Louis Roney: The plan (for the guy without a plan)

• I’m a guy without a plan. And I live in a country where the guy who runs things doesn’t have a plan. He shouts from the rooftops, “I don’t have a plan!” All the neighbors who hear him say he doesn’t have a plan are fearful. Without a plan, all of us feel lost. What am I going to do?

What are you going to do? What are all of us plan-less mortals going to do? Remember, this is the guy who promised us we could keep our doctor and our health plan if we like ’em. So you see, we all thought he had a plan — because he told us he had a plan! Is this mess we’re in what he was planning all the time?

• When Aristotle said, “Man is a political animal,” he was right. But as far as I am concerned that description doesn’t apply to me 24 hours a day. We Americans see our planet through rose-colored glasses, only occasionally wiping the glasses clean so as to see the true reality around us. In school we sang a nice little song that said, “Row, row, row your boat gently down the stream, merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream.” The trick was, I guess, to row gently enough so as not to make waves to threaten us up ahead.

• When I returned from the South Pacific after World War II, I felt a high degree of optimism in the American public as led by Roosevelt, Truman, Eisenhower and Reagan. Since then we seem to be in a downslope in our political life and the men who empower it. Now with Barack Obama as a clueless chief of state who looks to be way over his head in the White House, we are a ship adrift. Obama has little idea of how to work with anyone — Congress, the military, entrepreneurs or our vital allies. Many U.S. citizens feel that Obama is not solving our problems, and what’s worse, is not even giving them a commendable “old college try.”

He talks about “jobs” but prefers spending his time fundraising and playing golf. Obama’s decision-making ability seems almost nonexistent. The worldwide supply of modern arms today is frightening, with each side knowing it can be destroyed by a sudden attack from the other — and meanwhile, we are waiting directionless á la Barack Obama.

• We hear that atheists object to prayers at football games. If atheists really think that the other sides’ prayers will decide the game, are they still atheists? Or are they “believers in something anyhow.” Think it over.

• “In life you need two things: Ignorance and confidence.

Get your facts first, then distort them as you please.

Go to heaven for the climate, hell for the company.

Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it’s time to pause and reflect.

Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first!

The only way to keep your health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.

All generalizations are false, including this one! ”

— Mark Twain