Feminists head the herd when it comes to taking offense. They can find affront at the drop of a hat. Feminists have taken umbrage at everything from Victoria’s Secret to My Little Pony. Anything that fails to promote feminism’s “strong” woman — the bra-burning, gruff, nagging, sea hag — renders women doting airheads suitable for serving the patriarchal society.

Okay, same song; men are pigs. What’s new? 

Well, something is new. The venerable LEGO is marketing the latest indoctrination tool for a chauvinistic society bent on creating an entire generation of models for the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue. Specifically, the LEGO Friends line of toys. According to offended feminists, LEGO Friends “limits creativity and healthy role development” and encourages “damaging gender stereotypes.”

That sounds serious. But have no fear; the offended will arise to save little girls from childhood fun. In fact, the offended are petitioning LEGO to pull the toys from distribution. The petition’s initiator — Carolyn Costin, MFT (the “T” stands for tyrant, you can decide what the “MF” represents) — said, “Presenting slimmer, more fashion oriented LEGO people for girls falls right into the pervasive cultural messages for them to focus solely on their appearance and being thin.”

Really? Are we supposed to believe that playing with LEGOs will cause a generation of young girls to want to look like their LEGOs? Children of the 70s — I am one — played with green army soldiers, Evel Knievel stunt cycles, and cap guns. How many of us wanted to turn green when we grew up, or jump Caesar’s Palace, or become a gunslinger? 

In fairness, the LEGO Friends collection is rather sugary. Girls can choose from sets such as Olivia’s Tree House, the Butterfly Beauty Shop, and Stephanie’s Cool Convertible, complete with a puppy for the back seat. Sickening? Infinitely! The LEGO Friends are more nauseating than shotgunning a keg of corn syrup. But for Pete’s sake, they’re toys! 

Even if Carolyn Costin (the MFT) is correct and these toys do cause kids to desire a slimmer figure, is that automatically a problem? We’re inundated with stories about what fat slobs Americans have become, even those who grew up idolizing Barbie. Another “thin is in” message might be a godsend. Anyway, what would Carolyn consider a suitable image-building toy: Roseanne Barr’s Tub-O-Lard Doughnut Shop, or Gloria Steinem’s Chopemoff Vasectomy Clinic? 

Still, give Carolyn her due. She’s quite the pro at poking her nose into other people’s business; a genuine Buttinski Hall of Famer. If only there was an off-season.

1. Republicans will keep the U.S. House, albeit with their 25-seat majority slightly reduced. In the 10 presidential re-elections since 1936, the party in control of the White House has added House seats in seven contests and lost them in three. The average gain has been 12 seats. The largest pickup was 24 seats in 1944—but President Barack Obama is no FDR, despite what he said in his recent “60 Minutes” interview.
2. Republicans will take the U.S. Senate. Of the 23 Democratic seats up in 2012, there are at least five vulnerable incumbents (Florida, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Pennsylvania): The GOP takes two or three of these. With the announcement on Tuesday that Nebraska’s Ben Nelson will retire, there are now seven open Democratic seats (Connecticut, Hawaii, North Dakota, New Mexico, Virginia, Wisconsin): The GOP takes three or four. Even if Republicans lose one of the 10 seats they have up, they will have a net pickup of four to six seats, for a majority of 51 to 53.
3. Rep. Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Harry Reid or both will leave the Democratic leadership by the end of 2012. Speaker John Boehner and Senator Mitch McConnell will continue directing the GOP in their respective chambers.
4. This will be the fourth presidential election in a row in which turnout increases. This has happened just once since 1828, from 1928 through 1940.
5. In 2008, voters told the Pew Poll that they got more election information from the Internet than from daily newspapers. Next year, that advantage will grow as the Internet closes in on television as America’s principal source of campaign news.
6. After failing to win the GOP presidential nomination, Ron Paul will not run as a third-party candidate because that would put his son, Rand Paul, in an untenable position: Does the Republican senator from Kentucky support his father and effectively re-elect Mr. Obama, or back his party and defeat him?
7. Mr. Obama’s signature health-care overhaul, already deeply unpopular, will become even more so by Election Day. Women voters are particularly opposed to ObamaCare, feeling it threatens their family’s health.
8. Mr. Obama may propose tax reform, attempting to use it to appeal both to his liberal base (a question of fairness) and independents (a reform to spur economic growth). This will fail, but not before boosting Mr. Obama’s poll numbers.
9. The Obama campaign won’t corral high-profile Republican endorsements—as it did in 2008 with former Secretary of State Colin Powell—with the unimportant possible exception of former Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel. It will also make a special effort to diminish the GOP’s advantage among military families, veterans and evangelicals, with the last a special target if Republicans nominate Mitt Romney.
10. Despite an extraordinary amount of presidential time and involvement, Team Obama will fall as much as $200 million short of its $1 billion combined fund-raising target for the campaign and Democratic National Committee. Even so, Mr. Obama and Democrats will outspend the GOP nominee and Republicans. This won’t necessarily translate into victory: John Kerry and Democrats outspent President George W. Bush and Republicans in 2004 by $124 million. Groups like American Crossroads (which I helped found) will narrow the Democratic money advantage.
11. Scandals surrounding the now-bankrupt Solyndra, Fannie and Freddie, MF Global and administration insider deals still to emerge will metastasize, demolishing the president’s image as a political outsider. By the election, the impression will harden that Mr. Obama is a modern Chicago-style patronage politician, using taxpayer dollars to reward political allies (like unions) and contributors (like Obama fund-raiser and Solyndra investor George Kaiser).
12. To intimidate critics and provoke higher black turnout, Democrats will play the race card more than in any election since 1948. Witness Attorney General Eric Holder’s recent charge that criticism of him and the president was “both due to the nature of our relationship and . . . the fact that we’re both African-Americans.”
13. The economic recovery will continue to be anemic, leaving both unemployment and concerns about whether the president is up to the job high on Election Day. Because of this, Mr. Obama will lose as his margins drop among five groups essential to his 2008 victory—independents, women, Latinos, young people and Jews. While he will win a majority from at least three of these groups, he won’t win them by as much as he did last time.

