THE WIT AND WISDOM OF TOM COBURN

“The gay community has infiltrated the very centers of power in every area across this country and they wield extreme power. That agenda is the greatest threat to our freedom we face today. Why do you think we see the rationalization for abortion and multiple sexual partners? That’s a gay agenda.”

-- Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn on freedom


"I favor the death penalty for abortionists and other people who take life."

-- Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn on the death penalty


"If I wanted to buy a bazooka to use in a very restricted way, to do something, I ought to be able to do that."

-- Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn on gun control


"I don't apologize for saying we need to protect the unborn. Do you realize that if all those children had not been aborted, we wouldn't have any trouble with Medicare and Social Security today? That's another 41 million people."

-- Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn on Medicare and Social Security


“Lesbianism is so rampant in some of the schools in southeast Oklahoma that they’ll only let one girl go to the bathroom.”

-- Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn on education


"You got lots of 'splainin to do."

-- Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn on Supreme Court nominee Sonia Sotomayor

FOR ALL MANKIND

Milestones in space aren't what they used to be.

There are 13 people on the space station today, the most folks in Earth orbit at one time ever. A new milestone in space.

But 40 years ago two humans walked on the moon.

I watched the TV coverage that summer day, a full day of talking heads leading up to the actual landing.

My girlfriend and I visited her grandmother, who was transfixed by the TV. It was a great show, she said. But of course it isn't true because the moon is only this big, she said, holding her hands a basketball's width apart.

At one point Walter Cronkite was interviewing Arthur C. Clarke in Florida, and they brought in Robert A. Heinlein by satellite from California. Cronkite gradually dropped out of the conversation as these two great science fiction authors talked to each other. I don't remember what they talked about. The miracle was just that they were there, talking, on this amazing day.

Clarke had predicted communications satellites. And Heinlein wrote about the first men on the moon. And they each wrote about a future of space colonies on Mars and Ganymede, and humans who would take spaceships to the stars, even if it took several generations to get there.

The future isn't what it used to be. The average person alive today was nine years old when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin bounced around the moon. And a surprising percentage of Americans don't believe we really went there in the first place. After all, it's impossible. The moon is only this big.

What happened to my space colonies and starships? What happened to the Walt Disneys, Willey Lays and Werner Von Brauns who popularised the dream of human space travel? What happened to the science fiction greats who inspired us and the Communists who challenged us?

Today the science fiction genre has gone from hard science to sword and sorcery, outright fantasy and impossible space operas.

Today we have Bill Gates and Steve Jobs who promise to draw us together in ways we can't now imagine. We are turning inward. The new frontier is the human soul. We are gazing at our navels.
And today 13 people are orbiting our planet, a new milestone in space. But come on, they're 215 miles from Earth. That's the distance from Tulsa to Kansas City.

So maybe we're like the Vikings who discovered the New World and never followed up on it, leaving behind only bits of rotted ships and fading runes.

And maybe some future humans will populate the universe, and find on the moon a spidery bit of disintegrating spaceship and a plaque with runes that read, "Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon, July, 1969, A.D. We came in peace far all mankind."

QUOTATION OF THE DAY

"You tried you best and you failed miserably. The lesson is, never try."

-- Homer Simpson

GETTING MORE THAN YOU WANT

The Defense Appropriations Subcommittee has voted to spend $485 million on five new presidential helicopters that President Obama says he does not want.

The subcommittee also voted to spend $369 million on 12 new F-22 fighter jets that Defense Secretary Gates says the Pentagon does not want.

But these are only part of a $636 billion defense spending bill, so what's a few hundred million here and there?

A FRENCHMAN HERE, A FRENCHMAN THERE

Two violent Islamist insurgent groups in Somalia have agreed to a hostage sharing agreement.

Two Frenchman were kidnapped this week from their hotel in Mogadishu and turned over to the Hizbul group.

But the Shabab group wanted the hostages, and threatened to go to war with Hizbul over it.

Eventually a compromise was reached and Hizbul gave one of the hostages to Shabab. Now Hizbul and Shabab each have one Frenchman.

See how we can all get along if we just try?

THAT OLD CLASS ACTION

When the Onex Corporation bought Boeing's commercial aircraft operations in Kansas and Oklahoma, they came up with a money saving strategy:

Fire the old guys!

Onex even sent an E-mail to the board of directors describing the strategy, and saying "We are moving from a demographically expensive population towards one that should be cheaper."

Now the fired old guys are bringing a class action suit. They want their jobs back, unspecified compensatory damages and $1.5 billion in punitive damages.

It was pretty stupid of the Onex executives to put their age strategy in writing. But they were probably just too young to know better.

