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I've Never Been Able To Get It Straight About What These People Who Are Worried About The Trade Deficit Are Worried About. When They Say That We're Buying Too Much From Overseas, That We're Sending Too Many Dollars Overseas To Get All These Goods And Services They Got, They're Saying That The American Dollar Is Too Strong And That Is Hurting Our Economy. And The Result Of This Will Be That The American Dollar Will Get Too Weak, And That Will Hurt Our Economy.

-P. J. O'Rourke

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I've Never Been Able

P. J. O'Rourke

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I've Never Been Able To Get It Straight About What These People Who Are Worried About The Trade Deficit Are Worried About. When They Say That We're Buying Too Much From Overseas, That We're Sending Too Many Dollars Overseas To Get All These Goods And Services They Got, They're Saying That The American Dollar Is Too Strong And That Is Hurting Our Economy. And The Result Of This Will Be That The American Dollar Will Get Too Weak, And That Will Hurt Our Economy.

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The Harvard Lampoon Itself, Which Had A Pretty Stellar Run In The '60s.

The Weirder You're Going To Behave, The More Normal You Should Look. It Works In Reverse, Too. When I See A Kid With Three Or Four Rings In His Nose, I Know There Is Absolutely Nothing Extraordinary About That Person.

It Is Important To Remember When Reading Adam Smith Or Even When Just Thinking About Smith That The Era That He Lived In, We're Not Talking About Poverty In A Day When It Meant Not Enough Bedrooms For The Kids, An Old Car, A Black And White Television. We're Talking About A Whole World Where Poverty Meant Not Enough To Eat.

Black And White

Always Read Something That Will Make You Look Good If You Die In The Middle Of It.

Imagine Having Journalists In Your Own Home And Not Even Covering The Furniture With Plastic Sheets First.

Whereas Rolling Stone, I Just Never Had Anything To Do With Them. I'd Stop By The Office Maybe Twice A Year.

My Grandmother Wouldn't Even Speak The Word Democrat If There Were Children In The Room, She'd Say Bastards Instead.

We Had A Choice Between Democrats Who Couldn't Learn From The Past And Republicans Who Couldn't Stop Living In It.

Whatever It Is That The Government Does, Sensible Americans Would Prefer That The Government Does It To Somebody Else. This Is The Idea Behind Foreign Policy.

It Takes A Lot Of Weapons To Do Good Works (as Richard The Lionhearted Could Have Told Us). And This Is Not Just A Somali Problem. We Have Poverty And Deprivation In Our Own Country. Try Standing Unarmed On A Street Corner In Compton Handing Out Twenty-dollar Bills And See How Long You Last.

People Who Are Wise, Good, Smart, Skillful, Or Hardworking Don't Need Politics, They Have Jobs.

There Aren't Many Political Humorists. Dave Barry Is Excellent, But He Doesn't Do It Much.

Gambling Is So Pervasive In Nevada That Maybe The State Should Just Go The Whole Hog. There'd Be Gum Machines That Dispensed Chewing Tobacco If You Lost. You Could Gamble For The Toilet Paper In Public Bathroom Stalls. And Fill Out Keno Cards In An Attempt To Win Cancer Therapy At The Hospital.

When You Think Of The Good Old Days, Think One Word: Dentistry.

It's Better To Spend Money Like There's No Tomorrow Than To Spend Tonight Like There's No Money.

Ireland And The Irish

I Have Three Children And Three Dogs. You Put Them In A Prius, You Know? People Who Have A Prius Obviously Have No Life! No Wife, No Kids, No Pets - There's No Room In There For Anything!

If We're Going To Improve The Environment, The First Thing We Should Do Is Duck The Government. The Second Thing We Should Do Is Quit Being Moral. Screw The Rights Of Nature. Nature Will Have Rights As Soon As It Get Duties. The Minute We See Birds, Trees, Bugs, And Squirrels Picking Up Litter, Giving Money To Charity, And Keeping An Eye On Our Kids At The Park, We'll Let Them Vote.

My Wife And I Both Come From Irish Families. There Are Two Kinds Of Irish Families: The Hitting Kind And The Kidding Kind. If You're Fortunate - And Both Of Us Are - You Come From The Kidding Kind Of Irish Family.

In The American Political System, You're Only Allowed To Have Real Ideas If It's Absolutely Guaranteed That You Can't Win An Election

Even A Band Of Angels Can Turn Ugly And Start Looting If Enough Angels Are Unemployed And Hanging Around The Pearly Gates Convinced That All The Succubi Own All The Liquor Stores In Heaven.

Politicians Are Wonderful People As Longa As They Stay Away From Things They Don't Understand, Such As Working For A Living.

