Archive For The “Zingers” Category
It seems that the old saying “the more things change, the more things stay the same” is as true as Isaac Newton’s law of gravity. One thing for certain, it ain’t a pretty picture.
To quote Benjamin Franklin…”We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.”
In the United States, that has never been more true than it is today. Looking at news headlines all year has convinced me that we have already become a nation where the morons far outnumber the rest of us.
Let’s look at some of the more notable issues of this past year. In Detroit Michigan they spent $15,000 per student on public education with a 24.7% graduation rate. Now just what employer wants to hire someone who has demonstrated they are a quitter by dropping out of school? I can’t imagine why they have such a high unemployment rate in Detroit, can you?
We have a President that plays golf all the time and waits for Congress to work together and bring solutions to him. That’s like being a general and waiting for your troops to work out the battle plans. Do you think just maybe we have a failure of leadership here?
The state of California is drowning in overspending and debt and who do they elect for governor? Good old “Governor Moonbeam”. The same Jerry Brown who spent them into oblivion the last time he was governor.
We have a retirement supplemental program called Social Security, that everyone knows is running out of money rapidly, and what does our infinitely wise government do? They classify drug addiction as a disability so drug addicts can suck off of Social Security disability payments. After all, we wouldn’t want those poor disabled drug addicts not to have the money to buy more drugs now, would we?
In this Presidential campaign the President’s campaign managers declared that Governor Romney had a “war on women”. Now just how does a man that has five children engage in a “war on women”? Five kids kind of indicates that you like women pretty well doesn’t it?
New York citys Mayor Bloomberg has outlawed soft drinks over 16 ounces to limit the sugar intake of New Yorkers. Instead of buying a single 24 ounce drink New Yorkers are now buying two 16 ounce drinks. I guess old Mayor Bloomberg just isn’t very good at math.
The number one problem in Mexico is drug gang violence, and it has resulted in over 35,000 murders. So what does our Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) do? They allow shipments of over 2,000 assault weapons to be sent across the border to Mexican drug cartels. Now that makes sense doesn’t it? Makes you think maybe the ATF has been hiring Detroit dropouts.
The Chicago teachers are some of the highest compensated teachers in the nation. So what do they do? They go on strike because they don’t want to be held accountable for their performance. I just can’t imagine why Chicago schools are failing, can you?
The pièce de résistance rests in the White House and holds the nation’s office of the Vice President of The United States. I like to call him “Gaffy Duck” Joe Biden. This is a guy that is the envy of all the writers on Saturday Night Live. They can never top the things that this guy comes up with. He was the very first person to note…. “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” Now that doesn’t imply that the former African-American candidates were mumbling, stupid, dirty, and ugly does it, Joe?
Does it worry you that this idiot is just a heartbeat away from the Presidency? I mean this guy was laughing all the time in vice presidental debate about Iran obtaining a nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching Cincinnati. Nice to know the nation’s VP thinks ICBMs in the hands of Islamic martyrs are laughable.
I don’t know, maybe it’s me and the fact that I’m getting older, but it just seems that common sense has left this country and moved to China. You know, the place where Jeep is putting in a new factory and according to our nation’s leaders they will never import Chinese made Jeeps to the U.S.
Oh well, I think I’m just going to take the “Bloomberg common sense” solution to all of this. Instead of ordering a 20 ounce margarita I’m going to order two 12 ounce ones instead! I guess that’s the new math.
Larry Oscar is a graduate from the University of Tulsa and holds a degree in electrical engineering. He is retired and lives with his wife on a lake in Oklahoma where he brews his own beer, sails, and is a member of numerous clubs and organizations.
Cats are very controversial animals.
It’s amazing how cats can bring out the worst in some people. For some strange reason cats are not a “neutral” animal. Everyone seems to have a definite opinion of cats. They are either liked or intensely disliked. You could see a yak walking down the street and when someone said “Hey look there goes a yak” the response would be a shrug of the shoulders and a comment like “so what, yaks are yaks.”
However, you can see a cat cross the street and make the comment “Look a cat,” and someone will almost always respond with a death threat for the cat. There are many articles written about why people hate cats and almost all are written by cat lovers. They all seem to miss the point and many attribute the dislike of cats to some primal “fear of cats.”
