Today I paid an unexpected visit to the USAID headquarters in Cairo.
The last few years I have shown you how USAID organized, financed, & ran the invasion across our southern border.
Today I visited their fortress-like offices in Egypt….
2/14
Approaching the gate manned by Egyptian guards, we bluffed our way in and drove through the su*cide b*m8er barriers. This was aided, no doubt, by the fact that we were in a Mercedes (the diplomatic car of choice) and I look unmistakably American.
3/14
My driver waited in the car while I walked the perimeter looking for the entrance.
There is no USAID signage of any kind on this citadel of corrupt bureaucracy….
I was 21. A truck driver during the day and a student at night, I was asked to teach Sunday school at a little rural Alabama church that met only twice a month.
You see, the membership was old and few in number. Many thought the church…
2.
…should be closed. But these ornery old people liked their church and didn’t care what anyone else thought they should or shouldn’t do.
One of the members had heard me speak and asked if I would be their pastor.
Pastor?
I didn’t know anything about that, but I agreed…
3.
…to come every other week to teach Sunday school for a couple of months until they could find someone else. Amused by my youth and energy, they had no intentions of replacing me and two months stretched into two years.
I watched the interview multiple times. Watch it. Cooper likes making sweeping, authoritative, controversial pronouncements with Trump-like self-assurance. Unless you’re a specialist, and Carlson isn’t, you might shrink from…
3.
…challenging him.
To wit:
• “Churchill was the chief villain of the Second World War.” (45:34ff)
• Holocaust caused by a logistical mistake and a desire to be “humane.” (46:40ff)
• Hitler wanted peace/Churchill wanted war (48:43ff)
Over the years I’ve heard stories about Laurence Olivier, Charleton Heston, Tony Blair, Judy Dench, Alice Cooper, Mick Jagger, Richard Harris, and many others.
But this is my favorite story.
A taxi driver tells me he picked up an old guy on London’s West End one evening…
3.
…outside of a pub. He doesn’t look in his rear view mirror very carefully, but nonetheless offers a bit of friendly chat chat to his passenger as he might do with anyone:
How are you?
Where to, sir?
Eventually he asks: “So, what do you do for a living?”