I do however, give this woman high marks for knowing how to take advantage of her 15 minutes of fame and make the leap from “just an ordinary hockey mom” to “MULTI-MILLIONAIRE MOM!” thanks to media coverage and the women out there who see her as a modern day Annie Oakley, rifle in one hand, baby in another and running for one of the highest offices in the land.

What makes me wonder is the fact that none of these women, particularly mothers, who seem to adore her, don’t question a mother who would haul around a baby with Downs Syndrome and subject that baby to the harsh lights and deafening noise of political rallies just so she can get a sympathy vote. She claims she loves her baby and I don’t doubt that, but there is a fine line between love and abuse.

Another thing, among many that bothers me about Sarah Palin, is her record. She loves to play up what she calls her solid political background, citing her term as mayor of Wasilla, an Alaskan town of about 7,000 when she served. I live in Las Vegas where we have hotels that employ more people than that.

But what interests me more is that Palin majored in journalism at the University of Idaho and worked part-time as a weekend sportscaster in 1988 for KTUU-TV in Anchorage. She apparently left after a few months because of the low pay. Her boss says she was a hard worker who enjoyed the entire process, not just being in front of the cameras. How much could she have liked it if she quit after a few months? She was single at the time so had no family to support. Almost every journalist I’ve know has struggled at the start, working for low pay but knowing they had to pay their dues. Not Palin. Can she not take the hard road or is she just restless, wanting to try other things?

Maybe the same thing happened as governor of Alaska. She quit that job with almost a year and a half left on her term and it was only her first term. Is this the kind of person Americans should even consider running for president? Does she not realize that we the people expect our president to finish out his or her term once we elect them?

It will be interesting to see how she does on FOX. I pity the team of experts that is assigned to prepare her for her segments. I can see it now:

Subject: Illegal immigration.
“Remember Sarah, when someone mentions illegal aliens, they don’t mean little purple people who are trying to come here from another planet. They will be talking mainly about Mexicans who live just south of our border (pointing at a map for her) and no, Mexicans cannot see Russia from Tijuana.”

Subject: The Mideast
“No, Sarah, the Mideast is not Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky. It’s way over here (again pointing at map).”

I could go on, but I think you get the picture. It’s not a pretty one.

1) I will not be persuaded to buy a Blackberry, iPod or any other handheld device that combines a phone, computer, camera, apps (whatever the hell they are) text messaging or anything else that allows people to communicate with me when all I want is some privacy.

2) I will continue my policy of never ever watching a reality show whether it be the Housewives from Hell or some idiots who exploit a bunch of kids.

3) I won’t be signing on to Facebook, nor will I Twitter or Tweet. I do a lot of interesting things but I don’t feel I have to tell everyone, nor do I have any desire to post my photo or any info about me so that people who I knew in the past can contact me. If I wanted to stay in touch with anyone, I would have already done so and I would have done it by phone.

4) I will continue to put my shopping cart in the parking lots’ designated drop spots in malls or at supermarkets while glaring or making nasty comments to those people who don’t. When did we start getting so lazy that we can’t walk 20 feet to put a shopping cart out of the way?

5) I will, whenever and wherever possible, help the homeless in any way I can. There might be a bunch of bums amongst them, but the majority are people who really do need our help. There but for the grace of God…….

6) I will not under any circumstance put a television set in my bedroom. A bedroom is for two things only and they both start with S. The choice is yours which is more important.

7) I will continue my quest for the perfect woman, which, I readily admit, is an impossible task but fun pursuing.

8) I will not stop ranting at the greed of big business which is destroying our country nor the bureaucracy of our government that endangers our lives.

9) I will continue to criticize the media who has lost its way and believes they are here to create the news rather than report it.

10) I will pray for peace.

1) Pilot Sully Sullenberger for his heroic effort in landing a plane full of passengers and crew on the Hudson River.

2) The inauguration of a black president. A huge step forward for our country whether you voted for him or not.