The Three Branches Of Government: Money, Television, And Bullshit

Michael O'donoghue Was A Very Close Friend Of Mine - Very Encouraging With My Stuff, And Really A Great Guy - But He Was A No-kidding Difficult Person.

Anything That Makes Your Mother Cry Is Fun

Wearing A Hat Implies That You Are Bald If You Are A Man And That Your Hair Is Dirty If You Are A Woman.

To Really Enjoy Drugs You've Got To Want To Get Out Of Where You Are. But There Are Some Wheres That Are Harder To Get Out Of Than Others. This Is The Drug-taking Problem For Adults. Teenage Weltscbmerz Is Easy To Escape. But What Drug Will Get A Grown-up Out Of, For Instance, Debt?

Abstract Anger Is Great For Rhetorical Carrying On. You Can Go On Endlessly About The Post Office, But It Doesn't Mean You're Mad At Your Mailman.

The Sport Of Skiing Consists Of Wearing Three Thousand Dollars Worth Of Clothes And Equipment And Driving Two Hundred Miles In The Snow In Order To Stand Around At A Bar And Get Drunk.

I've Never Been Able To Get It Straight About What These People Who Are Worried About The Trade Deficit Are Worried About. When They Say That We're Buying Too Much From Overseas, That We're Sending Too Many Dollars Overseas To Get All These Goods And Services They Got, They're Saying That The American Dollar Is Too Strong And That Is Hurting Our Economy. And The Result Of This Will Be That The American Dollar Will Get Too Weak, And That Will Hurt Our Economy.

You Know Your Children Are Growing Up When They Stop Asking You Where They Came From And Refuse To Tell You Where They're Going.

Most Of Us Had Never Seen A Sober Redneck Before, And We Have The Reagan Landslide To Testify That None Of Us Ever Wants To See One Again. It Was A Horrifying Apparition. And Ever Since Jimmy Carter, All Of Us Rednecks Have Had To Be Very Careful To Be Drunk Rednecks Lest We Turn Into Some Kind Of Awful Creature With Big Buck Teeth And A State Department Full Of Human-rights Yahoos.

Collectivism Doesn't Work Because It's Based On A Faulty Economic Premise. There Is No Such Thing As A Person's "fair Share" Of Wealth. The Gross National Product Is Not A Pizza That Must Be Carefully Divided Because If I Get Too Many Slices, You Have To Eat The Box. The Economy Is Expandable And, In Any Practical Sense, Limitless.

When [george W.] Bush Was Elected, I Think They Thought I Would Have Some Sort Of Special "in" With That Administration, To Provide Some Sort Of Inside Poop. Which Is Not Something I'd Be Interested In Doing, And Anyway, I Didn't. I Actually Knew More People In His Dad's Administration. So It Was Obviously Winding Down At Rolling Stone, And They Were Having Financial Troubles, Too. They Weren't Getting The Advertising, And The Issues Were Getting Thin. They Fired Bob Love, Who'd Been My Editor There For A Long Time.

One Nice Thing About The Third World, You Don't Have To Fasten Your Seat Belt. (or Stop Smoking. Or Cut Down On Saturated Fats.) It Takes A Lot Off Your Mind When Average Life Expectancy Is Forty-five Minutes.

The Second Item In The Liberal Creed, After Self-righteousness, Is Unaccountability. Liberals Have Invented Whole College Majors--psychology, Sociology, Women's Studies--to Prove That Nothing Is Anybody's Fault. No One Is Fond Of Taking Responsibility For His Actions, But Consider How Much You'd Have To Hate Free Will To Come Up With A Political Platform That Advocates Killing Unborn Babies But Not Convicted Murderers. A Callous Pragmatist Might Favor Abortion And Capital Punishment. A Devout Christian Would Sanction Neither. But It Takes Years Of Therapy To Arrive At The Liberal View.

The Great Thing About Being A Print Journalist Is That You Are Permitted To Duck. Cameramen Get Killed While The Writers Are Flat On The Floor. A War Correspondent For The Bbc Dedicated His Memoir To 50 Fallen Colleagues, And I Guarantee You They Were All Taking Pictures. I Am Only Alive Because I Am Such A Chicken.

Never Do Anything To A Clitoris With Your Teeth That You Wouldn't Do To An Expensive Waterproof Wristwatch.

The Tenth Commandment Sends A Message To Socialists, To Collectivists, To People Who Believe That Wealth Is Best Obtained By Redistribution, And That Message Is Clear And Concise . . . Egalitarianism Is Sinful; It's Also Cowardly.

