when they were little.  A short visit to Sephora or Ulta would bring me up to date on makeup.  Unfortunately, it's in San Francisco, and the rents there are too high.  I'll just have to remain satisfied with unassuming, humble Delaware.

A new game

Invented in Spain,this game could easily be adapted to other settings.  Like:  New Jersey. Maryland, Illinois, and California.  Only the faces would need to be changed.

My post about stealing soap from hotel rooms apparently struck a chord deep in the American soul.  It was my biggest hit!