ShayneBlog

2012-01-29T17:35:00.000-06:00

Through the Prism of Race
It doesn't matter what we say, you'll call us 'racists' anyway

I'm really angry. In fact, since I began writing this little blog, I don't think anything (aside from an attack on Israel) has made me this mad. Look, I've made no doubt where my political leanings are. With that said, there is more to being a conservative than voting for the Republican nominee. Half the time, conservatives care little for their nominee but only vote for the candidate because the alternative is much, much worse. Three years of Obama have proven that once again.

But back to topic; my anger.

It has widely been reported, by members of our beloved mainstream media, that anyone who dares disagree with President Obama is a racist. It doesn't matter if the criticism against him is due to his poor record on economic issues, his dangerous naivete on foreign policy or even his seemingly endless campaigning, while the country lurches towards another civil war.

Simply stated, anything said about the President in a bad light deems the attacker a racist.

And why is that? Well, obviously the first thought that comes to mind is the fact that President Obama is the first black man to hold the office. That alone is a tremendous accomplishment for a nation that was dealing with serious racial inequality (at the very least) just 40 years ago. That there is no question as to how miserably black Americans were treated in this country during many of our generation's lives, gives excellent reason many - not just blacks - tremendous pride for eschewing the prejudices of old and attempting to create the society that Martin Luther King, Jr. prayed and spoke about.

And yet, as far as we have come, there are so many of us who still demand to see everything in life through the prism of race. It these people's world, blacks voting over 90% for Obama in 2008 was perfectly fine. But should a white candidate receive that amount, he is more than likely to be considered a member of the KKK, who wants white supremacy to rule the land.

When George W. Bush was President, he was mercilessly mocked as a buffoon, an ape, a terrorist and the ultimate evil (all by the Left). There was even a movie that was released showing his assassination, for crying out loud. The vitriol placed against the President was so vicious he is still being threatened by leftists the world over.

Yet, when anyone on the right says ANYTHING even remotely derogatory (and yes, I admit some things aren't just derogatory), the media immediately claims the GOP candidate is using "code words" from Jim Crow days. The point, of course, is a tactic that is used by leftists throughout history. And that is when you have no argument to make about the policy, demean to neutralize your opponent. I've seen this tactic every time I've sat through each and every commentary on MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CNN and CBS.

And it isn't just on the news shows. Pick up a newspaper and read the New York Times or Washington Post. Often times, it's much more subtle that a flat out "Republicans are racists" meme. However, almost every time someone writes about the political race for president, the author always finds reason to attack the GOP candidate for not caring about Black people.

For example, Newt Gingrich and his calling Obama the "Food Stamp President." Even when Gingrich clearly states that there are more white folks receiving food stamps than black folks, network hosts (too many to mention here) still claim he is slamming black folks. How, exactly? Do the hosts at MSNBC, CBS or any of the other non-Fox networks feel only blacks are on food stamps?

How about Maureen Dowd of the New York Times? When Joe Wilson shouted the words "you lie" when Obama was lying during a joint session of Congress (September 2009), Dowd wrote the following day, "But, fair or not, what I heard was an unspoken word in the air: You lie, boy!" Perhaps Wilson should have shown more respect for the office of the president. But after watching the Supreme Court justices berated openly during the State of the Union address, and also being told that he and other Republicans should shut up "because I won," Wilson was clearly frustrated that no one dare question Obama.

Look, there is no doubt anymore that the main stream press is the only reason Barack Obama is President today. He had no experience running even the smallest business, he openly called for wealth distribution, he openly called for the fundamental transformation of the greatest country the world has ever known, he criticized those who "cling to religion and guns," and he sat in the pew for 20 years listening to ravings of vicious, anti-American, anti-Semitic preacher, who by the way inspired the President to write his first autobiography. In addition, LA Times is sitting on a video of Obama praising "his good friend" and known anti-Jewish bigot Rashid Khalidi. Khalidi is a harsh critic of Israel, has made statements supportive of Palestinian terror and has worked on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization while it was involved in anti-Western terrorism and was labeled by the State Department as a terror group.

And yet, when the Democrat primaries were underway, the press destroyed former favorite-daughter Hillary Clinton - often portraying her unfavorably in photographs, while constantly publishing pictures of Obama with a halo behind his head. But the press' man agenda was the removal of President Bush at all costs. For proof, go back to 2004, when Dan Rather ran a story with forged military records of the President. Of course, Bush won re-election while Rather was finally outed as a left-wing partisan hack.

So what is it today that angered me so and brought up all these emotions?

Jesse Jackson.

Yes, the good old Reverend who was so ticked off by Obama's stealing his thunder that he once threatened to "cut his nuts out." during a break in an interview (live mike caught his comment). Well, Jesse seems to have gotten over himself and has joined the ranks of those who see everything through the prism of race. In defense of Jackson (not that he deserves it), He's ALWAYS seen the world through the prism of race and he's also ALWAYS been dishonest about it. After all, one of Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" is that the ends always justify the means." Ok, that was Karl Marx's ideology as well. But we are comparing two sides of the same coin. On Saturday morning, at Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow PUSH forum, broadcast nationally on the Word Network, the bad Reverend got worked up over the photograph of Arizona Governor Jan Brewer pointing at the chest of President Obama. Here's what Jackson said:

"She knew what she was doing. She was telling him off. She was cutting him down to his size. She must never get away with that. Even George Wallace did not put his finger in Dr. King’s face. Say, enough is enough."

Wow. I love the "enough is enough" comment, as if Democrats are so civil themselves. But what gets me is the sheer hypocrisy. First of all, Jackson immediately compares Governor Brewer and President Obama to George Wallace and Martin Luther King. Seriously? Aside from Wallace being a Democrat and King being a Republican (bet you didn't know that, huh?), Jackson is clearly race baiting here. Wallace was famous for sending Bull Connor to stop the "uppity Negroes" in Selma. Wallace was a terrible bigot who split the Democrat votes in 1968 and 1972. Jackson isn't calling Obama "Wallace" here. He's calling Brewer that (and likewise comparing Obama to King - which is an ENORMOUS stretch of the imagination).

So, according to Jesse Jackson, it's absolutely racist to point your finger at someone without them being racists. Okay, let's assume this to be true. Then how do you explain these pictures:

Is President Obama a racist? Is Jesse Jackson? Well, we know the answer to question #2.

The truth of the matter is, Governor Brewer is not a racist for pointing her finger at Obama anymore than President Obama is a racist for pointing his finger at Prime Minister Netanyahu. But the agenda of Jesse Jackson, just like the agenda of the liberal press, is to make ALL conservatives look like racists. The ironic part of this is it was the Democrats who fought for slavery and the Democrats who tried to destroy Lyndon Johnson for the Civil Rights Amendment. It was Democrats who created, funded and supported the Ku Klux Klan.

When you look at the damage that has been done to the black community over the past 4 decades, you can see much of it stemmed from Johnson's "Great Society." I do not begrudge the Democrats for wanting to help those less fortunate then themselves. It's a very noble act. But when your actions cause so much damage, it matters not how good the intentions are. The fact that conservatives, like myself, believe there is a better way to help less fortunate folks (white or black or purple or green), does not mean we hate Blacks. Quite the contrary. We simply do not care what the color is of your skin. Unlike the left, we believe all people should have the opportunity to raise themselves up to as successful as they can. We do not believe in pushing someone down to make them like everyone else. We believe in raising everyone up who wishes to be raised up.

Unfortunately, people like Jackson need racial strife to continue in order for him to be relevant (and financially rewarded). This is why he was so in favor of castrating the President. He saw him as a threat to his standing and felt the need to knock Obama down, in order to raise himself up. Of course, he was soundly derided for it and thus needed to do something to rebuild his image. How better to do that than by reaching into the Democrat playbook of the politics of personal destruction? And with Obama being black, it's an easy sell to others who see the world through the prism of race. Of course, Jackson has tried this before, especially after his "Hymietown" comments and after his affair with Karin Stanford, a 39-year-old worker at his Rainbow/PUSH Coalition office in Washington (while counseling President Clinton after his relationship with Monica Lewinsky became public.

Obama was supposed to bring in a new era of a post-racial America. At least, that was the hope and expectation of many who voted for him. Instead, he surrounds himself with extreme race-baiters whose agenda is not to move America forward, but to punish those who they feel oppressed them. Sadly, not only are they trying to punish the wrong people, they are seriously hurting the fabric of this country.

Jesse Jackson says "enough is enough." Too bad he doesn't really mean it.

2012-01-29T09:28:00.003-06:00

Ten Great Songs From One Great Year

1973

(for an earlier version of 1973, click here)

What was a harbinger of history to come, January 1st brought the nations of Great Britain, the Republic of Ireland and Denmark into the European Economic Community, which later becomes the European Union. Later that month, the U.S. Supreme Court gives its' final verdict in the matter of Roe v. Wade, which overturns states abortion bans.

In March, as the Watergate scandal begins to target President Nixon, the White House announces that the last American soldier has left Vietnam. The first week of April brought three "firsts." The first handheld cell phone, the opening of the World Trade Center's Twin Towers (the Sears Tower in Chicago opens a month later) and the first designated hitter in Major League Baseball (Ron Bloomberg of the New York Yankees). A couple of weeks later, Federal Express begins operations in Memphis, Tennessee.

NASA launches the Skylab program in May. Also that month, Secretariat becomes the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years. The Middle East is once again at the center of world events, as Black September members open fire at the Athens airport; 3 are killed, 55 injured. This was the same Palestinian group that murdered 11 Israeli athletes the year before, during the Olympics. Just over a month later, Egyptian and Syrian forces coordinate a sneak attack on Israel on Yom Kippur, the holiest day on the Jewish calendar. While the Arabs score a first strike win, Israel eventually regroups and defeats the Arab armies.

The end of the year brought in a change in the U.S. Vice Presidency, as Spiro Agnew resigns following his no contest plea to charges of income tax evasion. Gerald R. Ford is sworn in to replace him.

Midnight Train to Georgia -- Gladys Knight and the Pips (lyrics)

This was written and originally recorded by Jim Weatherly, who had a solo hit in 1974 with "The Need To Be." Weatherly explained the origin of this song in an interview with Gary James: "the song actually came about after a phone call I had with Farrah Fawcett. Lee Majors was a friend of mine. We'd played in the Flag Football League together in L.A. He had just started dating Farrah. One day I called Lee and Farrah answered the phone. We were just talking and she said she was packing. She was gonna take the midnight plane to Houston to visit her folks. So, it just stayed with me. After I got off the phone, I sat down and wrote the song probably in about 30 to 45 minutes."

Time in a Bottle -- Jim Croce (lyrics)

This hit #1 14 weeks after Croce was killed in a plane crash. Croce started touring after he completed I Got A Name. On September 30, 1973 a plane carrying Croce and 5 other people crashed upon takeoff as he was leaving one college venue to another 70 miles away. No one survived the accident, and among those killed was Maury Muehleisen, who played guitar on Croce's albums. This song entered the Top 40 of the Billboard Hot 100 chart for the week ending December 1, 1973 and finally reached #1 for the week ending December 29, a little over 3 months after he died.

The Night The Lights Went Out In Georgia -- Vicki Lawrence (lyrics)

This song tells the tale of a man who finds out from his friend Andy that his wife had cheated on him with both Andy and a guy named Seth. This being Georgia, he gets a gun and sets out to kill Andy, but when he gets there Andy is already dead. The police show up, arrest him for killing Andy and he is hanged. The singer then reveals that she is the man's sister and that she shot Andy and also killed her brother's wife. This was the only hit for Lawrence. She was an actress on The Carol Burnett Show and starred in Mama's Family.

Money -- Pink Floyd (lyrics)

This song is about the bad things money can bring. Ironically, it made Pink Floyd lots of cash, as the album sold over 34 million copies. Many studio effects were used on this song. They were using a new 16-track recorder, which allowed them to layer sounds much easier, but complex studio techniques like this still took a long time to do in 1973, as there weren't digital recorders and samplers available like we have today.

Crocodile Rock -- Elton John (lyrics)

This tells the story of a guy in the '50s and '60s who frequented a restaurant where the patrons loved an obscure dance called the Crocodile Rock. Because of all the events that happened in the '60s, however, this unknown little dance forever vanished into history and no one cared anymore. Even his girlfriend, who also enjoyed "burning up to the Crocodile Rock," left him. It's a catchy little song with really sad lyrics.

Killing Me Softly With His Song -- Roberta Flack (lyrics)

This was written by the songwriting team of Charles Fox and Norman Gimbel, and first recorded by Lori Lieberman in 1972. The story goes that the song was inspired by Don McLean, a singer/songwriter famous for his hit "American Pie." After being mesmerized by one of his concerts at the Troubadour theater in Los Angeles - and in particular McLean's song "Empty Chairs" - Lieberman described what she saw of McLean's performance to Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox, who were writing songs for her new album, and they wrote the song for her.

The Morning After -- Maureen McGovern (lyrics)

This was written by Al Kasha and Joel Hirschhorn for the Oscar-winning movie The Poseidon Adventure, starring Gene Hackman. The original title of the song was "Why Must There Be a Morning After?" During the spring of 1972, Russ Regan (the head of 20th Century Records at the time) began looking for someone to record "The Morning After" for the singles market. He originally offered the song to Barbra Streisand, but she turned it down in favor of other projects. He then remembered hearing (months before) a demo tape from a secretary who was a part-time Folk singer (and who had never made a record before) named Maureen McGovern. Regan liked her voice so much, that he immediately hired her sight unseen to record the song.

Feelin' Stronger Every Day - Chicago (lyrics)

In a 1991 interview, Peter Cetera said that while the song is about "both healing and moving on after the end of a relationship," it could just as well apply to the dynamic wave of success that Chicago was riding at this time. This was their second #1 album on the US album charts, their third two-time platinum album, and they would yet have two more consecutive #1's on the US album charts. This song comes right at what many could argue was the peak of their career, although even the lowest of Chicago's career could pass for moderate success for other bands.

Could It Be I'm Falling In Love - The Spinners (lyrics)

"Could it be I'm Falling in Love" was written by Melvin Steals and Mervin Steals, who according to Chancellor of Soul, were two songwriter brothers working for The Spinners' label, Atlantic Records, who were sometimes credited as "Mystro and Lyric." If The Spinners sound a little more like Motown than New York, that's because they used to be signed with Motown Records. The self-titled Spinners album was their first produced on their shiny new Atlantic contract. They were even known as "The Motown Spinners" before, but changed their name to "The Detroit Spinners" after moving to Atlantic. Both of these names are more commonly heard in the UK, to avoid confusion with a British group also called The Spinners. In the US, they're usually just called "Spinners." As a side note, I think I was the only white Jewish kid in Dallas who loved "Soul Train."

You're So Vain -- Carly Simon (lyrics)

The person Simon is singing about in this song remains a mystery, as she has never made it clear who she wrote it about; rumors include Warren Beatty, Kris Kristofferson, Cat Stevens, and Mick Jagger, all of whom she had affairs with. The media and the general public seemed to want this to be about a specific person, however, and Simon was happy to indulge. In a 2008 interview to promote her album This Kind of Love, she said: "When I had the line 'You're so vain, you probably think this song is about you,' that was definitely about one person. The rest of the descriptions basically came from my relationship with that person."

BONUS TRACK

Playground In My Mind -- Clint Holmes (lyrics)
(by request/Elizabeth Rand)

The nursery rhyme-styled song features Holmes performing a duet with producer Paul Vance's son Philip (he passed away 12/13/09) on the chorus. This song was written by Vance and Lee Pockriss, released in the U.S. in July 1972 but did not reach the Hot 100 until March 1973, where it stayed for 23 weeks. Holmes as been a Las Vegas attraction for many years and was the announcer on The Late Show Starring Joan Rivers, which ran from 1986-1988.

