Month: April 2024

Weekly Comments:  Hamas Protesters Disrupt Serious Students. Humor at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner

#1204 Apr. 28, 2024

Columbus: The president of Columbia University has turned leadership of the school over to Palestinian students and outside Hamas agitators. The 95% of students who are Christian or Jewish have no role in this newly designated ruling body.

Tomorrow is the last day of classes scheduled at Columbia, followed by three days allocated for unlimited protesting. Final exams begin on Friday. Graduation ceremonies are scheduled for May 15. No word yet on whether Ayatollah Khamenei of Iran has accepted an invitation to be the Commencement speaker.

Anti-Israel protests have sprung up across most of the country. At the University of Texas, the Palestinians were met by officers on horseback and quickly disbursed. UCLA has their police officers riding bicycles.

Right here at Ohio State University it’s already Finals Week.  Protesters were disrupting the serious students and 35 were arrested. Not surprisingly, 20 were outside troublemakers.

For parents of college students, you had better warn them to be careful who they follow. If they hear loud chants of “From the river to the sea,” they should know this doesn’t mean “From the Ural River to the Caspian Sea.”

The White House Correspondents’ dinner was last night. President Biden spoke, taking a few digs at Donald Trump, joking about his own age, and made serious comments about the essential role of journalists.

Since most of the 3000 attendees like President Biden, I think he missed a great opportunity to end his speech with the audience joining him in unison, “Four more years pause! Four more years pause!”

The President was followed by comedian Colin Jost of NBC who introduced himself as providing the “Republican Response.” He was pretty balanced in roasting both Biden and Trump.

Every humorist knows to pause after a punchline. I think Colin took that advice too far. Yes, he paused when the audience was roaring with laughter. But when a punchline got little or no reaction, he still paused for several seconds before reading the next joke.

Colin ended by telling how his grandfather who died recently had voted for Biden and added, as a Democrat he will likely continue to vote for him.

Historic quotes by Will Rogers:

“The real power (of small-town newspapers) is greater than all your metropolitan dailies combined. Any person that don’t read at least one well-written country newspaper is not truly informed.” DT #1865, July 27, 1932

“People’s minds are changed through observation and not through argument.” DT #1761, March 16, 1931

“This is dispatched just before the President (Roosevelt) goes on the air tonight. I am anxious to hear the comments in the press. Even if it’s good there is plenty of ’em won’t like it. He can speak on the Lord’s supper and get editorials against it. Never in our history was we as willing to blame somebody else for our troubles.” DT #2723, Apr. 28, 1935

The anti-Israel pro-Hamas protests by college students and outside troublemakers are getting worse. When a few hundred students can take over an Ivy League university, threatening their fellow students, it makes you question their intelligence. They may have a high IQ, but zero common sense.

Where are the parents of the Columbia protesters? Can you imagine being a dad and mom who have paid $90,000 a year, and now their precious son or daughter might get kicked out? And even if they graduate, who will hire ‘em?

I read that Columbia gives so much financial aid, the cost to most students is minimal. The administrators who awarded huge sums to ungrateful protesting students should be preparing to demand full repayment of their scholarships.

Secretary Mayorkas was impeached by Republicans in the House. The Republican leaders then solemnly walked the formal indictment past the Will Rogers statue, through the Capitol rotunda, and through the front door of the Senate chamber. Senate Leader Chuck Schumer accepted the 1000-page impeachment document, immediately ripped in two, placed it on the altar, and burned it like a sacrificial lamb. Case closed! Trial ended before it started.

Despite the defeat in the Senate, which everyone knew would happen, don’t be surprised if Republicans call back Secretary Mayorkas to testify in the House. I hope a House member will ask him this: “Of the 8 million immigrants seeking asylum that your Border Patrol has processed into the country, how many have appeared before a Judge and been granted asylum? And how many have been denied asylum and sent back to their home country?

