[J.P.’s Moment of Common Sense on Broad View, KBZZ 1270 AM and 96.1 FM in Reno. Listen to Broad View live Saturdays at 2:00 PM Pacific Time.]

I lost my four front teeth last week so this might be a broadcasting first: a man without teeth talking on the radio.  I only mention this so you don’t think crazed hillbilly militiamen have taken over the radio station.

Actually, it wasn’t teeth that I lost but rather an appliance that pretended to be teeth and did a mighty poor job of it.  It was a cheap bridge and I’m glad it’s finally gone.  I broke it into pieces trying to eat corn on the cob so I blame the whole thing on President Obama.  It’s like this: if he would take all of the corn crop to make ethanol instead of only half the corn crop, I’d still have teeth because nobody would have corn on the cob to eat.  Sure, I know, making ethanol from corn raises the price of food at the grocery store but if the president doesn’t care, why should I?

In two weeks the dentist will have new teeth for me and I’ll look like Robert Redford but meanwhile walking around without front teeth is a great sociological experiment.  So-ci-o-lo-gi-cal.  (S’s are difficult so forgive me.)  It’s amazing how little respect you get without teeth.  As soon as I start to talk, people stop listening.  Yeah, okay, that happened before, too, but now it’s really happening.  I’ve been eating a lot of chili because I’m pretty much confined to stuff that goes on a spoon and the counter people at Wendy’s keep telling me they don’t make anything out of thumbs... because when I walk in and try to say, “I want some chili” it sounds like “I want thumb chili.”

Don’t you think it wonderful that Wendy’s counter people have a sense of humor?  Me neither.

A couple weeks ago golf gave me insight into liberal thinking but now I understand these people even better because suddenly I know what it’s like to make a toothless argument.  Toothless arguments are all they have.  Think about it: Barack Obama is running around the country campaigning for reelection and what can he possibly say about the way the first four years have gone?

For one, he says he wants to finish what he started with the economy.  That’s a scary thought.  The economy is a shambles, in worse shape than when the man took office and everybody knows it.  When he talks about jobs, claiming he created three million of them, even Democrats are embarrassed.  Heck, even the teleprompter blushes.  Fact is, fewer Americans have jobs now than when he took the oath of office... and no other president in history could say that.

So everything he says about jobs is, by definition, a toothless argument.  Tooth-less.  (Boy that’s a tough word.)

With the economy such an awkward subject, Democrats are rustling up diversions hoping to distract us.  They say Republicans hate women.  That’s a hard sell because a lot of Republicans are women.  About half of them.  Duh.

So they say Republicans are racist, which belies the century of anti-slavery and civil rights legislation passed by Republicans over the objections of filibustering Democrats (like Al Gore’s father).  The Democrat Party founded the Ku Klux Klan specifically to prevent Republicans from winning elections and they lynched Republicans no matter what color they were.

The notion that the political party of Abraham Lincoln is somehow the racist party is the most toothless argument ever concocted.  Republicans support individual rights no matter what a person’s race might be.  It’s been that way since the beginning.  The Republican Party was founded by anti-slavery radicals, people!  Learn your history!

Watching others discount what I say because of my lack of front teeth got me wondering if liberals have the same problem.  I’m pretty sure they do.  After all, toothless is toothless, right?  Year after year, decade after decade of toothless arguments must be hard on a reputation.  Think about it.  Liberals are peddling the idea that centralized government is a good thing.  That’s what Obama really thinks.  To him, the government is always the answer to every problem—he was raised that way.  But we have a whole century of centralized government experiments that were all dismal failures producing endless suffering and death.  Suf-fer-ing.  (Now I know how Sylvester the Cat felt.)  Communist Russia, Nazi Germany, Red China, North Korea—there is no success story.

This fundamental argument—that big government is the answer—is the basis of everything the Democrat Party does and it’s the most toothless argument ever.

I think that’s why people listen to Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Harry Reid and Joe Biden and even Barack Obama with the same bemused and disdainful look they give me when I’m ordering Wendy’s chili with no teeth.  Liberalism has grown old and toothless.  The Democrat Party is the crazy old uncle with the gummy smile scraping his corn off the cob with a knife because he can’t chew, who sits in the corner at your family reunion telling stories that nobody believes.

Like Rodney Dangerfield, Democrats get no respect and that won’t change until their arguments grow some teeth.

That’s... today’s dose of common sense.

“God often gives nuts to toothless people.” —Matt Groening

“If suffering brought wisdom, the dentist’s office would be full of luminous ideas.” —Mason Cooley

“Some tortures are physical
And some are mental,
But the one that is both
Is dental.” —Ogden Nash

From Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA        Tweet

September 6, 2012 - You are too funny. I can relate to that, thank god mine are in the back. – Brenda K., Reno