She Should “Change” Her Act

Gee gosh almighty, what a hilarious column THIS was that appeared in this morning’s Philadelphia Inquirer (I guess this is what passes for freeper humor).

This plan to rid our currency of the penny is awfully suspicious. Notice it targets the coin that's a different color from the rest. The "copper" one amid a sea of "silver" ones. The "brown" coin that pays tribute to the president who freed the black people, in contrast to the "white" coins, which sport slave-holding presidents.

It was insulting enough that the "copper" coin was the lowest denomination, but now they want to be rid of it altogether. Even penny slots in Las Vegas won't take pennies. They take either bills - or bills and white coins only.

In his article advocating the extermination of the penny, National Review editor Rich Lowry wrote, "The poor pathetic penny has become clutter in the nation's pockets," and he described the cumbersome process of collecting pennies to exchange them for "useful" money. Lowry pointed out that it costs 1.23 cents to make one cent, which translates into a subsidy of $4 billion this fiscal year. Further, "more than $10 billion worth of pennies and other coins sit idle."

Now we're getting somewhere! Although other coins are "idle," it's the brown coin that's being singled out. Obvious analogies to welfare stereotypes aside, I resent Lowry's implication that the penny - which he calls "worthless," "nettlesome," and not "worth the bother" - shouldn't be considered money at all. This is racism, pure and simple.

It appears that on U.S. military bases overseas, the penny has been gone since the 1980s. They round all transactions to 0 or 5, and that's what is being suggested for a world without pennies. Of course, "rounding" means rounding up. And rounding up means making poor folks poorer. Now, obviously, if you remove all transactions ending in 1-4 and 6-9, a penny might seem "useless." However, if you were to remove all transactions ending in 0 or 5, then all those white coins would seem pretty useless, wouldn't they? In fact, wouldn't it make more sense to do that, since transactions not ending in 0 or 5 outnumber those that do?

Indeed, with white people fast becoming a minority in this country, why should white coins outnumber coins of color? Isn't it time for our currency to reflect the ever-changing society that it serves? We need a rainbow coin-ucopia. If it's too burdensome to continue minting and using the penny, assign it a higher value - and give it a makeover. Why not make a black coin, stamped with the closest thing to a black president this country has seen, William Jefferson Clinton?

Economists say $300 million a year is the value of "time lost" using pennies. But think about the cost - the confusion and inefficiency - that will result if we abort the penny. A person could no longer describe himself as penniless, since we all would be. He'd have to say: "I'm nickel-less," and then it sounds like he's saying his name is Nicholas - which has the potential to create as much inefficiency as that $300 million.

And what would happen to expressions like "a penny for your thoughts?" Most people's thoughts aren't worth a whole nickel.

If pennies have no value, why is it that you meet people named Penny, but never anyone named Quarter or Dime? Because Penny's parents believed their daughter to have no value? I don't think so. In fact, when we want to say people are being cheated or not valued, we say they're being "nickel-and-dimed" - not pennied.

We're often told that race relations have come a long way in this country. I say prove it. Fair-minded people everywhere, it's time to mobilize for a penny affirmative action plan. Let's keep our cents and our sense about us.

“Abort” the penny? Jokes about affirmative action and “racist” coins?

Wow, I haven’t experienced so many laughs since my lithotripsy procedure (trust me…it’s unpleasant).

(To be fair, I’d like to criticize her sneaky reference to Clinton, but Charles Barkley once said, on “Real Time With Bill Maher,” that he considered Clinton “our first black president” so I can’t in good conscience.)

I was chortling all the way when I checked up on Julie Gorin, who, incidentally, has made a career out of performing character assassination on a whole bunch of high-profile lefties, most notably Jimmy Carter. Gorin’s invective was unparalleled as she assaulted Carter for criticizing Dubya early in his flawed presidency for not doing what he could to try and manage North Korea and its nukes (a difficult task to be sure, but it’s the job of the President of the United States to at least TRY, and I would say that Carter’s criticism looks prescient now).

I regret that I cannot find a link to Gorin’s attack on Carter concerning North Korea, but I distinctly recall reading it in the Inquirer at the time it was published. Besides, if you don’t like that smear, Gorin will provide MANY others for you, including her supposition that Carter has “black blood” (“you can just look at his face”), that he will be “apologizing to the Muslim world for 9/11 one day,” and that The Carter Center received funding from Osama bin Laden.

I would acknowledge that Carter has not exactly been sympathetic to Israel at times, but guess what? When he states his arguments, they're typically well thought-out and I usually agree with him. Besides, Menachem Begin sold out Carter and Sadat on the Camp David accords after he signed off on them (this is explained in detail in Douglas Brinkley's fine book on Carter, "The Unfinished Presidency").

(Ordinarily, I would provide individual links, but there is such an avalanche of lies and innuendos out there that I will provide this Google search link and let you pick and choose for yourself.)

So with the whole world going to hell in a hand basket, with the Israel-Hezbollah war raging unabated, the continual sacrifice of our people in Iraq on Bushco's blood-splattered altar to The Holy God of Empire Expansion (while the terrorist violence faced by Americans there rages unabated), and both Iran AND North Korea raising the middle digit on high at us when we tell them to stop trying to make nukes, the freepers think it’s appropriate to make jokes about coins?

Stop, you’re killing me.