SelwynDuke.com

Scott Brown, Glenn Beck and the Spirit of the Age

  By Selwyn Duke

Scott Brown may be the Massachusetts man of the moment, but it sure didn’t take him long to commit his first gaffe. The scene was the podium at his Senate-campaign victory speech, where, flanked by his two scantily clad daughters, he proclaimed to the world that they were “available.” No, Bill Clinton was not in attendance.

At this point one could probably make a crack about politics’ frequent association with prostitution, which, as Eliot Spitzer proved, is sometimes more than a figurative nexus. But the truth is that Brown’s statement — a poor effort at humor — shocked many, including commentator Glenn Beck, who blasted the senator-elect on his radio show.

Read the rest here.

Reader Email: Uncle Santa Clause, I want a Pony

It’s Christmas Eve and Jimmy has just been tucked snugly in bed.  The anxiety for the day to come has him plum tuckered out.  As he drifts off to sleep, the last vision that passed across his mind is a photographic memory of the crayon written letter he sent to Santa:

Dear Santa,

It’s me Jimmy.  I have been a very good boy this year and I got all A’s on my report card.  All I want for Christmas is a pony; a brown pony with white spots is what I really want but any pony will do if you can’t find one with spots.

Thanks,

Jimmy

Earthquakes Aren't Man-made, Poverty is

                     The tragedy behind the tragedy in Haiti

By Selwyn Duke

Natural disasters are bad. They’re far worse when they combine with unnatural disasters. We’re all calling the recent Haitian earthquake devastating, but it’s more correct to say that in Port-Au-Prince there is tremendous devastation. And there is a difference, as more “devastating” quakes have caused less devastation in other places.

Famed economist Walter Williams brings this to light in a recent column. He points out that while Haiti's 7.0 quake has a death toll of more than 200,000, northern California's 1989 Loma Prieta 7.1 quake and San Francisco’s 1906, 7.8 quake — which was about eight times the intensity of Haiti’s — claimed respectively, only 63 and 3,000 lives.

Read the rest here.

Tuesday's Savage Nation Appearance: The Quayled Lady — Why You Should Forget about Sarah Palin

The Quayled Lady: Why You Should Forget about Sarah Palin - 01/19/10

Obama’s Healthcare Discrimination: Making Some More Equal than Others

By Selwyn Duke

One thing we get with our mother’s milk today is revulsion for what civil-rights lawyers call “invidious” discrimination.  For the civil-rights lawyers who attained their status through the invidious discrimination known as affirmative action, the parenthesized word means “likely to create ill will” or “offensively or unfairly discriminating.”  Now, the problem with judging invidiousness is that it requires you know what fairness is.  For instance, it certainly creates ill will when Americans are rejected simply because they’re too white or too male (yes, it makes sense — think San Francisco), but the government doesn’t trouble much about that.

What is More Troubling than Pat Robertson’s Remarks?

By Selwyn Duke

Of all the responses to the devastation in Haiti, the most copy-worthy is televangelist Pat Robertson’s claim that the earthquake was divine retribution.  In making his case, he told a story about how Haitian leaders long ago made a pact with Satan, promising to serve him if he would help vanquish their French oppressors.  The Devil delivered, said Robertson, but the consequence is that the nation has ever since been cursed, with one disaster befalling it after another.  It was reminiscent of when the late Jerry Falwell said — and Robertson agreed — that those who have authored America’s descent into sin were partially responsible for 9/11.

The Quayled Lady: Why You Should Forget Sarah Palin

By Selwyn Duke

Really, there’s precious little fairness in the world.  People tend to be slaves to emotion, and prejudices often reign supreme even (in fact, especially) in those who rail against prejudice.  This is why we’ll see millions of Americans reflexively dismiss a politician simply because of the letter following his name; it is why people will often oppose a position they would otherwise support simply because it’s being advocated by someone they dislike.  Ah, that troublesome human nature.

This brings us to Sarah Palin, the Wasilla woman often billed as the best hope of the GOP.  She certainly isn’t one of those plain vanilla characters who inspire blasé reactions, that’s for sure.  It’s just so often the case that people either love her or hate her, believe she is the cat’s meow or the pig with lipstick, a political sensation or a puerile simpleton.  I’m in neither camp.

Trial Begins for Woman Who Cut Baby from Womb

By Selwyn Duke

It sounds like a dark story from the days of ancient pagan rituals: A person tears open a woman’s womb while she’s still alive and takes her baby from it. I wrote about such a crime in August of last year, but, tragically, it was no isolated event. And now a different case of this kind is coming to trial, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Forty-year-old Andrea Curry-Demus of Wilkinsburg, a Pittsburgh suburb, wanted a baby badly. Very badly, it seems. So her hopes must have been buttressed when a urine test showed that she might be pregnant — yet a subsequent blood test would dash those hopes. This is when Curry-Demus put a deadly plan into action, one that would leave a woman dead and a baby motherless.

Read the rest here.

A Foolproof Tax Plan: So Simple Even a Caveman IRS Commissioner Could do it

 What does it tell you when even the IRS commissioner doesn’t prepare his own taxes because the code is “complex”?

By Selwyn Duke

Given that my father had been a WWII-era prisoner of war in Germany, no one could accuse him of not doing his part for America. Yet he was no fan of Uncle Scam. So many times he’d passionately say, “The government is worse than the mafia!” His point was that when you pay protection money to the local don, no one will dare vandalize your property. But there’s no such assurance when paying tribute to little g, a fact we were painfully aware of living in the Bronx.

There are few bureaucracies in America that inspire hatred — at least among that ever-diminishing class of productive citizens — like the Internal Revenue Service. Doing its part to mitigate materialism, it liberated enough money from our pockets in 2009 so that we had to work until April 13 for the government. Some call this part of the “social contract” — which, incidentally, I don’t remember ever signing. Others call it legalized theft. Yet others call it slavery.

Read the rest here.

The Economy is so Bad That . . . .

OK, I usually don't post emails I receive, but this one is just too good.  I hope you enjoy it.

The economy is so bad that:

I got a pre-declined credit card in the mail.

I ordered a burger at McDonald's and the kid behind the counter asked, "Can you afford fries with that?"

CEOs are now playing miniature golf.