This is the very same Herman Cain that did not know whether he was for or against Obama’s Libya policy and falsely claimed that the Taliban was playing a role in Libya’s new government.  This is also the same guy that insisted that leaders don’t need to know anything about world affairs, they just need to provide clarity and a competent staff.  In an interview with The Daily Caller, Cain had this to say about the expertise needed to be Secretary of Defense:

You don’t need to have defense expertise.  You don’t even need to have military expertise.  You need to have leadership expertise.  That’s what I would bring to that job.

I can buy that for the Presidency.  No one is going to be an expert in fiscal policy and be an expert in military strategy.  However, it’s absurd to think that if your sole job is to manage the Pentagon, you wouldn’t have any experience… at all.

As many PD’ers know, I was a Cain supporter very early on.  However, when it gets to the point where I have no rational explanation for my candidate more often than not, I have to cut my losses.  I was hoping that Cain could repair his image and coherently refute the allegations against him, but, unfortunately, it doesn’t look like time away has served him well.

I could fully support him as Secretary of Treasury.  His 9-9-9 Plan was a solid plan and I would love for him to be in a position where he could influence fiscal policy.  However, he’s giving me more and more reason to put write him off as either a kook or an arrogant wanna-be politician.

You might as well cry.

Go on and pout, I’m telling you why.

Santa Claus ain’t coming to town.

There won’t be any reindeer, or sleigh for you to see.

We’ve banned them all so we can prove our great sensitivity.

It’s no joke! The North Pole’s favorite son was banned from his annual appearance at the Hollings Cancer Center in South Carolina. Said spokeswoman Vicki Agnew: “Because of our state affiliation, we decided not to have a Santa presence this year.” The Center, Agnew continued, wanted to be “more secular and respectful to all beliefs. People who are Muslim or Jewish or have no religious beliefs come here for treatment.”

Doesn’t that make perfect sense. We can’t have the State promoting biblical characters like Santa Claus, now can we? After all, according to the Book of Blitzen, Chapter Three, it was Santa Claus who led the Israelites out of the Arctic Circle, parting Rudolph the Red-nosed Sea along the way. And the Gospel according to Comet tells how Santa came to grant strength to the lame, sight to the blind, and knowledge to the foolish. 

Ms. Agnew contends the decision wasn’t “meant to be cold.” If that’s true, then it was meant to be stupid; it’s the only other plausible explanation. What a shame Vicki Agnew wasn’t there when Santa was bringing knowledge to the foolish; she could use a miracle. 

Oh well, ’tis the season. America has come to herald each Christmas with renewed assaults on common sense. We ban Santa Claus and prohibit nativity displays. We purchase “holiday” trees from big box stores whose clerks are instructed to greet us with the innocuous “happy holidays.” Schoolchildren participate in “winter celebrations” rather than Christmas plays. And we endure it all so as not offend the perpetually offended. Has Christmas ever genuinely insulted anyone who wasn’t seeking insult to begin with? 

Frank Cloyes, the Center’s volunteer Santa, wonders when all this politically correct nonsense will end. “Let’s have a little joy in our lives,” he said. 

Mr. Cloyes can take some solace. The Hollings Center revisited their lunacy after South Carolinians revolted. However, his fundamental complaint remains unresolved. Political correctness is the antithesis of joy, existing only to prevent joy and prohibit fun at every turn. Life must universally suck for PC multiculturalists to be satisfied. And the nonsense won’t end until enough people summon the courage to tell hand-wringing busybodies like Vicki Agnew to go jump in a hole. In the meantime the Priests of High-minded Sanctimony will continue sacrificing America’s cultural and spiritual traditions to political correctness, their god most high. 

