It’s a very busy day for me with one of our dogs in the vet hospital (for Meatbrain, that’s “veterinary” not “veterans” ), two appellate issues to analyze and brief and prepping to spend a week on the water in San Diego with the family Hounds! But some light social commentary is always in order.

Lindsay Lohan will be dead before she hits her 25th birthday. Sorry, not so light, is it. She’s been picked up again for DUI, what is it, two weeks after getting out of rehab, and while she has a prior DUI charge pending. The cocaine found in her pocket during booking isn’t going to help matters. Can you imagine if she was actually old enough to drink legally?

Although she has her defenders who explain that she’s young and oh, such a great actress, the bottom line is that Lindsay is an accident that has already happened. Remember when we were being told that Michael Jackson was just as normal as you and me, just with a bit more cash in the bank. You don’t hear that anymore now that he’s officially changed races and moved to Bahrain, where I guess he believes Muslim sensibilities are so much more open to eccentric behavior, including sleeping with pre-pubescent boys.

No. Lindsay Lohan is a drunk, drug abusing narcissistic loser who made some cute movies when she was a child but has now pretty much torpedoed her career. Good riddance. My only hope is that when her train wrecks, it crashes into Brittany Spears.

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Every once in awhile this idea pops into my head, so I figure it’s about time to write it down.

Here’s the setup: I like Rudy Giuliani as a presidential candidate. He’s a straight shooter, who has his priorities in order with keeping this country safe and fighting terrorism at the top of the list. That’s why I can look past his stated pro-choice position (made easier by the fact that he has clearly stated he would appoint judges in the mold of Scalia and Roberts). But whenever he, and pretty much every other pro-choice candidate, makes the comment that despite the fact he is personally antiabortion, he will not impose his personal moral beliefs on anyone else, or when Hillary righteously intones that she wishes to keep abortion safe, available and rare (or whatever), I begin to wretch.

I simply don’t understand how you can have heartfelt personal convictions on an important moral issue but then not believe that those convictions ought be applied to others. It makes no sense to me. How is that any different than a candidate saying he finds racism morally repugnant, evil and abhorrent, but would not dream of imposing his personal moral convictions concerning racism on others. What would the response of the American people be to something like that? “Oh, sure I understand. If a person wants to refuse to rent to, or offer a job to, someone simply because they’re African-American, that’s their own personal moral choice.”

As to Hillary, I would ask her to identify what other constitutional right we should ensure is only “rarely” exercised.

It irritates the hell out of me when I hear a Muslim spokesman (they don’t typically allow spokes-women so forgive the non-gender neutral appellation), responding to the most recent atrocity be it a beheading, suicide bombing or simple honor killing, that the perpetrators are not “true” Muslims and that they have “corrupted” the real teachings of Islam.

The reason no one is buying this spin is because of stories like these.   Not too long ago the accepted convention was that mosques were sacrosanct places of contemplation and worship and to suggest they were being used for anything but was an affront to Muslims across the globe?  For example, remember the outrage and the usual now comic demonstrations  in the Muslim world when bullet holes were found in a mosque wall during the bringing down of Saddam Hussein.  How dare the Americans sully with their bullets our holy places, we were told.

All that talk has pretty much been waylaid by the obvious use of mosques throughout the world as terrorists training grounds and bastions of hate speech.

But remember, none of the folks rising up and shouting “Allah Akbar” while a bearded holy man inveighs against, and calls for the annihilation of, the infidel are true Muslims.

I consider myself your average American guy.  When I wake up I head out the front door to grab the paper and then sit down with a cup of java to read the Sports, Metro, front page and Business sections…usually in that order.  I therefore know about the (alleged) dogfighting Michael Vick, that median home prices have gone up a tad lately in the O.C., that there was an earthquake in the Bay area yesterday and that the stock market is at a record high.

As to that last point, what I apparently didn’t know is that a peaking Dow Jones is not necessarily a good thing, especially if you are a liberal, Bush-hating commentator from the LA Times. Just as the left, for purely political reasons, must begin savaging Gen. David Petraeus, it must also talk down as many of the standardly-relied-upon-by-the-public economic indicators, most of which are clearly suggestive of a strong, vibrant and growing economy.  All this must be done relatively soon before we great unwashed types get an inkling before the next election that things ain’t all that bad.

I’m no economic savant, but neither are 99.9% of us.  We look to such things as the rate of inflation (still extraordinarily low), unemployment (still at historic lows which, some would say, approaches “full employment”–otherwise why would we need all these illegal immigrant workers), GDP (still growing steadily), personal income rates (increasing greater than inflation), job creation (usually better than predicted), etcetera to get an idea of the health of our economy.  And based upon most of our standard measures, the economy is in pretty good shape.

That’s why you will begin to see more and more “analysis” of the otherwise positive numbers and a tut-tut esoteric explanation that we shouldn’t believe our lyin’ eyes.

Barack Obama is for “age appropriate” sex education for kindergartners.

The spin on this is that Obama was talking about teaching these children about how to recognize sexual predators, etc and that parents can opt their kids out from the instruction. Thank you, but I think it’s best to leave discussions with 5 and 6 year olds about what is “inappropriate touching” to their parents, and it’s a sad reflection on our times when there are things being taught in kindergarten classes that parents might rightfully want to exclude their children from.

Furthermore, isn’t it about time we stopped stealing away our kids’ innocence bit by bit and earlier and earlier?