3) Like it or not, the bailout to the financial industry that kept us from spiraling into a depression that would have devastated our country.

4) An initial bill to overhaul health care and provide it for millions of Americans who are not now insured. Far from perfect, but a start.

5) The continuing efforts of individuals and organizations to rebuild New Orleans and other communities destroyed by Hurricane Katrina. Better late than never.

Thumbs Down:

1) The bailout of General Motors. Like any other business in America, if you can’t compete, you fail and there are no safety nets for the thousands of businesses that go under each year. Does being big make a difference? Shouldn’t. And there are plenty of other car companies who can keep us supplied with vehicles that aren’t getting government handouts.

2) The fiasco surrounding the shooting at Fort Hood and the attempt to blow up a  Northwest plane at Christmas as it made its descent to the Detroit airport. Both acts could have been avoided if warning signs had not been dismissed. The passengers on Northwest flight were fortunate that the explosive failed to ignite properly.  Not so at Fort Hood where the gunman, an Army major stationed at the base killed 13. Both men charged in the incidents were Muslim terrorists. Time to start racial profiling.

3) The polarization of Congress. We should toss them all out next election or support Independent candidates.

4) The polarization of Americans. We bitch. We gripe. But are we doing anything to change things?

5) The unspent billions of dollars from the stimulus package that were supposed to be used to help get people back to work. Nothing short of criminal.

Secondly, kudos to the Chinese for not giving in to appeals not only by the drug smuggler’s country, Britain, but to other countries who stuck their respective noses in where they didn’t belong. One of the things I admire about China — although there is a lot about that country that I don’t — is the fact that it does what it believes is right and if the world doesn’t like it, too bad.

I only wish our own country would follow China’s example of doing what’s best for America and not be so sensitive about what others might think of any actions we might take. We have become so politically correct that we are putting our country in danger. The greatest threat to us and to the world is terrorism, almost exclusively carried out by Islamic radicals. Yet we refuse to practice racial profiling. When we know that 99 percent of terrorist acts are committed by Arabs why do we bother searching little old ladies, mothers with children and just about anyone else at airports or customs when none of them fit the profile?

The same can be said for torture. If a known terrorist is captured and intel believes he may have knowledge regarding plans for an attack on Americans or anyone else, why shouldn’t we torture them to garner that information? Instead, we treat them with kid gloves rather than steel ones. What kind of people have we turned into if we would rather take the chance of seeing innocent people killed because we didn’t want the world to think we tortured a terrorist who admits to wanting to kill all Americans and infidels?

Not only are we, as Americans, becoming too politically correct, but we are getting too soft. And that combination will prove to be our downfall in the war on terrorism.

How naïve of me to think that they might try to give us what they knew to be facts and to have a balanced discussion of those facts so that the public might get some idea of what to expect if and when the health care bill came to a vote in the Senate.

But as usual, each talk show host took a side, gathered like-minded guests and proceeded to scare the hell out of an unsuspecting and ill-informed public. The favorite word of the day of course was SOCIALISM. Who knows, maybe even COMMUNISM. It wouldn’t have surprised me if clowns like Glen Beck and Sean Hannity or even Bill O’Reilly, with his laughable “No Spin Zone” slogan, didn’t use a giant photo of Lenin as a backdrop while they eschewed the evils of a national health care plan.

Let me be clear. I am an Independent, as I wish most Americans were. It doesn’t matter to me who presents a piece of legislation on any issue. What matters to me is that I fully understand what is being proposed so that I can make an opinion based on the facts. If I think it would be good for most Americans and the country at large, I would support it. If not, I wouldn’t. It’s that simple.

Although I don’t have all the facts pertaining to the health care bill passed on Friday, I think it was the right move. I favor an overhaul of our present health care system as most Americans do. Will it be costly to implement? Absolutely. But in the long run I believe it will benefit us and our children and grandchildren. And that’s what we, as Americans have to look at when it comes to any important issue facing us today. We have become what I like to call an “instant society” wanting immediate results and looking only at the short-term outcome. It is a trait that will spell doom for all of us.