 So you better not count on seasonal cheer.

It hasn’t a chance with bureaucrats near.

 Santa Claus ain’t coming,

Santa Claus ain’t coming,

Santa Claus ain’t coming to town.

Tebow, an underperforming young NFL player who had previously failed to live up to his lofty college reputation, was recently pressed into the starting role as quarterback for the Broncos. He has responded by leading the Broncos on an extended winning streak, with several of the games being won in improbable fashion with last-minute rallies.

After each victory, Tebow gives thanks to G-d with an obvious, unashamed on-field display of reverence.

Such public displays of religiosity and faith have led to unrestricted criticism and mocking by the liberal media. Negative articles have been written. Commentary by announcers has been sarcastic and condescending.

The question, of course, is why? Why do the liberal media feel so offended or threatened or simply put out by Tebow’s actions?

One of the first things a committed liberal says is that religion has no place in the public square and that there must always be that wall between “church and state.” The Constitution mandates that, they say, citing the First Amendment’s famous clause: “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion….”

What these selective Constitutional scholars conspicuously fail to quote is the next segment of the very same Amendment, which goes, “….or prohibiting the free exercise thereof….” Reasoned people would argue that Tebow is merely availing himself of that right to free exercise.

And how, exactly, is Tebow’s on-field behavior different than when David ‘Big Papi’ Ortiz hits a home run and looks skyward and points upward with his two forefingers as he crosses home plate? What is he doing—paying homage to the Delta Airlines flight passing overhead? After recording the final out of a winning game, superstar pitcher Randy Johnson would point to the sky from the pitcher’s mound, “…in tribute to my Dad.” Where did he think his Dad was—in the top row of the bleachers? More importantly, where did the media think Johnson was pointing and why? Why are Ortiz’ and Johnson’s (and many other athletes’) overtly religious gestures towards “heaven” somehow less controversial and offensive to the liberal media than Tebow’s actions?

There is an undercurrent of thought among many liberals that this country was not founded on religious principles and any display or even the slightest implication of a public religious gesture should be forbidden, lest someone of a different (or no) faith be “offended.”

From an historical, factual standpoint, that thought is incorrect. The United States was indeed founded on Judeo-Christian values, and specific, unequivocal religious references abound in both our founding documents and in today’s day-to-day society. The famous phrase in the Declaration of Independence, “….that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights….” would have to have a wildly imaginative interpretation for the word “Creator” not to mean G-d.

Our money says, “In G-d we trust. Court proceedings are begun with, “…so help you G-d.” A display of The Ten Commandments resides in the Supreme Court. The public examples are numerous and overwhelming as to the religious underpinning on which our society is founded.

The question is not whether we are a country that was founded on religious principles. We are, quite factually and provably.

The question in the minds of secular-progressives is whether we should continue to be such.

That is an entirely different issue than whether we are a religiously-founded country. Any well-spoken, articulate secular-progressive can logically and clearly speak as to why the religious foundation that shaped the Founding Fathers’ outlook and governing philosophy is no longer relevant, helpful, or valuable in today’s complex, diverse, multi-faceted world. Similarly, today, a thoughtful, intellectual religious person can make a convincing presentation as to why belief in the tenants and guidelines of a faith-based lifestyle strengthen—not hinder or distract from—the ability to lead a productive, ethical, compassionate life. A spirited, intelligent, unemotional discussion between the two sides would be quite illuminating.

Would the liberal media take such enthusiastic, critical note of a public display of, say, Muslim or Buddhist or Hindu or even Jewish religious expression? Likely not. Do the media take note when the display is “toned down” a bit (such as a quick Ortiz heavenward point) vs. Tebow’s overt Christian display?

No, the media do not take note of or mention Ortiz’ quick gesture. It’s easy to figure out why.

Big Business (and their relentless pursuit of profits) is bad, evil, and inherently untrustworthy.

Is that really the lesson we want to take away from this mess? The same old clichés, presented for the same old reasons? How trite. How tired. How wrong.

Let’s take a closer look. There is no question that this whole Occupy situation has the anti-Big-Business crowd in a huff. This has been a veritable field day for the anti-business faction to jump into the public fray with their hand-wringing cries of how, once again, Big Business has stuck it to the everyday little guy: 99% vs. 1%. Forgive our student loans. Income disparity.

But is it true? Are all large businesses automatically bad? Well, hold onto your spotted owl and consider the following:

Big Businesses are the economic engines of any civilized society. They make possible all the things that make our lives enjoyable, safe, and convenient. The car companies make products like the Ford Fusion and Honda Accord—reliable, safe, affordable personal transportation, easily serviced anywhere with readily-available inexpensive parts. How would life be if instead of a few major car companies, there were 87 different, small-scale car companies, each with costly, unique designs and specific parts, not mass-produced in the 100’s of thousands for low-cost economies of scale, but instead, produced at high cost in the low 1000’s, available only in a restricted geographic location? How would you like it if you couldn’t drive from Boston to Ft. Lauderdale, because the parts needed to fix your car would be unavailable once you got past New Jersey? Or how would air travel be affected if we couldn’t fly to Europe or South America or the Far East because each region used an incompatible jet fuel?

