[J.P.’s Moment of Common Sense on Broad View, KRNG 101.3 FM Reno. Listen live Saturdays at 11:00 AM Pacific Time.]

They say the cream always rises to the top which is reassuring in troubled times like these.  With America facing so many doggone problems, it’s good to know our leaders are the very best people we have, the cream.

The IRS has turned into the Democrats’ version of the KGB, the NSA is spying on us instead of our foreign enemies, and the Justice Department is following reporters around like they’re terrorists—it’s downright creepy the way federal agencies are stalking Americans.  It makes me wonder if I can walk around naked in my own home.

After all, I don’t want some female FBI agent looking at the surveillance photos and falling in love with me—that would be awkward.

The Obama administration has so many unfolding scandals nobody can keep track of them all: Benghazi, Fast & Furious, fake email accounts, green energy scams, the State Department has been hiding a pedophile ambassador (sorry about that, Belgium), and this week we learned that our president has been infiltrating and spying on Christian churches because he worries they might be criticizing him.

Speaking of cream, the president is a bright guy, right?  Sure, okay, he doesn’t know how many states there are, and he thought a tornado killed ten thousand people in Kansas, and he thinks the Constitution was written twenty centuries ago, and he insulted Catholic schools in Belfast, Ireland, this week, which is like insulting the Bruins in Boston, but he’s smart, he’s gonna fix our problems... right?

He’ll get help from smart people like Sen. Mary Landrieu from Louisiana, who was debating immigration policy this week with a senator from South Dakota when she suddenly announced that South Dakota shares a border with Canada.  Makes you wonder: if she thinks South Dakota is on the border with Canada, where does she think North Dakota is?

Hopefully, before making any decisions about immigration, Landrieu will dig up a map and locate Mexico.

To be fair, Landrieu isn’t the only congresscritter with a hazy sense of geography.  A couple years ago, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee raved about how North and South Vietnam are living harmoniously side by side.  (This is the same woman who wanted a photo of the flag Neil Armstrong planted on Mars.)  Worse yet, Hank Johnson from Georgia expressed concern during a congressional hearing about the number of Marines stationed on Guam—he was afraid too many Marines would make the island tip over.

Yep, it’s good to know we have smart people running things.  People like Nancy Pelosi, former Speaker of the House, who pushed Obamacare through without a clue what the legislation actually said.  “We have to pass the bill to find out what’s in it,” she said.  That fills people with confidence.  So does our Secretary of Defense, Chuck Hagel, who was speaking at the University of Nebraska this week when a gentleman from India raised his hand to ask a question.  “You’re not from the Taliban, are you?” asked the Secretary.

The poor guy is a professor but I guess his complexion looked suspicious.  Or maybe it was supposed to be a joke.  It’s just good to know we have a sharp fella like Chuck Hagel in charge of national defense.

Over in the Senate where senile old Harry Reid was once asked to name the greatest living Americans and picked two dead people, they held a classified briefing last week about the NSA spying on American citizens.  The entire nation is freaked out about it.  People are frightened, upset with the government, and want some answers so the NSA was summoned to tell our one hundred United States senators exactly what was happening with those gigantic piles of data they’ve collected.  The briefing was at 2:30 Thursday afternoon.  Unfortunately, most of the senators wanted to get out of town Thursday morning for a long weekend so only 47 of them showed up.

Sen. Diane Feinstein was exasperated with her fellow senators for skipping the briefing but before you jump on her bandwagon and start saying, “See?  Sometimes the cream really does rise to the top,” keep in mind this is the woman who talked about imploding bullets a couple months ago during a hearing about gun control.

Sometimes we look at the Looney Tunes running things in Washington and hope maybe other countries have leaders smart enough and sane enough to nudge our poor schmucks onto the right path... but then we read about the losers masquerading as leaders in other countries and realize they’re just as bad.  This week the owner of the New England Patriots told the story of how Vladimir Putin of Russia ended up with his 2005 Super Bowl ring: Mr. Putin asked if he could try it on, then immediately walked off and flew back to Russia.

That’s not exactly normal behavior, ya know?  Good news: he and Obama will put their heads together and talk about nuclear bombs this week.  That should fill you with confidence.

Here’s what I figured out: when you milk a cow and set the milk aside the cream will rise to the top, it’s true, because the pail of milk is a good environment.  But government is not a good environment—it’s dirty and nasty.  If you take that same pail of milk and dump it in a dirty pond, you know what ends up floating on top of the water?

Scum.

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

“I’m against a homogenized society because I want the cream to rise.” —Robert Frost

“Society is like a stew.  If you don’t stir it up every once in a while then a layer of scum floats to the top.” —Edward Abbey

From Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA        Tweet

June 22, 2013 - I just watched the Hank Johnson video. Oh my word, that is beyond stupidity. That General was really trying to remain respectful and not snicker. I just want to comment on the rumored infiltration of the church. My church would be what most would consider a conservative Evangelical Christian Church. As a church body, our pastor, our elders, and it's members are well aware as to the time we're living in. In almost every small Bible study gathering, and in many services we give thanks for the freedom to meet together and worship freely. This is something many around the world are not able to do and are often killed for. We understand as a church that persecution of the church is happening but is going to increase greatly as it is a natural consequence of a totalitarian government. The Christian church is certainly a threat and would have to be basically destroyed or become unrecognizable as compared to what it is today. I wish people in this country would look at the history of Germany from the early to mid 1900's. There are so many parallels to our country today that it's scary. It really paints a picture of where we're headed and how those in power gain total control over it's citizens. Pastor Erwin Lutzer writes some great books on the subject. I bet the Germans of yesterday never thought they would live to see a day when the cross that hangs in their church pulpits would be replaced with swastikas, but it happened. – Samantha, Michigan