Wayward Landlubber

     There aren't many conservative humorists deserving  of the name. Dennis Miller was a funny guy on Saturday Night Live, but his career tanked when he was hired byFoxNews.  Conservative humor is not ironic it is cruel, as befitting Libertarianism, sometimes called the death of altruism. P.J. O'Roarke is a notable exception. I have chuckled at his humorous ripostes over the years even as he slid the knife across liberal throats. He is that quintessential Libertarian. A political orientation that thinks of itself as better than the more prosaic Democrats and Republicans. Never-the-less, when the votes are counted they are spooning with the Republicans. Paul Ryan would be one of them but like most Republicans, he is not funny.      One of my favorite quips of O'Roarke's is, "the Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass from your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says govern...

     There is this thing about myth and hoax that republicans can't comprehend. Well there are lots of things they don't comprehend, this being a party where comprehension is not valued, but I'll confine myself to these two.      Hoax, to a republican is any threat that threatens the subsidies of the corporations that control them. When the hoax is brought before them, they lock it in the closet with other things that they are told to ignore. The bigger the hoax the more accurate the perception.    But  myth, now there is the zenith of incomprehension. Ask a republican about Cassandra and most will wonder if that is the supple pole-dancer at the Gentleman's Club. Maybe 3 out of ten would know that she had the ability to foretell future events. Few would know the full story, knowledge in depth not being a talent republicans aspire to.      Cassandra was the niece of King Prium of Troy. The Troy of the Trojan War. You have lost t...

     They were not my brothers, those men of my generation standing nearby on a cold, blustery day in the nations capital. We were staring at a marble wall remembering a time when our waists may have been thinner and our hair thicker, in many cases much longer. The names on the wall were young men, boys really, whom we had known in that far-off time. Sometimes we knew them closely, sometimes more distantly. We had grown into comfortable middle age, they had not.      We were a motley group, those of us among the living. We would have been a motley group back then, grooming standards being what they were. Some of us were wearing remnants of old uniforms, seemingly smaller than when first worn. Some of us had sleeveless denim vests festooned with patches and biker colors. Many of those patches were MIA/POW. Some of us were indistinguishable from the run-of-the-mill tourists on the mall. We had come to be in this spot to honor our memories, in some cases for c...