ELLEN SAID WHAT???

You no doubt have heard the latest dust up concerning the “Hollywood” crowd. Ellen Degeneris was seen at a football game sitting next to, gasp, former President George Bush and his wife. The pseudo universe in which she dwells went crazy. Social media has condemned Ellen as a turncoat. How could she sit next to this villain of the left wing? 

If you follow such things, Ellen is an avowed homosexual liberal. Her politics could not be further from the politics of George Bush. She definitely lives and works among a crowd of disloyal lefties who believe, because they are wealthy and “famous”, that their political opinion should be everybody’s opinion. Sorta like communism, one voice, one choice, one opinion. Dissenters should be destroyed. Alternate opinions should be silenced. My way or no way. 

Well, it now appears Ellen holds a different belief. She went on her show, not to defend herself but instead to use the opportunity to teach what tolerance is all about. She declared that it is okay to be nice to people even if you disagree with them politically. It’s okay to have friends from the other side. 

Well not according to her crowd. The so-called tolerant left is completely intolerant of anybody or anything that doesn’t toe the line of their beliefs. That makes you a deserter. A betrayer. If you do that, you can’t belong.

Let’s examine just who this community of Hollywood lefties is. They are, for the most, individuals who, through no effort or fault of their own, were born with good looks. Of course there are some exceptions, like Rob Reiner and Michael Moore for example. Their work, if you want to call it work, is to memorize someone else's lines and speak them. They don’t create, they only re-create. They live in a fantasy world of make believe. One day they can be a king, and the next, a cowboy. They can shoot the gun out of the bad guy’s hand. Wow, what heroes. In reality most of them have the personality of an open grave and you wouldn’t want them in your house. 

So, why do we pay any attention to this bunch of spoiled brats? Who cares what Leonardo Dicaprio thinks about anything? I know I don’t. The media, on the other hand, seems quite taken with “stars”. When one of them wants to say something, regardless of how stupid it may be, there will be a microphone in their face. Look at what Katy Perry said. Katy who? Listen to what Rob Reiner has to say about this or that. You mean “meathead”? No thanks. These are not the types I go to for political opinion. If they can make music, perhaps I’ll listen to that. I haven’t been to a movie in several years. They would have to pay me to see most of the movies of the past few years. That industry effectively deleted me from their customer base and I am truly okay with that.

I’m old enough to remember when no one knew the politics of the stars. They lived their lives and we lived ours. Who they supported or voted for was always their own business. I can also remember when they were loyal Americans who supported the efforts of this country. They got involved with war bond sales. Some even enlisted in the military to help fight for freedom. Today you have ugly, vulgar, Robert DeNiro. He should be ashamed of himself. Can you imagine what Clark Gable or Jimmy Stewart or perhaps John Wayne would think of the loud mouthed entertainers who seem to command so much attention now? Trust me, they would be as disgusted as we are. 

Ellen has some strange associates. With friends like those, one certainly doesn’t need any enemies. Thank you for speaking out Ellen. I have developed a whole new respect for you.

Ron Scarbro

MILESTONES AND MILLSTONES

This month marks another milestone in my personal life. I will celebrate my 79th birthday this month. Some may call such a birthday a millstone, not a milestone. Not me. I will celebrate that day. Turning 79 is an accomplishment for anybody. I can easily remember back when I was a child, I didn’t know very many 79-year-old people. The reason is simple, there weren’t that many. What few I did know were old and I mean old. So, what changed? How is it that today those people over 80 are among the fastest growing population in America if not the world?

I am sure there are many reasons but I would like to consider just a few. Take air conditioning for example. The ability to escape the oppressive heat of summer and the stress of that heat, especially at night, makes one’s life much easier. When I was a kid, if you wanted air conditioning, you had to go to the movie theater. That wasn’t all bad because many times they were showing Tarzan or the Lone Ranger. 

Not to be outdone as an extender of human life, consider heating. I set the thermostat to a comfortable temperature and magically my heater goes on or off to achieve that temperature with no effort on my part. Even more magically, my air conditioner and heater are on the same thermostat. I don’t have to chop wood or stoke a fire. I don’t have to breathe in smoke and ash to stay warm. I just push a button. 

Not that long ago, if you wanted to go somewhere, you either saddled up a horse or hitched up a wagon. Do you have any idea how many people left this earth prematurely because of rearing horses or runaway buggies? A ten-mile trip to the grocery store was an all day event. Today I can get in my car, get out on a paved highway, turn on my air conditioner, set my cruise control, turn on stereo music, relax in my power adjusted seat, and travel well over a mile every minute. If it rains, I turn on the windshield wipers. If it gets dark, I turn on the headlights. If I want, I can even talk on the phone with anybody in the world while I am traveling through space from my car. Imagine what people from a hundred years ago would think of that. 