2012-01-22T09:20:00.000-06:00

Ten Great Songs From One Great Year

2000

While most people looked at 2000 as the beginning of a new millennium, the next year (2001) actually has this designation. However, this did not stop the enormous celebration and festivities that occurred at it's onset. Soon after the parties died down, the new decade introduced the marriage of giants AOL and Time-Warner, the largest corporate merger in history. Also in tech news, software leader Microsoft was sued by the US government for violating anti-trust laws. In January, the Dow Jones Industrial Average peaked at 11,722.9. This became the peak of the dot.com bubble.

In an April predawn raid, federal agents seize 6-year old Elián González from his relatives' home in Miami, Florida and flew him to his Cuban father in Washington, DC, ending one of the most publicized custody battles in U.S. history. Politically, the year brought in the elections of Vladamir Putin in Russia, Vicente Fox in Mexico and of course, George W. Bush in the United States.

In the Middle East, "Palestinians" use Ariel Sharon's Temple Mount visit as a pretext to rioting in Jerusalem. This came just a few short months after Israel completely withdrew her troops from Lebanon. Two weeks later, members of Al-Qaeda, a militant Islamic organization, headed by Osama Bin-Laden, badly damaged the USS Cole in a suicide bombing mission. the terrorist act killed 17 crew members and wounded at least 39.

Lastly, this was the year Charles Schultz died and Dora the Explorer was born.

Kyptonite -- 3 Doors Down

Commonly thought to contain a shout out to the movie Superman ("Kryptonite" is the substance that rendered Superman powerless - it could only be found on his home planet of Krypton), and to Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, Brad Arnold says this song has neither. He explains how it all came together: "That line is just like a happenstance line. That song is so little about Superman. It's just really about that question. That's just something that everybody can identify with." He says that it was either Part I or II of the Superman movies that had Superman fighting an enemy in space, where they floated around to the dark side of the moon. He says, however, that he wrote this song before the movie came out. "And I was like, 'What?!' he laughs. "And it was after I wrote that song. That was weird."

Smooth -- Santana ft. Rob Thomas

Clive Davis is a legendary record executive who was the mastermind behind this album. Santana had not had a hit since "Hold On" in 1982, so Davis teamed him up with contemporary musicians like Wyclef Jean, Everlast and Lauryn Hill to make sure the younger generation took notice. The result was a wildly successful album that went over well with Santana's old fans and created a legion of new ones. This was the first single, and it spent 12 weeks at #1 in the US.

Oops!...I Did It Again -- Britney Spears

Written by Max Martin, a Swedish producer who wrote Britney's first hit, "Baby One More Time." The songs sound very similar. Spears took on a racier image when she released this as the video played up her sexuality, and the line "I'm not that innocent" made people question her claim that she was a virgin. The first single from her second album, this CD has sold over 9 million copies in the US. Her first album sold 13 million. A record 155 radio stations added this to their playlists the first week it was released. This reflects the hype surrounding the single.

Stan -- Eminem ft. Dido

This tells the story of a fan obsessed with Eminem. When his letters are not answered, he puts his pregnant girlfriend in his trunk and drives off a bridge. The song ends with Eminem answering his letter and realizing Stan was the man in the news who drove off the bridge.

Eminem performed this at the 2001 Grammys with Elton John playing piano and singing the Dido part. The Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) protested the performance, claiming Eminem promoted hatred. The part of this song that was deemed anti-gay was the line where Stan writes, "We could have been together" and Eminem replies, "That's the kind of thing that makes me think we shouldn't meet each other." Elton John didn't have a problem with it.

Absolutely (Story Of A Girl) -- Nine Days

With bands like Vertical Horizon and Lifehouse all over the airwaves, Nine Days was a welcome addition to playlists with "Absolutely (Story of a Girl)." The song was written by their lead singer John Hampson, and the girl who "Cried a river and drown the whole world" was his girlfriend, Teresa Savino, who later became his wife. The song was a huge success, but Nine Days was not able to follow it up; Epic Records dropped the band and wouldn't release their second album because they didn't hear a hit. Hampson became a high school English teacher. It wasn't until 2007 before they had finally released a followup EP Slow Motion Life (Part One), with 6 new songs.

Breathless -- The Coors

The Corrs are a family group formed in Dundalk, Ireland in 1990 by Andrea (lead vocals), Sharon (violin), Caroline (drums) and Jim Corr (guitar/keyboards). They blend the music of their Irish background with contemporary Pop/Rock. Their popularity was restricted to Ireland until 1994, when the American ambassador to the country invited The Corrs to perform at the 1994 World Cup in Boston. This led to a support slot on Celine Dion's 1996 tour, which the group joined just after an appearance at that year's Olympic Games in Atlanta. Their album Talk On Corners became the biggest-selling Irish album in the UK and was the top selling album in 1998 in Britain.

Californication -- Red Hot Chili Peppers

A song about the deterioration of society, this reflects how the world is becoming very superficial and plastic, much like California. Amazingly it appeared that writers for the Showtime comedy drama Californication did not negotiate with the Red Hot Chili Peppers before borrowing this song's title for their show. Consequently the rock group filed a lawsuit against Showtime on November 19, 2007 seeking damages and restitution and asking the court to issue a permanent injunction barring further use of the title. In addition, one of the characters in the program played by Rachel Miner was given the nickname Dani California, the title of a 2006 Chili Peppers song, and one episode featured a character describing California as "the edge of the world and all of western civilization," a line from "Californication."

Sailin' to Philadelphia -- Marc Knopfler with James Taylor

The title track of Knopfler's second solo release is drawn from Thomas Pynchon's novel about Charles Mason and Jeremiah Dixon, the two English surveyors who established the border between Pennsylvania and Maryland, Delaware and Virginia in the 1760s. The border later became known as the Mason-Dixon Line and has been used since the 1820s to denote the border between the Southern United States and the Northern United States. The album contains featured vocal appearances by James Taylor, Van Morrison, and Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford. AMERICA recorded this song on their most recent release My Back Pages (2011).

She's So High -– Tal Bachman

Bachman is the son of Canadian rocker Randy Bachman, who is famous for his work in The Guess Who and Bachman-Turner Overdrive. This is Tal's first single - his sound is much more mellow and mainstream than his father's. In 2003, Kurt Nilsen's cover version became Norway's best selling single ever. Nilsen is the answer to a great trivia question: who won the only "World Idol" competition? He won the one-off show in 2004 competing for Norway against the Idol winners from other countries, including Kelly Clarkson, who came in second.

There She Goes -– Sixpence None the Richer

This was originally recorded by the The La's, a promising band from England who developed a cult following in America. They released it as a single in 1988, but it didn't chart. In 1990, when The La's finally released their first album, they re-released this as a single - this time it charted at #13 in the UK and #49 in the US. Critics loved the album, but the La's disappeared soon after it was released. Sixpence None The Richer's version became a hit when it was used in the movie Snow Day. Many people believe the song is about shooting up heroin, with "she" being the drug.

BONUS TRACK

Thong Song -- SisqO

Seven years after "Baby Got Back" and "Rump Shaker," the world was ready for another Booty song; something that can play in the clubs and unapologetically celebrate women who show off their fine posteriors, in this case by wearing a thong.Sisqó (real name: Mark Andrews) was a member of the '90s R&B group Dru Hill, known more for their smooth sounds than their club beats. Working with the songwriting/production duo The Funktwons (Tim Kelley and Bob Robinson), Sisqó created this jam that combined his soulful vocals and distinctive look with a pumping beat. With lots of airplay on MTV, the song picked up speed as the network promoted it on their spring break coverage, and it remained popular through the summer of 2000. Sisqó was on the A-list for a few months, showing up in a Pepsi commercial and parties at the Playboy mansion. His follow-up single "Incomplete" charted at #25, but he faded fast, releasing another solo album that tanked in 2001 and falling into obscurity and depression. In 2003, he faced gun charges for shooting at a car, but he emerged a few years later as a reality TV star, showing up on Gone Country and the UK version of Celebrity Big Brother.

Disclaimer: Some of the "facts" listed are from songfacts.com or Wikipedia.

2012-01-15T10:00:00.000-06:00

Ten Great Songs From One Great Year

1980

A new decade to replace the old. The end of the 70s had become filled with overindulgence, drugs and bad music. It felt as if, overnight, the world woke up to a new "Morning in a America." Of course, the biggest change was due to the election on Ronald Reagan, in November. In truth, 1980 was just as bad as the year before. The hostages were still in Iran, Jimmy Carter was failing and filled with malaise and the world was becoming a much more dangerous place.

Politically, the year started with the ABSCAM scandal, which targeted numerous politicians in a bribery sting. Only one, Senator John Murtha (D-PA) was able to overcome the scandal and continue a lifetime political career. March was the month when President Carter announced the American boycott of the Summer Olympics (The USSR boycotted the 1984 games in retaliation). Rosie Ruiz won the Boston Marathon, only to be discovered later exposed as a fraud and stripped of her award. In music, the Mi Amigo, the boat that housed pirate radio Radio Caroline, sank in March. It was the ship that influenced the movie "Pirate Radio."

On the same day in May, Mt. St. Helens, in Washington, erupts, killing 57 and causing $3 billion in damage and race riots break out after a Tampa, Florida court acquits 4 white police officers of killing Arthur McDuffie, a black insurance executive. Miami was also the scene of the Marial boatlift, when over 125,000 made their way from Cuba, trying to escape Castro's regime.

December was particularly tragic. American missionary Jean Donovan and three Roman Catholic nuns are murdered by a military death squad in El Salvador while volunteering to do charity work during the country's civil war. Four people were murdered at Bob's Big Boy on La Cienga Blvd. in Los Angeles and four others were injured by two armed robbers, in what was one of the city's brutalest crimes ever. And of course, the assassination of John Lennon, by Mark David Chapman.

Brass In Pocket (I'm Special) -- The Pretenders

The song's title came about after The Pretenders first ever UK gig, when they were in the communal dressing room with The Strangeways, who they were supporting. Chrissie Hynde wanted to know whose trousers were sprawled over the back of a chair. One of The Strangeways, Ada Wilson, said: "I'll have them if there's any brass in the pockets." When Chrissie inquired what he meant by brass, it was explained to her that brass is a northern slang term for money. Chrissie fell in love with the expression and was inspired to write the song. (Songfacts)

All Out Of Love -- Air Supply

Air Supply formed in 1975 when Graham Russell and Russell Hitchcock met as cast members on the stage musical Jesus Christ Superstar. In 1978 they toured their home country of Australia with Rod Stewart. They were then invited to tour North America with Stewart, enabling them to break into the American market. The following year, Clive Davis signed them to Arista Records and released "Lost in Love" internationally. "All Out Of Love" was their next single on Arista. (Songfacts)

Drivin' My Life Away -- Eddie Rabbitt

With the exception of "I Love A Rainy Night," This was Eddie Rabbit's most successful song, reaching #1 on the Country charts and selling over a million copies. The song was inspired by the hectic lives of his roadies, whose constant traveling made them virtual strangers to their wives, families, and friends. This was featured in the motion picture Roadie, which starred Art Carney and Meat Loaf. (Songfacts)

Ride Like the Wind -- Christopher Cross

This song the story of a condemned man on the run to Mexico. The story line is one not often heard on Adult Contemporary radio, but the precise instrumentation and soaring background vocals, which were provided by Michael McDonald, helped make the song a hit. The eponymous album spurned 3 top #20 hits, including the #1 hit "Sailing." Cross scored 5 Grammy awards in 1981 for the LP.

Take Your Time (Do It Right) -- The S.O.S. Band

This was the only top 40 hit for this Atlanta, Georgia based band. Originally called "Santa Monica', they changed their name to the SOS band because "the letters stand for "sounds of success." They recorded 8 albums over the next decade, with their last being, One of Many Nights.

Misunderstanding -- Genesis

This was one of the first songs written by Phil Collins. The lyrics deal with the problems Collins was having with his marriage. After taking over as the group's lead singer, he spent less and less time with his wife. They eventually divorced. While "Follow You, Follow Me" was their first single, "Misunderstanding" was a bigger hit and made a much bigger impact on American radio.

We Live For Love -- Pat Benatar

This was Pat Benatar's 3rd straight top 30 song from her debut album In the Heat of the Night. But it was something of a departure from her typical sound. She sang in a high key, and some radio listeners mistook her for Deborah Harry from Blondie. Benatar and Harry both appeared in the 1980 movie Union City, although neither sang a note.

Jojo -- Boz Scaggs

Between 1976-1980, Scaggs had a number of top 40 hits, including the #3 hit "Lowdown." But his biggest success was in 1980, when he hit the Top 17 four times, with "Breakdown Dead Ahead" and "Jojo", from his Middle Man LP, "Look What You've Done to Me" from the Urban Cowboy Soundtrack and "Miss Sun" from his Greatest Hits album. He took an 8 year hiatus and returned to the charts in 1988, with "Heart of Mine" which only peaked at #35.
In the summer of 2010, Scaggs began a tour with Donald Fagen and Michael McDonald. They are performing together as one band billed as The Dukes of September Rhythm Revue. The show includes classic rock, soul/R&B songs by various artists and personal repertoire songs from all three headliners.

Seven Bridges Road -- The Eagles

The "Seven Bridges Road" is Woodley Road in Montgomery, Alabama. This song describes the emotions the singers feel as they travel the road, which does have 7 bridges and moss covered trees. This was written and originally recorded by the Country singer Steve Young in 1969 on his debut album Rock Salt & Nails. It is Young's most famous song. This song was the only "new" song on the Eagles Live album, which turned out to be their final album until 1994's Hell Freezes Over.

Hurts So Bad -- Linda Ronstadt

Throughout her career, Linda Ronstadt wore many different hats. Her start was in country and western and moved into soft rock. In 1980, she took a different path and released a harder edged record which featured two top 10 hits, "How Do I Make you" and this track - newer, harder version of the old Little Anthony and the Imperials ballad. Her new style did not last long, as she was soon moving on to old standards and Disney-style pop tunes.

Bonus Track

In America -- Charlie Daniels Band

The events that became known as The Iranian Hostage Crisis caused Charlie Daniels' patriot spirit to come alive in a big way, along with those of many other US citizens. This song is his tribute to that spirit. Daniels says, "It was a reawakening of patriotism. That was something that our enemies did that they had no idea what they were doing, because it galvanized America. The line, "Just go and lay your hand on a Pittsburgh Steelers fan" stems from Daniels' feeling that the people in Pittsburgh are "The salt of the earth, the finest, just the greatest people. The strength of America." He says, "I've gone to ball games at different places, but I've always felt the Pittsburgh Steelers fans, especially in the old stadium - I mean, they're steel workers and they're good old guys with blisters, or calluses on their hands. The strength of America is not in Washington D.C., It's in our people, it's on the farms, in the factories. It's the people out here that make this country work. The truck drivers, the farmers. And these people, that's what they were, and I just felt like if you want to go to war, let me take some of these guys with me. Go lay your hand on a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, and you're gonna find out what American anger is, because it's the kind of people they are."

2012-01-08T11:29:00.000-06:00

Ten Great Songs From One Great Year

1968

This was one of the most tumultuous years in American history. As television brings the Vietnam War into America's living rooms, the battle of Khe Sanh: One of the most publicized and controversial battles of the war begins in January. A couple of weeks later, the Tet offensive begins. What should have been the decisive moment for an Allied victory, turns into a nightmare due to President Johnson's inability to present the victory to the people. The war has become increasingly unpopular and the images from television drive that home. In May, the My Lai massacre, which takes place in March, does not become known until the next year. That becomes the defining moment for the anti-War movement.