There Was An Austerely Dignified Award Ceremony. By That I Mean We Had To Buy Our Own Drinks - In Clear Violation Of The International Journalists'code Of Truth, Fairness And An Open Bar.

Zen Martini: A Martini With No Vermouth At All. And No Gin, Either.

If Government Were A Product, Selling It Would Be Illegal.

Southern California Is A Nice Place, If You Could Cut Out The Show-business Cancer. It Just Keeps Spreading.

What About Snipers?" I Once Asked Someone. He Said, "oh, Most Of The Snipers Have Automatic Weapon. They Arent Very Accurate.

The Democrats Planned To Fiddle While Rome Burned. The Republicans Were Going To Burn Rome, Then Fiddle.

A Nation With A Goofy Foreign Policy Needs A Very Serious Policy Of Defense.

Australia Is Not Very Exclusive. On The Visa Application They Still Ask If You've Been Convicted Of A Felony - Although They Are Willing To Give You A Visa Even If You Haven't Been.

Never Steal Anything So Small That You'll Have To Go To An Unpleasant City Jail For It Instead Of A Minimum-security Federal Tennis Prison.

This Going On And On About How Terrible A Carbon-based Economy Is, These People Are Full Of Crap. They Don't Know What They're Talking About. Their Motives Are Not Necessarily Good Just Because They Say They Are Being Good. It's Peace, Love, And Understanding. To Which I Can Just Say, "shut Up." Human Liberty, Rule Of Law, And Free Markets Fix This Stuff. It Isn't Necessary To Go Around Being The Mia Farrow Of The Ecosphere.

I Think It's Been Hard For People To Understand How Islam Can Be A Good Religion, And Yet The Islamists Are Evil. Those Of Us Who Have Had Experience With Islam Understand This, Just As We Understand The Difference Between Snake Handlers And People Going To Church On Sunday Morning.

And Worrying Is Less Work Than Doing Something To Fix The Worry. This Is Especially True If We're Careful To Pick The Biggest Possible Problems To Worry About. Everybody Wants To Save The Earth; Nobody Want To Help Mom Do The Dishes.

El Salvador Has The Scenery Of Northern California And The Climate Of Southern California Plus - And This Was A Relief - No Californians.

There's A Whiff Of The Lynch Mob Or The Lemming Migration About Any Overlarge Concentration Of Like-thinking Individuals, No Matter How Virtuous Their Cause.

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Smoking Cigarettes Seems To Alarm Peace Activists Much More Than Voting For Reagan Does.

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Popular Culture Has Become Engorged, Broadening And Thickening Until It's The Only Culture Anyone Notices.

Popular Culture

People Think The Free Market Is A Philosophy, They Think That It Is A Creed. It Is None Of Those Things. Free Market Is A Bathroom Scale, It Is A Measuring Tape, It's Simply A Measurement.

Those Who Do Not Know History Are Probably Also Not Doing Well In English Or Math. P.j. O'rourke

If Disney Still Wants To Make Epcot Center Futuristic, They Could Do So By Blowing The Place Up With An Atom Bomb.

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When Politics Are Used To Allocate Resources, The Resources All End Up Being Allocated To Politics.

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Coffee And Cigarettes Are Much Better If You Want An Instant Breakfast.

Social Security Is A Government Program With A Constituency Made Up Of The Old, The Near Old And Those Who Hope Or Fear To Grow Old. After 215 Years Of Trying, We Have Finally Discovered A Special Interest That Includes 100 Percent Of The Population. Now We Can Vote Ourselves Rich.

Human Problems Are Complex. If Something Isn't Complex It Doesn't Qualify As Problematic. Very Simple Bad Things Are Not Worth Troubling Ourselves About.

There Is One Thing Women Can Never Take Away From Men. We Die Sooner.

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I Can Think Of A Number Of Areas In New York Where Three Acres Of Nuclear Waste Would Make The Neighborhood Safer To Walk Around In Than It Is Now, And Better Lit.

I'll Be 56 This Year, I've Got Two Kids, And I Think It's Probably Time To Go Back To Writing One-glove Jokes.

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So-called Western Civilization, As Practised In Half Of Europe, Some Of Asia And A Few Parts Of North America, Is Better Than Anything Else Available. Western Civilization Not Only Provides A Bit Of Life, A Pinch Of Liberty And The Occasional Pursuance Of Happiness, It's Also The Only Thing That's Ever Tried To. Our Civilization Is The First In History To Show Even The Slightest Concern For Average, Undistinguished, None-too-commendable People Like Us.

Staying Married May Have Long-term Benefits. You Can Elicit Much More Sympathy From Friends Over A Bad Marriage Than You Ever Can From A Good Divorce.