Fear could not be further from the truth. Most cat haters derive their dislike of cats from experience with them. Cats are not very trainable. You never see a duck hunter going out with his retriever cat to bag some mallards. You never see a fetch cat get the morning newspaper, or see a sign that says “Beware Watch Cat.”
Cats have an attitude. They are demanding and tend to ignore any command you give them. Come to think of it, so do most wives.
On the other hand a friend of mine says they are just stupid and don’t have the capacity for learning commands and spoken words like dogs do.
Cats don’t like water and most humans do. This may have something to do with it. You can always take a dog out boating. Dogs love to swim and play in the water. Cats on the other hand, almost never bathe. They sit around and lick themselves. I’m sorry, licking yourself is no substitute for a good soaking bath. John S. Nichols said, “Cats aren’t clean, they’re just covered with cat spit.”
On top of that, they cough up large slimy hair balls. You would think that cats would learn that eating your own hair makes you barf, but no,they keep doing the same thing and expecting different results. Sort of like politicians.
Women seem to like cats more than men do. Maybe they have more in common with cats than with dogs. After all, I don’t know of any women who are good at fetching a downed bird.
Dogs are very grateful animals. They will wag their tail to show satisfaction and they will eat just about anything you give them. Cats are no where near as amiable.
Cats wag their tail to show you they are annoyed, and they quite often turn down the same food they just ate four hours ago. Cats are not reliable sniffers. This may be the reason you never see an officer walking around an airport with his drug sniffing cat. Cats get away with more.
If the cat took a dump on your wife’s favorite rug it would be no problem. You would hear comments like “poor thing, you must be feeling bad.”
But if you just happen to spill some barbeque sauce or beer on the same rug all hell would break loose. Just what is it about these worthless cats that deserves this special treatment? Cats are just not very smart. A cat will whine and want to go outside on a cold raw day only to whine and want back inside 10 minutes later. Then in an hour or less the stupid cat will forget how raw and cold it was and want back outside again.
In my opinion cats bring out the empathy in most right-brained people. Cats, being basically worthless, bring out an unconscious empathy for such a stupid creature. A lot of people are also like that. Not all cats are cast from the same mold. Some cats have an identity crisis and even think they are dogs.
There is no greater cat hater than a cat that thinks it’s a dog, sort of like reformed smokers. Now don’t get me wrong. Not all cats are worthless. Some cats are very good mousers and ratters. Outdoor cats are preferred by most ranchers and farmers for that very reason. I guess most of us guys can learn to tolerate
Larry Oscar is a graduate from the University of Tulsa and holds a degree in electrical engineering. He is retired and lives with his wife on a lake in Oklahoma where he brews his own beer, sails, and is a member of numerous clubs and organizations.
Sometimes you just have to wonder on what some people’s brain functions. In the 60’s most of us knew it was pot or some new form of LSD. What is it today that makes people ignore reality and be so willing to accept the “spin doctors’ dribble? I personally think some people just can’t deal with reality, so they fabricate a new fictional version of reality that satisfies them emotionally.
The economic collapse was spun as a failure of “capitalism.” The reality is that it was a failure of a government socialistic attempt to manipulate the lending practices of banks and savings and loan institutions. As a result of the huge amount of subprime loans that were being made, the demand for homes rose. This increase in demand destabilized the market and sent the price of homes to ever higher and higher prices. You know… the law of supply and demand.
Then the first signs of a deep recession started to occur, and more and more subprime borrowers began to default on their loans as the economy worsened. Many banks and mortgage insurance corporations such as Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and AIG were unable to survive due to the record number of subprime defaults.
This was forecasted as early as February of 2007. This should be no surprise to anyone that the subprime market started the loan defaults. After all, these are the same people who have a record of poor financial management, or else they would not have had a low credit score in the first place. And it should be no surprise that the unintended consequences of subprime lending such as loan derivatives, CDO’s, credit default swaps, hedge funds, massive housing speculation, risky home equity loans, overstated appraisals, zero down loans, and greedy bankers and politicians surfaced.
To make matters worse, it all could have been avoided if the government had kept it’s hands off of trying to social engineer our society. Now we have those same bleeding heart socialists trying to spin it as a fault of capitalism. Are there greedy people in banking and on Wall Street? Duh!