On the same day, Robert F. Kennedy decides to enter the Presidential race. Later that month, President Johnson, realizing the his re-election chances have dwindled, announces he will not run in the '68 election. Two weeks later, at 6:01 p.m., April 4, a shot rang out as the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. stood on the second floor balcony of the Lorraine Motel, in Memphis, Tennessee. Walter Cronkite announced the news shortly after on CBS Evening News. King died an hour later. A week later, President Johnson signs the Civil Rights Act of 1968. On June 8th, James Earl Ray, longtime petty criminal and supporter of segregationist George Wallace was arrested and charged with King's murder. Although initially confessing, Ray later recanted and claimed until his death in 2008, that he did not pull the trigger.

Three days prior to Ray's arrest, Presidential candidate Robert Kennedy is assassinated following a campaign speech at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, California. He dies the next day. The asssassin, Sirah-Sirhan was a Christian-Arab from Jordan. He told Robert Frost, in a 1969 interview, that he wanted to kill Kennedy because of the candidates long-time support for the State of Israel.

Because of the upheaval within the Democrat Party, which culminated in riots during the Chicago convention, Richard Nixon, the GOP candidate and former Vice-President, defeats the Democrat's compromise pick, Hubert Humphrey. Wallace also siphons many democrat votes in the south, to insure Nixon's victory.

In the lighter side of news, The Beatles released "The White Album," the White house was the scene of the marriage between Julie Nixon (the President's daughter) and David Eisenhower (the grandson of the former President). The year ends with a look to the future, as Apollo 8 enters orbit around the Moon. Astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William A. Anders become the first humans to see the far side of the Moon and planet Earth as a whole.

I've Gotta Get a Message to You -- The Bee Gees

Robin Gibb told The Mail On Sunday November 1, 2009 about this slice of pop melodrama sung from the perspective of a condemned prisoner: "This is about a prisoner on Death Row who only has a few hours to live. He wants the prison chaplain to pass on a final message to his wife. There's a certain urgency about it." This song went #8 in August.

Young Girl -- Gary Puckett and The Union Gap

The song's author, Jerry Fuller explained the inspiration for "Young Girl." "I was on the road a lot as an artist, fronting various groups for many years. I guess every entertainer goes through a time when 14-year-olds look like 20-year-olds. That's somewhat of an inspiration not from my own experience, just knowing that it happens." The song peaked at #2 in March.

(I'm a) Girl Watcher -- The O’Kaysions

The O'Kaysions didn't have many hits, but the North Carolina sextet's energetic "Girl Watcher" remains a staple on the Carolina/Georgia/Florida beach circuit. It became popular again 1987, when Kool and the Gang remade into "Wheel Watcher" for the ABC game show, "Wheel of Fortune." This song peaked at #6.

Angel of the Morning -- Merrilee Rush and The Turnabouts

This tender ballad is surprisingly virtually the same song as the primitive rocker "Wild Thing." Chip Taylor, who wrote both songs explained to Mojo magazine September 2008: "I heard some guy playing 'Wild Thing' real slow on a guitar. It sounded nice. So I did the same, lifting one of my fingers off a chord to create a suspension. Then the words 'There'll be no strings to bind your hands, not if my love can't bind your heart' came out. It was as beautiful a love connection as I could ever feel." Taylor added that it was the producer who added the sweeping strings. This song went to #7 in June. Juice Newton also took this song to the top 10 in the spring of 1981.

Little Green Apples - O.C. Smith

Smith began recording in 1955, but finally hit it the top 40 in 1968, with his hit "The Son of Hickory Holler's Tramp." Two songs later, he hit it big with this ballad. Smith continued to record R&B songs for 20 more years. His last entry was in 1986, with "Brenda."This song peaked at #2 and earned its composer Bobby Russell the 1969 Grammy for Song of the Year. Smith died in 2001, at the age of 69.

Classical Gas -- Mason Williams

This song appeared as a video on the Smothers Brothers' television show, for which Williams was a writer. The song was played behind a video which consisted of nothing more than photographs of great works of classical art flashed at near cinematic speed on the screen. You saw each picture just long enough to recognize it but nowhere nearly long enough to remember the name. The fact that the paintings were classics originated the name. This is one of the first music videos ever produced. This song peaked at #2 in August.

What a Wonderful World -- Louis Armstrong

The 66-year-old Armstrong became the oldest act to top the UK charts when this reached #1. Four years previously Satchmo had become the oldest artist to record a US #1 when "Hello, Dolly!" hit the top spot. While this song only reached the "bubbling under" the top 100 in America, it was a number one hit in Britain and became Armstrong's signature song.

Like To Get To Know You -- Spanky and Our Gang

This song was the follow-up to Spanky and Our Gang's hits "Sunday Will Never Be The Same" and "Lazy Day," and it scored quite well, peaking at #17. This was their last Top 30 hit, though they continued to score a number of minor hits until October 1968, when lead guitarist Malcolm Hale died of accidental carbon monoxide poisoning at the age of 27. Front woman Elaine "Spanky" McFarlane achieved some success as a solo artist, sometimes fronting for The Mamas & The Papas after the tragic death of the late Cass Elliot.

(Sittin'on) On the Dock of the Bay -- Otis Redding

Redding died in a plane crash on December 10, 1967, 6 weeks before this was released and 3 days after he recorded it. It was by far his biggest hit and was also the first ever posthumous #1 single in the US. Redding was a rising star moving toward mainstream success at the time of his death. There is a good chance he would have recorded many more hits if he had lived. The song peaked at #1 on March 16th and stayed there for 6 weeks.

Do You Know the Way to San Jose -- Dionne Warwick

Burt Bacharach and Hal David wrote this. They discovered Dionne Warwick and wrote many of her hits. Burt Bacharach (from Record Collector magazine): "Dionne did not want to record that song. She didn't like it. But we talked her into it and she did it. Her mind changed once it was a hit (laughs). I knew it was a pretty special song and I knew it was a different kind of song, too."This song peaked at #10.

Bonus Track

Mrs. Robinson -- Simon and Garfunkel

Simon began writing this as "Mrs. Roosevelt." He changed it to "Mrs. Robinson" for the movie "The Graduate". He may have written this about Eleanor Roosevelt. Some of the lyrics support this such as "We'd like to help you learn to help yourself. Look around you, all you see are sympathetic eyes" and "Going to the candidates debate. Laugh about it, shout about it. When you've got to choose. Every way you look at it, you lose." Roosevelt was a female rights and black rights activist, always helping everyone but herself during the Great Depression. A lot of the time she seemed to have been running the country as much as FDR, but never would have actually won the presidency because she was female. On the strength of the film, this song rose to #1 in June. The video is taken from the movie.

2012-01-01T10:00:00.003-06:00

Ten Great Songs From One Great Year

1998

The first few months of 1998 were mostly taken up with the scandal of President Clinton, and Monica Lewinsky, a White House intern. By the end of the year, Clinton will have been Impeached by the House of Representatives. Because the House had a Democrat majority, and the votes were tallied along party lines (although an additional 10 Republicans voting against impeachment). Clinton survived the impeachment. However, he was disbarred from practicing law.Another one of the main stories at the time was that Suspected "Unabomber" Theodore Kaczynski pled guilty, and accepted a sentence of life without the possibility of parole. Another major story was the final development of Pakistan's nuclear abilities. This caused tremendous tensions between Pakistan and her neighbor, India.

In July, the International Criminal Court was created to prosecute individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression. In August, however, the United States' embassies of both Kenya and Tanzania are bombed, killing 224 people and injuring over 4,500; they are linked to terrorist Osama Bin Laden, an exile of Saudi Arabia. While Bin Ladin has been on the map of worldwide terror, this is his most audacious move yet.

In sports, this was the year John Elway finally won a Super Bowl (after losing 3 times in landslide loses) and also the Tennessee Volunteers won their first NCAA football championship since 1951. Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa set baseball ablaze with their race to see who would break Roger Maris' home run record. Although both men break the record, McGuire holds the record of 70 (since topped by Barry Bonds). And in Basketball, Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls win their third straight NBA title. This was the 2nd three-peat for the Bulls this decade.

Torn -- Natalie Imbruglia

Iris -- Goo Goo Dolls

Out of my Head -- Fastball

Thank U -- Alanis Morissette

Truly, Madly, Deeply -- Savage Garden

Sex And Candy -- Marcy Playground

Jumper -- Third Eye Blind

Brick -- Ben Folds Five

Sunny Came Home -- Shawn Colvin

As Long As You Love Me -- Backstreet Boys

BONUS TRACK

My dad died in October of this year. During his final weeks, I listened to the Gerry Beckley (of the band AMERICA) album "Van Go Gan" a lot. The song that makes me miss my dad the most is this one:

Kiss of Live -- Gerry Beckley

2011-12-25T10:00:00.000-06:00

Ten Great Songs From One Great Year

1975

The year started with a bang, as on New Year's Day, H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman are both found guilty of the Watergate cover-up. Three weeks later, in the waning days of the Vietnam War, the North Vietnamese Politburo approves the the final military offensive against the South. On April 29th, the United States orders the final evacuation of the last diplomatic, military, and civilian personnel from Vietnam. The next day, Saigon falls to the Communists, ending the war.

In July, An American Apollo and Soviet Soyuz spacecraft dock in orbit, marking the first such link-up between spacecraft from the 2 nations. A couple of months later, NASA launches the Viking 1 planetary probe toward Mars. In Detroit, Teamsters Union president Jimmy Hoffa is reported missing. He has never been found. In September, fugitive Patty Hearst is captured and arrested in San Francisco.

President Ford survived two assassination attempts this year. One by Annette "Squeaky" Fromme, who was a member of Charles Manson's "family" and the other by Sarah Jane Moore, who had an obsession with the Patty Hearst saga.

In October, Saturday Night Live makes it's debut. The show is still running after 37 years. The Cincinnati Reds are defeated by the Boston Red Sox in Game Six off Carlton Fisk's 12th-inning home run to cap off what many consider to be the best World Series game ever played. However, the Reds go on the win the series the next day.

Take it to the Limit -- The Eagles

I'm Not in Love -- 10cc

Lady -- Styx

Baby As You Turn Away -- Bee Gees

How Long -- Ace

Swearin' to G0d -- Frankie Valli

Thunder Road -- Bruce Springsteen

Kashmir -- Led Zeppelin

That's the Way of the World -- Earth, Wind and Fire

The Entertainer -- Billy Joel

BONUS TRACK

Mr. Jaws -- Dickie Goodman

2011-12-22T18:14:00.002-06:00

A very good history lesson for many of you who have been educated in America's public school system.

2011-12-18T10:00:00.001-06:00

Ten Great Songs From One Great Year

1982

In January, the biggest news was the breakup of AT&T, forcing it into a network of smaller companies - known as "Baby Bells." This shake up allowed competition of telephone services to flourish, including MCI and Sprint. In April, Argentina invades the British Falkland Islands. While the war officially ended in June, with the Argentine military surrender, the conflict continues to this day. Also in April, under the agreement signed with the late Anwar Sadat, Israel completes it's withdrawal from the Sinai peninsula. Although peace was forged by the treaty, it was at best a cold peace that is today threatened by the fall of Mubabrak. However, in April, forces under Israeli Defense Minister Ariel Sharon invade southern Lebanon in their "Operation Peace for the Galilee," eventually reaching as far north as the capital Beirut.

There were two notable plane crashes in 1982. In January, shortly after takeoff, Air Florida Flight 90 crashes into Washington, D.C.'s 14th Street Bridge and falls into the Potomac River, killing 78. Ironically, on the same day, a Washington Metro train derails to the north, killing 3 (the system's first fatal accident). And in July, Pan Am Flight 759 (Boeing 727) crashes in Kenner, Louisiana, killing all 146 on board and 8 on the ground. Furthermore, in the same month,on a movie set, the Twilight Zone actor Vic Morrow and 2 child actors die in a helicopter stunt accident.

In October, tragedy strikes Chicago when when 7 people in the area die after ingesting Tylenol capsules laced with potassium cyanide. Now, almost 40 years later, the case has not yet been solved. In better news, the year also brought the first permanent artificial transplantation when 61-year Barney Clark receives one at the University of Utah. Clark lived an additional 112 days, but set the stage for major advances in transplantation (of which I benefit from greatly).

Did it in a Minute -- Hall & Oates

Going Down -- Greg Guidry

Making Love -- Roberta Flack

Eye of the Tiger -- Survivor

You Can Do Magic -- America

Somebody's Baby -- Jackson Browne

Talking to the Moon -- Don Henley

Steppin' Out -- Joe Jackson

I Ran -- A Flock of Seagulls

Hold on -- Santana

BONUS TRACK

Welcome to Heartlight -- Kenny Loggins

2011-12-11T09:00:00.001-06:00

Ten Great Songs From One Great Year

2006

The year started out sadly for the State of Israel, when Prime Minister Ariel Sharon suffers a severe stroke and cerebral hemorrhage. To this day, he remains in a coma. In February, Turin, Italy hosts the Winter Olympics. In June, Mubai, India is the scene of a major terrorist attack.

In August, Pluto loses it's "planet" designation, The International Astronomical Union defines 'planet' at its 26th General Assembly. In October, North Korea detonates its' first nuclear bomb as South Korea's Ban Ki-moon is elected as the new Secretary-General of the United Nations.

In November, Former President of Iraq Saddam Hussein is sentenced to death by hanging by the Iraqi Special Tribunal. Also this month, Democrats retake congress in a serious rebuke of President Bush.

Crazy -- Gnarls Barkley

Chasing Cars -- Snow Patrol

Sexyback -- Justin Timberlake

Dani California -- Red Hot Chili Peppers

Read my Mind -- The Killers

How to Save a Life -- The Fray

Move Along -- All-American Rejects

Sugar, We're Going Down -- Fall Out Boy

I Write Sins, Not Tragedies -- Panic! At the Disco

Sweet Escape -- Gwen Stefani/ft. Akon

2011-12-11T01:08:00.002-06:00

The best comment from the GOP debate last night:

Baggage, or no baggage, Newt knows how to speak wit dignity and emotion. He is the the frontrunner right now because of hos ability to win every debate. Liberals hate him, but they aren't going to vote for a Republican anyway. The key is the independent voter and if Gingrich continues to be a voice of conservative reason and historical truth, then I can see him winning the independents over. They clearly have grown weary of President Obama.

I have not yet decided on with candidate will get my support. I'm on the fence between 3 of them (and Romney isn't one of the three). But I have to say that with comments like this that Newt said tonight, I'm giving him a lot of attention. If only he a more trustworthy conservative...

2011-12-07T03:05:00.002-06:00

Life and Sports

This past Sunday, in front of live audience of almost 63,000 people - and a televised audience of many, many more - Dallas Cowboys' Head Coach Jason Garrett had a brain freeze. With about 1 minute remaining on the clock, the Cowboys had the ball and a chance to run down the field and score the game-winning points to beat the Arizona Cardinals in what could have been a season defining victory. With the ball the Cardinal 48-yard line, and facing 3rd and 11, Cowboy Quarterback Tony Romo scrambled and hit wide receiver Dez Bryant with an 18-yard pass that left Dallas at the Arizona 31 and 24 seconds left to play.

Nine times out of ten, Dallas calls time out there and sets up at least 1-2 more plays to move closer. While a field goal from that distance is possible (the kick is set up 7 yards deeper and the goal posts are 10 yards deep in the end zone, setting up a 48-yard field goal), the odds are much weaker from that long a distance. So trying another couple of plays to get closer makes a lot of sense - especially when you have 2 timeouts left at your disposal and 24 seconds of game clock.