Big Business makes life-saving medical technology seem routine today. The pharmaceutical companies deliver one life-saving or life-enhancing product after another, made possible by tremendous research and development expenditures—funded by profits—and armies of scientists spending untold hours in the lab. Take a look inside your grandparents’ medicine cabinet next time you’re there. They have products that keep their blood pressure under control, lower their cholesterol, control their diabetes, relieve their arthritis, keep their heart beating regularly—all unavailable only a short time ago.

Large, multi-national companies heat and air-condition our homes and workplaces at astonishingly low cost without our giving it so much as a second thought. Do you stop and thank Honeywell, GE, and Carrier every time you step into your crisp 68-degree office on a sweltering 95-degree day? No, chances are you complain to your facilities manager that you feel a little draft coming over and could he please re-direct the ceiling vent.

Big Business makes it possible to produce and distribute vast quantities of food all over the world. No Coca-Cola? No Kellogg’s Corn Flakes? No Purdue chicken? No Campbell’s Chunky Soup? Tough to imagine. In reality, America’s food industries are so efficient and produce so much that we actually regard some foods as “unworthy” of consumption.

Do you acknowledge Mitsubishi and Sony when you play the latest Blu-ray disc on your big screen TV? Do you tip your hat in amazement to those computer/tablet/smart phone companies whose millions of apps have made Star Trek’s 1967 science fiction fantasies into today’s take-it-for-granted reality? You probably don’t even notice. Without profits to fund those development efforts—and hire the necessary people—none of that would exist.

Profit enables banks to lend money, so people can buy houses, cars, and finance college educations.

If a bank’s expenses are higher, they have to pass that added cost along to their customers, in this case in the form of higher interest rates on loans, higher fees, and lower interest rates paid out on savings accounts. It does impact people directly. Misguided legislation like the Dodd-Frank act reduces those companies’ profit and increases their costs. All because a few self-appointed Democrats feel they’re G-d and they feel they’re qualified to decide—totally arbitrarily—who is entitled to make how much money.

Profitable companies enrich our lives and raise our standard of living. What if Apple hadn’t been able to get low-cost financing a few years ago–from a bank!—when they were struggling, and they weren’t able to develop the iMac which led to the iPod which led to the iTouch which led to the iPhone which led to the iPad?

A profitable bank lent them the money and Apple made profits and developed great products that make our lives better, while they (Apple) made big profits to develop more great products that we’ll enjoy (and come to regard as essential, like iTV) in the near future.

The conveniences and advancements that we’ve come to expect—indeed, demand—are possible because of the competitive nature of capitalism and the profits that companies put back into research and development in their efforts to win new customers and capture market share. It’s easy for people to focus on highly-publicized executive salaries and bonuses, but those don’t really amount to anything in comparison to the amount spent on market research and R&D for new products, and the risks any company takes when entering a new market.

Big Business (and Small Business, too, for that matter) employs tens of millions of people in this country. Their suppliers employ millions more. Their associated service/support and transportation/warehousing industries employ millions more. The ripple effect of these workers’ personal spending in every imaginable tangent business is incalculable. Big Business is the engine that keeps the world working and moving.

Profit is the fuel. Without it, everything grinds to an instant and permanent halt. It’s not for Barney Frank or Chris Dodd to say how much money you’re entitled to make from your hard work, ingenuity, and creativity. Their responsibility is to stay out of the way (once there are some common-sense—not punitive— regulations in place), and let you decide where and how to spend your money. The good companies will succeed and profit; the bad ones will fall by the wayside. The consumer determines the winners and losers, not the Government.

Change that and our economic system collapses. Have a nice day.

Italian Premier Mario Monti formed a government of bankers, diplomats and business executives Wednesday, saying the absence of politicians in his Cabinet will spare political parties the “embarrassment” of taking the tough decisions needed to steer the country from financial disaster.

I find this fascinating! Could this really work? It makes sense on the surface- a group of people whose careers are not dependent upon public opinion, working for the greater good of the country. However, what are the potential unintended consequences? And, when given the positions of authority, do the business men and women on this panel become politicians, based on the constant scrutiny? And if it does work, will the TEA party take notice and try to copy the experiment here in America?

If it does work, how many countries will follow suit?

As background for those readers not familiar with the state of boxing in America 50 years ago, it was a very major sport, perhaps third in overall popularity and visibility to baseball and football. Major fights received significant television and newspaper coverage. There were “boxing writers” at the big national newspapers. The general public had a solid awareness of who the champions were in the various weight divisions.