There are greedy people anywhere there is money and power, but even China requires 30% down on all home mortgage loans, and guess what? They don’t have a mortgage problem. In the wise words of Bill Shakespeare, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be, for loan oft loses both itself and friend, and borrowing dulls the edge of husbandry”, Hamlet Act 1, scene 3. Don’t swallow what you hear like a fish rising to the bait.
Stop and think. Life is much easier when you do, and thus, many of life’s pitfalls can be avoided. The global warming claims by alarmists like Al Gore, and countless others, are another good example of this human phenomenon. For years we have been listening to “Brother Al” and his fish tell us that rich nations like the United States are the cause of the Earth’s “global warming.” And if we don’t tax our energy consumption and give the taxes to some poor country so they won’t cut down their trees, then we are all doomed.
And most of the same gullible people who swallow every word from these “Brother Al” types bought into it. Those of us with common sense know that the Earth has undergone a lot of climate changes. Just ask any geologist. And the Earth’s climate will undoubtedly continue to change regardless of what mankind does. To help settle the issue Germany, Italy, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States put together a drilling project in Antarctica to determine what the Earth’s past climate changes were like, and possibly how fast the changes were.
The project is called “Andrill.” (www.andrill.org/news/sms1). What they have found is that the Earth has undergone multiple warming and cooling periods, and that the change can be very rapid. The Earth was so warm during these periods that Antarctica had abundant plant and warm water sea life with no ice covered glaciers. This has happened many times in Earth’s history. This has shocked many scientists who had swallowed Brother Al’s line of pseudoscience and expected a stable Antarctic climate until now.
Why, I’m shocked, aren’t you? I’m shocked that these scientists would jump to conclusions first, and then look for evidence to back up what they want to believe. We should never take ourselves too seriously. We have very little effect on the Universe and we really aren’t very important in the grand scheme of things. When we get so arrogant that we think we as humans rule the
World’s climate we need to get a grip. I think we watch too many science fiction movies. Changes in the economy, global climate, and almost every aspect of your life will occur.
Heraclitus, a Greek philosopher, said the only think constant is change. What is important is that you don’t panic and swallow some spin doctor’s fish bait. Relax, and take your big SUV for a Sunday drive around the lake. One good thing out of this is the fun we will have watching all of these left wing bozos eat crow. — Larry Oscar
Larry Oscar is a graduate from the University of Tulsa and holds a degree in electrical engineering. He is retired and lives with his wife on a lake in Oklahoma where he brews his own beer, sails, and is a member of numerous clubs and organizations.
It seems that the old saying “the more things change, the more things stay the same” is as true as Isaac Newton’s law of gravity. One thing for certain, it ain’t a pretty picture. To quote Benjamin Franklin, “We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid.”
In the United States, that has never been more true than today. Looking at news headlines all year has convinced me that we are have already become a nation where the morons far outnumber the rest of us. Let’s look at some of the more notable issues of this past year.
In Detroit $15,000 per student was spent on public education with a 24.7 percent graduation rate. Now just what employer wants to hire someone who has demonstrated they are a quitter by dropping out of school? I can’t imagine why they have such a high unemployment rate in Detroit, can you?
We have President Obama that plays golf all the time and waits for Congress to work together and bring solutions to him. That’s like being a general and waiting for your troops to work out the battle plans for you. Do you think just maybe we have a failure of leadership here?
The state of California is drowning in overspending and debt and who do they elect for governor? Good old “Governor Moonbeam,” the very guy who spent them into oblivion the last time he was governor. We have a retirement supplemental program called Social Security, that everyone knows is running out of money rapidly, and what does our infinitely wise government do? They classify drug addiction as a disability so drug addicts can suck off of Social Security disability payments. After all, we wouldn’t want those poor disabled drug addicts not to have the money to buy more drugs now, would we?
In his re-election campaign, the President’s campaign managers have declared Governor Romney has a “war on women.” Now just how does a man that has had five children engage in a “war on women?” Five kids kind of indicates that you like women pretty well doesn’t it? New York City’s Mayor Bloomberg has outlawed soft drinks over 16 ounces to limit the sugar intake of New Yorkers. Instead of buying a single 24-ounce drink New Yorkers are now buying two 16 ounce drinks. I guess old Mayor Bloomberg just isn’t very good at math.
The number one problem in Mexico is drug gang violence, and it has resulted in over 35,000 murders. So what does our Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) do? They allow shipments of over 2,000 assault weapons to be sent across the border to Mexican drug cartels. Now that makes sense doesn’t it? Makes you think maybe the ATF has been hiring Detroit dropouts.