But for an inexplicable reason, Garrett does not call a time out and allows the clock to keep running. Dan Bailey, the Cowboys rookie kicker (who has been very, very good), comes out to attempt a game winning field goal. He kicks it trough the uprights and the game is over, right?

Not so fast. Yes, the kick was right down the middle. However, Garrett for some incredibly strange reason, decides to finally take that time out - with 7 seconds left, less than a second before the kick goes in. Since the time out was granted, Bailey has to try the kick again. This time, something goes wrong and he misses it. Overtime. The Cardinals then win the toss in overtime and go down the field to win the game.

That evening and next day, the Dallas sports media crucifies Garrett - himself only a rookie coach (he took over midway through last season) with many fans calling for his immediate resignation (if not outright firing). On the national sports media, Garrett is labeled a buffoon and an incompetent.

What a sad testimony to our culture.

How would you feel if you made a poor judgement call at your job? Let's say you work in a business office and have a project due at 3pm Monday morning. You spend the previous week working 12 hour days to prepare and you make the presentation. It isn't flawless, but it isn't bad, either. Then, at the very end, you show a slide that has incorrect information. No one died, and it was an honest mistake that under the pressure of trying to be perfect, you made an error.

Now imagine the people in the conference room to whom you made the presentation start mocking you. The owner tells the press that while he has the confidence in you, it has really been shaken. The next day, 100,000 people all know all about what happen and call for you to be run out of town on a rail. You aren't just called an incompetent, but an idiot and buffoon by seemingly everyone in the city.

This was just a football game, folks. And yeah, he made a mistake. Rookie coaches do that. Tom Landry did that. Don Shula and Chuck Noll did that. Granted, football is an extremely popular sport and millions of fans watch it. But all in all, it is just 2 teams of players both trying to win a game.

You could use the excuse that players make millions of dollars, and therefore we expect perfection. But these people are still only human and are fallible.

However, in our society, sports is more than just a game between players. It is a culture that offers us an opportunity to hide from the stresses of life and give us a respite from our own struggles of daily living. We place our own hopes and dreams into the players who represent our cities and when the players lose a game, the whole city loses.

Living in Dallas for many years, you learn to understand that how the Cowboys go, the entire city goes. The first thing most Dallasites do on Monday morning is read the sports pages of the Dallas Morning News. The weekend games are either a source of pride, or a sourse of embarrassment. But rarely ever is it ignored.

Reading the sports sections of other newspapers, you get the idea that it is no different anywhere else. In Philadelphia, the columnists are biting at the chomp to fire Andy Reid - one of the best, and most successful coaches in the league - because his team is having a poor season. Before this week's game, Arizona fans were calling for their head coaches job - just a couple of years removed from his taking the Cardinals to their very first Super Bowl.

Now it's true that if you are consistently erring in judgement in your job, you will eventually get fired (unless you happen to work for the government). The same holds true in professional football. But Garrett took over a team that had a 1-7 record at the time last year. Since then, the Cowboys have gone 12-8 and find themselves a full game ahead of the New York Giants in the division race. Very few people thought Dallas would be where they are this year, aline in first place, this far into the season. The team has made many questionable mistakes. But not by the coaching staff. It's a very young team and has improved each week.

But in the game of football, we do not allow our heroes to right to be human. My feeling is because WE are so fallible, it is unacceptable for our teams to be. If we accept that these players are human, then we will accept that sometimes mistakes are made. But we are in such need to an escape, that we cannot accept that. Otherwise, what's the point of resting our emotions on these teams?

As a kid, I was as guilty as anyone about this. I would scream and curse whenever the Cowboys failed to live up to my dreams. It consumed me when when they lost. Now, I see it in my own kids. I see in them what I used to do and I need to put a stop to that. You can watch sports and even cheer and root for your own team without making it personal against the other players or coaches. You can watch the games and enjoy the sport without wanting to throw heavy objects at the TV screen when they screw up. In the past 9 years - since my transplant - I have grown to recognize that not only do these teams not care about me (except my money), they do care about their jobs and every week try their best to perform. Sometimes, they win and sometimes they lose. But mostly, they try (DeShaun Jackson, notwithstanding).

After all, they're only human.

2011-12-04T18:47:00.013-06:00

Ten Great Songs From One Great Year

1967

The War in Vietnam dominated the American media this year, as television brought the war to living rooms throughout the country. American college campuses become the domestic battlegrounds of the anti-war movement. As US troops fight Communists in southeast Asia, China and the Soviet Union begin aggression on their borders. War breaks out between Israel and her Arab neighbors, in June. The war lasts 6 days, as Israel demolishes the armies of Egypt, Jordan and Syria.

This was the year boxer Muhammed Ali refused military service and Elvis Presley marries Priscilla Beaulieu. In music, the Beatles release the album "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band" and the Monterrey Pop Festival, featuring Jimi Hendrix, The Who and Janis Joplin (among others), takes place in California. Race riots take place in Washington, Tampa, Detroit and Plainfield, NJ (near Newark).

President Johnson signs the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967, creating the Corporation of Public Broadcasting. In November, NASA launches Apollo 4, the first Saturn V rocket.

The Letter -- The Box Tops

Can't Take My Eyes Off of You -- Frankie Valli

Windy -- The Association

How Can I Be Sure? -- The Young Rascals

I Was Made to Love Her -- Stevie Wonder

The Rain, the Park and Other Things -- The Cowsills

Music To Watch Girls Go By -- The Bob Crewe Generation

There's a Kind of Hush -- Herman's Hermits

Conquistador -- Procol Harem

Up, Up and Away -- The 5th Dimension

2011-11-27T01:26:00.006-06:00

Ten Great Songs From One Great Year

1986

1986 was the year of the Challenger disaster. The Russians opened the Mir Space Station and that same month, Pixar Studios opened for business. It was also the year Geraldo Rivera opened Al Capone's secret vault and the nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl Power Plant, in Pripyat, Ukraine, explodes - killing an estimated 4,000 people and causing the entire area to be permanently quarantined.

In June, Jonathon Pollard plead guilty to spying for Israel, Len Bias - the second overall selection by the Boston Celtics in the NBA Draft, suffers a fatal cardiac arrhythmia from a cocaine overdose. Eric Thomas develops LISTSERV, the first email list management software and U.S. Postal Service employee Patrick Sherrill guns down 14 of his co-workers before committing suicide.

In October, President Ronald Reagan met with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavík, Iceland, to continue discussions about scaling back their intermediate missile arsenals in Europe. Also, the Iran-Contra affair first becomes public. In December, three black men are assaulted by a group of white teens, in Howard Beach (Queens, NY). One of the victims, Michael Griffith, is run over and killed by a motorist while attempting to flee the attackers.

Sara -- Starship

Something About You -- Level 42

Big Man on Mulberry Street -- Billy Joel

Falling in Love -- The Miami Sound Machine

Russians -- Sting

Rain on the Scarecrow -- John Cougar Mellencamp

Tonight She Comes -- The Cars

Calling America -- Electric Light Orchestra

Only Love Knows Why -- Peter Cetera

Black and White -- Jackson Brown

BONUS TRACK

I Wanna Be a Cowboy -- Boys Don't Cry

2011-11-21T22:09:00.001-06:00

"You would think they'd be saying 'thank you'."

2011-11-20T15:58:00.002-06:00

Ten Great Songs From One Great Son

Mayer's list

When I decided to start blogging again, I knew I would continue my Top Ten Songs list. It was a lot of fun to do and the responses I received were always very good. Through the lists, I connected with some of the artists who I profiled and also friends of those artists.

Usually, I focus on a particular year, or decade. On occasion, I'll feature a single artist or band. But this week, I was asked by my oldest son, Mayer, to create a list of his favorite songs. Before I do this, I'd like to tell you a little about my boy.

Mayer was born in December 1993, in Sinai Hospital in Detroit. From birth, we knew he was different from other kids. Very early on, we feared he was autistic. He was showing all the classic signs of it and, as young parents with a 2 year old daughter, we weren't prepared for such a challenge. Because of hos issues, he was a very difficult child who cried and fussed a lot He was delayed in everything. But interestingly, he excelled at jigsaw puzzles well beyond his age level. Furthermore, he was showing signs of a remarkable memory.

When he was almost 3, an event happened that seemed to "wake him" up. Although he was only in a particular school for a few weeks, he was allowed to take part in the class' graduation ceremony. For the first time, Mayer smiled and laughed and he seemed to revel in the new attention he was receiving. From that time on, Mayer started to come out of his shell and begin to show promise.

Over the following years, Mayer handled all the changes and issues that was thrown at him. He was deeply affected by my illness and he began having serious issues at the school he was in. It became apparent that a change needed to be made. Once I was well enough, we moved back to Chicago and hoped for a more settled life. But a year later, his newest school folded and he was forced to attend another school. Unfortunately, the students at this new school decided that because Mayer was a little different, he could just be ignored or made fun of. This has continued through high school as well.

On the other side, Mayer is a very intelligent kid who has been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome. This form of autism affects social skills more than anything else. And when you are in high school, nothing matters more than your social life. It's heartbreaking to me and his mother when we see how depressed and discouraged he is because he desperately wants to be accepted by everyone and considered just another guy. But he also knows he isn't.

Mayer has a wicked sense of humor, loves sports - especially the Dallas Cowboys and Texas Rangers (well, look who his dad is). But he also likes the Cubs and the Bulls. He is devoted deeply to his brothers and sister, as well. He's a great kid and someone worth befriending because he is a very loyal person who wants everyone to get along. He is my oldest boy and I can not be any more proud of the man he's becoming.

Come Sail Away -- Styx

Don't Stop Believing -- Journey

Dream On -- Aerosmith

Livin' on a Prayer -- Bon Jovi

Follow You Down -- The Gin Blossoms

Stairway to Heaven -- Led Zeppelin

Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) -- Green Day

More Than a Feeling -- Boston

Bohemian Rhapsody -- Queen

Hotel California --The Eagles

2011-11-13T15:56:00.000-06:00

Ten Great Songs From One Great Year

1979

The biggest selling band of the decade, The Bee Gees, started off their last great year fronting a benefit concert for UNICEF. While they still dominated the charts in '79, the next year brought the end of disco and the Brothers Gibb's chart dominance to a screeching halt. That same month (January) saw the end of a somewhat democratic Iran, as Muslim fanatics overthrew the government and eventually held 53 American hostages for 444 days. Thus began the inevitable downfall of President Jimmy Carter.

In what was soon to become a worldwide juggernaut, Sony Corporation releases the Sony Walkman in Japan. This was the first widespread use of a personal music player. In Chicago, in a between-doubleheader, promotional event between the hometown White Sox and Detroit Tigers, WLUP disc jockeys Steve Dahl and Gary Meier, in conjunction with White Sox owner Bill Veeck and others, devised a promotion that involved people bringing unwanted disco music records to the game in exchange for an admission fee of 98¢ (the fee representing the station's location on the FM dial, 97.9). The records would be collected, placed in a large crate in center field, and blown up by Dahl. The ensuing riot and fiasco caused the last forfeiture of a baseball game and caused the "blacklisting" of Mike Veeck (the owner's son who was the "brains" of the event) from Major League Baseball.

Nuclear energy becomes a major issue when reactor 2 at Three Mile Island melted down. While there were no deaths or even any health risks to the general public, outcry over the safety of nuclear power became a hot button issue. In September, Pioneer 11 becomes the first spacecraft to orbit Saturn. The year ends with the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. It is the beginning a a now 3 decade struggle for the Eastern nation.

Heart of Glass -- Blondie

The King of Hollywood -- The Eagles

Fire -- The Pointer Sisters

Rosalinda's Eyes -- Billy Joel

Is She Really Going Out With Him -- Joe Jackson

No More Tears) Enough is Enough) -- Barbara Streisand and Donna Summer

What You Won't Do for Love -- Bobby Caldwell

Sail On -- The Commodores

The Devil Went Down to Georgia -- The Charlie Daniels Band

This Night Won't Last Forever -- Michael Johnson

BONUS TRACK

The Rainbow Connection -- Kermit the Frog

2011-11-11T22:26:00.005-06:00

The "Death Penalty" Awaits

This post will not be long because everyone already knows the horrid details out of Penn State University. The sheer criminality of the acts are outweighed by the incompetent reaction of the school's staff. And if it weren't incompetence that allowed these sexual assaults to continue for years, then it was blatant cover up in order to remain a successful (read: profitable) school.

I recall in the mid 1980's, living in Dallas at the outbreak of the Southern Methodist University scandal. In that case, SMU had been warned a number of times about serious violations occurring at the school. Even the-then Governor of Texas, Bill Clements, had his administration marred by the ongoing scandal - from which he was implicated, as well.

Because of the seriousness of the charges, the NCAA - which had threatened such action - imposed the "death penalty" upon the Mustang's football program. While SMU may appear to be some small, insignificant program, in it the 1980's - led by future NFL Hall of Hamer Eric Dickerson, as well as former New England Patriots running back Chris James - the Mustangs became a powerhouse in the now-defunct Southwestern Conference. In fact, in 1982, they won the conference with a 10-0-1 record, rated as high as #2 in the nation after defeating Dan Marino's Pittsburgh Panthers in the Cotton Bowl.

So SMU's decline was a stunning development - and a well deserved one as well. Of course, there were many people who felt that it was unfair to punish the entire program for the actions of just a few boosters, coaches and students. But the only way to ensure the rehabilitation of the program was to start over again.

The argument was made that football should not be a priority on campus while they have so much corruption that needs to be cleans away. It was painful - especially for those who recently joined the team. But for the most part, the student body, while discouraged and angry, moved on to the business of rebuilding SMU's reputation. It took almost 20 years for their football program to begin again. And now, after just 5 seasons, they have won a bowl game and have applied to join the Big 12 Conference. It's a great story of repentance and renewal.

In Happy Valley, we are seeing something far, far worse than recruiting violations. We are seeing sexual abuses to minors by a member of the football staff that has been going on since 1998. In addition, while certain officials did bring this story up the ladder, it either didn't make it to the top, or it was conveniently put aside. The only excuse for doing that was fear of the fallout, should they get caught.

Unfortunately, the pain from earlier fallout pales in comparison to the pain Penn State is suffering through today.

It would be very easy for me to blame Joe Paterno, Mike McQuearry or any other official who was told of the assault, but never followed through. In fact, as far as I'm concerned, JoPa may well have done nothing legally wrong. But as the head coach - an perhaps the most recognizable coach in all of college football, it falls on him to be on top of everything that happens within that program. You do not coach at one place for 60 years without being the main guy.

But aside from the coaches and other officials. What this scandal has done to Penn State is nothing short of disastrous. Every game played between the Nittany Lions and any opponent will be marred on television with respect to the charges. Players will be hounded relentlessly for soundbites from the media and the school will go from a place of education to a circus.

Like it happened to the innocent Mustang players before, Penn State must immediately shut down its football program. If they don't, it is very likely the NCAA will shut it down for them. At least if PSU goes first, they will begin to appreciate the errors in judgement and begin to mend their ways.

This is not something that can be excused by cancelling a game or two. The entire program must be gutted and given time to mourn. College football will survive - in fact, it will gain a greater respect for authority. And when PSU is able to put the past behind them, they should follow SMU's role and start off small.

It is the very least they could do for the 10 year old boys who did nothing but idolize Jerry Sandusky - all the way to the wall. No one is more vilified than a man who chooses to rape a young boy. The stench of this scandal will take years to dissipate. Keeping their football team active only serves a reminder of what is more important - life over football.

Penn State, do the right thing.

2011-11-08T21:33:00.002-06:00

Is This What You Wanted, America?

Do you remember, back in 2008, when President Obama said we have to "fundamentally change" the United States of America?

For those 53% of America who voted, are you happy now?