This is in stark contrast to the decline of boxing’s popularity today and the meteoric rise in the past decade of Ultimate Fighting/Mixed Martial Arts. Boxing slowly strangled itself to death with the advent of multiple bureaucratic “Governing bodies,” with each different organization recognizing a different boxer as champion in the same division. Sports fans, faced with a bewildering array of indiscernible organizations like the World Boxing Association, the World Boxing Council, the International Boxing Federation, etc., each recognizing different fighters as champions, soon grew weary of the whole thing and today, boxing has been reduced to near-irrelevance in the sporting world.

UFC/MMA—with its faster-paced, less-restrictive rules—has caught on with a new, younger generation of sports fans, the same fans who are accustomed to the immediate impact and explosive results they enjoyed from video games growing up. To this new generation of followers, “traditional” boxing was too slow, too chess-like in its often-deliberate pace and its intense strategic approach.

But boxing enjoyed tremendous popularity a half a century ago. From the early ‘60’s to the early ‘80’s, there were arguably more highly-skilled, truly excellent fighters competing for dominance than at any other time in the sport’s history, before or since. Champions and contenders alike, there were countless names that transcended the boxing world and made it into the general public’s consciousness: Floyd Patterson, Sonny Liston, Emile Griffith, Jimmy Ellis, Jerry Quarry, Ron Lyle, “Sugar Ray” Leonard, Roberto Duran, Marvin Hagler, Tommy “The Hitman” Hearns, Alexis Arguello, Earnie Shavers, George Foreman. And dozens more.

In this Golden Age of boxing, two figures stood out above all the others: Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali (nee Cassius Clay). Ali (as Clay) won the Olympic Light Heavyweight Gold Medal in Rome in 1960, and turned professional shortly thereafter. His amazing skill brought him to the top of the sport at the tender age of 22, when he won the World Heavyweight Championship in 1964.

Right after winning the title, he did something that set his life on a controversial trajectory from which it would never deviate: Clay announced to the world that he had become a follower of the Nation of Islam religion and had changed his name to Muhammad Ali, rejecting forever, as he put it, “my slave name.”

The great majority of people in America had never even heard of Islam or the Muslim religion. Many were confused by his actions and put off by his angry denouncements of “white” American culture and society. In the coming years, Ali would add to his controversial image by demeaning his opponents and boastfully predicting the exact round of their demise. Much of that braggadocio was intentional on Ali’s part, designed to hype the publicity (and therefore the ticket sales) of his bouts. Yet he remained a lightening rod for conflicting opinions, as people were equally divided as to whether they loved his outgoing, anti-establishment style, or whether they wanted to see his mouth “shut for good.”

Regardless, Ali was a compelling figure. Tall, handsome, and fast and graceful in the ring, he had a remarkably quick wit, an always-ready smile, and just enough of a constant twinkle in his eye that one never knew exactly how seriously he took himself.

He found the perfect foil in ABC sportscaster Howard Cosell, whose own rise to fame came about primarily because of his coverage of Ali.

One exchange in particular seemed to exemplify the repartee the two enjoyed.

Interviewing Ali before a fight in the late 1960’s, Cosell—who thought of himself as quite the intellectual and linguist, said to Ali, “Muhammad, you’re being unusually truculent today.”

To which Ali replied, without skipping a beat, “I don’t know what truculent is, but if it’s good, then I’m it!”

Ali’s controversial image reached its zenith in April 1967, when he refused induction into the U.S. Army after being drafted, uttering his forever-famous line, “I ain’t got no quarrel with them Viet Cong.”

That solidified his positive image and standing among the growing numbers of anti-war young Americans, who never understood or agreed with our involvement in a seemingly meaningless foreign war in Vietnam, half a world away.

But just as many Americans—many older, more ‘conservative’ types, but not exclusively— felt the opposite. Never having been particularly fond of his arrogant, bragging style and his insulting talk about traditional American culture, they saw Ali’s stance as an indication that while Ali was perfectly happy to benefit from and profit from the opportunities afforded him by the American sports profession, many resented him when he wouldn’t give back—even a little— to the country in which he’d become rich and famous. History is full of notable American athletes and performers (like James Stewart, Ted Williams, Andy Rooney and Pat Tillman, to name just a fraction) who stepped up when needed and served their country bravely and honorably.

As a result of his refusing induction, Ali was stripped of recognition as champion by all the athletic commissions around the country and his boxing license was rescinded. He was forced into sports exile, a champion no longer.

By the late 1960’s, a new heavyweight boxer was making a name for himself with his explosive, aggressive style and dramatic victories: a young slugger from Philadelphia named Joe Frazier.

Frazier was a simple, uncomplicated person, totally apolitical, the complete opposite of Ali. He didn’t boast. He wasn’t involved in political controversy. He was down-to-earth, friendly (“I’m Joe Frazier, sharp as a razor! What’s your name?”), and hard working. Early in his career he trained at night in the gym after working in a Philadelphia slaughterhouse all day. (The Sylvester Stallone scene in the original “Rocky” movie of him punching a carcass was inspired directly from Frazier’s early experiences.)