The Chicago teachers are some of the highest compensated teachers in the nation. So what do they do? They go on strike because they don’t want to be held accountable for their performance. I just can’t imagine why Chicago schools are failing, can you? Derek Jeter should join the Chicago teachers union.
The pièce de résistance rests in the White House and holds the nation’s office of the Vice President of The United States. I like to call him “Gaffy Duck” Joe Biden. This is a guy that is the envy of all the writers on Saturday Night Live. They can never top the things that this guy comes up with. He was the very first person to note, “I mean, you got the first mainstream African-American who is articulate and bright and clean and a nice-looking guy.” Now that doesn’t imply that the former African-American candidates were mumbling, stupid, dirty, and ugly does it, Joe? Does it worry you that this idiot is just a heartbeat away from the Presidency? I mean this guy was laughing all the time in the recent VP debate about Iran obtaining a nuclear intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching Cincinnati. Nice to know the nation’s VP thinks ICBMs in the hands of Islamic martyrs are laughable.
I don’t know, maybe it’s me and the fact that I’m getting older, but it just seems that common sense has left this country and moved to China. You know, the place where Jeep is putting in a new factory, and according to our nation’s leaders they will never import Chinese made Jeeps to the U.S. Oh well, I think I’m just going to take the “Bloomberg common sense” solution to all of this. Instead of ordering a 20-ounce margarita I’m going to order two 12-ounce ones instead! I guess that’s the new math. — Larry Oscar
Larry Oscar is a graduate from the University of Tulsa and holds a degree in electrical engineering. He is retired and lives with his wife on a lake in Oklahoma where he brews his own beer, sails, and is a member of numerous clubs and organizations.
In the brief history of our nation we have experienced a few crossroads, and we are at one of them today. Many of us have abandoned the principals that made this country the most powerful and prosperous nation the world has ever seen.
Moving forward we can either continue to abandon our founding principals, and therefore continue a downhill path of economic destruction, or we can reclaim the values that allowed us to rise to the top. We are beomg bombarded with political rhetoric from all sides. We will be faced with the choice of who will lead us, and in what direction we want to be led. For each American that will mean we must examine our core values and determine if our own self interest is more important than saving the country.
And we must evaluate if it is even worth the effort. Over the past several years this column has pointed out the problems in our society and how we have lost our core values. We have let our educational system fail us, and we now have a very low and poorly educated workforce who cannot compete in a global economy.
We have not been responsible for our diet and exercise. The result is over one third of all Americans are obese, and this has increased our health care costs. We have let ourselves become envious and we now covet the success of others, and we have turned the American dream of wealth and prosperity into something “evil.”
We have lost the uniquely American value of self-reliance, and replaced it with a nanny state of social dependence. We have fallen into the trap of letting the rest of the world demand that we solve their problems rather than demanding that they stand on their own two feet.
We have failed to live within our means, and now debt is crushing our economy. The list goes on and on. Now we are indeed at a crossroads. Do we reverse course, or do we continue an inevitable slide into a third world “has been” nation?
These issues must be considered when we choose our next leader. Let’s assume that we want to return to prosperity, and to the values that brought us to a point of greatness. What should we look for in our next President?
For starters, we need a leader who can bring back and inspire American individualism to stand on your own two feet as a person, not a dependant on society. Individualism is the trait of character that instills self-reliance and personal responsibility. That will insure that Americans stay in school, work hard, and get a good education.
We need a leader that emphasizes solutions to problems rather than wallows in empathy and self pity. Empathy has never solved a single problem in anyone’s life, but solutions to problems have. And we need a leader that praises success, and encourages individuals to seek wealth and happiness. The fact is wealthy people contribute to our nation’s financial stability while poor people are an economic and social burden on the nation.
We need a leader that understands that living within your means is not “radical,” “extreme,” or a “Draconian” idea. We need a leader that can have the self discipline to let the rest of the world grow and sort out their own problems rather than getting involved in their business.
Other countries must learn to stand on their own two feet as we have. A good case in point is China. In the 1940’s China had a revolution and they purged their country of foreign influence. They went through some very bad times. They killed and murdered their own people. They suffered famine and hardship. And they had a very difficult time establishing their identity as a nation, but they have been evolving over the past 60-plus years from a communist nation to a capitalist nation.