Next on my list is food. Food poisoning killed many, many people in times past. Botulism and rancid meat were not uncommon. We have today the safest food in our history. With pressure canning, freezing, and in some cases chemical preservatives, we can keep food healthy and tasty for much longer than in the past. Who knows how many lives are saved or extended by that simple fact?

Finally, I want to consider modern medicine. I have a shoulder replacement, a knee replacement, hearing aids, some store-bought teeth, I sleep with a CPAP machine because of sleep apnea, and eyeglasses. I take medicine to control my cholesterol, blood pressure, prostate, and blood sugar. If I get a headache, I can take an aspirin. In simple words, my condition is almost exclusively the result of modern medicine. And for a certainty, I am grateful for it. 

So, yes. My 79th birthday will be a milestone. I will spend some of that day remembering so many of my friends and family who did not get there. I will rejoice in the knowledge that I knew them. But, I will go about my day looking forward to the next several milestones. In fact, I plan to die in my sleep some twenty or thirty years down the road. That will be yet another milestone.

Ron Scarbro

DEATH BY A THOUSAND PIN PRICKS

Donald Trump has been President for about three years. In those years he has accomplished more than any President in modern history. He has done it by putting into practice solid Republican principles and sound fiscal policy. Our country is in the best shape it has been in for years. Our economy is strong. Unemployment for every sector of the country is at historic lows. Our military is ready to take on any and all threats from any tin horn dictator anywhere. Times are indeed good.

The Democrats know all this. They know this makes Trump almost impossible to beat in 2020. They know, like you, that Democrat policies have been proven to be failures. So, if you are the Democrat party, what can you do? Becoming a Republican would be the smart answer, but I don’t think they are that smart. 

They instead devised a plan to first deny him the office and, failing that, make it so difficult to govern he would just quit. This all started well before the election. First they never believed he could beat their chosen queen to be, Hillary Clinton. Why they got on board with this perennial loser, I’ll never understand. But they did. Fortunately for this country Hillary was defeated. 

Never fear, the “deep state” said. We have insurance policies. And so it began. I call it death by a thousand pin pricks. With every Democrat failure, another accusation appears. It just never ends. One lie after another.

It is obvious that the Democrats don’t care that they are hurting this country with all the crap they are throwing at the fan. And, what they truly fail to comprehend, is that they will pay dearly for the harassment of this President. Like I said earlier, they are not very smart.

With Trump’s accomplishments they know they can’t win at the ballot box, so they intend to defeat him with scurrilous, unproven and unprovable accusations. It all reminds me of a nice picnic. You spread the tablecloth and put out the food only to find ants crawling onto your cloth and inviting themselves to your picnic. You squash the ants and go on about your business. The Democrats remind me of little crawling insects. They are nothing more than an irritant and they will also be squashed like the ants at the picnic. We, the American people, are not going to forget this attempted coup. 

I want readers of this essay to come away with no doubts as to where I stand. I am sick and tired of all the crap and harassment of our President, Donald J. Trump. He walked away from a billionaire’s lifestyle to help get this country back on track after the disaster of Barack Obama. And, in spite of all the resistance, interference, disloyalty, and lies perpetrated by the liberals, he has had tremendous accomplishment.

Nothing the Democrats have tried has worked. So, now they intend to impeach him. After all, they think if we can’t beat him legitimately, we’ll just kick him out of office. That, my friends, is what a coup is. 

Here is another one of those pesky little inconvenient truths, impeachment will also fail. Not only will it fail, but the Democrats will come away looking worse than ever as they are exposed for what they are. Won’t look very good on their collective resumes, wouldn’t you say?

I can’t be the only one in this country who feels this way. We are sick of it all. Congress, get to work on the real issues facing this country. Do the work you were hired to do. And this final thought for many in the Congress. You might want to touch up your own resumes. Many of you will be out of work after the next election. 

Ron Scarbro

SECURE AND UNSECURE MESSAGING

As I have mentioned before, I am an enrolled veteran with the VA for medical care. I have a doctor who has been assigned to my care. As is the case for most General Practitioners, he is a very busy man. He is virtually impossible to reach by phone. So, the VA in its wisdom installed a system that allows patients to communicate with their doc that doesn’t include the phone. It is called the “secure messaging service.”  When I need to communicate with my doc, I just send him a brief note over the system and he has forty-eight hours to respond. For the most part it is an effective system of communication. 