While we’re in a mood to ask questions, I have one for Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia. She is determined to get rid of Speaker Mike Johnson so I hope a journalist will ask her this: “If you were Speaker, and you were in a meeting with Senator Schumer and President Biden, what legislation would you demand they pass and sign? And do you think you would be any more successful at persuading them than Speaker Johnson?”

The Biden campaign has a new ad promoting him as “sharp as a knife.” Please give me a little comedic freedom with this story based on fact. I have a prized knife that I will keep around as long as I can. It’s a Case knife that my dad received as a gift about 80 years ago. He passed it down to me. The blade is well worn, not nearly as strong as it used to be because it has had quite a life. Whittling, carving initials in oak trees, sharpening pencils, cutting strings off hay bales, removing screws, peeling apples, castrating bull calves. Not necessarily in that order. It has been sharpened on a grindstone several times, but not recently. It’s kinda dull. That’s ok because I have newer knives with multi-purpose blades that are ideal for the tasks listed above. (No cows, so no need to cut a calf.) I keep this precious 80-year-old Case knife tucked away on a velvet pad in a desk drawer where I can pull it out, admire it, then put it back. No one cares if it is sharp.

Here’s a puzzling announcement. As the Biden-Harris campaign gears up for the big push to November, all hiring will be based on DEI. This decision is a gift to Republicans who will hire based on merit, and could still lose. Considering the main issue for Democrats, I suggest you contact the Biden campaign immediately if you are a Black or Hispanic man who had an abortion after 20 or 30 weeks.

I’ll close on a high note. Happy Earth Day tomorrow. And happy birthday to my favorite daughter, Marcia, born on the first Earth Day.

Historic quotes by Will Rogers:

“I generally give the party in power, whether Republican or Democrat, the more digs because they are generally doing the country more damage, and besides I don’t think it is fair to jump too much on the fellow who is down. He is not working, he is only living in hopes of getting back in on the graft in another four years, while the party in power is drawing a salary to be knocked.” WA #100, Nov. 9, 1924

“I don’t think I ever hurt any man’s feelings by my little gags. I know I never willfully did it. When I have to do that to make a living I will quit.” WA #36   August 19, 1923

More than 150 million Americans will file an Income Tax Return by tomorrow. If you paid any income taxes for 2023, congratulations. A portion of your taxes paid your college student debt.

What? Even if you have no unpaid student loans, or did not even attend college, you just paid your share of $7,400,000,000 in student debt. This is in addition to your share of the $145,000,000,000 student loan debt you paid in 2021 and 2022.

Several former students with outstanding loans had illnesses or other mental or physical issues and they legitimately deserve our compassion and contributions. They deserved relief.

But too many signed a loan for a “new Cadillac Escalade education” and all they got after 4 or 5 years was a “1999 Chevy Vega career.”

Did Congress vote for this $152 BILLION transfer from you to the former students? No. Did you vote for it? Of course not. (But, in a way you did if you voted for Joe Biden in 2020.) The Supreme Court DID vote, and they voted NO!

But President Biden defied the Supreme Court and did it anyway. A Democrat Congresswoman applauded the President’s move, saying the debt relief for 4,000,000 former students could allow them to “get another degree.”  Believe it or not, Will Rogers made a similar point on his radio program, June 2, 1935, “The only salvation I can see for the young is to increase the college term to an additional four years. You’ll say, ‘Well, what could they learn in another four years?’ Well, there must be something about making a living that they haven’t learned yet, and they could kind of work on that for the next four years.”

But what loan relief really does, and the President’s original purpose, is to get 4,000,000 more votes for Democrats. An even worse consequence is the effect it has on current and future students. They will sign for a college loan and assume that after getting a degree, they won’t have to pay any of it back.

Iran attacked Israel with about 300 drones and missiles Saturday night. Iran’s radical Islamic leaders really hate Israel. Iran is 75 times bigger than Israel and is separated from little Israel by two other big countries, Iraq and Jordan. Here’s Will Rogers in his newspaper column (DT #2189, August 9, 1933), “I don’t care how little your country is, you got a right to run it like you want to. When the big nations quit meddling then the world will have peace.” (This also applies to Ukraine and Taiwan.)