Short, stocky, with an ungainly ring gait, here too, he was the complete opposite of Ali’s graceful, almost melodic movements in the ring. But in his own way, he was just as effective and soon ran up an impressive undefeated string of victories.

Joe and Muhammad became fairly friendly during Ali’s forced exile from boxing. As Frazier’s success grew, he loaned Ali money to assist him and lobbied hard to the various boxing authorities to reinstate Ali’s boxing license. There was undoubtedly a measure of self-interest in such actions for Frazier (a future bout between the two would be a high-paying extravaganza for them both), but compassion played a major role for Frazier as well. That’s who he was.

As circumstances developed, Ali did resume his boxing career within a short time. Ali and Frazier met in three memorable fights. Their trilogy set the standard for sports rivalries, as Yankees-Red Sox, Celtic-Lakers, and Borg-McEnroe contests have always been referred to as “Ali-Frazier confrontations.”

Yet it’s their third fight (held in Manila, in the Philippines, Oct 1st, 1975) that really defined for the ages who they were as boxers—and as people.

Ali had always taunted Frazier in the publicity build-up to their previous fights. As I had written previously, “Frazier, for his part, seemed overwhelmed by the events. A simple man from a poor, humble background in rural South Carolina, Joe never knew exactly how to respond to Ali’s taunting. Play along or ignore him? Am I ‘in’ on the joke or am I the butt of the joke? Is Ali serious when he says these bad things about me or is it all tongue-in-cheek, designed to maximize the publicity?”

But this time, Ali went further—much further. He derided and insulted Frazier to an extent never seen before in sports history. Standing at a podium during a pre-fight press conference, Ali pulled out a small rubber toy gorilla, and announced, “It’s gonna be a thrilla and a chilla and a killa when I get the gorilla in Manila!” while he repeatedly punched the rubber toy, its head wildly bobbing back and forth. “Take that Joe! You so ugly, Joe!”

Frazier was incensed. “Do you know what it’s like to have your young son go to school and have to fend off questions about why his father is being called an ugly gorilla? This was a man I helped when no one else would. I spoke up for him. I gave him money when he was broke and desperate. Now he does this?”

Their third fight (the “Thrilla in Manila” name stuck) was perhaps the most brutal, hard-fought boxing match ever. Frazier—thought to be washed up by most boxing experts and by Ali also—fought with an intensity rarely, if ever, seen before. Ali, his inherent physical advantages over Frazier notwithstanding, was pushed beyond his limit and he dug down deep within himself to produce a superhuman effort of skill, courage and stamina that may never be eclipsed in a ring again. At the end of the 14th round (with just the 15th and final round to go), Ali came back to his corner and said to his trainer Angelo Dundee, “Cut ‘em off,” indicating that he’d had enough, he couldn’t go on, cut off my gloves. But astonishingly across the ring, Eddie Futch, Frazier’s trainer, had already motioned to the referee, Carlos Padilla, that Frazier couldn’t continue. The Thilla was over and Ali had won. Ali later called that fight, “The closest thing to death.”

Some people say that the basic nature of boxing makes it a metaphor for many aspects of life. It could be considered the sports equivalent of capitalism. There are some basic rules and guidelines, a few ethical boundaries the contestants aren’t supposed to cross (“Protect yourself at all times,” and “No hitting behind the head,” etc.), but beyond that, it’s completely up to the individual boxer to devise a winning strategy that will beat their competition, using only their own guile, skills, and cunning. Not unlike starting a private business, taking all the risks, putting yourself on the line after sizing up and evaluating your competition. You either succeed or fail on your own. There’s no one there to catch you if you fall.

This is in marked contrast to, say, baseball or football or basketball, sports that operate like centrally-managed economies: Central management, directing large swaths of resources within very strict guidelines, with very definite rules governing every move, towards a very finite, tangible goal. Baseball goes 9 innings, every time. Football goes 60 minutes, every time. But only boxing can end without warning, via knockout, at any time.

Others have suggested that boxing’s wide-open, unscripted, improvised nature is much like the open, improvised nature of jazz music, whereas the more structured sports are similar to large symphonies with a central conductor directing the group’s moves and guiding it towards a known, predictable conclusion.

Similarly, the individual fighters themselves take on personae of politicians or well-known captains of industry or famous performers. In any group, there are those who take chances, who value hard work and a no-nonsense approach above all else. There are also innovators whose vision and creativity break out of the mold of what was previously thought possible and emblazon new directions.

The world is made up of a continuum of people and approaches to life, from all flash/no substance ‘takers’ who work any given situation strictly for their own personal benefit, to all work/no quit ‘givers’ concerned only with the greater good.

Ali and Frazier certainly represented vastly different personal styles, and perhaps just as vastly different approaches to life, but it’s up to each person individually to decide for themselves where on that continuum Ali and Frazier fall.

