Our 'OOPS!' about Rick Perry

About the only thing most remember about the 2012 debate and Rick Perry is the 'Oops" moment when he forgot the name of the agency he wanted to eliminate.

To someone like me, senior moments like this are no big thing and even occur to the young. But the MSM latched on to this boo-boo like a hungry dog with a bone and wouldn't let go.

I, however, became his fiercest fan after hearing his ideas about reforming the government. What, you say?

Yes, Rick Perry mentioned tort reform, simplifying filing tax returns; called Social security a Ponzi scheme and proposed a most audacious plan about how Congress operates --- Perry proposed slashing the pay for elected officials and their staffs, and cutting the amount of time they spend in Washington in half. Makes perfect sense to me.

Shouldn't our representatives spend time at home learning about the problems of their constituency instead of breathing in the rarified air of lobbyists in DC?

His record as a three term governor of one of the most successful job producing states was nothing to sneeze at. He was also a captain in the Air Force and flew C-130s, a cargo plane and you cannot be stupid to fly one of those babies. The MSM made that oops moment into a caricature that has stuck to him in the same way that it stuck to George W. Bush, another military pilot. It's amazing how school records for Republicans are so accessible but Bill Clinton and Barack Obama had theirs sealed. Why?

Much is made of these Democrats' brilliance without any documentation. Bill Clinton was a Rhodes scholar who went to Oxford but not much has been reported about how he was accused by a teenager (Eileen Wellstone) of rape there and was dismissed and told to leave Oxford. We know very little about how Obama managed to get into Harvard although former Manhattan Borough President Percy Sutton once told NY1 host that he was asked by a friend, Dr. Khalid al-Mansour, to provide a recommendation for Obama to his Harvard connections.

Sutton explained that al-Mansour was "the principal adviser to one of the world's richest men." The billionaire in question was Saudi prince Al-Waleed bin Talal. The Obama campaigned vehemently denied this claim and intimated that the octogenarian Sutton was suffering from dementia. Sutton died in December 2009, at the age of 89.

Has the president ever been asked about his Saudi benefactor? No but the NY Times went after Marco Rubio's driving record and traffic citations as though these infractions disqualified him from running for president. The intrepid Times staff ignored the 17 unpaid parking tickets that Obama paid up just before running for office in 2008.

Now that Rick Perry has announced, the media lapdogs are salivating Pavlovian style just itching to mock him mercilessly. If you want to recognize how lazy and biased a reporter or pundit is, watch if he or she mentions Perry's smart glasses or hints that Perry's wearing them to look smarter. That person is not only an incompetent, but one who has no interest in researching the truth.

There are hundreds of articles mocking Perry's smart glasses as not making him smarter Political comics will equate Perry with Clark Kent and how the glasses don't really make him smart, he's still stupidman, etc.

Rand Paul is an ophthalmologist and even he commented snarkily on Perry's glasses without inquiring the reason behind the change. Rand belongs in the Senate and should stay there for a while.

I've read only one article besides what I've written about this that actually covers the truth behind those $500 smart eyeglasses. BTW, that figure was determined by the lazy MSM which searched online for a similar style. Why didn't they all do what Michelle Cottle in The National Journal did? She asked Rick Perry about the change and he called and told her the details in a lengthy conversation and I will list some of the highlights of Cottle's informative article:

"In 1967, when I was a young senior in high school, I was hit in the eye with a rock thrown across a football field by my best friend." The offending projectile "was a smooth stone, the size between a 50-cent piece and a silver dollar. It hit me directly in the left eye. I lost complete vision in that eye."

He regained his sight after blood drained and then did fine for years and even passed eye tests for Air Force. After the 2012 election, he noticed distortion in his left eye vision. His ophthalmologist sent him to a retina specialist.

And so off Perry went to Austin's Dr. Armie Harper. "He diagnosed me with what is referred to as pre-retinal fibrosis. For a layman, what that is-that injury that occurred 45 years ago was starting to manifest itself." Unlike the smooth, concave curve of a normal retina, explains Perry, "mine went up and then dipped down and went back up. It looked like somebody had pushed the retina in. What it is, it was the scar tissue that had never been readily visible from an eye exam. He said, 'It's like Saran wrap, when you heat it and it crinkles up. That's what's happening to your retina. There are two ways to deal with this. Try to correct it with glasses. Or have surgery.' "

"From time to time, someone says, 'You need to get rid of the glasses,' " he tells me. "And there's a certain amount of people out there who say, 'He got the glasses to change his appearance.' I don't know whether it changed my appearance or not, but I'm pretty comfortable. I like being able to see."

Everything that Ms. Cottle wrote quoting Rick Perry is verifiable. I hope The National Journal appreciates her ethical reportage since it's rare these days.

It is only my opinion but I think out of all the crowded 2016 GOP field, Rick Perry is the toughest of all and boy do we need tough now. We also need to remember that Ronald Reagan lost his first primary in 1976 and came back.

Here's hoping Rick Perry will survive the lying, stinking media and do the same.

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