Family Love Is Messy, Clinging, And Of An Annoying And Repetitive Pattern, Like Bad Wallpaper.

I Like To Do My Principal Research In Bars, Where People Are More Likely To Tell The Truth Or, At Least, Lie Less Convincingly Than They Do In Briefings And Books.

I Am A Journalist And, Under The Modern Journalist's Code Of Olympian Objectivity (and Total Purity Of Motive), I Am Absolved Of Responsibility. We Journalists Don't Have To Step On Roaches. All We Have To Do Is Turn On The Kitchen Light And Watch The Critters Scurry.

The Principal Feature Of American Liberalism Is Sanctimoniousness. By Loudly Denouncing All Bad Things — War And Hunger And Date Rape — Liberals Testify To Their Own Terrific Goodness. More Important, They Promote Themselves To Membership In A Self-selecting Elite Of Those Who Care Deeply About Such Things.... It's A Kind Of Natural Aristocracy, And The Wonderful Thing About This Aristocracy Is That You Don't Have To Be Brave, Smart, Strong Or Even Lucky To Join It, You Just Have To Be Liberal.

Drugs Have Taught An Entire Generation Of Kids The Metric System

Adam Smith Pointed Out That There Were Three Things That Make Us More Prosperous, In A General Sort Of Way: Freedom To Pursue Our Own Self-interest; Specialization, Which He Called Division Of Labor; And Freedom Of Trade.

Division Of Labor

The Chinese Had Gunpowder, But It Didn't Occur To Them To Put It In A Gun. They Possessed The Compass But Didn't Go Anywhere. They Invented Paper, Printing, And A Written Form Of Their Language, But Hardly Anyone In China Was Taught To Read.

The French Are A Smallish, Monkey-looking Bunch And Not Dressed Any Better, On Average, Than The Citizens Of Baltimore. True, You Can Sit Outside In Paris And Drink Little Cups Of Coffee, But Why This Is More Stylish Than Sitting Inside And Drinking Large Glasses Of Whiskey I Don't Know.

Maybe A Vague President And An Incompetent And Somewhat Corrupt Administration Is What The Nation Needs.

Authority Has Always Attracted The Lowest Elements In The Human Race

A Woman Should Dress To Attract Attention. To Attract The Most Attention, A Woman Should Be Either Nude, Or Wearing Something As Expensive As Getting Her Nude Is Going To Be.

I Suspect The Soviets Never Did Want To Use Those Bombs. The Most Stalinist Of Soviet Hard-liners - Stalin, For Example - Must Have Realized A Nuclear War Would Be A Hard Thing To Clean Up After.

It Was Ronald Reagan Who Used To Say That The 10 Most Frightening Words In The English Language Are, "i'm From The Federal Government, And I'm Here To Help."

Liberals Have A Quaint And Touching Faith That Truth Is On Their Side And An Even Quainter Faith That Journalists Are On The Side Of Truth.

Bureaucrats Want Bigger Bureaus. Special Interests Are Interested In Whatever's Special To Them. These Two Groups Bring Great Pressure To Bear Upon Politicians Who Have Another Agenda Yet: To Cater To The Temporary Whims And Fads Of The Public And The Press.

Civilization Is An Enormous Improvement On The Lack Thereof.

That Is The Really Great Thing About Being An Adult Male, Once You Get Married And Have Children The Whole Decision-making Process Is Taken Out Of Your Hands, And I For One Am Extremely Grateful.

The Arab Peoples Possess An Ancient And Highly Developed Civilization That Is In Many Ways More Sophisticated Than Our Own. For Instance, They Invented Algebra. And This Is Why We Have To Go To War With Saddam Hussein This Minute And Bomb The Shish Kebab Out Of Him Before He Invents Trig And Chemistry And The Whole Of America Flunks High School.

With Epcot Center, The Disney Corporation Has Accomplished Something I Didn't Think Possible In Today's World. They Have Created A Land Of Make-believe That's Worse Than Regular Life.

Some People Are Worried About The Difference Between Right And Wrong. I'm Worried About The Difference Between Wrong And Fun.

Maybe A Nation That Consumes As Much Booze And Dope As We Do And Has Our Kind Of Divorce Statistics Should Pipe Down About "character Issues."

Detroits Industrial Ruins Are Picturesque, Like Crumbling Rome In An 18th-century Etching.

Whenever People Tell You They Are Going To Wipe The Slate Clean, It's Your Slate They Mean To Wipe.

Politics Is The Art Of Achieving Prestige And Power Without Merit.