Karl Marx had it backwards. And if China continues their path toward capitalism, they will overtake our economy within the next five to 10 years. No system is perfect. All systems of government will have people who won’t make it. The question is what system provides the best prosperity for the most people. And that solution for government is obvious. It is capitalism.
China has learned that, and they will continue their evolution towards capitalist prosperity. Solutions for our problems and the future of our success will not come easy. Nothing in life worth having ever comes easy. That is why welfare and handouts never improve people’s lives. They only prolong the inevitable.
We should not look for the easy way out. Let each of us examine our own values and look in the mirror. If this country is worth saving, then we must choose wisely. If not, then maybe we should have a plan “B” and be ready to leave the country. After all, most of our ancestors immigrated here to escape some nation that was heading downhill. They did it, and if need be, we can do it. — Larry Oscar
Larry Oscar is a graduate from the University of Tulsa and holds a degree in electrical engineering. He is retired and lives with his wife on a lake in Oklahoma where he brews his own beer, sails, and is a member of numerous clubs and organizations.
Are we in a decline? That is one of the big emerging questions in political debates. Now just how smart does someone need to be to know the answer to that one?
Let’s see now. We have a complete failure of the public education system with dropout rates equal to or exceeding graduation rates. Larry Oscar We have lowered our standards and test scores for employment requirements until it isn’t even worth having standards anymore. We have teachers, ministers, priests, politicians, and just about every other form of our leaders having sex with minor students and their staff.
Those employers who are hiring can’t find qualified workers, except in other countries. It is easier to do business in almost any country in the world other than the USA. The American population has turned into a bunch of government handout ridden lemmings. And the one who is supposed to lead us out of this mess says, “We’ve lost our ambition, our — our imagination, and — and — our willingness to do the things that built the Golden Gate Bridge and Hoover Dam and unleashed all the potential in this country. What a crock!
This bozo has no idea what he just said. For one thing Mr. B.O., the Golden Gate Bridge and Hoover Dam could not be built today because of all the EPA environmental and OSHA safety government regulations you helped create. Meanwhile B.O. continues to make it worse. Why have any ambition when you can just sit back and let the government take care of you?
And those with a creative imagination dare not invent something here. Why you might just make millions of dollars with your imaginative invention, and then you would be one of the “Evil Hated Rich.”
Now I know that B.O. has had a rough time quitting smoking, but I thought it was tobacco he was smoking. Now I see it was something else. Our government has done more harm to our society than any of the founding fathers could have possibly dreamed up.
For starters in 1995 the government had the audacity to tell Americans that home ownership is the “American Dream.” Then the government started forcing banks to loan money to subprime borrowers so they could “Live the American Dream.” How dare anyone in the government tell us as individual Americans what the American dream is! The so called “American Dream” is for us to decide on our own, not the worthless government.
For many Americans it’s owning your own business. For others it is not even owning a home, but rather living where you have no upkeep or maintenance. And just why is it that some low life politicians think they can run our lives better than we can? Babbling Barney Frank of Massachusetts is a fine example of this. Who would want to trade places with this slobbering ugly wad of fat?
Yet this clown thinks he is a genius and knows what we want better than we do. Our nation is indeed in decline, and people like him are leading us there. This may be the first time in American history that the next generation of Americans will have a harder time being successful than we did. And we have the government to thank. It is time for new leadership in this country.
We need leaders who will step up to the plate and stop blaming others for the circumstances we are in. Blaming others will not solve the problems, and solve them we must. We need true leaders who value the rich and poor alike. Our next President needs to understand that he or she is the President of ALL Americans, not just the poor, or the middle class, but the rich as well. We should celebrate the economic diversity that this nation has produced rather than trying to tear down the successful Americans who pay the vast majority of the taxes collected.
Our politicians have made “wealth envy” a national fad. Shame on us as voters for electing these cads. Let’s show some good old American Christmas spirit this season. Let’s find a rich person and buy them a drink. Tell them how much you appreciate their tax contributions and ask them to keep paying their taxes, keep working hard, and please don’t move to China.