The story goes that an old boxing trainer, when asked to predict the winner of a closely-matched fight, came out with this mangled version of something Mark Twain once wrote:

“Ya takes yer pick and ya makes yer choice.”

I made mine a long time ago.

To revere a forgiving victim is one thing. But what would we think of someone who encouraged their assailant? What would we think of a woman who cheered her attacker during a sexual assault? How about someone who applauds while their neighbor is being murdered, or roots for the thief who’s burglarizing their home, or praises the thug who’s vandalizing their property? We’d think them foolish, if not tetched.

“C’mon,” you say, “no one is stupid enough to cheer their attacker.” 

You could lose the farm on that bet. Blindly crediting people for common sense and rationality is a risky proposition. Americans regularly cheer their attackers, especially when the consequences from the attack aren’t immediately perceptible or experienced. 

Washington has been herding America into centralized despotism for generations and the Obama administration is quickening the pace. Eventually, we’ll be left groveling before government for our every need, or begging from the foreign nations to whom our so-called leaders have indebted us. Who would cheer the charlatans who are selling us down the river? Listen to the audience at an Obama rally.

Whenever President Obama proposes increased federal spending or another bankrupting entitlement program his supporters shower him with adulation. He promises a few hundred billion dollars for “shovel ready” jobs, or “green energy,” or to keep teachers, police, and firemen on the job, and his audience glorifies him like a redeemer, as if he were riding a donkey down a road paved with palm branches. Such was the case when the President touted his $447 billion jobs proposal during a speech at North Carolina State University.

The President invariably claims his spending initiatives will be “paid for.” The rhetoric is deceptive, if not a full-blown lie. Washington is overspending by $1.5 trillion annually, has accumulated a debt ten times that amount, and holds long-term benefit obligations that exceed our total national assets. No federal spending is “paid for.” Every dime is borrowed against the future incomes of the people who cheer Obama, like the students at N.C. State. Obama pledged debt to them and their children and they showered him with love and adulation in return. 

Obama is sinking the country even further into unsustainable programs and unimaginable debts. His attack on our fiscal future is a repeated punch in the gut. And the “useful idiots” cheer him wildly, as if he is delivering us from evil.

“Trumpeter John “Dizzy” Gillespie was one of jazz’s all-time great performers. With his colorful on-stage antics and trademark bent-bell horn, Gillespie was widely recognized as a prime architect of the influential be-bop movement of the 1940’s and 50’s and he remained a vital force in jazz right up until his death in 1993. Once, when asked how his playing always sounded so fresh and creative, he answered with his characteristically dry wit, “It ain’t the notes you play that count, man. It’s the ones you leave out.”

Fast-forward to October 2011: Dizzy’s point is especially relevant as it applies to the coverage of today’s major issues. The degree to which certain stories are covered by the media—or ignored completely—has a tremendous influence on the public’s perception of people and events.

Take for example the case of the Occupy Wall Street movement by liberal protesters. The liberal MSM is trying to portray them as a cutting-edge, pulse-of-the-country voice against the excesses of corrupt capitalism. The Occupy group is presented as having clear, laudable ideals for economic equality through a restructuring of how our American economy works, away from unlimited, uninhibited individual potential and achievement and towards a more socialistic-style wealth redistribution model.

In reality, it seems as if a great swath of Occupiers has no real idea of why they’re there at all, other than to party, protest (what, exactly, isn’t clear, besides not having to pay back their student loans), fight with police and talk to each other on their (profit-driven, capitalistic) iPhones. But to listen to the major networks report it, this is a major, significant, important movement in American culture and politics. No other angle is presented.

Attorney General Eric Holder’s apparent contradictory statements with regard to his knowledge of ATF’s “Fast and Furious” program are getting similar kid-glove treatment from the liberal MSM. A brief re-cap: Fast and Furious was an ill-conceived program to sell U.S. guns to Mexican drug kingpins in the hopes that those guns could be traced and the drug lords found and prosecuted. It went horribly wrong, too many guns ended up in the hands of truly bad people, and US personnel were killed in the process. The ATF is overseen by the US Justice Department, of which Holder, as AG, is chief.

At a May 2011 Congressional hearing, Holder disavowed any long-term knowledge of the program, saying, “I probably heard about it [Fast and Furious] for the first time in the last few weeks.”

But CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson (good for her, and confirming a long-held view that the only thing the MSM like more than negatively portraying conservatives is uncovering scandals that justify their—the MSM’s—existence) discovered e-mail memos from ten months ago that seem to unequivocally prove that Holder was in the loop right from the beginning. Now, CBS is circling the wagons, refusing—without explanation—to allow Attkinson to give any interviews to other news outlets.

Nonetheless, this is big trouble for Holder and a major blow to the Obama Administration’s credibility, especially following so closely on the heels of their Solyndra solar panel loan debacle. This is the same half-billion dollar waste of taxpayer money debacle that has been buried by the MSM to the point where virtually no “average” person has any awareness of it. That song gets no airplay.

