I am not Joe -- but I'd like to be, someday

Not really.

I'm one of the people Joe has already helped out. I'm the person who, not so long ago, had to break down and ask the taxpayers to help me make ends meet. I didn't ask for everything they told me, at the office, I was qualified to receive. I only got the minimum, and felt like crap for having to ask it.

I would like to think that someday soon, I will be able to rise above my peculiarities and disabilities, and draw a genuinely healthy paycheck. I'd like to believe that, when I do, I will not be subject to the kind of treatment proffered this other private citizen. At least, one should hope this will be the last time this happens to a simple voter with an honest question. Especially when he was invited to ask a question, in his own front yard, in the first place. The only reason they're going after him today is that their sainted candidate of choice slipped up and gave away his true intentions in answering this plumber, Joe. Anybody who is not appalled and frightened by this reaction by the press and the Obamists is clearly not thinking ahead, and/or has no concept of history.

Someday, Joe Wurzelbacher will be that business-owner he dreams of becoming. And, someday, I, and you, too (by the grace of angels), will be Joe. And you all ought to hope we don't get this same treatment. In fact, you ought to hope the people who are perpetrating this offense today will face deeper scrutiny, and be removed from positions of authority, anywhere they are.

Puff, puff, puff...

While I'm trying to catch my breath after walking a couple of dogs, I'm going to ask all my friends in Illinois to take advantage of this last day of good will between smokers and the rest of us... starting the day after tomorrow, the law says there is top be no smoking in public places or private businesses.

Quite frankly, while my wheezy, miserable lungs are happy about the result, the rest of me is less than impressed with the method. Well, that's not quite frank enough, but my mother occasionally reads my blog, and I'm not inclined to subject her to the sort of language struggling to trip past my guardian fingertips and onto the key pad.

I'll be glad when I can go to the local public house of a Thursday for Open Microphone night. Who knows? I may even participate, this year. I have a kazoo, and I know how to use it. I'm also told that my friend/sister (extended family gets complicated) Elke's bird, Pippin, likes my singing... That (and a whole lot of money when I win the lottery) ought to get me a recording contract.

But kazoo azide, just where do the jackasses in Springfield get off "protecting" me from second-hand smoke, when, as yet, they've not exhausted every other non-nanny-state option, first? Did they allow, say, insurance companies to actually jack up rates for smokers, for health, fire, and liability? Did they do the same for businesses which permit smoking on their premises? Did they, perhaps, introduce city/county/state fees for fire protection, community clinics, etc., in which businesses which do not allow smoking get a cut rate? Did they really try anything, honestly, at all, before they decided smokers are not human and, therefore, have no rights? Of course not.

So, all of my friends who smoke, puff like crazy throughout tomorrow, for on Tuesday we will fume without tobacco.

Is Paris Hilton an Illegal Immigrant?

By the amount of sympathy both are getting in the press, this year, for having broken the law, I'm beginning to think either Paris Hilton is an illegal or the illegals are all, somehow, blood relatives to her and the rest of America's so-called elite.

How is it that this country has gone so far away from its original principles of Thomas Paine, when he stated, "The true and only true basis of representative government is equality of rights"? In that same article, the Dissertation on the First Principles of Government, Paine continues:

When we speak of right we ought always to unite with it the idea of duties; rights become duties by reciprocity.

So far, it looks as though the only people who understand duty to law and reciprocity are the greater public (aka "middle America"), who are becoming increasingly angered over the Shamnesty bill and over the way Hollywood's elite cast aside public safety laws (such as those against drunk driving) as trivial things to be ignored.

This country was built upon laws. For the media to celebrate and members of Congress to encourage scofflaws indicates their serious disconnect from the true fundamentals of our society.