The Little Flower: still current today

With  all of the starchy resistance by Republicans to extension of unemployment benefits,  I ran across this heartfelt blast  from Fiorella LaGuardia during the Depression as quoted in Arthur Mann's  lively portrait, La Guardia A Fighter against his times (1959).  Reacting in 1931 to President Hoover's opposition to government assistance, the Little Flower  boomed (as only he could): :

"Dole! Dole! Dole! ...That is all that one hears at every discussion of an unemployment insurance plan...What is there so novel and radical about it?'

 He added that if Americans can insure themselves against fire,  theft,  assault, hurricanes, death and the like, then why shouldn't they, like every advanced country in Europe, insure themselves against the hazards of industry?

"The needy," he said, "are not interested in words.  They want food, clothing and shelter."

Anybody want to argue with that?

May we have a truce in War on Christmas?

There's no letup by the gateway theologians who are making war on those accused of  making war on Christmas.  As the tinseled authors of seasonal books, they have made it to the top of the best-seller lists under the trade names of  Bill O'Reilly, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin, among others, producing screeds in time to increase their own mass marketing  profits  before Santa arrives.

That's smart business practice.  Why would you complain about a war on Christmas in mid-summer when many Americans are preoccupied with making war on crabgrass?

The inspirational leader  of these entrepreneurial tests is O'Reilly, who has found his groove in titles that begin with "Killing..."  That, of course, thrusts his literary pursuits directly into America's passion for violence.  In another five years or so, O'Reilly will have killed  off more people than the Florentine plagues.

As a merciful writer, I have despaired of the war crimes associated with Christmas. So I chose my only option with a cue from O'Reilly.  In a few hours I will begin writing my own book titled "Killing Macy's"  and will have it on Amazon in 24 hours. Without apologies, my book will take it to the heart of the battlefront.

I hope the gateway theologians will accept my desperate enterprise in the spirit of the season with a holiday truce that  could begin to  fill my own Christmas stocking.

Fa la la la...

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To digress:  After watching OSU 's loss to MSU, it seemed reasonable to conclude  that the Bucks stopped in Indy.

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Let me close by assigning the Grumpy Abe Linguistic Lunacy Award (GALL)  to Sen. Rand Paul in the unholiest sense.  The Kentucky Republican  asserted that the extension of jobless benefits beyond the Dec. 28 expiration date would be a "disservice" to the unemployed.  Guys like Paul forever keep me guessing about their loose talk.  But he said it on Fox News so it must be true.