I'll Pick "i'm Kidding" Anytime Over "i'm Lying."

The Question Nowadays Is Not What Makes Government Work. The Question Is How Do We Make It Stop.

Government Work

It Was To Be A Short Visit For The G-shevs. More Than Four Days In The U.s. And Raisa's Visa Card Bill Would Shatter The Fragile Soviet Economy.

I'd Like To End The Book A Lot Of Ways. Except I Don't Have Any Answers. Use Your Common Sense. Be Nice. This Is The Best I Can Do. All The Trouble In The World Is Human Trouble. Well, That's Not True. But When Cancer Cells Run Amok And Burst Out Of The Prostate And Take Over The Liver And Lymph Glands And End Up Killing Everything In The Body Including Themselves, They Certainly Are Acting Like Some Humans We Know.

Wherever There's Injustice, Oppression, And Suffering, America Will Show Up Six Months Late And Bomb The Country Next To Where It's Happening.

I Live In New Hampshire. We're In Favor Of Global Warming. Eleven Hundred More Feet Of Sea-level Rises? I've Got Beachfront Property. You Tell Us Up There, "by The End Of The Century, New York City Could Be Underwater," And We Say, "your Point Is?"

Then Saturday Night Live Spawns... Well, Everything Right Down To American Pie 9, Where All Humor Has To Be Irrelevant, Which Can Get A Little Tiring.

There's A Lot Of Debate On This Subject - About What Kind Of Car Handles Best. Some Say A A Front-engined Car, Some Say A Rear-engined Car. I Say A Rented Car. Nothing Handles Better Than A Rented Car. You Can Go Faster, Turn Corners Sharper, And Put The Transmission Into Reverse While Going Forward At A Higher Rate Of Speed In A Rented Car Than In Any Other Kind.

You Know, If Government Were A Product, Selling It Would Be Illegal. ... Government Contains Impure Ingredients - As Anybody Who's Looked At Congress Can Tell You. ... Government Practices Deceptive Advertising. And The Merest Glance At The Federal Budget Is Enough To Convict The Government Of Perjury, Extortion, And Fraud. ... In A Nutshell: Government Should Be Against The Law. Term Limits Aren't Enough. We Need Jail.

The Mystery Of Government Is Not How Washington Works But How To Make It Stop.

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Mysterious Things

The Tenth Commandment Sends A Message To Socialists, To Egalitarians, To People Obsessed With Fairness, To American Presidential Candidates In The Year 2000 - To Everyone Who Believes That Wealth Should Be Redistributed. And That Message Is Clear And Concise: Go To Hell.

African Famine Is Not A Visitation Of Fate. It Is Largely Man-made, And The Men Who Made It Are Largely Africans.

Government Isn't A Good Way To Solve Problems ... [g]overnment Is Concerned Mostly With Self-perpetuation And Is Subject To Fantastic Ideas About Its Own Capabilities. ... [g]overnment Is Wasteful Of The Nation's Resources, Immune To Common Sense And Subject To Pressure From Every Half-organized Bouquet Of Assholes. ... [g]overnment Is Distrustful Of And Disrespectful Toward Average Americans While Being Easily Gulled By Americans With Money, Influence Or Fame.

Just As Some Things Are Too Strange For Fiction, Others Are Too True For Journalism.

So What If I Don't Agree With The Democrats? What's To Disagree With? They Believe Everything. And What They Don't Believe, The Republicans Do. Neither Of Them Stands For Anything They Believe In, Anyway.

Good Manners Consist Of Doing Precisely What Everyone Thinks Should Be Done, Especially When No One Knows Quite What That Is.

Most Of The People Who Have Grabbed Hold Of Climate Change And Greenhouse Gases, Pollution, Oil Dependency - They Have Another Motive, And Their Motive Is To Attain The Appearance Of Virtue Without Having Actually Done Anything Virtuous.

Then Basically What Was Happening Was That It Was The Middle '80s, And Rolling Stone Realized That A Lot Of Their Readers Had Voted For [ronald] Reagan, And They Were Going, "gosh! We Need A Republican! Does Anybody Know A Republican? Wait A Minute! I Think P.j.'s A Republican!"

This Country Is So Urbanized We Think Low-fat Milk Comes From Cows On Nutri/system Weight-loss Plans.

Even Very Young Children Need To Be Informed About Dying. Explain The Concept Of Death Very Carefully To Your Child. This Will Make Threatening Him With It Much More Effective.

With The War In Iraq, I Had The Cooperation Of The Department Of Defense. Kuwait Was Pretty Eager To Get American Journalists In There, To Show Us What A Wonderful Place They Are, And What Great Allies They Are To America, Even Though They Didn't Actually Fight In The War.