Take a good look at the "Occupy" crowd. You know, the ones sexually assaulting women, defecating in bank buildings and police cars, setting fires to condominiums, rioting against police, marching with Neo-Nazis, Communists and anti-Semites.

This is your change, America.

Obama said back then that "We cannot continue to rely only on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives that we've set. We've got to have a civilian national security force that's just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded."

Since our mainstream seems so efficient at digging up innuendos, rumors and any bit of dirt they can on Conservative blacks and women, perhaps one of them should have inquired what, exactly, Mr. Obama meant.

It goes without saying that the media spent more time and energy vilifying Herman Cane in one day than they spent connecting the then-future President to his strong ties to radical Marxists, Islamists and unrepentant terrorists.

Do you recall when Joe Biden said, "Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We’re about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don’t remember anything else I said. Watch, we’re gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy"?

So let's count up the "international crisis" that have transpired under Obama...

Iran - Obama ignored the "Green Revolution" and instead sided with the Mullahs (in the interest of his insistence that we could be "friends" with these maniacs. Had Obama offered support for the protesters, the likelihood that we would now be facing a nuclear Iran is at best minimal.

Iraq - During his campaign, Obama repeated called the Iraq War a terrible mistake and voted against the surge that secured what should have been a victory. However, he has now gone against his military experts (who know a thing or two more that he does) and has idiotically announced a complete withdrawal of military personnel in the Iraq theater. Thereby basically allowing Iran to fill the void left by American withdrawal. Like in Vietnam, we are basically leaving those who needed us that they are on their own. No wonder the world hates us.

Russia - One of the first decisions Obama made as President was to renege on President Bush's promise to Poland to build a missile defense shield program. He did this in order to "reset" relations with Russia. However, aside from the fact that under President Bush, Russia and the US got along fine, it was a total betrayal to Eastern Europe and leaves them at the mercy of both a more aggressive Russia and a psychotic Iran.

Egypt - Whether or not Hosni Mubarak was good for Egypt or not, the way Obama handled the situation was nothing less than incompetent. His calling for Mubarak's dismissal, after saying he should stay - and ignoring the ultimate outcome of a power vacuum that is being filled by the murderous Muslim Brotherhood, set the stage for the massacre of the Coptic Christian population, as well as Egypt's severed peace with Israel.

Libya - This was another terrible mess. Obama completely overstepped his authority in bombing the Hell out of Libya. Again, losing Gaddafi was not a terrible outcome. However, Obama sided with our sworn enemies of Al-Qaeda in order to accomplish this feat. Now, with Gaddafi dead, Libya has accepted Sharia law to the strictest. I guess the liberation of Libya wasn't also for women, Christians or Jews. Nice Job.

Syria - See Iran.

Forget for a moment that under Obama, the economy is in the toilet, unemployment is still around 9% (under employment estimated around 20%), the US is $15 trillion in debt and the President's signature legislation - ObamaCare is a complete disaster that is just as unpopular today as it was when it was forced down the nation's throat. Forget the fact that while Obama promised to have the "most ethical, transparent administration, the scandals that are currently plaguing the White House makes the Nixon administration jealous.

Forget all that for a moment and answer this - how do you possibly re-elect Obama at a time when his incompetence on the world stage is so glaring?

I give credit to the man for hunting down and killing Osama Bin Laden. I'll even give him credit for Gaddafi's demise. But neither of these accomplishments were his alone and they are terribly inconsequential in the grand scheme of things.

I do want to point out that this is not a comparison between President Obama and President Bush. There were a number of issues where Bush failed as well. I am simply stating the truth about Obama. This is also not an endorsement of any of the Republican candidates in the race. Obviously, there are questions regarding which one of them is the best option for 2012.

All this is is a condemnation on the record of President Obama and a rational reason why he should be soundly defeated next November.

2011-11-07T21:31:00.002-06:00

Brilliant and necessary.

2011-11-06T18:45:00.008-06:00

Ten Great Songs From One Great Year

1993

The year started with the inauguration of William Jefferson Clinton, as the 42nd President of the United States. Less than a month later, Vaclav Havel is elected President of the Czech Republic. Also in politics, Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney resigns amidst political and economic turmoil. Kim Campbell, his successor, becomes Canada's first female Prime Minister. However, she resigns from the Conservative Party in November. General Motors sues NBC, after Dateline NBC allegedly rigged 2 crashes showing that some GM pickups can easily catch fire if hit in certain places. Just a few days later, Islamic terrorists set off explosives in the garage of North Tower of the World Trade Center.

April brought in the stand off at the Branch Davidian complex, in Waco, ends in a fire that kills 76 people. A few days later, the Holocaust Museum is opened in Washington, D.C. The end of April saw tennis star Monica Seles stabbed in the back by an obsessed fan of Steffi Graf. Joe Carter, of the Toronto Blue Jays, hits a 3-run home run to win game 6 of the World Series, giving Toronto back to back championships. In football, the Dallas Cowboys became the third straight NFC East team to win the Super Bowl, beating the Buffalo Bills 52-17 in Super Bowl XXVII. And in pro basketball, Michael Jordan leads the Chicago Bulls to their 3rd straight NBA title.

In what was the first alleged scandal for President Clinton, Deputy Council Vince Foster committed suicide in July. Microsoft Windows changed the way we used computers with the release of Windows 3.1. The year ends with America embroiled in the Savings and Loan scandal, while President Clinton signs the North American Free Trade agreement.

Come Undone -- Duran Duran

Two Princes -- Spin Doctors

Bed of Roses -- Bon Jovi

Cryin' -- Aerosmith

Linger -- The Cranberries

Because the Night - 10,000 Maniacs

Man on the Moon -- R.E.M

Sober -- Tool

Found Out About You -- Gin Blossoms

Daughter -- Pearl Jam

2011-11-05T21:27:00.000-05:00

Why he was the best Mayor in NYC's history:

2011-11-02T21:21:00.002-05:00

Unoccupied

So, what I have I missed since I last wrote?

This "Occupy" nonsense is quickly getting out of hand. Aside from the fact that no one has a clue why they are there, it has become a breeding ground for anarchy and violence. Again today, there were two more stories of sexual assault. And in Oakland, rioters destroyed stores, banks and other businesses. In NY, a Kosher restaurant has had to lay off 21 workers because Mayor Bloomberg refuses to clean up the area around Zuccotti Park. Instead, they have kept barriers in place, which has dried up foot traffic in the Wall Street area.

The shame is two-fold. For those who truly feel that there is a reason to protest, they are protesting he wrong people. Actually, their complaint is not dissimilar to the Tea Party. The Tea Party also believes the bailouts were wrong. However, these protesters in Zuccotti Park (and elsewhere) are calling for more government regulation and action, without realizing (or caring) that it's government largess that is the problem. What they should be doing is marching on Washington. After all, the banks have been forced to take the bail-out money, as crazy as that sounds. Furthermore, most of the banks have paid back the money they were forced to take.

The second shame is that the protests have been co-opted - first by the Communist Party and then by anarchists. In fact, prisoners released from Rikers Island have been told to go down to Zuccotti Park because they can get food and drugs. The "Occupiers" have already complained that the homeless are using up their resources (I guess if you are homeless, you don't fit in). Talk about hypocrisy!

It really is time for Bloomberg to act like the Mayor and defend the laws he has sworn to protect. The same goes for Oakland and everywhere else the rules have been broken.

In some cities, it's starting to bite the city officials in the butt. When the Tea Party wanted to have a protest in that city, the Tea Party was charged over $10,000 and had to go through hoops to get the proper licensing. However, the "Occupy Richmond" group was told by city officials they didn't need to go through any process and could stay - free of charge - as long as they would like. Of course, the Tea Party is now suing the city of Richmond for this injustice. Good for them.

What makes this even more sickening is how the White House, and other Democrats, are aligning themselves with this movement. Does Obama really believe that siding with Nazis, communists and anarchists will enhance his re-election chances? It sure didn't help Hubert Humphrey.

It's clear to anyone who is paying attention that Obama is purposely siding with the occupiers for two reasons. Number one - it takes the attention away from his failed presidency, and two - it helps solidify his base. But this will backfire on him. Eventually, the cold weather will send the true believers home and leave just the fringe of society to stay. Even though the mainstream media portrays these people with undue respect, the story will (and is) growing old and there will be more important matters that will come up - like how do they destroy the Republican front runner.

In addition, as these protests continue to get out of hand (as we saw in Oakland today),city officials will eventually grow tired of placating to these people and will be forced to restore law and order. Remember, the people who own the businesses that are being destroyed are taxpayers.

In 2008, we elected a man who told us he wanted to "transform the United States." Too many people paid little attention and were just happy to elect someone "historic." We are paying the price for our ignorance. We now have a President who is openly advocating for those who wish to overthrow our government and destroy our capitalistic society.

Let me ask you this, if Obama were honestly and openly trying to destroy our country, what would he be doing different that he is doing now?

2011-10-30T23:16:00.009-05:00

It's been two months since I've last posted. But I'm beginning to get the desire to write again. Instead of a rant (and in the following weeks, I think I'll have a lot to rant about), I'm going to do something I used to love doing, but haven't in a long while. A top 10 music list. I hope you enjoy it.

Ten Great Songs From One Great Year

2004

This was a memorable year for me because it was the time when my recovery from my transplant really started to look optimistic. This was a rough year because I finally dealt with post traumatic stress disorder and a deep depression. But it's also the year I pulled myself out of it and started seeing life in a whole new light. It was the year I started to listen to country music again and a year when I realized how depressing country music can be.

This was also the year I started my website and blog and finally began to write my transplant story. John Kerry gave me a lot to write about, as he tried in vain to reinvent his miserable past. Cindy Sheehan got her 15 minutes of fame, while San Francisco issued its' first same-sex marriage licenses.

In the world, The Madrid terror bombings took place in May, which led to the capitulation of Spain to the terrorists. In the same month, Israel targets and eliminated Sheik Ahmed Yassin. The war in Iraq takes a wrong turn when 60 Minutes reveals the Abu Ghraib scandal. While newsman Dan Rather gets caught in a fabricated hit piece on President Bush. But the biggest story is the southeastern Asia earthquake and tsunami, which killed almost 250,000 people.

In sports, Boston Red Sox finally beat the curse (and the Yankees) and the Detroit Pistons became known as the thugs of the NBA.

Somebody Told Me -- The Killers

Somewhere Only We Know -- Keane

Here Without You - 3 Doors Down

Run -- Snow Patrol

Mayberry -- Rascal Flatts

Songs About Rain -- Gary Allan

Rollin' -- Big and Rich

This Love -- Maroon 5

Boulevard of Broken Dreams -- Green Day

Look What You've Done -- Jet

BONUS TRACK

Live Like You Were Dying -- Tim McGraw
(also known as the song that changed my life)

2011-08-31T00:03:00.003-05:00

Fearless NFL Predictions 2011

NFC East
Philadelphia Eagles………….12-4
NY Giants……………………….....….9-7*
Dallas Cowboys……......…………...8-8
Washington Redskins….......…….5-11

NFC North
Green Bay Packers…..………12-4
Detroit Lions………………......….….9-7
Chicago Bears…………………..........7-9
Minnesota Vikings………........……5-11

NFC South
Atlanta Falcons…………………11-5
New Orleans Saints………….......…10-6*
Tampa Bay Buccaneers……......….8-8
Carolina Panthers……….......……...4-12

NFC West
St. Louis Rams……………………9-7
San Francisco 49ers….........…………9-7
Seattle Seahawks……….........……….5-11
Arizona Cardinals……….........….…..5-11

AFC East
New England Patriots………..12-4
NY Jets………...………......……………10-6*
Miami Dolphins……….......…………6-10
Buffalo Bills……………........…………5-11

AFC North
Baltimore Ravens………………10-6
Pittsburgh Steelers…………….........10-6
Cleveland Browns……………........….7-9
Cincinnati Bengals…………….......…4-12

AFC South
Houston Texans…………………10-6
Indianapolis Colts…………..….........10-6*
Jacksonville Jaguars…………........….7-9
Tennessee Titans………………..........5-11

AFC West
San Diego Chargers……………..11-5
Oakland Raiders……………........……..9-7
Kansas City Chiefs…………........……..8-8
Denver Broncos………………........…..4-12

Wild Card Round
Atlanta over NY Giants, St. Louis over New Orleans
NY Jets over Houston, Baltimore over Indianapolis

Divisional Playoffs
Atlanta over Philadelphia, Green Bay over St. Louis
New England over Baltimore, San Diego over NY Jets

Conference Finals
Green Bay over Atlanta
New England over San Diego

Super Bowl 46
New England 27 Green Bay 20

2011-08-10T08:17:00.001-05:00

2011-07-26T00:05:00.002-05:00

Dan Peek 1950-2011

It was sometime late 1974 when my brother and I went to Eckerd's Drug store, in Dallas. I don't remember if I had allowance money, or if my dad was just in a generous mood. After all, I wasn't yet 12 years old, although my brother was 17 at the time. Our goal was to buy some records (I don't remember why Eckerd's carried albums, but they did).

The album I most wanted was Elton John's Greatest Hits, which had just been released. I fell in love with his music a couple of years before, when I first heard "Rocket Man" on the radio. "Daniel" brought me to tears, as well - as did "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road."

But my brother had a different interest. He purchased America's latest LP, Holiday. I had to admit, aside from hearing "Ventura Highway" and "Muskrat Love" on KVIL often, I really didn't know much more about them. Of course, unlike my brother, my tastes in music were far less refined when I was a child.

But from the moment I heard the song "Lonely People", I was hooked for life. Little did I know that this LP was their first with famed record producer George Martin. I had no idea that had a run of hit singles over the preceding couple of years, or that by their 3rd LP, Hat Trick, they were already considered yesterday's news.

But then, their latest hits - "Tin Man" and the previously mentioned "Lonely People" burned up the charts (both landed in the top 5 on Billboard). But it all started for me with "Lonely People."

That song was written and sang by Dan Peek, one of the trio of young guys who formed America. Dan Peek died last night at the age of 60.

Now I will admit, my favorite member of the band, the one whose voice I felt really spoke to me, was Gerry Beckley. Beckley's "Sister Golden Hair" remains my all-time favorite song of theirs. But it was Dan Peek's voice that first caught my ears.

Since Peek decided to leave the band in 1977 (following their 7th studio album), he is not as well considered as much as the other two (Beckley and Dewey Bunnell). But his style, voice and influence was an integral part of their early success. Peek wrote four of their biggest hits - "Don't Cross the River" (which Garth Brooks recorded on his final album), "Lonely People," "Woman Tonight" and "Today's the Day", which was their final top 40 hit as a trio.

But his contributions were much more than 3-4 songs per record. His higher voice gave the band a rich and powerfully moving harmony that set America apart from other similar bands.

A few years ago, I found his website online and because he seemed such an honest and open guy, decided to write him an email telling him how much his music meant to me growing up. I was stunned when not only did he respond, but engaged me in some deep conversations. Although he was a devoted and religious "born again" Christian, he never spoke down to be about my being Jewish, and instead found much common ground between our two faiths. I was deeply impressed. For a few months, he contacted me to see how I was progressing in my recovery from my heart transplant. While I was honored to be hearing from him, I never questioned his sincerity.

One thing that impressed me the most was how distant he was from the rock and roll scene he was totally engulfed in years ago. He admits readily that he would have died young had he stayed his course in drugs and whatever else was the flavor of the week in Hollywood. Soon after, I purchased his book, "An American Band" - which tells the story of the band's halcyon days. In the book, Peek exposes the petty jealousies, the triumphs and successes, and the pain and losses he and his band mates dealt with during their rise to fame.