Liberal MSM bias is a cumulative effect. It’s not just one arbitrary source and it’s not as obvious as, say, Brian Williams or Jon Stewart saying that he doesn’t like Mitt Romney. It’s more subtle. Like Dizzy said, what they don’t say is just as important and influential as what they do say.

The liberal MSM don’t say anything equal and equivalent to their negative descriptive terms of conservatives such as “Religious Right.” This is a negative term from the MSM, implying that to be both “Religious” and “Right” is bad. The MSM never use the term “Secular Left,” which is the exact reciprocal equivalent to Religious Right. Instead, to the MSM, there is “normal,” and there is the Religious Right.

Another example: The liberal MSM use the adjective “Conservative” or “Right Wing” to imply something negative or bad about a person. Rush Limbaugh is always referred to by the liberal MSM as “Right Winger” Rush Limbaugh or “Ultra-Conservative” Rush Limbaugh.

But…..his equivalent on the liberal Left is never described in such terms. Rosie O’Donnell or Michael Moore or Oprah Winfrey are never described by the MSM as “Ultra Left-Winger Michael Moore” or “Extreme Radical Liberal Rosie O’Donnell.” Never.

It’s insidious and very subtle. It’s like a drip, drip, drip on a rock. After many years, the rock is split and it wasn’t obvious it was even happening.

Conservatives need to recognize this and plan their media strategy accordingly. Because the liberal MSM will always be playing the same old tune.

It was a set up.

I’m in Philadelphia for an industry conference. This morning I was riding high. I had sat forth row in the center for Stuart Varney‘s keynote address, that by the way, was fantastic. I’ve long enjoyed Varney because he is so direct. I even tweeted some of his comments live during his speech (yeah, each word is a separate tweet).

Later, I somehow let David Kaiser talk me into lunch. When we pulled into Tony Luke’s rather than Geno’s or Pat’s, I should have known something was wrong.

I returned to the conference, attended a couple of dud sessions, then returned to my hotel room for the evening only to find this:

Yeah. I have blond hair (even better worse, click the photo to enlarge it!).

So I don’t know how he did it, but Kaiser managed to get into my room with a friend who has black hair, use my razor, leave gobs of hair in the razor, on my toothbrush, mouthwash, deodorant, and contact lens case.

However it is also possible that it might have been Attack Watch drones, as I have enjoyed mocking President Obama’s McCarthy Team incessantly.

Perhaps it was our own Political Derby obsessive Ron Paul contingency because despite leaning toward his views, I just cannot join the irrational crazies.

Maybe it was Edgar. He does have black hair.

But likely it was the “housekeeping” at the Embassy Suites where I am staying.

Seriously, everything written here actually happened today. This was the most disgusting, nasty, repulsive, thing I have ever experienced in a hotel. So thanks Hilton brands for leaving me squeamish in my own hotel room, afraid to leave anything behind. I don’t think I’ll be needing your “cleaning” service the rest of my stay and despite my Diamond status, it will be very difficult to come back.

Though the case against Kaiser is compelling…. I’ll call Attack Watch! now.

But as I watch the deconstruction of this parking lot outside my window I see power drills and wrecking balls, not precision surgeon scissors and scalpels. The job would never get done if we used those instruments. America is not financially stable enough where we need to only make minor adjustments and small cuts.

We don’t need more taxes, class warfare, and vague entitlement cuts. We are not some pristine sculpture that only needs to be sanded. At this point, America is like this broken up parking garage that I currently am staring at. We need to cut out all the government excess before we can invest and rebuild in a new building.

America need serious and meaningful changes to our entitlements programs, defense spending, and tax code. Obama has elected not to touch the tax code and social security. You want to know why? Because he can’t figure out a way to sell it politically. This president will never do anything without thinking about his poll numbers first (not like that has helped him recently).

Everyone knows it has to happen, so we need to equip ourselves with the right tools to get the job done. In the coming weeks we will see if Obama is ready to work with the right tools and work with Republicans to come up with something that isn’t dead on arrival in the House and isn’t a complete waste of time.

But people can see from what he wrote what a little man Krugman really is, so I will leave it at that.

What we should remember today is what happened after the atrocious attacks of 9/11/01.
Americans found God again. Churches and synagogues left previously half-empty were packed again, like they were during our parents’ generation and more so in the generation before theirs. Neighbors helped neighbors in true Godly service. We believed in each other and remembered a higher power again.

It is an interesting dichotomy how a tragedy can bring us closer together, closer to each other and our God. But it does. It is also easy to forget those feelings. Today, I hope we can all remember the spring that rose of the winter that was 9/11, the outpouring of good from the tragedy, the brighter side of a bitter evil brought by those who thought they could bring us to our knees.

Rather, today, we as Americans stand taller, stronger, and resolved to overcome with our genuine goodness.

God bless the USA.

Thank you.