Thursday, September 22, 2011

Pop Rock Thursdays: The Beatles




On March 4, 1966 Maureen Cleave, a reporter for the London Evening Standard, interviewed John Lennon.  His comments caused a firestorm for the band.

Cleave wrote, “Experience has sown few seeds of doubt in him: not that his mind is closed, but it's closed round whatever he believes at the time. ‘Christianity will go,’ he said. ‘It will vanish and shrink. I needn't argue about that; I'm right and I will be proved right. We're more popular than Jesus now; I don't know which will go first—rock 'n' roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right, but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It's them twisting it that ruins it for me.’ He is reading extensively about religion.”

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

How’se About Them Apples?


Republicans scored an upset victory in a House race that began as a contest to replace Rep. Anthony Weiner that morphed into a referendum on President Present’s economic policies while Nevada saw a trouncing of Democrat Kate Marshal by Mark Amodei in the NV-2 Congressional District.

The White House and its Democrat operatives, I think, can officially be described as all wee-wee’d up over yesterday’s election results.

David Catanese, writing for the left-leaning website Politico noted, “National Congressional Campaign Committee chairman Pete Sessions wasted no time framing the results as a rebuke to the GOP's favorite punching bags: President Obama and Nancy Pelosi.”

Sessions had this so say about the stunning victories.  “This clear rebuke of President Obama’s policies delivers a blow to Democrats’ goal of making Nancy Pelosi the Speaker again.  New Yorkers put Washington Democrats on notice that voters are losing confidence in a President whose policies assault job-creators and affront Israel.  An unpopular President Obama is now a liability for Democrats nationwide in a 2012 election that is a referendum on his economic policies.”

In a separate statement on the Nevada results, the Texas congressman was even more direct, remarking that "Democrats just saw their 2012 playbook fall apart."

Don Surber, a blogger whose opinions I greatly respect, posits this powerful summation of Bob Turner’s win in New York’s District 9:  A sitting Democratic president should not be able to lose the Jewish vote in New York City, and yet this president has managed to do just that. One has to admire the scale of incompetence it takes to undo more than a century of work by generations of Democratic Party officials. Somewhere Boss Tweed sobs. Remember, this district went with Obama in 2008 by an 11-point margin."

NY-9 is a district where Democrats outnumber Republicans 3-to-1.  Unions and the Democratic Party poured $1.5 million into the race outspending Turner and the GOP on the airwaves and swamped voters with campaign mailings and robo-calls—all to no avail.

At the Tatler, Bryan Preston declares, “Time of death for the age of Hope and Change, 11:58 pm eastern, Sept. 13, 2011.”

Time of death...now that's effin' funny.

Saturday, September 10, 2011

The Most Searing Event Of My Life


Sunday will mark the tenth anniversary of 9/11—a day of unspeakable horror and unparalleled heroism.

The day was clear and bright—a beautiful blue sky draped the city that never sleeps.  By mid-morning, the Manhattan skyline became shrouded in smoke.

We now know that the aircraft which crashed into the first tower of the World Trade Center was traveling at a speed of approximately 586 miles per hour—its fuel tanks filled with 10,000 gallons of jet fuel.  Twelve weeks after the terrorist atrocity there was at least one fire still burning in the rubble making it the longest burning structural fire in history.  We never, before that day, thought of passenger planes as weapons.

There is still an ache in my heart ten years after and tears are streaming down my face as I write these words.

Tom Brokaw commented, “Almost as soon as the Twin Towers came down the flags went up.  They began to grow in every crevice of America.  Someone said the sight of them is like countless bandages of patriotism covering a nation’s wounds.”

One of the iconic photographs that emerged was that of a small blonde-haired girl atop her father’s shoulders at a candlelight vigil; her right arm outstretched holding a small American flag.

The television networks had small images, called “bugs”, of the flag superimposed on the screen for weeks after the attacks.  Fox News maintained that image for many months after all the others discontinued its use.

Part of the fourth stanza of “America The Beautiful” reads:  “O beautiful for patriot dream, that sees beyond the years.  Thine alabaster cities gleam, undimmed by human tears.”  Dan Rather wept on the David Letterman show as he recited these words.  He noted, “We can never sing that song again the same way.”