America has been around for 40 years now and the two surviving members are still recording and performing together. While the band has never been known for strong lyrics, they have made a name for themselves and their consistency is remarkable. I had the pleasure to meet and greet the band about a year ago, when they performed nearby. Unlike many performers, they are very genuine and down to earth and they make a true effort to acknowledge their devoted fan base. Even though they had not performed with Peek for over 30 years, they're comments, following the news of his passing, was a moving tribute to what he meant to them.

Obviously, as a fan, I didn't know Dan that well. But from what little I did know, he was a tremendous talent and very fine man. I'm saddened in the same way I was when Dan Fogelberg died. It's another part of my childhood leaving me. But both of these "Dan's" passed on way too soon. In both cases, they will be missed.

Rest in peace, Dan Peek. You may have passed on, but your music will stay with me forever.

2011-06-26T16:58:00.003-05:00

I don't know when, or even if I'll blog again. But I didn't want my last post (assuming it is the last post) to be such a downer. It's taken awhile - 7 months to be exact - to move on from what had hurt me and now that I'm moving forward I thought I would just let you know.

Chances are, I will write again. After all, we're just 17 months away from (hopefully) a new President and there is much to talk about there. Also, I'm hopeful the NFL strike/lockout will be over in time for the season to begin again and while they aren't playing great, my Texas Rangers are in first place.

Of course, you needn't get me started on the NBA Champion Dallas Mavericks!

There is the creeping Sharia moving in America, the porous border in Mexico and, of course with that, the whole "gunrunner" scandal that had it been during a Republican administration, the news networks (aside from FOX) would be screaming about.

No, there is far too much not to blog again. But while I am ready to put past issues behind me, I'm just not yet ready to write consistently. It's funny, though. I usually am more prolific when I'm the least happy. But this was a very tough stretch for me and it made me not want to create anything. Now that I'm feeling much happier, the desire to write has started to come back.

Go figure.

Well, that's all for now.

2011-05-09T21:54:00.001-05:00

Seriously, I don't care anymore...

Never had a doubt
In the beginning
Never a doubt
Trusted too true
In the beginning
I loved you right through
Arm in arm we laughed like kids
At all the silly things we did

You made me promises, promises
Knowing I'd believe
Promises, promises
You knew you'd never keep

Second time around
I'm still believing
Words that you said
You said you'd always be here
In love forever
Still repeats in my head
You can't finish what you start
If this is love it breaks my heart

You made me promises, promises
You knew you'd never keep
Promises, promises
Why do I believe

Arm in arm we laughed like kids
At all the silly things we did
You can't finish what you start
If this is love it breaks my heart

You made me promises, promises
You knew you'd never keep
Promises, promises
Why do I believe
All of your promises
You knew you'd never keep
Promises, promises
Why do I believe

Promises
Promises
Promises
Promises
Promises

2011-04-10T12:43:00.001-05:00

2011-04-05T18:57:00.003-05:00

This parable is in regards to Richard Goldstone's mea culpa in this past Sunday's Washington Post:

There once was a Rabbi who was fired by his congregation, due to false allegations by a member.

When the member went to the Rabbi to apologize and ask what he could do to make amends, the Rabbi took out a feather pillow, cut a hole in it, and tossed the feathers into the wind.

He then instructed the man to go collect all the feathers. When the man said that was impossible to collect all of the feathers, the rabbi proved his point. Once the false allegations became part of people's beliefs, it is too late.

No one, among those who pledged revenge, based on Goldstone's original thesis, will care that he has since decided to come clean. It will either be treated as if Goldstone was forced to recant by the "evil Zionists" or it will simply be ignored. The Moslem community needs no real excuse to blame Jews for their shortcomings and this certainly will not stop them.

In fact, the damage to Israel's legitimacy and reputation by Goldstone is beyond any apology can can correct. The day will come that the name "Goldstone" will be equated with the same disgust as "Arafat." While a mea culpa is nice to hear - for our own sake - it is meaningless and way too late. It's already been 3 days and not a word of apology has come from the UN. That alone proves my point.

UPDATE!!!

I originally listed the NY Times as the paper that Goldstone placed his op-ed. I assumed it was the Times because that was where he originally posted his findings. However, instead, he wrote his retraction in the Washington Post. The question of why has been completely answered -- courtesy of Yid With Lid:

The NY Times Never Lets The Facts Get In the Way of a Good Blood Libel

In a spectacular reversal, this past Friday Judge Richard Goldstone published an op-ed in the Washington Post which reverses the key charge against Israel in the report about the Gaza War which bears his name. He no longer believes the blood libel put forth in his document, that Israel deliberately targeted Gaza civilians in the war, and he now believes Hamas was the war criminal.

"We know a lot more today about what happened in the Gaza war of 2008-09 than we did when I chaired the fact-finding mission appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council that produced what has come to be known as the Goldstone Report. If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.

When the story broke in the Washington Post, it seemed strange that Judge Goldstone would choose the D.C. paper to print his retraction. Goldstone has written op-eds in the NY Times defending his report. Others, including former President Jimmy Carter, have also filled the Times opinion pages with defenses of the Goldstone Report, so it would seem logical for the Judge to publish his retraction in the same vehicle he used for its defense.

The answer to this mystery is simple, according to Israeli Newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth, the New York Times was offered Goldstone's piece first, but refused to print it.

Yedioth Ahronoth's English Website YNet reported:

Not only did Judge Richard Goldstone's words of regret fail to match the global resonance of his original report, it now comes to light that one of the most important newspapers in the world refused to publish his retraction.

Yedioth Ahronoth reported Monday that a source close to Goldstone stated that in the past few days the judge had approached the editor of the New York Times opinion pages requesting to post the article he wrote in the paper – and was told his article was rejected.

Has the New York Times sunk so low that it refuses to allow someone to correct a report that resulted in violent incitement against Israel? Ynet's source in the Goldstone camp believes it so:

The editor gave no explanation as to why the article was rejected, but the source believes this was due to the newspaper's political agenda.

The letter was ultimately published in the more conservative Washington Post over the weekend.

The New York Times said in response that they do not comment on the editorial or reporting process. In recent years the New York Times adopted a highly critical line of reporting towards Israel. Lately, its senior commentator Thomas Friedman has been publishing extremely aggressive articles against Israel and its current government.

The NY Times political agenda was also evident in its coverage of the Goldstone op-ed. The "Gray Lady" does its best to deny that Israel has a right to defend itself against the false charges that it targeted civilians and tries to perpetuate the blood libel charges in the repudiated Goldstone Report. Its article called Israel Grapples With Retraction on U.N. Report, the Times begins with:

Israel grappled on Sunday with whether a retraction by a United Nations investigator regarding its actions in the Gaza war two years ago could be used to rehabilitate its tarnished international image or as pre-emptive defense in future military actions against armed groups.

Why not begin by saying that Goldstone recanted on his central charge against Israel. Why would it talk about a pre-emptive defense? The fact is the charge of Israel targeting civilians was false. If the New York Times was unfairly charged with a serious crime and then cleared, it would try to spread the news loudly and broadly, why is it news that Israel is trying to get the word out? Maybe because the Times doesn't believe the retraction. It believed and printed all of the other articles written by Judge Goldstone, but then again those articles made Israel look bad.

Another NY Times article, Head of U.N. Panel Regrets Saying Israel Intentionally Killed Gazans described the effect of the Goldstone Report as:

Mr. Goldstone’s article fell like a bomb in Israel, where many people considered the 2009 publication of the Goldstone report as one of the most harmful events in recent years. It was viewed as offering spurious justification for damaging accusations, which Israelis considered to be part of a campaign to delegitimize the state and label it as a war criminal.

As if the Times was saying being accused of being a civilian-targeting pariah nation in a United Nations report wasn't really so bad, but Israelis overreacted.

The Times was also quick to mitigate Goldstone's retraction with statements alluding to what seems to be their opinion that Israel was guilty anyway:

Israel carried out its military campaign after years of rocket fire by Palestinian militants in Gaza against southern Israel. As many as 1,400 Gazans were killed during the three-week offensive in December 2008 and January 2009, including hundreds of civilians. Thirteen Israelis were also killed.

The Times is downplaying the 5,000+ projectiles sent by Hamas terrorists into Israel. First of all, they weren't sent into "southern Israel," they were sent into communities, where families lived, in fact often those rockets were targeted toward schools.

The paper is also ignoring that Hamas fires its missiles from land that Israel pulled out of years before. In its editorials, the Times keeps calling for additional Israeli concessions while refusing to recognize that Israel's major unilateral concession in 2005, withdrawing from Gaza, was greeted with a rocket barrage that continues through today.

As far as the difference in death counts, many times more Iraqis were killed in the War in Iraq than Americans. Does that make the US war criminals? Of course not!

During the invasion, graphic images of human suffering were broadcast around the world, and after the fighting ended, the United Nations Human Rights Council asked Mr. Goldstone, who is Jewish, to head an investigation into Israel’s actions. He said he would do so on the condition that he could broaden his mandate to include Hamas’s conduct as well.

Here the Times is indicating that graphic images of suffering is proof of Israel's guilt. Pictures are selected by editors and can be just as biased as the articles. And the Gray Lady was biased in its picture selection. For example, few saw the pictures of the rockets landing in Sderot because the suffering they brought was largely ignored by the Times, the same way the paper ignored the Holocaust while it was happening. Maybe the NY Times doesn't believe that Jews can suffer.

The fact that Goldstone has retracted his main charge doesn't stop them from informing readers that groups not involved in the report are still calling for action taken against Israel:

In February, a group of Israeli and Palestinian human rights groups asked the United Nations Human Rights Council to take further action on the Goldstone report’s findings to ensure justice for the war’s victims.

But if there was no crime there should be no action, but the New York Times "forgets" that part,

The New York Times forgets lots of facts, and refuses to publish facts that hurt its anti-Israel agenda. But hey, why let the facts get in the way of a good blood libel.

2011-03-31T00:42:00.002-05:00

I found these over at my friend, Robert Avrech's blog:

You can find more at Elder of Ziyon.

2011-03-14T00:06:00.002-05:00

Way back in 2003, I submitted a parody song to the website Am I Right. The site offers a multitude of different music related item and one of those is song parodies. I had forgotten all about my submission until I heard about the slaughter of a family in Itamar, Israel. But then, like a rush of memory, it all came back and now, I feel it is apropos to repost these lyrics:

An Israeli Day in the Life
(parody of the Beatles' "A Day in the Life")

They killed some Jews today, oh boy
Another homicidal maniac
And once again the World stood still
Well I just have to cry
So many people died.

He blew a busload full of kids
No one noticed that he was a threat
The late day bus was rather full
Now the country's at a loss
Nobody was really sure if he was from Al-Aqsa or Hamas

I saw a news report, oh boy
The road map they created was released
As long as Arafat remains
And pays off his friends
The violence never ends
I'd love to throw him out...

Woke up, fell out of bed,
Dragged a comb across my head
Found my way downstairs and drank a cup,
And looking up I noticed I was late.
Found my coat and grabbed my hat
Made the bus in seconds flat
But the bus this morning never came
Some of them cried and some of them screamed

They killed some Jews again, oh boy
They won't allow us to feel safe no more
Although our land is very small
They want to take it all
Even though it never once belonged to them before
They'd love to kick us out

May their deaths be avenged and their memory be a sourse of inspiration for Jews everywhere.

2011-03-13T01:12:00.002-06:00

When I read about what happened last night in Itamar, Israel, I can not help but be not only mortified, but enraged beyond words. If you haven't heard about the latest terrorist attack, you can read about it here. I am too nauseated to review it.

I watched Rep. Keith Ellison being interviewed by Bill Maher, on HBO the other night. It simply amazes me how anyone can take what he says seriously. We all know that the Koran explicitly allows for lying, if it is for the purpose of defending the faith. Nothing that man says should be accepted as anything but lies.

As for the rest of that gutter religion - at least, I mean the bastardization of it - the best I can hope for is a giant can on Raid to wipe them all out. They have no soul, no love of life. Even their own leaders freely and proudly admit that they worship death.

And yet, our feckless leaders - and this goes beyond Obama, who himself has admitted to siding with the Moslems, should push come to shove, but to Bush, Clinton and all the rest. The simply fact is that you can not negotiate with people (and I really use that term loosely) who want you dead.

Of course, since it is only Jewish blood that has been spilled, the world will not care one iota.

And yet, what the world will do is condemn Israel for the poor Palestinians. Of course, it matters not that these poor Palestinians are poor because of their corrupt leaders and desire to kill every single Jew. The sad fact remains that Moslems living in Israel enjoy far more freedom, wealth and rights than anyone living in any other Arab land.

These animals deserve nothing more than extermination. They destroy everything they touch, they torture - not only Jews, but even their own citizens - and they threaten the west on a daily basis.

Of course, to hear Obama tell it, you are no more likely to die from a Christian than you are from a radical Moslem. But last I checked, there were ni Christains (or Jews, or Hindu or anyone else) blowing up buildings, shooting up school girls, murdering babies and their [arents, in the name of their god.

Whether it be because our President (and the ones before him) are afraid, or because they refuse to accept the reality, I don't know. This country used to stand up to immoral beasts like this. And why do we put up with it? Because of oil.

Oil is not a horrible reason. The horrible reason is because we refuse to create energy ourselves, and therefore are beholden to these beasts. We do not allow any new nuclear reactors, we do not allow more drilling, we do not open up our vast resourses that not only would damage the financial strength of these animals, but would immediately cure our own financial problems.

Our government, therefore, is completely complicit in this crime. Obviously, this is no comfort to the families of the victims. And the fact that our government refises to accept any responsibility is regardless.

It is long past time for Prime minister Netanyahu to stop playing the game by the the rules of those who hate us, and to start playing by the rules everyone has. If I were the Israeli Prime Minisher, I would immediately cease any "peace" talks, annex east Jerusalem and begin the expulsion of every single Arab in Judea, Samaria and Gaza.

What? Do you think the world will hate us more? Is that possible? I would also figure out a way to live without the $3 biilion in aid we receive from the US. Obama will never treat you fairly, Mr. Netanyahu. It's time, instead, to do what's right for your nation.

2011-03-10T23:25:00.004-06:00

Violent Rhetoric, Unions and Wisconsin Democrats

Let me see if I get this...

A few months ago, Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords was shot and seriously wounded. The shooting also took the lives of six others, including a state judge and nine-year-old Christina-Taylor Green, the granddaughter of former Major League manager Dallas Green. it was a tragic and horrible event perpetrated by a communist sympathizer who also listed Mein Kampf as one of his favorite books.

While it was almost immediately clear that the killer, Jared Laughner, was a leftist, the mainstream media, as well as the vast majority of left-wing websites, curiously blamed the attack of Sarah Palin and the right-wing. One of the reasons, the left exclaimed, was because Palin had listed Giffords' district in Arizona as a "target" for the Republicans to defeat in the election. Her use of a cross hairs image was considered to be so outrageous and condemned for bringing violet rhetoric to the public stage. The left became apoplectic over it and began calling for Palin's assassination (many comments on such sites a Gawker, the DailyKos, The Huffington Post and Democratic Underground, to name just a few, were the most outwardly vile).

As most people who are not unhinged will attest, using such language in politics is nothing new and in fact, in the 2006 election, the Democrat National Committee went a step further by not using cross hairs, but actually targets to show which districts they were targeting. However, due to the mainstream medias inability to refrain from extreme bias, that little bit of information was not mentioned.

From the moment the shooting was reported, all we heard (after blaming Sarah Palin, of course) was how uncivil the political rhetoric of the right wing was. Even President Obama, in his adress to the nation following the tragedy, made mention of the "words we speak" that could lead to violence. Even though it was found that Laughner never listened to right wing talk radio, hated George Bush and was simply a delusional nut-job, the press continued their call for the right to tone down the rhetoric. It was all great theater and completely biased.

