Idle thoughts while hanging out

Thoughts during a busy day:

Idle thought 1:  I want to have Mewt Gingney for my candidate.  Newt Gingrich is a completely principled conservative with, in his past at least, an unprincipled private life.  Mitt Romney is an unprincipled conservative with, from the past to the present, what appears to be a completely principled private life.  Separately, each is an imperfect candidate.  Combined into one super Republican . . . well, wow!   If I have to pick one, though, I’d go for Newt, since I’m voting for president, not husband.

Idle thought 2:  My mother is not well, and I was at her bedside entertaining her.  In keeping with my belief that laughter is the best medicine, I read to her two of my favorite funny posts (here and here), both of which happen to be written by military types.  It occurred to me that, while many in our military have extremely well-developed senses of humor, the same cannot be said for the Occupy crowd.  Have any of them said anything funny?  (Intentionally funny, I mean, not insanely stupid that makes one feel as guilty as if one laughed at a mentally disabled person for an inadvertent joke.)

Idle thought 3:  People often try to figure out what it is about the West that made it zoom ahead of all other cultures.  I’d like to suggest a trigger for the economic and intellectual explosion:  banking.  Being able to transport money easily and, even more importantly, being able to rent it, unleashed enormous creative, exploratory and commercial energy.  It’s rather striking, isn’t it, that the Occupy movement is directed at destroying banks. In other words, the attack really isn’t against just banks.  The attack is at the core of Western intellectual energy and civilization.

I’ll be the first to admit that banks are royal pains in the butt (I’m still sweating from the effort I had to make to assemble the 200 pages of documents I needed to apply for a re-fi), but I’m more inclined to blame controlling Democrat legislation for this insanity than the banks themselves.  Banks should be policed for fraud and corruption, but otherwise, they — and we — function best in an open market.

Idle thought 4:  I wasn’t in a rush to judgment regarding the Cain sexual harassment allegations, since such claims were a dime a dozen in the 1990s.  As the story develops, though, two thoughts occur:  if he did it, better we know now than later; and regardless of whether or not he did it, his and his team’s response to the story is appalling, which should concern us regarding his readiness for any upcoming fight directly against Obama.  I like Cain, personally, but I have strong doubts about whether he’s ready for prime time.  I’d rather see his flame burn out now than in October 2012.

Anything you guys would like to add to my list of idle thoughts?