The question that looms therefore, is whether this health care bill can be the basis of a bill that will give all Americans affordable health care and provide the quality of care that we all deserve for generations to come.

Democrats will argue that it is, while Republicans will keep attacking every part of it. I am pleased that the bill was passed although unhappy with the deals that had to be made to get the necessary votes and I would have liked to have seen more discussion and more access by the American public to the wording of the bill. But it is a start and gives us a framework on how to proceed, hopefully with intelligent input from both parties.

If the debate had continued, having watched the antics of the Republicans and the scare tactics from the far right media, there was a possibility a bill would not have passed. And whether you believe it or not, that would have been a tragedy for all of us.

Michael Jackson

Michael Jackson is dead. End of story. Or so it should be to all but his family and close friends. Unless he was murdered, who cares how he died? He’s dead. And yet, cable networks devoted a whopping 93 percent of their airtime to his death over the weekend and it was the lead story for several days on both network and local news, with images of thousands of mourners around the world gathering at different locales where MJ had lived or performed. Most crying or telling us how much they loved him and will miss him.

How do you love someone you never met and probably never saw other than in a video? Why will you miss them? The only connection you have with Jackson is his music and that’s all on CDs or DVD so you can hear him whenever you want.

I have said many times over the years that Americans’ obsession with celebrities, whether they be entertainers or athletes, boggles the mind and is more than a little worrisome. We will forgive them almost anything as long as they keep entertaining us through music, shooting winning baskets, scoring winning touchdowns or hitting home runs. Americans also don’t seem to have a problem with them being paid millions of dollars, while the average American makes around $50,000 for a full year’s work.

But God forbid that the American public hears of doctors, who save lives, make $1 million a year. Listen to the cries then of “rich doctors gouging the public.” And has there ever been a ticker tape parade for Doctors Without Borders, or researchers who have discovered a new drug that will cure hundreds of thousands of people?

Our values our skewed. We care more about an injury to Kobe Bryant than we do if someone loses their job. We mourn a celebrity we don’t even know more than we do a child who drowns in a pool, or a hard-working mother who dies of cancer leaving young children behind.

We would rather listen to every sordid detail of Michael Jackson’s life on our newscasts rather than hearing about issues and events taking place that affect or can have an affect on our lives.

When I saw the network news anchors choosing to lead off with a Michael Jackson update almost every day since his death, rather than reporting on what was happening in Iraq, Afghanistan, North Korea, the economy, health care or other issues of importance, I realized then how much entertainment rules in America. And that, my friends, is a sad day for us all.

But whether you like him or not, he’s a very funny guy who makes you think. I caught up with him last week after his radio show, a three-hour nationally syndicated talk show that just celebrated its second anniversary and which is now heard on 224 stations in the U.S.  Miller says, “I didn’t know quite what to make of it at first, but I love it and I find it cathartic. It’s the same stuff I used to tell a shrink for $200 an hour. I hope it’s the last job I’ll ever have. I’ve certainly had my ups and downs, sideways and diagonal in show business. I never know, but I’m enjoying it immensely.”

You would think doing a daily show would restrict him from pursuing other things, like his gig at The Orleans, but Miller says it really has no effect.

“There’s a studio in every city in America and I can go there in the morning and do the show, then I do an hour at night. Listen, I’ve had two gigs that took 12 hours a day at times in my life when I was in the real world, so when people ask me what it’s like to talk for three hours, then go on stage for an hour at night, I look at it as just four hours total.”

With his appearances on FOX News’ Bill O’Reilly show, Miller has become known as much for his political commentary as his comedy. He says that came about over time.

“I started out as a comedian who told more of a general nature of jokes, but then I got onto Saturday Night Live and that moved me into the topical joke forum. Then I guess the political stuff really came into prominence after 9/11 and people saw that my politics had changed on a couple of things, mainly the need to preemptively croak radical terrorists,” who he says, are the greatest threat to the world today.