For too long, the blame for violence has been thrown at the Republicans by the left. However, historically, the violent tendencies of politics have been a Democrat problem. For instance, growing up in Dallas, I learned early that the man who assassinated John Kennedy was a communist by the name of Lee Harvey Oswald. Yet, I also constantly heard, over and over again, that Kennedy was shot because of all the "right-wing" rhetoric surrounding his visit. But there was no rhetoric as violent as the actions of this far-left killer.

To hear the Congressional Black Congress tell it, the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was only passed because we had a Democrat in office. What they fail to mention is that 80% of the Republicans voted for passage, while just 61% of the Democrats did. In fact, when the bill went through the Senate, Democrat Senator Robert Byrd, who recently died and was considered by many Democrats as a hero, filibustered the vote for 14 hours!

Of course, Byrd wasn't just a Democrat senator. He was also the Grand Kleagle of the Ku Klux Clan. The clan, of course, was created as a domestic terror group strongly affiliated with the Democrat Party.

When we look back at American history, we see that John Wilkes Booth, Leon Czolgosz, the assassin of William McKinley, Charles Guiteau, the assassin of James Garfield and Oswald were all in no way aligned with the right-wing. And were more likely (and in some cases proven to be) leftists.

Of course, derangement is not solely a left-wing disease. There are crazy people on both sides of the aisle. But in today's United States, violent political rhetoric has become mainstream among the Democrats. Yet, no matter how many times videos prove the point, the media and other leftists project these attributes to the right-wing. It would be hysterical if it weren't so tragic.

And this leads me to the situation that is unfolding in Wisconsin. If you are unaware of what has been going on, then I suggest you Google it, because I haven't the energy to review it here. But, in a nutshell, Governor Scott Walker proposed a bill that would limit the ability of public service employees (those who are members of government unions) to bargain collectively. In addition, he asked the unions to pay a little more towards their pensions and health insurance. The proposal would still have meant that these union workers would pay far less for their benefits that private sector workers do.

The reason for Walker's proposal is that the state of Wisconsin can not meet its' bugetary commitments. The main reason is because the amount of unfunded pensions among the public sector unions will bankrupt the state. For weeks, Walker pleaded with the unions to negotiate. However, the union representatives consistently stated that they will not nudge one inch if their right to collectively bargain is taken away.

The problem is two-fold. Number one, Walker's proposal would only limit collective bargaining and make it available for wages only (as opposed to abolishing it entirely). Secondly, if the bill does not pass (it has, however, as of today), then hundreds of jobs would have been eliminated in order to save the states' financial outlook.

When I was a kid, I remember watching the movie "F*I*S*T" with Sylvester Stallone, and being moved by how important the unions were to this country. In some ways, I still agree. Even though I have been a member of a union, I was keenly aware of how the union drove a wedge between management and the workers. This always caused a stressful environment at work.

But there is a major difference between what was told in that movie and what today's realities are. The fight in Wisconsin is about public sector unions. These unions represent people who receive their wages from taxpayers. So when they negotiate a higher salary, they are asking for more money from you and I, since we are the taxpayers.

The problem is that when you negotiate between a union and a private company, both sides have a personal stake in the outcome. The company has to me careful not to give away too much or they will become insolvent and close up shop. There are limits as to how much they can spend.

This is not the same as with the government. Politicians only care about one thing - getting re-elected. They understand that re-elections cost a lot of money and unions have long been the largest contributors to the Democrat Party. So when a union negotiates with the government, that politician understands that the more money he gets for the union, the more money is donated by that union for the Democrat Party. It is a vicious cycle and being played on your dime.

So Scott Walker realized that he can not continue to give away the farm - especially since Wisconsin, like many other states, are going bankrupt. So, he proposes a bill that in reality, should never have been necessary. After all, even FDR understood that unions and federal employees make a very dangerous match.

So, what happens? Every public service union in the country traveled to Wisconsin to protest the bill. The Democrat congressmen - people whose sole responsibility is to vote for or against bills - decided to run and hide in the safe haven of Illinois. They did this to keep the Wisconsin legislature from being able to have a quorum, which is needed to pass the bill. It was exceedingly childish. In 2008, President Obama - when discussing his ObamaCare legislation - famously said, "elections have consequences." Yet, when the duly elected Scott Walker - who, by the way, was elected on a platform of reigning in union excess - legally passed a bill, the Democrats either ran away, or rioted in the capital.

Now that the bill has passed, we see how left truly feels about civility. Since Walker's name first made headlines back in January, the thugs who have been occupying the rotunda in Madison have lashed out with the ugliest, vile threats against the Governor, and Republicans in general. They have compared him to Hitler, called for his assassination and even threatened his mother!

Today, as the vote was made public, left wingers from all over the country posted tweets and Facebook messages calling for Walker's death. And yet, the mainstream media barely makes a sound. Just to show you how disgusting these comments are, here is a YouTube video regarding it:

As Professor Jacobson asks, "Why do these people, many of whom are professionals, feel no fear in expressing such death wishes in the open?"

To answer his question, it's because they know the media has a double standard and they know that Eric Holder's Department of Justice will never prosecute a leftist for an attack on a conservative.

In conclusion, until we put an end to the far left bias in today's media and recognize the hypocrisy of the left (I can't even say "far-left" anymore because it has become so mainstream within the Democrat Party), we will continue to decline as a nation. With a government that can not even admit who their enemies are, and can not stand for American exceptionalism, my hopes are dwindling and I pray for the future.

2011-03-07T22:36:00.001-06:00

The New Mother FµƆĸing Tone Is Here
courtesy of Weasel Zipppers

2011-02-27T02:48:00.004-06:00

Making Sense of it All
Part I

It's been a while since I've written an original post. I think I know why I fall out the mood to write, though. It would be easy to blame the fact that there are (as of February 16th) 156 million different blogs on the web. Of course, many of them have long been abandoned and even more of them are simply created as advertisements for products (or porn).

I don't know how many blogs have lasted as long as this one has. I started mine way back in April 2004 - almost 7 long years ago. I think that alone is a terrific accomplishment. Heck, aside from being a parent and a husband (the latter ending after 20 years), I don't think I've ever dome anything for 7 years!

I think what causes me to be so inconsistent lately are a couple of different things. For one thing, my latest job takes up a great deal of time and since I work mostly in the afternoons and evenings, by the time I get home I'm often too damn tired to write.

Another reason is more political. While it doesn't really bother me that I don't average a lot of readers (I did when I was more consistent), I sometimes feel like I have nothing tangible to add to the conversation. Many of my influences write about certain topics so well, that I feel I'm just echoing their comments. What would the point of that be? That's why I have been posting articles from these writers who tell it better than I could ever hope to.

That being said, I do feel there are certain topics that I have to ability to discuss in perhaps ways that aren't always so easy to understand from the big guys. My hope is that perhaps my way of writing, with the passion I have for the subject may influence, or educate you, the reader.

1. The Middle East

A number of people I have heard from, or spoken to, often contradict themselves in regard to what has been happening in the Mideast and Northern Africa. It soon dawned on me that the reason for their confusion can be traced to the White House. Unfortunately, President Obama has been completely void of a true policy regarding the revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya. Where that has been most glaring has been in his incoherent mixed messages to the leaders of these countries.

A year ago, when the Iranian students rose up to challenge Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Obama was eerily silent. At the time, he claimed it was not "our place" to interfere in other countries affairs. While there was some truth to that, it was clearly seen as Obama's way of sucking up to Iran, in hopes they would reconsider their nuclear ambitions.

It failed and all it accomplished was to show the Iranian protesters that the leader of the free world didn't care about their desire for freedom.

When Tunisia fell to revolution, gain the President voted "present." Assumedly, since there really was no connection between the Tunisians and the United States, it appeared that Obama was following his original doctrine. Of course, this doctrine did not include Israel - whom Obama was clearly willing and able to interfere, and did - much to the chagrin of the Israelis.

However, when the Egyptians rose up to overthrow Hosni Mubarak - like the Israelis, a friend and ally of Washington - suddenly (after a few days) Obama found his voice. Of course, he also changed his mind daily as to what to do. Because he had no coherent policy and seemed to be completely taken by surprise (which was odd, since both the Israeli government and his own State department warned him of the unrest and, if nothing else, Tunisia should have woken him up). At first, Obama called for calm. Then he announced Mubarak MUST step down. The next day, he changed his stance and told Mubarak to stay and orderly transfer his power. A day later, Obama told Mubarak to resign immediately.

Of course, by this point, Mubarak understood the weakness of our President and told him to stick it.

And then, Libya erupted. And where was Obama? Well, Libya poses a different problem for the President. For one thing, members of his inner circle have been great supporters of Libyan President-for-Life Moammar Khadafy (or however you spell it today). While it would be cynicle to claim that these connections caused Obama to delay interfering, it is hard to assume it wasn't an issue.

Still, as Khadafy began turning his military against the people, Obama sat on the sidelines - even though the Libyan ambassador pleaded with Obama to take the threat of what was happening seriously - even going so far as informing the State department that Khadafy was willing to use chemical weapons to stave off the revolution.

Now, almost a week later, Obama has finally made some noise and informed Khadafy he must step down.

Ouch. That must really sting, huh? How about sending a naval fleet to Tripoli to force him to step down?

All this has shown is that when it comes to American allies, Obama feels no shame in demanding his way. But when dealing with America's enemies, he changes his direction. Of course, to the rest of the world, this shows Obama to be not only very weak, but also incompetent. It's one thing to be caught off guard - hey, it happens. But to then do it again and again, it shows a basic lack of understanding about the world in general, and the region in particular. Especially painful was watching how poorly Obama treated Mubarak.

The other side of the coin is how poorly the State department understands the dynamics of the Middle East. It started recently with the Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper testifying that the Muslim Brotherhood was mostly secular. Of course, anyone who actually listens to their representatives know just how insane that comment is.

But in fact, this fecklessness can be traced all the way back to the Jimmy Carter administration and how they handled the Iranian revolution of 1979. But Carter was not the only culprit. As much as it pains me to admit it, every President - including Reagan - failed to fully appreciate the growing threat of radical Islam. I cringed whenever President Bush (W.) called Islam the "religion of peace."

By failing to recognize - or if they did recognize, but simply ignored - the death cult of Islam, they allowed the American left to control the conversation. Students in schools were taught all about the virtues of "multiculturism" - a subject that Germany, Denmark, Great Britain and France have all admitted to be a colossal mistake. Yet, as the European countries begin to take measures to correct this monumental blunder (which, in some cases may be too late), the American left, led by President Obama, continue to stick their heads in the sand.

I'm amazed at the fact that poll after poll claims that the United States is a "center-right" nation. In fact, there are more than twice as many people who consider themselves "conservative" than there are those who consider themselves "liberal." Yet it seems, in almost every instance, policies and laws put in place in this country over the past 50 years have moved the country leftward.

The midterm elections this past year may have actually slowed the tide, however. But from what we are witnessing in Wisconsin shows that the left is not about to concede any ground. In 32008, President Obama famously announced that "elections have consequences." Yet in Wisconsin, it seems the left didn't get the memo.

I'll discuss more of this in part two.

2011-02-21T13:16:00.002-06:00

There is so much I can say about the Wisconsin protests. But I will leave it to Arnold Alhert, who explains in great deal how insane this whole thing is. It is well word reading.

Wisconsin: Progressivism in All its Ugly Glory (JWR)

By the time you read this, we will all have been "Wisconsin-ed" up to our eyeballs. Yet when one cuts through all the blather--the worst of which is ludicrous attempt by our thoroughly debauched media to portray fleeing Democrats Senators as "heroes"--what we are seeing is the first serious campaigning for the 2012 election. The battle lines couldn't be clearer: either the public will wrest this country back from the serial abusers for whom no government deficits are too large, no compensation packages too lavish and no special interest groups are too special, or we will all become vassals of their self-righteous, progressive tyranny.

Don't think for a second that the appearance in Wisconsin of the Democratic National Committee, along with Barack Obama's Organizing for America, is merely a show of "solidarity" with the "oppressed" public service employees. Wisconsin has become Ground Zero for a progressive movement quite comfortable with the use of intimidation, threats of harm and precisely the same hateful rhetoric they accuse conservatives of perpetrating whenever that particular bit of hypocrisy suits their purposes.

To put it succinctly, progressivism is all about the ends justifying the means. Once one understands that, everything else becomes clear. It makes it easy to understand why the same president who reminded Republicans that "I won" as the singular justification to implement his agenda, is taking the side of cowardly Wisconsin Democrat Senators who have made it clear that winning only counts when their side is victorious. It makes it just as easy to understand why a mainstream media which no longer makes even a cursory attempt to maintain their integrity will never ask that president how he could align himself with those who willingly abandon the bedrock process of our democratic republic.

It makes it easy to understand why the same media which laughably refers to the protests as our "Egyptian moment" can willfully ignore the reality that Egyptian protesters were rallying for democracy while those in Wisconsin want democracy subverted. It makes it easy to understand why they did everything they could to find evidence of hate within the Tea Party movement--to the point of lying about it as they did when they claimed racial slurs were directed at members of Congressional Black Caucus outside the Capitol last year--even as they studiously ignore blatant manifestations of hatred directed at Governor Walker and Republicans in Wisconsin.

Here's something else they've studiously ignored: at a March 2, 2010 meeting of the Milwaukee School Board, Deb Wegner, Manager of Financial Planning in that city, revealed that the 2011 average annual salary for a teacher there would be maintained at the 2010 level--of $56,500. When benefits are factored in? Teachers total compensation was projected to rise--from $95,316 to $100,005. Average median income in Milwaukee from 2006-2008, as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau?

Just over $19,000.

That's something worth remembering while teachers are being portrayed as victims. It's also worth remembering many of those same teachers had no qualms whatsoever, not only about ditching school for three days last week forcing many of them to close, but dragging along some of their students to protest as well. For progressives, no one, not even children, are exempt from being used to further their ends.

This is one American who couldn't be happier with the current developments. From the president's characterization of the attempt by Wisconsin to reign in the excess of public sector unions as an "assault," to Rep. Nancy Pelosi "standing in solidarity" with those who have nothing but contempt for the will of the taxpaying majority, the ugly face of progressivism is being brought into an unprecedented level of focus.

For years, Democrats, their media enablers and their special interest groups have been able to mask their utter contempt for the American public (hopelessly stupid), the Constitution (completely elastic) and American exceptionalism (jingoistic hogwash). In 2008, the facade was partially removed when they arrogantly believed they would, as James Carville put it, "rule for forty years."

In 2011, arrogance has given way to fear, and what we're seeing in Wisconsin is the further unmasking of a progressive movement fighting for survival. We are seeing the president who ran as the great uniter being revealed for the class-war-faring, community organizing rabble-rouser has has always been. We are seeing the unbridled sense of entitlement of public service employees who would run every state in the country into bankruptcy--as long as they get theirs. We are seeing the unmitigated gall of Democratic legislators who would violate their oath of office without an ounce of remorse. We are witnessing a corrupt media once again trying to manipulate an American public increasingly aware and scornful of such attempts.

Between now and 2012, Americans should prepare themselves for a level of hatred, lying, character assassination, and quite possibly violence that will arise when those long used to getting their way are challenged as they have never been before. The Takers--from the crony capitalists on top to the rapacious public service unions in the middle, to the entitlement crowd and their community shakedown artists and racial hucksters on the bottom--know they are in trouble.