Veal Is A Very Young Beef And, Like A Very Young Girlfriend, It's Cute But Boring And Expensive.

Wealth Is, For Most People, The Only Honest And Likely Path To Liberty. With Money Comes Power Over The World. Men Are Freed From Drudgery, Women From Exploitation. Businesses Can Be Started, Homes Built, Communities Formed, Religions Practiced, Educations Pursued. But Liberals Aren't Very Interested In Such Real And Material Freedoms. They Have A More Innocent - Not To Say Toddlerlike - Idea Of Freedom. Liberals Want The Freedom To Put Anything Into Their Mouths, To Say Bad Words And To Expose Their Private Parts In Art Museums.

B Students Work For C Students - A Students Teach.

First And Foremost: Feed People.

Fortunately, I'm Married To Someone Who's A Pretty Excellent Parent!

A Little Government And A Little Luck Are Necessary In Life, But Only A Fool Trusts Either Of Them.

I Don't See Evidence Of America Being A Poorer Country Than It Was 20 Years Ago. I've Seen Impoverished Devastation. I've Seen Places Where Things Had Been Good And Now They Were Very Bad.

If We're Free To Do What We Want, Why Does Government Always Have A Plan For Us?

Smoking Is Very Bad For You And Should Only Be Done Because It Looks So Good. People Who Don't Smoke Have A Terrible Time Finding Something Polite To Do With Their Lips.

If You Spend Seventy-two Hours In A Place You've Never Been, Talking To People Whose Language You Don't Speak About Social, Political, And Economic Complexities You Don't Understand, And You Come Back As The World's Biggest Know-it-all, You're A Reporter.

When I Get In Deep Water, I Prefer To Announce That I'm In Over My Head.

Imagine If All Of Life Were Determined By Majority Rule. Every Meal Would Be A Pizza. Every Pair Of Pants, Even Those In A Brooks Brothers Suit, Would Be Stone-washed Denim. Celebrity Diet And Exercise Books Would Be The Only Thing On The Shelves At The Library. And - Since Women Are A Majority Of The Population - We'd All Be Married To Mel Gibson.

Pollution Is A Problem, And There's The Whole Problem Of The Spoiling Of The Commons, But We've Addressed The Pollution Problem On A Variety Of Different Levels In A Variety Of Ways, And It's Worked Pretty Well.

Politicians Are Always Interested In People. Not That This Is Always A Virtue. Fleas Are Interested In Dogs.

Ideology, Politics And Journalism, Which Luxuriate In Failure, Are Impotent In The Face Of Hope And Joy.

Finland Is A Rich Country. What Have They Got? They Got Nokia Phones And Plywood. How'd They Get So Rich? Because They're Free.

Visiting Future World Is Like Opening A Chinese Fortune Cookie To Read, "soon You'll Be Finished With Dinner."

Oh, God. The Sixties Are Coming Back. Well I've Got A 12-gauge Double-barreled Duck Gun Chambered For Three-inch Magnum Shells. And - Speaking Strictly For This Retired Hippie And Former Pinko Beatnik - If The Sixties Head My Way, They Won't Get Past The Porch Steps. They Will Be History. Which, For Chrissakes, Is What They're Supposed To Be.

Long Conversations With Pals When Neither You Nor They Have Had A Drink Can Be A Test Of Palship.

Man Developed In Africa. He Has Not Continued To Do So There.

I'm Really Tired Of Virtue.

You'll Note That Politicians No Longer Spend Money, They Invest It. Don't Worry About Paying More To The [irs]. You Aren't Being Taxed; You're Taking A Plunge On A Fly-by-night Stock Issue.

Cockfighting Has Always Been My Idea Of A Great Sport -- Two Armed Entrées Battling To See Who'll Be Dinner.

Bill Maher Can Be Pretty Good, Except When He Gets "important." Maher's All Over The Place Politically.

[al] Franken Is Left-wing And Funny. He's A Pretty Good Political Humorist.

The Poor Of The World Cannot Be Made Rich By The Redistribution Of Wealth. Poverty Can't Be Eliminated By Punishing People Who've Escaped Poverty, Taking Their Money And Giving It As A Reward To People Who Have Failed To Escape.

A Lot Of Things Work Better In A Locomotive.

Everybody In 15th Century Spain Was Wrong About Where China Was And As A Result, Columbus Discovered Caribbean Vacations.

If You're Doing A Column, You Kind Of Have To. Like In The Back Of Sports Illustrated, Rick Reilly Has To Find Something To Be Mad About. It's Not Really The Way I Approach Things.

