NB Columns

As much as liberals complain about conservative “misinformation”and incivility, they never seem to find it on channels like MSNBC, and we know there are small bands of liberals that wander over there. While many were watching the first GOP presidential debate on May 5, Ed Schultz invited on left-wing bomb-thrower (and 2010 congressional-seat loser) Alan Grayson to heap mud on George W. Bush.

Schultz asked if Bush failed to accept Obama’s invitation to Ground Zero out of personal pique. Grayson replied through a smirk, “I suspect that President Bush might've been passed-out drunk for the last three or four days, so I’m not sure he made any conscious decision at all.” Schultz found that acceptable. “Great to have you with us tonight,” he said to Grayson at interview’s end. “Thank you for your take.”

That wasn’t a “take.” It was a typical smear.

The Washington Examiner reports that it's been 768 days since the Democratic-controlled Senate passed a budget. What's the big deal? It's not like the nation is facing financial difficulties or anything.

I realize it's convenient for President Obama to pretend he's a bystander on fiscal matters when it suits him and to pass the buck that never stops with him back to Congress, but how about a little leadership on the issue for a change?

I was bullied once.

I was about 10 years old. Unfortunately, many kids can't protect themselves like I once did. Even worse, so much bullying today has turned to torment. Yesteryear's boyhood brawls have transformed into today's torture.

It's a new day in which social networks have created cyber-bullying. Why harass a kid in a school hall with a handful of kids when one can use Facebook and YouTube to bully him or her repeatedly in full view of the whole world? In so doing, the public damage and consequences are instantly and exponentially escalated.

In New York City, 41 percent of babies are aborted.

It's even worse than that, actually.

As the Chiaroscuro Foundation, a group that supports abortion alternatives, has pointed out: "Sixty percent of African-American pregnancies in New York City were aborted in 2009, the most recent year for which data is available. In a 10-year period beginning in 2000, more than 900,000 pregnancies in the city ended in abortion -- nearly one-eighth of the entire city population of just over 8 million."

Abortion, of course, is a hot-button word, bringing up all kinds of emotions in all kinds of people.

In the words of that great American philosopher, Larry The Cable Guy, “WE GOT-R-DONE”!!!

Osama bin Laden sleeps with the fishes, and the best military on the planet has kept a promise President George W. Bush made to the American people almost a decade ago. He said, “I don’t know if it will be tomorrow, or next month, or next year, but we will get him.”

Mission accomplished.

Here's a non-rocket science question: If you expect a reduced harvest of wheat, corn, rice or any other commodity some time in the future, what would be the wise thing to do about your consumption today? I bet that the average person would answer: Consume less now so that more will be available in the future.

But how in the world can people be encouraged to consume less now? Enter the futures market, which consists of a worldwide group of millions upon millions of traders, often called speculators. Speculators, betting on a future shortage, buy up wheat, corn and rice today in the hopes of making money selling it for a higher price when the bad harvest hits. As speculators buy more and more wheat, corn and rice, they drive up today's prices. As today's price gets higher, people consume less, but more importantly, people do the intelligent thing without bureaucratic edicts. The vital role of the futures trader, or speculator, is to allocate goods over different time periods. And, it's not just wheat, corn and rice that must be allocated over time but all commodities including oil.

We are living in strange times indeed when it's not laughable to suggest that President Obama will be difficult to beat in 2012. Well, I'm not buying it, even considering any positive (but inevitably temporary) surge Obama may receive with Osama bin Laden's death.

In 2008, as an economic crisis played into his hands, Obama ran against an uninspiring opponent in John McCain, campaigned on grandiose promises in lieu of a record, and cultivated and rode a mainstream media wave based on a myth of his messiahship. Yet he still only won with 53 percent of the vote.

America can display a strange sexist standard on child sexual abuse. When an adult woman assaults a teenaged boy, Hollywood laughs this off as a teen dream come true. The topic was great fodder for ‘90s teen shows like “Dawson’s Creek” with not a drop of judgment inserted, proving that when Hollywood pleads it’s only “reflecting reality,” it’s really only reflecting its own reality.

Mary Kay LeTourneau started assaulting her student Vili Fuulaau when he was 12 and she was 33. When they married ten years later – and after she served seven years in jail -- the nuptials were celebrated on air by "Entertainment Tonight." The couple remains shameless. They've repeatedly hosted a "Hot for Teacher Night" at a Seattle nightclub.

Today, MTV panders to its teen audience with this same "hot for teacher" fantasy. Recently, their scuzzy British teen soap "Skins" repeatedly hinted that the young female teachers were carrying around barely submerged desires for the teenaged boys. Now the second season of MTV's teen comedy "The Hard Times of R.J. Berger" has centered an entire episode on a female teacher and a boy having loud sexual intercourse in a janitor's closet.

While inspecting the body politic, one encounters one clear sign that liberalism is dead. It is the condition of our political discourse. Polite commentators note that the dialogue is "rancorous." Some say toxic. Actually, it is worse than that. It is nonexistent.

From the right, from the sophisticated right, there is an attempt to engage the liberals. House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan just did it by presenting a budget that cried out for intelligent response. President Barack Obama's response was to invite Ryan to sit in the front row for his "fiscal policy" speech at George Washington University. There Obama heaped scorn on an astonished Ryan and his work. He did not even mention Ryan's name. This is what Obama calls an "adult" debate?