I did have an occasion to question the security of the system however. I sent my doc a note which was a private correspondence. Lo and behold, I got an answer from someone I had never heard of. When I was able to question him about the experience, he informed me that I had a team of people responsible for my care and they all had access to my private correspondence. To this day I don’t know who they are or what their qualifications are in dealing with me or any question or issue I may have. So much for “secure messaging.” I probably would be better off just publishing my messages in the newspaper. 

So, Ron, why did you bring this matter up anyway? Well I am going to tell you why. Recently our President was on the phone with another world leader discussing whatever world leaders discuss. Now, wouldn’t you think that if there was a secure phone in the world, it would be the President’s? Apparently it isn’t secure. Maybe his system is similar to the VA’s secure messaging system. It seems the so-called “intelligence community” has access to these private phone calls. That’s not bad enough, they also sometimes feel it necessary to leak the contents of these calls along with their opinion of the legality and value of the communication. 

Now, we are talking about the President of the United States and his occasional need to negotiate with other world leaders over the phone. That, by the way, is his job. That is his mandate according to the Constitution. Nothing about any of that communication is available to the public unless the President says it is public. 

What we have here is a case of spying on the leader of the free world by some civil service bureaucrat. And, worse than that, that same bureaucrat leaking the contents of top secret communication to anybody he chooses.

He says he is a “whistleblower.” No, he’s a spy and he is spying on our President. He apparently isn’t the only one spying on this President. This particular spy has been reported as a holdover from the Obama Administration. That would make him an obvious partisan whose intent has nothing to do with what is good for the country. 

First of all, why is there a holdover working in this White House? They all should have been put out with the rest of the Obama crowd. Secondly, instead of protecting this clown as a whistleblower, we should immediately prosecute him for domestic spying. There is no place in this country for this kind of nonsense. 

Get used to it, liberals. Trump won and you lost. Deal with it. If you think it’s tough now, imagine how you are going to feel when he sweeps the country in 2020 and takes Congress with him. 

Oh, and by the way, when the real story of what the President was talking to the President of Ukraine concerning Joe Biden and his son Hunter gets out, there will be no place for Uncle Joe to hide.

Ron Scarbro

MONEY TALKS

MONEY TALKS

The first of the “college admission bribers” has been adjudicated and sentenced. There are several more to be tried. This group of wealthy, famous people saw fit to bribe college officials in order to get their children into prestigious schools and onto sports teams. Apparently this is quite common. The fact that these kids probably otherwise would not qualify to get into these schools seems to be irrelevant. The goal is to make sure not that they get a great education, but that their diploma is from the right school. That brings to mind the question, is a degree from Stanford, regardless of what one has learned, more valuable than a degree from any other less prestigious school where a student has applied himself and gotten a solid education?

Does money talk? A few years ago the late US Senator John McCain railed against the amount of money in politics. His contention was that the money being offered to politicians corrupted them. What? You mean that an honest person could be corrupted by someone offering money, bribes? What if I told you that a normal honest person would not be for sale to anyone regardless of the money. A corrupt person is already compromised. The money just confirms it.

All of this brings to mind this question. Who is more guilty, the briber, or the bribee? Take the cases of these individuals who are paying huge sums of money to these, pardon the expression, corrupt college officials. The ones who are doling out these huge sums of money are in trouble. Why aren’t the officials who are selling degrees from prestigious schools in even more trouble? Which of these activities is worse?

Consider the classroom at, say Harvard. Within that room there are students who have gotten there fairly with good grades and equally good character. There are also students whose admission was bought and paid for by wealthy parents. Is the material being taught compromised? Must the lessons be “dumbed down” to include persons who are ill prepared to be there? I guarantee you the professor knows who is in the class and how they got there. If a student, who has been given admission by bribery, flunks the class, will the professor give him a failing grade? I’m fairly sure that the parent who paid $500,000 to get his child admitted, would not look too kindly on a school who would reward that parent with a failed student. I’m pretty sure that half million was intended to not only gain admission, but also to make sure the students are graduated with the right grades. 

This whole deal cheapens the idea of prestigious schools and the value of their diplomas, doesn’t it? I surely don’t want the surgeon gloving up to cut on me to be one whose degree was bought and paid for by his wealthy parents. How about you? I don’t want the accountant who prepares my books and my taxes to be a graduate with a phony degree that was purchased with bribe money. Where does it end?

My take is that if a school is willing to exchange a degree for money, why should the payer of the money be in any more trouble than the school? If we are to arrest and punish the briber, then by all means we should also sanction the bribee, the receiver of the money. The whole deal stinks, period.

I have heard that the “Golden Rule” has been revised to read, whoever has the gold, makes the rules. I refuse to believe that. No doubt money talks but sometimes what it says is wrong.

Ron Scarbro