I Have, Of All The Inglorious Things, A Malignant Hemorrhoid. What Color Bracelet Does One Wear For That? And Where Does One Wear It? And What Slogan Is Apropos? Perhaps That Slogan Can Be Sewn In Needlepoint Around The Ruffle On A Cover For My Embarrassing Little Doughnut Buttocks Pillow.

I Like To Take Things That Are Boring-but-important And Try To Make Them Interesting. That Was Definitely What I Was After With Eat The Rich.

The Complexity Of Economics Can Be Calculated Mathematically. Write Out The Algebraic Equation That Is The Human Heart And Multiply Each Unknown By The Population Of The World.

The Only Really Good Vegetable Is Tabasco Sauce. Put Tabasco Sauce In Everything. Tabasco Sauce Is To Bachelor Cooking What Forgiveness Is To Sin. The Next Best Vegetable Is The Jalapeno Pepper. It Has The Virtue Of Turning Salads Into Practical Jokes.

Moscow Has Changed. I Was Here In 1982, During The Brezhnev Twilight, And Things Are Better Now. For Instance, They've Got Litter. In 1982 There Was Nothing To Litter With.

Money Is Preferable To Politics. It Is The Difference Between Being Free To Be Anybody You Want And To Vote For Anybody You Want. And Money Is More Effective Than Politics Both In Solving Problems And In Providing Individual Independence. To Rid Ourselves Of All The Trouble In The World, We Need To Make Money. And To Make Money, We Need To Be Free.

A Good Bachelor Drinks His Dessert (and Sometimes The Rest Of His Meals). A Sweet Tooth Is A Danger Signal That You're Getting Too Much Exercise And Not Enough Cocktails.

[friedrich] Hayek Is Not Protesting That Things Like Child Labor And Stuff Are Good. He's Just Trying To Show That When Government Undertakes To Make Everything Good For Everybody, This Is What Happens. And He Addresses It To Socialists Of All Parties.

Children From The Age Of Five To Ten Should Watch More Television. Television Depicts Adults As Rotten Sob's Given To Fistfights, Gunplay, And Other Mayhem. Kids Who Believe This About Grownups Aren't Likely To Argue About Bedtime.

Every Generation Finds The Drug It Needs.

If We Do Our Deficit Spending On Weapons, At Least We Get Weapons. Then If We Need Weapons, We Have Them. If We Don't Need Them, No Harm Is Done.

Everybody Wants To Save The Earth; Nobody Wants To Help Mom Do The Dishes.

I Didn't Realize What Fun It Was [ Been A Reporter].

Politics Is The Business Of Getting Power And Privilege Without Possessing Merit

If The Japanese Want To Be Taken Seriously As World Financial Powers, They'd Better Quit Using The Same Tailor As Variety Show Chimps.

In Case We Have To Shoot Democrats. It Happened During The Civil War, And It Could Happen Again.

The Larger The German Body, The Smaller The German Bathing Suit And The Louder The German Voice Issuing German Demands And German Orders To Everybody Who Doesn't Speak German. For This, And Several Other Reasons, Germany Is Known As 'the Land Where Israelis Learned Their Manners'.

You Can Smoke Or Drink On A Golf Course Without Interrupting The Game, And You Can Take A Leak - Something You Can't Do On A Squash Court And Shouldn't Do In A Swimming Pool.

East Germany Was So Total In Its Totalitarianism That Everything Was Banned Which Wasn't Compulsory.

Authority Has Always Attracted The Lowest Elements In The Human Race. All Through History, Mankind Has Been Bullied By Scum. Those Who Lord It Over Their Fellows And Toss Commands In Every Direction And Would Boss The Grass In The Meadow About Which Way To Bend In The Wind Are The Most Depraved Kind Of Prostitutes. They Will Submit To Any Indignity, Perform Any Vile Act, Do Anything To Achieve Power. The Worst Off-sloughings Of The Planet Are The Ingredients Of Sovereignty. Every Government Is A Parliament Of Whores. The Trouble Is, In A Democracy The Whores Are Us.

Masochists Are People That Have Pleasure Confused With Pain. In A World That Has Television Confused With Entertainment, Doritoes Confused With Food, And Dan Quayle Confused With A National Political Leader, Masochists Are Clearly Less Mixed-up Than The Rest Of Us.

Fishing... Is A Sport Invented By Insects And You Are The Bait.

The Great Thing About Starting Golf In Your Forties Is That You Can Start Golf In Your Forties. You Can Start Other Things In Your Forties But Generally Your Wife Makes You Stop Them, As Bill Clinton Found Out.

