Sarah Palin thinks she wasted her time in high school and college learning foreign languages like French and Spanish and instead advocates we all just do the right thing and "speak American"!
My question is, which of the indigenous people's dialects she wants us to learn: Iroquois, Apache, Sioux, Nez Pierce, or Yiddish?
In case you missed it since his campaign has all but disappeared from public view, Republican Presidential hopeful Scott Walker worries that with all the police shootings this year, "this is not the America he grew up in."
He's right! It's safer today for police officers than it was back when he was growing up.
Seems Walker sadly grew up during the first seven years of Reagan administration, when there were no fewer than 576 confirmed police shootings across the nation.
During the past seven years under President Obama, there have thankfully been only 314 such police shootings.
Like Walker said, this is not the America he grew up in.
And thank goodness for that.
I know most of you have been unable to sleep since President Obama officially renamed Alaska's tallest peak Denali rather than Mount McKinley.
If it makes you feel any better, I'd share two thoughts.
First, President McKinley never visited Alaska in his entire life, and therefore never saw the mountain peak later named after him.
Second, he's been dead since 1901, so I doubt if he is going to complain that much about the change.
I could be wrong, but I don't think so.
Now that I check out the death notices daily to insure I'm not included on the list, I've become fixated on the pictures families choose to accompany the death notices of senior citizens.
Some folk choose photos from 60 or 70 years ago when the deceased were still young while others choose recent photos that more accurately portray the deceased at the end of life.
My question is: How do families decide which is more appropriate?
I've decide my obituary should include a photo of Paul Newman when he appeared in Cool Hand Luke.
I like the idea that people seeing the notice will think I was once that good-looking.
Think about it.
All over the country, right-wing government officials are promoting the relaxation of laws limiting concealed-carry gun permits under the delusion that the more guns there are out there, the safer we all are.
Then we have an incident such as the one that occurred in Brooklyn, N.Y., last week, when some of the best trained police officers in the world -- police drilled for hours to deal with the pressure of sudden gunfire -- engaged in a gun battle with a suspect who fired six shots at the police only to receive 84 bullets in return.
The result?
The suspect was 0-for-6 with his shots, hitting no one.
The police, on the other hand, were a pitiable 1-for-84, hitting the suspect once in the leg.
The moral of the story is if a professional criminal and professional law-enforcement officers shot so poorly during a sudden explosion of gunfire, how is some amateur in a church, a classroom or in a mall going to do under similar circumstances?
The second moral??
A recent nationwide survey showed that states with the toughest gun laws had the least number of gun shootings while the states with the most lax laws had the highest number of gun-related incidents.
Again, I write, when will we ever learn?
I'm the last one ever to be cynical about politicians, but is there a single living, breathing human being with an IQ over 80 who thinks Donald Trump will keep his pledge to not run as an independent if he is denied the Republican nomination?
If you locate them, please give them my number so I can sell them some rich Tewksbury oilfields.
One final thought: Long after the world has forgotten the name Roger Goodell and his current henchmen from the NFL, your grandchildren and mine will still be in awe at the achievements of the Brady/Belichick tandem.
And that you can take to the bank.