Peggy Noonan writing for the Wall Street Journal noted, “When you ask New Yorkers now what they remember, they start with something big—the first news report, the phone call in which someone said, ‘Turn on the TV.’ But then they go to the kind of small thing that when you first saw it you had no idea it would stay in your mind forever. The look on the face of a young Asian woman on Sixth Avenue in the 20s, as she looked upward. The votive candles on the street and the spontaneous shrines that popped up, the pictures of saints. The Xeroxed signs that covered every street pole downtown. A man or a woman in a family picture from a wedding or a birthday or bar mitzvah. ‘Have you seen Carla? Last seen Tuesday morning in Windows on the World.’”

She continues, “They tell us to get over it, they say to move on, and they mean it well: We can't bring an air of tragedy into the future. But I will never get over it. To get over it is to get over the guy who stayed behind on a high floor with his friend who was in a wheelchair. To get over it is to get over the woman by herself with the sign in the darkness: ‘America You Are Not Alone.’ To get over it is to get over the guys who ran into the fire and not away from the fire.”

“You've got to be loyal to pain sometimes to be loyal to the glory that came out of it.”

E. J Dionne, in a September 7, 2011 screed for the Washington Post, suggests it is time to leave 9/11 behind.  "After we honor the 10th anniversary of the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, we need to leave the day behind. Al-Qaeda is a dangerous enemy. But our country and the world were never threatened by the caliphate of its mad fantasies."

From the men and women who began that dreadful Tuesday morning sitting at their desk or in an airport to the brave passengers on Flight 93 who defied their murderers to prevent the murder of others on the ground to the rescuers who stared death in the face, we will weep and offer our deepest sympathy.  To the children, spouses and friends of those who left them that day we say you are not alone.

On Sunday, September 16, 2001, during a two-hour special presentation of Fox News Sunday, Tony Snow offered a moving commentary:

"Good and evil almost never express themselves as harshly and clearly as they did Tuesday morning. People we don't know slaughtered people we do and they did it with contemptuous calm. Yet, even as clouds of dust and smoke rose from the rubble, even as family members tortured by hope and doubt took to the streets with pictures and pleas, even as mobs celebrated in Gaza, Cairo, and Baghdad, something shook itself sluggishly to life and that something is a sense of ourselves.”

“Kindness flourished amid the flames: a couple carried a disabled man down sixty-eight flights of stairs, a priest crouched to give last rites as a mighty tower collapsed, and the hand of God closed about him. A man and woman, their hope gone, held each other and leaped. A solitary candle, a flag, a tear. These are the tokens of our renewal.”

“The United States had a spirit before it had a name; one of faith and freedom, of ambition tempered by piety. We once were a nation of neighbors and friends, we are again today. We once were a nation of hardship-tested dreamers, we are again today. We once were a nation under God and we are again today.”

“Our enemies attacked one nation, they will encounter another. For they underestimated us. Today in our grief and in our rage, our determination and hope, we've summoned what's best and noblest in us; the kinship that awes our enemies and friends alike. We are again Americans."

On October 8, 2001 President Bush addressed the nation.  In his speech he revealed, “I recently received a touching letter that says a lot about the state of America in these difficult times, a letter from a fourth-grade girl with a father in the military.  ‘As much as I don’t want my dad to fight,’ she wrote, ‘I’m willing to give him to you.’ This is a precious gift.  The greatest she could give.  This young girl knows what America is all about.”

For anyone, anyone, to say we must leave 9/11 behind must have a black, cold heart.  I will never forget.  May God bless America today and every day.


Linked at Proof Positive and Say Anything Blog.  Thank you both.  I am honored.
Linked at Frugal CafĂ©.  Thank you so much Vicki.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

9/11 Ten Years After: Iconic Photograph Of The Pentagon

Flames and smoke pour from the Pentagon on September 11, 2001, after a direct hit from American Airlines flight 77.

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

9/11 Ten Years After: Iconic Photographs

Firefighters grieve for their colleagues following the collapse of the World Trade Center towers. Over 300 firefighters and paramedics were in the towers trying to rescue victims when the buildings collapsed. 