It's Better To Make Fun Of Yourself Because You've Always Got Someone Around To Make Fun Of, And They Can't Sue You.

Nothing About Economic Growth In The United States Over The Course Of The Past 40, 50 Years, During Which Time This Has Been Continually Happening, Would Indicate That We Are Being Harmed In An Overall Sense By This.

These Were People Who Believed Everything About The Soviet Union Was Perfect, But They Were Bringing Their Own Toilet Paper.

The Very Existence Of The Bicycle Is An Offense To Reason And Wisdom.

After All, What Is Your Host's Purpose In Having A Party? Surely Not For You To Enjoy Yourself; If That Were Their Sole Purpose, They'd Have Simply Sent Champagne And Women Over To Your Place By Taxi.

Bob Wallace Was My Editor At Rolling Stone When I First Started Writing There, And He's A Wonderful Editor. I Was In The Philippines During The Marcos Overthrow, And I Was Up On What Was Called Smokey Mountain. I Think It's Gone Now, But It Was A Garbage Dump With A Bunch Of People Living On It. I Was Talking To Bob On The Phone, And I Told Him, "i'm A Humorist. I Can't Write About This." And Bob Told Me To Let My Style Be Dictated By The Subject, To Take What I Saw And Write About It In The Tone That It Requires.

Cats Are To Dogs What Modern People Are To The People We Used To Have. Cats Are Slimmer, Cleaner, More Attractive, Disloyal, And Lazy. It's Easy To Understand Why The Cat Has Eclipsed The Dog As Modern America's Favorite Poet. People Like Poets To Possess The Same Qualities They Do.

The Collegiate Idealists Who Fill The Ranks Of The Environmental Movement Seem Willing To Do Absolutely Anything To Save The Biosphere, Except Take Science Courses And Learn Something About It.

The Constitution Is An Equally Forthright Piece Of Work And Quite Succinct ... Giving The Complete Operating Instructions For A Nation Of 250 Million People. The Manual For A Toyota Camry, Which Only Seats Five, Is Four Times As Long.

When Buying And Selling Are Controlled By Legislation, The First Things To Be Bought And Sold Are Legislators.

Funny Inspirational

Any Trade That Is Voluntarily Made Is Mutually Beneficial, By Definition, And, Indeed, Is Balanced, By Definition.

Although Computer-generated Artificial Intelligence Eludes Us, Artificial Stupidity Has Been Perfected.

Happy Hour Is Slightly Different In The Soviet Union. There Are No Ice Cubes Or Orange-peel Twists In The Vodka. Also, It Lasts All Day.

I've Been A New Yorker For Ten Years, And The Only People Who Are Nice To Us Turn Out To Be Moonies.

Sloths Move At The Speed Of Congressional Debate But With Greater Deliberation And Less Noise.

The Only Time A Bachelor's Bed Is Made Is When It's In The Factory.

Who Does Bill Clinton Think Got Off The Boat And Stepped On Plymouth Rock? Peace Corps Volunteers?

We Should Never Hesitate To Listen To A Fool About Life Because Life Is Pretty Foolish As Far As I Can Tell.

On Michael Moore Tv Show, When He Went To The Home Of The Guy Who Invented The Car Alarm And Set Off All The Car Alarms On The Block... Pretty Funny.

It Is A Law Of Governance That Democracies Have To Spend Themselves Dizzy. Citizens Of Democracies Can, After All, Tell Their Government To Give Them Things.

Democracies Have

If You Get Outside The World Of Show Business And Its Satellites, There's A Whole World Of Car Nuts In The Los Angeles Area.

Fretting About Overpopulation, Is A Perfect Guilt-free - Indeed, Sanctimonious - Way For "progressives" To Be Racists.

I've Always Figured That If God Wanted Us To Go To Church A Lot He'd Have Given Us Bigger Behinds To Sit On And Smaller Heads To Think With.

Getting Down On All Fours And Imitating A Rhinoceros Stops Babies From Crying. (put An Empty Cigarette Pack On Your Nose For A Horn And Make Loud "snort" Noises.) I Don't Know Why Parents Don't Do This More Often. Usually It Makes The Kid Laugh. Sometimes It Sends Him Into Shock. Either Way It Quiets Him Down. If You're A Parent, Acting Like A Rhino Has Another Advantage. Keep It Up Until The Kid Is A Teenager And He Definitely Won't Have His Friends Hanging Around Your House All The Time.

The Motorcycle Is A Device Created By The Team Of God And Darwin To Rid The World Of Useless Young Males.

The Australian Language Is Easier To Learn Than Boat Talk. It Has A Vocabulary Of About Six Words.

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Rebecca Harding Davis

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