We need more wealthy people in this country. The richer people get the more they spend. With 70 percent of our economy based on consumer spending, we need more wealthy people to buy some very expensive things. And if you know some very rich dude who is looking to unload some cash just send him my way….I could use a new TV! — Larry Oscar
Larry Oscar is a graduate from the University of Tulsa and holds a degree in electrical engineering. He is retired and lives with his wife on a lake in Oklahoma where he brews his own beer, sails, and is a member of numerous clubs and organizations.
It never ceases to amaze me how just when you think it can’t get any worse, it 
invariably does. And there is nothing more frustrating than not being able do anything about it but sit back and watch.
I think that is how most Americans feel when we watch the National Debt Clock just keep on ticking. Recent Congressional wailing and gnashing of teeth has produced nothing tangible about stopping the bleeding. We are at a point now where this nation’s spending so far outstrips our ability to pay the debt off that it is on the verge of being a hopeless case.
If so, that begs the question of when is the best time to default. Do we wait until the debt is much greater and we are forced to default, or do we go ahead and do it now and get it over with. That is what divides our nation. About half of our nation consist of people who cannot mentally force themselves to put aside their emotions and make a pragmatic decision. They want to delay any pain and suffering as long as possible, even if it’s worse when it eventually happens.
And about half of the nation looks at the problem and sees the logical inevitability of the situation. They want to go ahead and get it over with, so the recovery time will be sooner rather than later. It is very hard to accept some facts, but if we are going to survive as a nation, we must. We have grown up with the idea that America can do anything. Our leaders have told us that we are the envy of the world and there is nothing we can’t do if we just put our minds to it. After all, they say, this is America.
Oh yeah, well how come the Chinese are using $100 dollar bills to light their cigars. We need a reality check here. The truth is we have our limitations. There are a lot of things we can’t do. And we need to sit back and learn to deal with it.
We cannot afford to be the policeman for the entire World. We cannot be the World’s sugar daddy either. And we cannot make some people in the world stop their hatred for others. We cannot feed the entire planet. We are out of money, out of energy, and out of patience. There are some of us that think “If we don’t do it nobody will, it’s our moral duty to get involved.” That is a very dangerous and ignorant belief.
As long as we have that attitude nobody will ever step up to the plate. Why would they, when they know America will do it. The phrase “tough love” was coined in 1968 by Bill Milliken when he wrote a book titled Tough Love.
The idea behind tough love is that you treat someone harshly or sternly with the intent to help them in the long run. You inflict pain now so that the pain over the long run will be diminished. That is what the entire world needs at this point in history.
We need to administer a serious dose of tough love across the entire world. Nations that we have been propping up need to learn to stand on their own two feet. Americans who have been living off of others need to take responsibility for their own lives.
We need to understand that we cannot provide everything for everybody. Some will have to shape up or do without. This nation will have to set a stern set of priorities that only provides a limited amount of individual support. And we will have to tell some nations that they are on their own.
Americans have let their lives be consumed with commercialism. We have been obsessed with acquiring gadgets and things. That has led our nation down a path of consumer debt that is based on the desire for instant gratification. We, as a people, need to live a more frugal life, and we must demand that our government do so as well. — Larry Oscar
As one of the longer hottest summers on record comes to a close we can reflect on the changes that have taken place in the lives of Americans in just a few short months.
The debt crisis, a prolonged recession, a volatile stock and housing market, the failure of Keynesian economics, social unrest in the Middle East, higher diesel and gasoline prices, inflated food prices, European economic failures, tornados and hurricanes, and the prolonged heat wave creates an environment of stress throughout our country that Americans haven’t experienced since The Great Depression of the 1930’s.
It may be that the stresses in the lives of Americans are indeed even worse today than it was over 80 years ago. During the 1930’s people were more self-reliant. We were a nation of individuals who were not too many generations removed from the self-reliant pioneers who settled this country.
Over the last 200 years Americans have lost the ability to take care of themselves. We have become a nation of lemmings who depend on someone else for nearly everything in our lives.
Gone are the days when we grew our own food, built our own houses, stitched our own cloths, and provided for our own future. Today we have so many people who look toward the government, or “Federal Family” as the spin doctors are now calling the government, for everything in their lives.
We have become walking zombies. What is interesting is the difference in the attitude of the people who live in different states. Our nation was designed as a union of individual states. The idea being that people who live in the states can govern their own lives with local and state governments, and that the federal government is to be limited and nonintrusive in our individual lives.
