Jewish Atheist

How can Toyota owners get into their cars each morning? Incredibly, many are still loyal. This kind of brand loyalty is far from innocuous, unlike the believe-no-matter-what attitude that accompanies religion or Cubs fandom. It can cost you your life. But still they believe. If I had a Toyota, I would sell it to the first sucker — sorry, buyer — today, if possible.

The conversion of America from a war-ready military empire to a peaceful nation will take time and be resisted in many quarters. I dedicate the rest of my Presidency to this prpoject. It may cost me my re-election, but at least the project will be started, and future Presidents will have to implement it. At least that is my hope.

He was a jihadi, a striver, a struggler. And a martyr. He gave up on this world as irremediably broken and corrupt. But the key difference: Muslims blow themselves up for the sake of a religious fantasy. He did it because he refused to stop confronting reality.

Jefferson was supposed to have said that we need a revolution every now and then, and, great nation that we are, we’ve shown we can do it (fairly) peacefully — as with minority rights, women’s rights, gay rights, etc. Peacefully — but emphatically. It is dangerous to be right when the government is wrong, but nothing is more American.

The men who died on St. Valentine’s Day did so in vain. We have not learned the awful lessons of drug prohibition. And maybe we never will.

Tenure — guaranteed job security — was supposed to protect professors from being fired for being controversial. What a joke. Nowadays profs are anything but, hewing to the same diversity/multiculturalism party line espoused by corporations and the government, only with stricter speech codes. Controversial would be marching in the streets to end this horrendous deficit, these obscene wars. But profs don’t march anymore. They have tenure.

It is unconscionable to burn fossil fuel for amusement. No society that is serious about fuel conservation can burn this much gasoline for amusement.

At this moment there is on the desk of each of the Joint Chiefs of Staff an official Predsidential order to begin evacuation of troops from both countries. In 36 hours, the Joint Chiefs are to report to me with phased withdrawal plans, which will be implemented immediately. We knew how to send those kids in — and I notice with shame and humility how few of us, who have sent so many to their graves, had the guts to do that. Not very many, I would think. We sent them in, we know how to get them out.

So REtard is undergoing a watering-down process. Retarded has moved on, weakened, generalized, become a general term of opprobrium. That’s how it was used in the offending expression. The speaker was not talking about the feebleminded (an archaic term which I like). Retarded can now apply to ANY person, thing or idea. If a person, then it means ‘insentitive,’ ‘naive,’ ‘elementary in his/her thinking,’ ‘lacking acuity,’ ‘not up to speed/snuff in some way.’ Applied to ideas, it means ‘obvious,’ ’simplistically stupid,’ ‘impractical for obvious reasons,’ or even ‘archaic’ (the retarded idea that women should stay home and have babies).

Perhaps on Groundhog Day, we can realize, as Phil eventually did, that through it all, the only thing that we can certainly change is our own mind and behavior. Like Phil, all we can do is keep at it till we get it right.