Editorial

If eternal vigilance is the price of freedom, incessant distractions are the way that politicians take away our freedoms, in order to enhance their own power and longevity in office. Dire alarms and heady crusades are among the many distractions of our attention from the ever increasing ways that government finds to take away more of our money and more of our freedom.

Magicians have long known that distracting an audience is the key to creating the illusion of magic. It is also the key to
political magic.

A cursory reading of the Gospel accounts reveals that one of Jesus’ primary methods of communicating truth was through His use of parables.

A “parable” is a short simple story designed to communicate a spiritual truth. The Greek word parable literally means “a laying by the side of” or “a casting alongside,” thus “a comparison or likeness.” In a parable something is placed alongside of something else, in order that the one may throw light upon the other (Nelson’s Illustrated Bible Dictionary 1995).

When a baseball player has come to bat after failing to get a hit twenty times in a row, some fans say he is “due” for a hit.

But statisticians say he is no more likely to get a hit in this at bat than at any other time. In other words, there is no such thing as being “due.”

After the Republicans went from being the dominant party, at both the state and national levels, just a few years ago, and got clobbered at the polls by the Democrats two elections in a row, some people think the Republicans are “due” to make a comeback in this fall’s elections.

Back in the days of the Soviet Union, two Russian economists who had never lived in a country with a free market economy understood something about market economies that many others who have lived in such economies all their lives have never understood. Nikolai Shmelev and Vladimir Popov said: “Everything is interconnected in the world of prices, so that the smallest change in one element is passed along the chain to millions of others.”
What does that mean? It means that a huge increase in the demand for ice cream can mean higher prices for catchers’ mitts, among other things.

I’ve learned that most of the things I worry about never happen—age 64
I’ve learned that every great achievement was once considered impossible—age 47
I’ve learned that you can’t hide a piece of broccoli in a glass of milk—age 7
I’ve learned if there were no problems there would be no opportunities—age 19
I’ve learned that it doesn’t cost anything to be nice—age 66
I’ve learned that the most important thing is not what others think of me but what I think of me—38

This has not been a good year for Gov. Bobby Jindal, and it may get worse. Perhaps you think that is not possible -- that Jindal hit his nadir when they billed him as the “rising star” of the GOP and put him up against President Barack Obama on national TV.
It would indeed be hard to match that debacle, and Jindal will not have an audience of that size again any time soon. But he keeps plugging away, and misses no opportunity to bomb on a smaller stage. The cumulative effect could eventually do more harm to his presidential ambitions than his one famous flop.