Has there ever been a more peculiar attack? Iran announced a week ago they would attack. They even waited on Saturday for President Biden to return from Delaware to the White House Situation Room so he could watch on TV as it was happening. Israel, with help from us and other allies, destroyed 99% of the drones and missiles.

I’m wondering if Iran had a slew of older, out-of-date drones and decided this would be a way to get rid of them and have Israel use up valuable resources to shoot them down. And half of the Iranian ballistic missiles misfired, never got off the ground. This could have been a strategic maneuver by Iran to learn how Israel might react to a real attack. Let’s hope our CIA has a few spies who know the truth.

The attack came after President Biden warned them using one of his favorite words, “Don’t.”  I think Webster should declare “don’t” as the Word of the Year. It has two definitions. 1. When a parent or teacher tells a child “Don’t” it means you better not do that! 2. When President Biden tells a country “Don’t”, well, it is meaningless.

Tomorrow Donald Trump goes on trial in New York City. It will be unique. Never in history has a misdemeanor trial lasted two months.

The Solar Eclipse and college basketball are dominating headlines this weekend. The South Carolina women’s team finished a perfect season by defeating Caitlyn Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes today, 87-75. The depth of the SC team is unbelievable as subs outscored Iowa subs 37-0.

The men’s championship will be tomorrow night, Purdue vs. UConn. Both were top teams this year. The winner will be a true champion.

Ohio is in the band of “Totality” for the solar Eclipse. It will reach from Texas to Maine tomorrow afternoon. I’m on the edge of the total darkness band and plan to watch from my back yard. I hope the clouds part for a few seconds at about 3:10 pm.

President Biden insists on telling Israel how to fight a war. So, Israel is pulling all their troops out of southern Gaza where the Hamas terrorists are hiding in their tunnels with over a hundred hostages, including Americans. Those hostages are not silver and gold to Hamas, they are PLATINUM.

I would like to tell our President to get on the phone with the Hamas leaders in Qatar and their backers in Iran and, in the same harsh terms he uses with Trump supporters, lay out the risk to their personal safety and their friends unless Hamas surrenders and returns all hostages. I would like to do that, but I won’t waste my time.  Unfortunately, our President is more interested in votes from pro-Hamas Palestinians in Michigan and Minnesota and misinformed college students across the country than he is in the future of Israel.

We’re into the final week to pay our income taxes. This is courtesy of the 16^th Amendment to the Constitution, “The Congress shall have the power to lay and collect taxes on incomes, from whatever source derived…” This was passed in 1913 and the first taxes collected were at a rate of 1% to 7%. I wonder if the Amendment would have been approved by three-fourths of the states if it had included the phrase, “up to 75%.”

Here are a few quotes by Will Rogers to ponder as you finish your 1040 (or wait eagerly for your refund):

“You can’t legitimately kick on income tax, for it’s on what you have made. You have already made it. But, look at land, farms, homes, stores, vacant lots. You pay year after year on them whether you make it or not.” DT #1798, April 28, 1932

“The income tax has made more liars out of the American people than golf has.” WA #17, April 8, 1923 (also WA #99, Nov. 2, 1924)

“There is some talk of lowering (the income tax), and they will have to. People are not making enough to pay it.” WA #17, April 8, 1923

“It costs ten times more to govern us than it used to, and we are not governed one-tenth as good.” DT #1770, March 27, 1932

“The crime of taxation is not in the taking it, it’s in the way that it’s spent.” DT #1764, March 20, 1932

“If your Income Taxes go to help out the less fortunate, there could be no legitimate kick against it in the world.” WA #421, Jan. 18, 1931

Another Historic Quote by Will Rogers:

“I can’t see any advantage of having one of your own Party in as President. I would rather be able to criticize a man than to have to apologize for him.” WA #14, March 18, 1923