HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!

If you thought a government capable of spending $600,000.00 – 40% of it borrowed – to study the relationship between the size of a man’s penis and whether or not the short stick holder will be the catcher on the Hershey Highway Traveling Javelin Team would be incapable of doing anything great you would be forgiven.
Buttressing that argument is the news that the President and his Readin’, Ritin’, & Rithmetic Czar, neither of whom has any of their children in any of the really fine public schools in Washington, D.C., decided that the “No Child Left Behind” law is too tough on the tots. It seems that not enough of the nippers can pass it. Their solution, the paradigmatic template so beloved by modern American Liberals, was simple. Don’t enforce the law. Specifically, don’t enforce the law in states where the kids don’t do well on tests. [Only a cad would suggest that a poorly hitting Little League team be given 4 strikes or that a very tall basketball team be forced to have an obese melanin challenged point guard]

Is it permitted to ask how an admitted Constitutional scholar could have forgotten Article 2, Section 3 of said Constitution? It says “…he shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed”. There are no exceptions for ones that the President doesn’t like. In fact, there are no exceptions.

Maybe it’s time to bring back my idea to change pi to 3.0

Doing that would increase everyone’s geometry grade. Self-esteem would soar. Perhaps it would lead to a decrease in teenage bullying. In a real “Git’r done” mood it would be a Win/Win/Win/Win deal.

It might be tough on any future Bridges to Nowhere but, to quote the great Lord Keynes, “In the long run we’re all dead”.

It is hard to believe but this country once did great things.

We are within the octave of the 66th anniversary of the most successful arms control treaty of the 20th century. It is so successful that it is in the 2nd decade of the 21st century. In an age where less than 30 year old football stadiums are considered out of date it is an achievement worthy of a secular Te Deum.

In less than 4 days of intense negotiation, beginning in the skies above Hiroshima and ending with a bang at Nagasaki, the United States of America ended World War 2.

Nobody, specifically Harry Truman or Paul Tibbets, got a Nobel Peace Prize for what they did. The framers of the Kellogg-Briand Naval Treaty got a passel of them. Not until Arafat, Rigoberta Menchu, Billy Carter’s brother, Potty Mouth Alpha Gump, and Lord Barack the Beneficent became winners in the International Affirmative Action Big Time Poke Uncle Sam in the Eye sweepstakes have more laurels been granted. Despite solemn promises about lions and lambs two of the signators, Germany and Japan, tried to sink the ship my wife’s father, Lt. Cdr. Walter Chapman, served on. It was General Quarters on two oceans. As bad as that was – 11 years – it was exponentially better than the deal at Munich. That one lasted about ½ the time needed for a decent rendition of Flight of the Valkyries.

Truman, “Captain Harry” to the men he commanded in World War 1, said, “If the American people knew that I had a weapon that could end the war and didn’t use it they would have been right to run me out of town on a rail”. The United States and Great Britain were taking 1,000 casualties a day. It is estimated that Operation Olympic Coronet, the invasion of the home islands of Japan, would bring an additional 1,000,000 casualties. The short, still correct retort to the mush brained cry “No More Hiroshimas” is “No More Pearl Harbors”. Nolo me tangere cum impecunis is still on the books.

Eisenhower commanded 10,000,000 men. He ended the war in Western Europe 11months and 4 days after his armies landed. When he said, “I will go to Korea” the boys in the Kremlin knew he wasn’t going there for the waters. The shooting stopped 6 months after he was sworn in.

Admiral Arleigh Burke, John McCain’s father’s boss in WW2, said he did 2 things well when he was in the Navy: he improved the landscaping at the Pentagon and he was responsible for the Polaris missile. It would have made no sense to shoot something 3,000 miles into the men’s room window at the Kremlin and have it filled with water balloons.

1962 and 1973 validated yet again the unilaterally imposed treaty. The jury is still out on whether or not President Bush, invoking the Cartago delenda est maxim, should have used some of the small ones to open Friday prayers in a half a dozen mosques.

Since it was OK to start the Israeli/Egyptian/Syrian/Hashemite/Shia/Sunni/WOG war on Yom Kippur and since turnabout is fair play maybe Ramadan would have been a lovely day to start a war.

It could end tomorrow.

We know it didn’t end yesterday.




HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!




Kevin Smith