Monday, September 5, 2011

In Football Terms, Barry Is About To Be Sacked


I never thought I would see the day that I would quote anything from Maureen Dowd, the swayback nag of the Looney Left.  To my surprise, she has emerged from her persistent vegetative state, for now.
Dowd writes, “The leader who was once a luminescent, inspirational force is now just a guy in a bad spot.”
[SNIP]
“Obama is still suffering from the Speech Illusion, the idea that he can come down from the mountain, read from a Teleprompter, cast a magic spell with his words and climb back up the mountain, while we scurry around and do what he proclaimed.”
The days of spinning illusions in a Greek temple in a football stadium are done.  The One is dancing on the edge of one term.”
The Errand Boy Sent By Grocery Clerks will address the nation on the very night that the 2011 NFL season kicks off in Green Bay with the league's past two Super Bowl champions taking the stage. 
I can’t wait to see the Nielsen ratings for the speech that the White House is now underplaying compared to the ratings for the season opener.
I say The One is gonna get sacked.  He’s already fumbled his presidency.
There will be nothing new in his speech.  Zero.  Period. 

Sunday, September 4, 2011

Sarah Palin: "They Called Us Un-American"


Amid the rain in Indianola, Iowa thousands gathered to hear the firebrand speak.  Talking heads of every stripe had, for weeks, predicted that Sarah Palin would or wouldn’t announce her entry into the 2012 presidential race.
She took the stage to the sound of chants from the crowd of “Run, Sarah, Run.”  The rain stopped and Palin began her forty-two minute speech that included her bedrock theme of restoring America, American exceptionalism and developing American energy resources.
At one point, perhaps to remind everyone of how she’d been outspent in her own campaigns in Alaska, she said, “Like you, I’m not for sale.”  I think this speaks explicitly to how the corporate-controlled media remain flummoxed by her motives.
No one knows with any certainty what Sarah’s plans are for 2012.  One thing is sure; she plans to speak forcefully to Americans that this administration is not winning the future.  “[It is] losing our country and with it the American dream.”

She reminded Americans—not those who live in New York, Washington or LA—but ordinary Americans who live in the heartland of this country that they were part of a movement.  “You got up off your couch; you came down from the deer stand, you came out of the duck blind; you got off the John Deere; and we took to the streets,” she said.
"We can confront the problem," she said, "[A]nd we can achieve lasting reform...We will be demonized; they'll mock you; they'll make things up; they'll tell you to go to hell...We won't say, 'No, you go to hell,' we won't say that...No, the road isn't easy, but it's nothing compared to the suffering and the sacrifice of those who came before us."
Then, to hammer the point home, she paraphrased The Great Emancipator saying, “We shall nobly save, not meanly lose, this last best hope on Earth.”
The most recent Fox News polls show 74% of voters think Palin should not run.  For the 66% of Tea Party members who think she should not run, the unflappable Sarah said, “Polls?  Nah...They’re for strippers and cross-country skiers.”
Gutsy broad, that Sarah.


Friday, September 2, 2011

Snubbed: What’s Good For Bush Is Good For Obama


King Putt will honor NASCAR champion Jimmie Johnson and the eleven other Chase drivers from last year in a White House ceremony on Wednesday, September 7th—but nearly half of the 2010 playoff contenders won't be there.

NASCAR said Thursday that five drivers—Greg Biffle, Kurt Busch, Carl Edwards, Kevin Harvick and Tony Stewart—will not be attending the White House visit due to "schedule conflicts."

Jeff Gluck, who is reporting the snub, bellyaches that, “For a sport that prides itself on patriotism, having so many drivers turn down the president’s invitation simply seems strange.”

Robbie Cooper, at Urban Grounds, thinks Jeff is getting wrapped around the axle.  Cooper thinks “[T]his move will actually make these exceptionally patriotic drivers even more popular with their even-more patriotic fans. NASCAR fans don’t like Obama precisely because of his disdain for the very things that NASCAR fans love: fast cars, guns, Bibles, America…”

Rick Moran steers the conversation in a different direction. “The sneering condescension of the left for "NASCAR Dads" has not gone unnoticed among the ranks of drivers—most of whom have a pretty good PR sense when it comes to their fans. Like C&W singers, the bond between a driver and his fans is very close and it is not surprising that since most fans of NASCAR have strong feelings against the president, that drivers would forgo the opportunity to be a prop in his re-election campaign.”
“As for Gluck's ‘patriotism’ shot—is he really equating patriotism with being an extra in a campaign commercial for a candidate they don't support? Besides, I don't recall hearing that argument during the Bush years when dozens of lefties from every walk of life dissed Bush by either turning down invitations, or by showing up and ‘speaking truth to power.’  Politics is politics and what's good for one side, is good for the other.”
“You go, boys.”
Being neither a king nor a god, Americans are not at the beck and call of the errand boy sent by grocery clerks.  This “snub” serves as a delightful reminder for President Present.
Via Memeorandum

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