“When it comes down to it, at the end of the road, if you ask people are they more afraid of global warming than radical Islamic terrorists, I think I know what the answer will be. Global warming is like a hurricane coming. You at least get a warning, where as radical Islamic terrorism is like an earthquake. It happens — like that. You never know when it’s coming. I’ve always been more afraid of earthquakes than I have of hurricanes.”

Miller also is known for his vocabulary and his obscure references. I asked him where his love and knowledge of language came from. “When I was young, my mom told me to look up a word a day and that stuck with me. You know, it’s funny how things so basic can help you through life. I remember at the time, thinking, ‘what’s that gonna do?’ But it allowed me to make a living.”

Another path in life saw Miller signed to be an NFL commentator on ABC’s Monday Night Football, co-anchoring with football great Dan Fouts. “We lasted two seasons. It seemed like half the country hated my guts and half liked me and I was fine with that. I’ve never been an across-the-board purchase for mainstream America. I tried my best. I had fun.

“But I remember when Madden left FOX, I said to Dan, ‘I bet we get fired today,’ even though we had just signed for a third year. I knew that if Madden wanted the job, he’d get it. Sure enough, eight hours later, we were gone. But I’m a fatalist about show business. I’m kind of like G. Gordon Liddy” he says laughing. “Just tell me what corner you want me on if you’re gonna whack me. I don’t want any innocents getting hit in the crossfire.”

Miller has never let any grass grow under his feet. Along with the above-mentioned achievements, he was also the Weekend Update correspondent on Saturday Night Live for six years, before exiting in 1991. He has also been cast in films, usually in dramatic roles, most notably in 1994’s Disclosure, 1995’s The Net, and 1996’s Murder at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

He is a five-time Emmy-award winner for his critically acclaimed half-hour, live talk show, Dennis Miller Live, which had a nine year run on HBO and was the host and executive producer of CNBC’s Dennis Miller, a topical interview talk show.

Miller also distinguished himself as an author, publishing the four editions of his popular rants — The Rant Zone, now out in paperback and  I Rant Therefore I Am; Ranting Again and The Rants, all making The New York Times best sellers list.

Despite how busy he is, Miller has taken the time to become the spokesman for USACares, an organization that is involved in the quality of life issues of military personnel.

“Say a veteran or soldier is going to lose his house, for instance, they step in. USACares looks at specific needs of our military men and women, to see who needs help. I don’t get involved with that process. I’m just the front man for them. They do a great job and 90 cents out of each dollar goes directly to a veteran to help him/her in a specific situation at that point in their lives. It’s a great organization and I’m proud to be part of it. And everyone can help by going to USACares.org.

Miller has been married for 20 years to a former model and they have two boys. He attributes the longevity of his marriage to “picking the most beautiful, sexy woman I’d ever seen in my life who turned out to the nicest too. So you can’t go wrong with that as a starting point.”

If you want to see more of Dennis Miller, all seven of his HBO Comedy Specials are available on DVD from Standing Room Only Entertainment, in this complete Collector’s Edition 3-DVD Set. Dennis Miller: The HBO Specials is now on sale for a suggested retail price of $29.99.

What I did not consider was the fact that by doing this, I was taking on a new responsibility and making a commitment, both of which ran contradictory to me being retired and doing what I’d planned to do — write a book and travel.

So now, four months later, I am going to do what I planned, which in turn means bringing an end to my columns and interviews. I will, when the mood strikes, write a blog on this site to rant about something that makes my blood boil, or just to offer my opinion on something that is happening in our country or around the world.

My lifelong interest has always been on issues and events, both nationally and internationally, that affect, or could affect, our daily lives and I feel that as a citizen of the world, I should be able to express my opinions.

I will miss providing all of you with information (hopefully it was helpful) on what is going on in our town, but feel free to write me at lennylasvegas@gmail.com to ask any questions.

Be healthy. Be happy. And enjoy life……..