GAI STRASHEH DI VANTZEN

It was disappointing to hear that people from that nutso church in Topeka, Kansas, picketed the Jewish Community Center here in Tulsa, and that a bomb threat followed the picketing. The bomb threat turned out to be a hoax.

But it was gratifying to read some of the readers' comments that followed that story in the Tulsa World newspaper's web site.

It was "Rockfan" in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, who wrote, "Those hoaxers and protesters can kiss my tuchus!"

(The Yiddish headline, Gai Strasheh Di Vantzen!, means " You don't frighten me!" or, literally, "Go threaten the bed bugs!")

(Tuchus is Yiddish for "buttocks.")

QUOTATIONS OF THE DAY

"No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money."

-- Samuel Johnson


"I'm a blockhead."

-- Marc Sherman

CHEW, DON'T SWALLOW

Those devious Jews are at it again.

Hamas reports that Israeli intelligence agents are distributing aphrodisiac chewing gum in Gaza.

A Palestinian man filed a complaint that his daughter chewed the gum and suffered "dubious side effects."

A Hamas spokesman says, "The intelligence services are aiming to corrupt the young generation by distributing these products among students."

My only question is, where can I get some of this gum?

GREATLY EXAGGERATED

Despite what you may have read on the Internet, note the following:

• Jeff Goldblum did not fall to his death off the Kauri Cliffs in New Zealand while making a movie.
• Natalie Portman did not go off the same cliff.
• Harrison Ford did not go down in a capsized yacht in St-Tropez.
• George Clooney did not crash his private plane in Colorado.
• Miley Cyrus did not die in a car crash.
• Rick Astley was not found dead in a Berlin hotel.
• Britney Spears did not die in a car crash with a pretzel van.
• Ellen DeGeneres is still alive.
• Louie Anderson is still alive.

However, Michael Jackson, Farrah Fawcett, Ed McMahon, Karl Malden, Robert McNamara, Billy Mays, Gale Storm and Oscar Meyer are still dead.

QUOTATION OF THE DAY

"Anywhere I hang myself is home."

-- Professor Louis Nordstrom Ph.D., A.K.A Zen Master Mitsunen, Buddhist monk

TRY TRY AGAIN

In 1998 President Bill Clinton and Russian President Boris Yeltsin announced plans to open a joint early warning center to monitor missile launchings around the world. It never happened.

In 2000 President Bill Clinton and Russian President Vladimir Putin announced plans to open a joint early warning center to monitor missile launchings around the world. It never happened.

In 2007 George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin announced plans to open a joint early warning center to monitor missile launchings around the world. It never happened.

Last week, President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev announced plans to open a joint early warning center to monitor missile launchings around the world.

You think?

AND NO SLEEPING UNDER BRIDGES

The Anchorage, Alaska, Assembly passed a new law that allows police to break up homeless camps.

The law is not discriminatory because it applies to the rich and poor alike.

RAPE NO, HOUSEWORK YES

Afghanistan has changed the law that legalized marital rape.

The new law says that a woman no longer must submit to sex with her husband, but she still has to do the housework.

QUOTATIONS OF THE DAY

"It looks like things are going to be over and we are going to get the clown from Minnesota,’’

-- Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, referring to Al Franken


"I don't know how Senator Inhofe regards clowns, but it might be an incredible complement."

-- Minnesota Senator Al Franken, responding to James Inhofe

UNCIVIL RIGHTS

From the extreme irony department --

The Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the civil rights organization founded by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., wants to fire the president of its California chapter, the Reverend Eric P. Lee, for opposing Proposition 8 and supporting gay marriage.

QUOTATION OF THE DAY

"We keep marrying other species and other ethnics..."

"The problem is the Swedes have pure genes. They marry other Swedes, that's the rule. Finns marry other Finns; they have a pure society. In America we marry everybody. We will marry Italians and Irish."

-- Fox & Friends host Brian Kilmeade

I'D LOVE TO BE...

Oscar Mayer, retired chairman of his eponymous meat processing company, is dead.

Long live his hot dogs.

QUOTATION OF THE DAY

"For the last -- I don't for how long now -- this lowlife Michael Jackson -- his name, his face, his picture -- is all over the newspapers, television, radio. All we hear about is Michael Jackson.

"Let's knock out the psychobabble. This guy was a pervert, was a child molester. He was a pedophile. And to be giving this much coverage to him, day in and day out, what's it say about us, our country?

"There's nothing good about this guy. He may have been a good singer, dancer, but the bottom line is: Would you let your child or grandchild be in the same room with Michael Jackson? What are we glorifying him for?"

-- U.S. Representative Peter T. King of Long Island, New York.

THAT'S STRANGE

I just found out that that the late former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara middle name was Strange.

No, I mean literally. His name was Robert Strange McNamara.

Strange.