However, over the past 200 years the federal government has been growing and growing. We are at a crossroads as a nation. Do we continue with this bloated federal government and the increased financial burden it places on the people, or do we start to shrink the federal government back to a manageable level?
That will be the question facing us in the coming elections in November. Our nation has survived and prospered over the past 200 years to become the greatest nation that has ever existed. Our brand of freedom and capitalism has fed more people, created more prosperity, spread more democracy and freedom, and increased mankind’s knowledge of medical science and technology than any nation in history.
Now we face a danger, not from a foreign threat, but from a threat of human complacency from within. Do we allow ourselves to become the beings of George Orwell’s book Nineteen Eighty-Four, or do we stand on our own two feet as our founding fathers did?
Our society has developed a disturbing pattern of behavior in our people. Nobody is willing to take responsibility for their lives or their actions. We are constantly blaming the conditions of our lives on anyone or anything but the results of our own actions. This even goes all the way to the Oval Office. Obama has blamed his failures on everything from the last president to earthquakes and tsunamis in Japan.
We didn’t elect him to play the blame game, we elected him to fix the leak. “Joe the plumber” could have done a better job. Unfortunately we have complete states with this type of mentality. I hate to keep picking on California, but they are the best example of the worst of us.
California, a state of lemmings, has 12% of the nation’s population and 32% of the nation’s welfare. And they wonder why they are in debt $24 billion dollars and getting worse every day. Now what’s wrong with this picture?
All of us need to stop and re-evaluate our lives as individuals. Are we to become a has-been nation of lemmings, or a revived nation of individuals standing on our own two feet. It is now time for the nation to decide.
I, for one, think we are about to see a great revival in this country. A revival that will embrace our brand of capitalism and crush the socialist marxist leanings of many of our lemming citizens. But I have been wrong before.
It is tempting to let big brother and the nanny state do the things for us that we should be doing for ourselves. Laziness is a very human temptation. So stand in front of a mirror, fully clothed of course, and take a good look at who is looking back at you. Is that person taking on the shape of a lemming? If so, go out and wash and wax your car.
That’s exactly what my wife is going to do this fall. And she may even wax my truck, as she promised after her team lost the Super Bowl earlier this year.
— Larry Oscar
More and more often you here the phrase “you just can’t make this stuff up.” Funny, most of the time it’s in regard to something from Washington. Just when you think the world can’t get any more crazy…… it invariably does. It seems like the entire world has lost all common sense and irrational behavior is now the new norm.
Lliving in Oklahoma, and having my ancestry go back to before the 1889 Oklahoma Land Run, it is easy to see why we think very differently than much of the rest of the nation. Oklahoma Territory was settled by a diverse set of fiercely independent people. They range from native American tribes, outlaws, oil barons, farmers, coal miners, cattle ranchers, and even bootleggers. The makeup of our state is not a socially unified group of people.
If you walk up to a native Oklahoman and tell him “we are all in this together,” you will more often than not get a frown, and a reply that lets you know that they will be the judge of who and whom they are “in this together with” and not you.
We are individuals in Oklahoma, and not members of some group of human lemmings like they are in other states. If you have moved here from the “Left Coast” or “Taxachusetts,” you will quickly learn that we don’t appreciate socialists. In fact, you may get invited to return from whence you came!
There is such a thing as “Oklahoma Values” and most Oklahomans will take up arms to defend them, including me. Here are some of our Oklahoma values:
1. You must stand on your own two feet! Nobody “owes” you anything. Your success in life depends on your decisions and your behavior. It’s nobody’s fault but your own. Got that “Oblama!”
2. We “give”…We don’t “give back”! As Oklahomans we have worked hard to get where we are in life. When you “libtards” ask us to “give back” you are marginalizing our accomplishments in life. We didn’t get where we are by being “lucky” or “fortunate.” The vast majority of Oklahomans got where we are by hard work and being willing to take a business risk. If you want us to donate our time and money you better just ask us to “give.” Don’t insult our individual accomplishments by asking us to “give back.”
3. Never blame your parents! Your parents only have you for about 18 years. And by the time you reach 13, you won’t listen to anything they have to say anyway, so take responsibility for your own life and your own actions. You won’t find 40-year-old Oklahomans blaming their parents.
