Louis Roney: Kudos to the lady

• What great news it was to learn that Commissioner Carolyn Cooper will, after all, be unopposed and retain her seat on the Winter Park City Commission! Our City is fortunate indeed in having the un-self-seeking service of a person of such high caliber, integrity, intelligence, diligence and respect. From this corner, Carolyn, please accept a full measure of thanks, and good wishes for another successful term.

• I find President Obama to be quite an unattractive thinker. He suggests that our taxes be raised to the point that we “pay our fair share.” Who is he going to get in Washington, D.C., to decide what your and my “fair shares” are? His idea of your “fair share” may be quite different from yours, but if you get an expensive powerhouse of a lawyer, you may be able work out some kind of a deal with Obama’s boys … Obama’s most glaring misstatements have to do with the spending that he has vowed to slice. After he tells us that, he proceeds to spend $1.4 trillion yearly without batting an eyelash — but after all, he’s a politician, not a moralist.

• Rugby football started as a sport that the English encouraged among their young men to quell their war-like instincts. “The playing fields of Eton” were seen as places to dissipate the naturally pugnacious instincts of obstreperous young males. In truth, many a former British rugby player fell in such places as Waterloo. Human beings seem to be enamored of opposites – for we decorate wartime bravery at the same time we are preaching, “love your brother as yourself.” In World War I, as in the American Civil War, there were proven cases of brother fighting against brother on opposite sides. Mankind works hard to lengthen human life at the same time that we are inventing ever-more-terrible weapons to destroy our existence. To say that human beings do not seem to make good sense of life is a masterpiece of understatement.

• How come so few of one’s best friends are ever kin to him?

• In Arizona, a 1955 Mercedes-Benz 300SL owned by Clark Gable went at auction for $1.85 million!

• Our national debt, which has expanded by tremendous multiples under four years of Barack Obama, puts every newborn baby $52,000 in debt to the government the minute he is born.

• Obama is running the U.S. bankrupt spending $1.4 trillion more per year than we take in. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) says the U.S. is on an unsustainable course. Eighty-three percent of Americans now agree (but they voted for him, nevertheless).

• This commentator, and any other guys who played football, knew well that it was a rough, tough game loaded with the chance of injuries. Getting hit in the head is part of the football landscape. I played high school football in Winter Park, but never went out for football at Harvard after that because I remembered well the effects of taking heavy hits to my head, which by then, I had determined to use for more productive pursuits. The decision to play the game in college or as a professional is a personal one, and once the player has made his decision, I do not understand how ex-players, later in life, can successfully sue the organizations that supplied the voluntarily sought-after blows to players’ craniums.

• Lots of the problems we face today exist because the people who work for a living are now outnumbered by those who vote for a living.

• “Quantitative easing” is the new Obama palliative for “borrowing money” … what?

About Roney: Harvard’42—Distinguished Prof, Em.—UCF 2004 Fla. Alliance for the Arts award (Assisted by beautiful wife Joy Roney)