4. We shoot guns! Oklahoma is a land of the outdoors. We fish, hunt, camp out, hike, and we love things that explode and make noise. If you come from a part of the country where you have never been exposed to firearms, don’t bring your anti-gun mentality to Oklahoma. We are proud of our western heritage and WE SHOOT GUNS!
5. No whining! Oklahomans are not whiners. Good and bad things happen in life. That’s just the way it is so learn to live with it. You will have good and bad times. We lived through the dust bowl, WWII, and the Great Depression all at once. The woosies among us left for California. I could write a book on that.
6. The government can roll it up into a nice tight ball and put it where the sun never shines! Oklahomans don’t want a nanny state government. We will take care of our own and ourselves. Whiz on the government. We are a free people who will live free or die. Don’t bring your big government mentality into our state. You will find that Democrats and Republicans in our state consider themselves as Oklahomans and brothers first. We Oklahomans stand together, and we will determine how we live and not some all powerful dictator from Washington.
The list of Oklahoma values is much longer than the six listed above, and any native Oklahoman will be happy to expound on the full list if asked. Oh…one more Oklahoma value. We like burgers, hot dogs, BBQ, fried chicken, and 32oz soft drinks. Got that New York? — By Larry Oscar
By Larry Oscar
It’s been a few years since some studies were conducted that support the theory that drinking beer is a prerequisite for good health. In a study, published in March of 2008, researchers at the National Institutes of Health released a study showing that frequent drinking in moderation may protect men from death due to cardiovascular disease.
Men who reported drinking 120 to 365 days a year had a 20% lower cardiovascular death rate than those who drank one to 36 days a year. In a 2003 study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Adults over age 65 who drank one to six alcoholic beverages over the course of the week had a lower risk of dementia than non-drinkers. A 2006 report that appeared in the American Heart Association journal also showed that a drink or two a day may result in a better cognitive function in women.
Now this isn’t news to those of us who have savored the health benefits from 
drinking for several decades. We know that our consumption of beer, wine, and other “beverages” have helped us become the geniuses we are today. And doing some simple research on just how much beer Americans drink has produced some mind boggling numbers. The United States produces about 200 million barrels of beer per year. That’s roughly 20 US gallons of beer for every man, woman, and child every year. It’s nice to know that the United States is still ahead of the rest of the world in something besides teenage pregnancy.
Now you take the volume of Skiatook Lake in Northeastern Oklahoma where I live, which is over 2.1 billion barrels and divide that by 200 million barrels of beer and that means that the beer drinkers of the United States consume the entire volume of the lake in beer about every 10 ½ years. Now there is something that we can all take pride in as a nation. Thank God for beer drinkers. Beer brewing goes back to over 6,000 BC. It is one of the oldest beverages mankind has produced. Beer is also something that has brought nations together in times of crisis. Many high level negotiations between nations and kings and queens have been conducted over a few pints of ale.
It has been suggested that beer may be responsible for over one half of the amount of the human population. In 1931 a study was conducted that proved beyond any doubt that after a few beers women become more attractive. I have personally never experienced this, of course, but it would be a logical conclusion given the lack of beauty enhancing cosmetics during the 1300’s.
And a point of note is the modern beer advertisement. Do you ever see a beer commercial with some “skank” holding up a frosty glass of brew? Of course you don’t. The obvious implication here is that beer attracts babes, and if you drink the right brand of beer you will leave the bar with some beauty hanging on your arm. I can assure you that these commercials are misleading.
However, perception is reality to some people. Just look at who some guys have married when walking around Wal- Mart! If it wasn’t for beer we might have hoards of very overweight women roaming the streets with knives and pitchforks demanding husbands. Beer levels the social playing field. You can always crack a joke at a party if you have a beer in your hand. For example, take the old beer joke “What does a drunk walrus have in common with a woman at a Tupperware party?….. They’re both out looking for a tight seal.” Now you wouldn’t get away with that joke in a social setting while holding a glass of champagne, but with a beer in your hand everyone laughs, and you look like a cool dude.
Now that we are well into 2012, and this year is supposed to be the last, according to some ancient Mayan prophecy, maybe we should make a serious resolution. (I never understood why anyone would ever believe a prediction from anyone who missed predicting their own demise.) However, we should all adopt a new resolution to drink as many different beers this year as possible. And what better country in which to drink beer. After all, it may not have been the Constitution that made America great. It may have been Anheuser-Busch !!