And they are in trouble for a very simple reason: the heart of progressivism is indecency. It is an indecency which seeks first to divide Americans and then conquer them--for our own good. It is an indecency which sees every American, not as as individual, but as a cog in a giant socialist machine that is supposed to take us to Utopia. It is an indecency which sees self-interest and selfishness as one and the same, talent as something to be exploited, and individual ambition as something to be tethered to the "greater good." If democracy or the rule of law becomes an impediment along the way, it is to be intimidated, demonstrated against, deliberately mis-characterized by the media--and ignored by the Justice Department, the czars, and answer-to-no-one-but-the-president bureaucrats.

The demonstrators in Wisconsin are "Egyptians?" Try Greeks. Try rioting French and English youths. Try the millions of self-entitled workers in Europe whose own gravy train has run out of gravy. Heroes? Even a hero sandwich has more class than this rabble, and the bet here is most decent Americans know it.

And I'm betting they'll say so in no uncertain terms in 2012.

2011-02-07T00:03:00.002-06:00

Although I have rarely linked to Yid With Lid. but that is not because of anything personal against him. In fact, he is one of my favorite bloggers. If not for Yid, the whole Helen Thomas story would perhaps not have seen the light of day. So I take his foresight seriously.

He posted what I really believe is a well thought out and reasoned defense of FOX News host Glenn Beck. I recall, not too long ago, someone making the argument that Beck is an antisemite. Of course, after researching it a bit (I have watched and listened to his show and had never come to that conclusion myself and I doubt my friend had ever listened to a word Beck has ever said, as well) and realized the source of my friend's comment was from Media Matters. At the time, all I really knew about MM was that they were left-wing and hated conservatives.

So when I read Yid's article today, I was thrilled to see him investigate this in more detail and am not the least bit surprised at his conclusion:

The 7 DUMBEST Charges of Antisemitism Made Against Glenn Beck By The Soros Progressive Hit Team

From their perspective, Media Matters' targeting of Glenn Beck is almost understandable, after all the radio host/TV commentator has been warning people how the progressive agenda is a danger to American freedom for a long time. He has also been exposing, George Soros, also known as "Spooky Dude" who is the Sugar Daddy for much of the progressive movement, including Media Matters.

What Media Matters doesn't like to talk about is the fact that Soros is a major funder of the organization, most of the funding is indirect. Three different Soros charitable foundations, individual members of the Soros family, and the Geosor Corporation give hundreds of millions of dollars to The Open Society Institute (see page 18 of the Institute's nonprofit tax return posted here). Open Society gives money to the Center for American Progress who gives money to Media Matters. Another Soros funded group that helps Media Matters is the Democracy Alliance, and recently Soros gave a large and public chunk of money to Media matters, calling it the "first ever" donation by the financier (except for all the other I suppose). Keep in mind that Media Matters is not required to list its donors, this information comes from the tax returns of the foundations that give it money, so there may be other donations not discovered.

Media Matters attacks on Beck have reached almost comic proportions---an incredible obsession. A search of Media Matters on site search engine reports the Soros-controlled media police posted 2,460 anti-Beck posts between January 4, 2010 and October 5th (the day before they began their strategy of trying to brand the Commentator as a Jew-hater. Let that number roll around in your mind for a second–2,460 posts in 274 days–that’s an average of nine posts a day and (if he didn’t miss a TV or radio show) 13 posts per program. It was obvious that either Media Matters and Mr. Soros had it in for Glenn Beck or someone has some sort of kinky crush on the Fox star.

Media Matters began a "Glenn Beck has a Jewish Problem" hit job in October when the the commentator dedicated a program to outlining George Soros’ political network and exposing Spooky Dude’s history of currency manipulation and it continues through today with the bogus charges of 400 rabbis, blessed by Media Matters and promoted by the Progressive mainstream media.

False charges of Antisemitism are a particular hot button of mine. As a Jew, every time I hear someone being bullied with false charges of Antisemitism I an compelled to offer a defense (usually that deflects the bully’s anger toward my direction).

That doesn't mean I reject all charges of Antisemitism. When charges are valid I just vigorously attack the bigot, such as when my friend Rabbi Nessenoff asked me what to do with this little video he took of Helen Thomas. I quickly posted it on my site The Lid, at Big Journalism, gave it to Scott Baker who at the time was running Breitbart TV , sent out tweets and emails to most of the large sites. By the end of the day it was on radio and TV and the calls for Thomas’ head were all over the place, and my friend Rabbi Nessenoff's face was all over the media.

In the case of Media Matters and Sugar-Daddy George's progressive hit squad, branding Beck as Antisemitic was a brilliant strategy at times they brought back memories of the All in the Family episode where Mr. Rabinowitz, Archie Bunker's attorney advised,

In a court of law, you can’t beat a station wagon filled with nuns!

Though in the case of Soros progressive hit squad, it was an open letter with 400 Rabbis.

Thankfully the attempt to brand Glenn Beck as an anti-Semite isn't working for two reasons. First of all and most importantly it's not true. As a regular listener of Beck's radio show and a semi-regular viewer of his TV offerings, if there was the slightest hint of Antisemitism coming out of the Fox broadcaster's mouth I would be attacking him relentlessly. Just as I continue to attack people like WFAN's Mike Francesa and his former partner Chris Russo, who reacted to 9/11 by calling for Jews to take a loyalty oath.

The other mistake made by the Soros hit team lead by Media Matters was over reach. The few months have seen some of the the lamest allegations of Antisemitism made since biblical times, when God told Abraham to leave the Mesopotamian City of Ur the land of his birth, his kindred and his father’s house, move to the Holy Land to create the first “Jewish neighborhood.”

These, in my humble opinion are the lamest.

1) Just What The Heck Were They Smoking? In early October Beck covered Soros’ history as a currency speculator whose sometimes underhanded dealing brought down the British pound sterling and an insider trading conviction in France . He had also been accused of triggering the economic meltdown of Southeast Asian currencies in 1997.

Beck claimed Soros,

“rolled the dice in ‘97 in Asia, and many, including the Malaysian prime minister, believe it was billionaire speculator George Soros who helped trigger the economic meltdown that spread through Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines.”

Media Matters turned this Beck program into Antisemitism with some pretty inventive and twisted logic. Try to follow this (if you can)— since Beck mentioned Soros was accused of doing underhanded dealing by the Malaysian Prime Minister—and since the Malaysian PM is a serial anti-Semite who once said Soros’ currency dealings were part of a Jewish conspiracy–and since Soros is Jewish—well then, that must mean Beck must be a Jew-hater who believes that Jews run the banks. Understand? No, I didn’t think so. Don’t feel bad because it doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense and it ignores the fact that, well Soros' has been underhanded if you consider a insider trading underhanded. This charge was reminiscent of those weird questions found on the S.A.T. exams in the 1970s. Remember? —Cat is to Dog as hamburger is to automobile. You would be scratching your head for days trying to figure out what the exam’s creator smoking.

Besides being hard to follow, the other problem with the Media Matters charge was Beck did not mention or even hint at the word Jew in his discourse. Of course according to the Media Matters playbook Beck’s omission of any tie to the Jews is not a concern, because like the Ministry of Truth from 1984 truth is not their concern.

2) OOPS, I Guess I Should Have Checked My Mail. During a series about Soros in November, Beck used an interview Soros did with 60 Minutes where the Pope of Progressivism discussed how he helped to confiscate Jewish property:

KROFT: My understanding is that you went out with this protector of yours who swore that you were his adopted godson.

Mr. SOROS: Yes. Yes.

KROFT: Went out, in fact, and helped in the confiscation of property from the Jews.

Mr. SOROS: Yes. That’s right. Yes.

KROFT: I mean, that’s–that sounds like an experience that would send lots of people to the psychiatric couch for many, many years. Was it difficult?

Mr. SOROS: Not–not at all. Not at all. Maybe as a child you don’t–you don’t see the connection. But it was–it created no–no problem at all.

KROFT: No feeling of guilt?

Mr. SOROS: No.

Ironically, Beck had used this passage to bring out sympathy for Soros,

But when he had to go over and take the lands from the people, his Jewish friends and neighbors who were being sent to the gas chambers, I can’t imagine what that would do to a teenager, or anybody, an adult—well, what did it do to George Soros.

Beck’s only real question about Soros and the Holocast era is why today at age 80, he considers it the happiest year of his life.

A few days later, Progressive leader Abe Foxman head of the ADL, who often works harder for progressive issues (such as late-term abortion rights and amnesty for illegal aliens) than Jewish issues criticized the way Beck handled his discussion of Soros’ youth in Nazi Hungry saying,

Glenn Beck’s description of George Soros’ actions during the Holocaust is completely inappropriate, offensive and over the top.

Foxman's charges indicated that he did not actually watch the program but was simply told about the quote and issued his rebuke. Unfortunately for the loyal progressive, Foxman had to "walk back” his criticism when Beck revealed a two week old letter he received from the ADL guru, apologizing for an earlier unfounded rebuke of the Fox commentator and praising the commentator as a friend to both to Israel and the Jewish Community.

3) You Say Tomato, I Say You Mean "Damn Those Jews." On November 9th of 2010 Media Matters attacked Beck-owned website, The Blaze for associating with anti-Semites.

The Blaze’s infraction was quoting Zubi Diamond, author of "The Wizards of Wall Street” to substantiate a claim that George Soros may be “betting on U.S. financial collapse.” According to Diamond, Soros’ agenda is “to destroy capitalism.”

According to Media Matters, when Diamond called Soros the “mastermind” behind of a “cabal of slithery rich” who “visited financial violence on the American people to get Barack Obama elected,” He was using anti-Semitic imagery. No really, they really made that claim.

4) Who Owns That Website- Oh I do. One would think that once Keith Olbermann left MSNBC there would be some movement toward sanity. However within days of the Master of Mean's firing, Cenk Uygur who was a temporary substitute for Olbermann's substitute decided to join in on the "fun" declaring that Glenn Beck had a Jewish problem.

Cenk must have been trying to impress his bosses with the charges against Beck but it was built on holes. Who cares if eight of those nine people Cenk cherry-picked were Jewish? Anybody can take a list and pick out the Jews. Most of the other names that Glenn Beck has criticized, indeed has devoted entire shows "attacking" include a host of gentiles: Bill Ayers, Woodrow Wilson, Van Jones, Mark Lloyd, Rev. Wright, Andrew Jackson, Teddy Roosevelt, John Holdren, and Jim Wallis just to name a few. Indeed even the MSNBC personnel who Glenn Beck has locked horns with, such as Olbermann and Matthews, are not Jewish (thank you God!).

Using Cenk as a spokesman for protecting the Jews is a bit of a joke in itself. He has used the a modern version of the "blood libel" against the IDF, invokes a moral equivalency between terrorist acts and Israel's targeted attacks on Hamas leadership and in one Huffington Post article wrote that he can't stand Judaism (to be fair he can't stand Islam either).

Additionally Cenk Uygur runs a website called Young Turks which is loaded with Antisemitic comments. For example, this comment made by someone named kkdragonlord?

that makes me wonder, jews are mighty poweful over there with holywood and Israel holding America by the balls, what would be the problem with a jew President?

Christian right would freak out or something?

down here we even complain when our candidates try to make a big deal out of faith

Don't look at me, I don't have a problem with a "Jew president" but I would rather have a gentile who is a conservative, than a Jew who is a liberal.

5) A Media Matters Writer With a Jewish Problem Claims Glenn Beck Has a Jewish Problem Joining Uygur in claiming that the Fox host had a Jewish problem was progressive MJ Rosenberg, who among other jobs, is a commentator for Media Matters.

Rosenberg went after Beck in an article where he tried to relate the tragic shooting of Gabrielle Giffords to Beck's supposed Jew-hatred.

I have written about my concern that the Jewish community was not paying enough attention to Beck because he cleverly covers his tracks by professing his "love" for Israel. (Virtually all anti-Semites these days understand that expressing "love" for the Jewish state gives them a relatively free pass to bash Jews and even to use Nazi themes against them.)

Sorry Rosenberg, but its time to throw down the hypocrite card. There is no political commentator who uses anti-Semitic imagery more than Rosenberg himself. Ironically just a few weeks later, in a piece written by MJ Rosenberg and published by Media Matters, he used another crisis, this time the one in Egypt to imply that Jews ran the government, the media, and if it wasn’t for those dammed Jews, the United States and the Islamic Republic of Iran would be practically “kissing cousins.” Many people have accused MJ Rosenberg of being a self-hating Jews, when you have read enough of Rosenberg's writings, it is clear he is not self-hating, in fact I believe he loves himself (although it is also clear he isn't a huge fan of those war-mongering, foreign policy running, Iranian hating, media owning Jews)

6) A Station Wagon Filled With 400 Rabbis. Just before the weekend of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, the the Soros-affiliated Jewish Funds for Justice (JFJ) delivered a petition to Fox headquarters criticizing Glenn Beck for comments he made about George Soros back in October (the same ones Abe Foxman criticized). JFJ embellished the original Foxman allegation with a false charge that Beck used Holocaust terms to describe people he disagreed with “hundreds of times.”

Two weeks later in the January 27th edition of the Wall Street Journal was an advertisement/open letter signed by 400 Rabbis via JFJ. Repeating the libels found in the petition delivered earlier that month, the letter added a demand that Fox News Chief Roger Ailes disrespected the group because when JFJ announced they were preparing a complaint signed by four hundred Rabbis, Ailes dismissed the threat describing the group as “Left-Wing Rabbis who don’t think anybody should be able to use the word Holocaust on the air.” Ailes was completely incorrect– the group was composed of Left-Wing Rabbis who don’t think anybody but progressives should be able to use the word Holocaust on the air.

Interestingly the body of the charges seemed to have been ripped off from an article by NY Jewish Week's progressive writer James Besser, written on November 11th.

A Further investigation revealed that most of the people/or organizations whose quotes were used in the body of the JFJ letter to corroborate their slander were rebelling against the Soros effort. Out of the five quotes, three weren’t contacted prior to the use of their names, announced they disagreed with the thrust of the letter and were upset that they were included. A fourth came out and said the letter was too one sided. And, not surprisingly, the only group/person not raising an objection has multiple connections to the Dude himself.

Incredibly one of the people who was offended by their inclusion in the Jewish Funds For Justice letter was none other than the ADL's Abe Foxman, who helped to start the ball rolling back in Novemember

I was surprised to see my name and statements attributed to me used in the advertisement from Jewish Funds for Justice calling on Rupert Murdoch to "sanction" Glenn Beck for his repeated use of Holocaust and Nazi images on his Fox News program.

I want to make it clear, for the record, that I do not support this misguided campaign against Fox News, even though my name was used.

While we have said many times that Nazi comparisons are offensive and inappropriate when used for political attacks, in my view it is wrongheaded to single out only Fox News on this issue, when both liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, can share equal guilt in making trivializing comparisons to the Holocaust.

Furthermore, the open letter signed by hundreds of rabbis is a trivialization in itself—bizarrely timed for release on United Nations's Holocaust Remembrance Day. At a time when Holocaust denial is rampant in much of the Arab world, where anti-Semitism remains a serious concern, and where the Iranian leader has openly declared his desire to "wipe Israel off the map," surely there are greater enemies and threats to the Jewish people than the pro-Israel stalwarts Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes and Glenn Beck.

Wow, Abe Foxman the progressive’s- progressive, jumped off the Beck is a Jew hater bandwagon. Losing Abe Foxman is the progressive equivalent of when Walter Cronkite editorialized against the Vietnam War and President Johnson said, “If I’ve lost Cronkite, I’ve lost Middle America." Media Matter's just lost the the Jews of "Middle America."

7) The Charges Never Made. This one doesn't really involve Glenn Beck, this one is about the real live Antisemitism or inappropriate use of Holocaust imagery ignored that should have been blasted by Media Matters, Jewish Funds for Justice and the rest of the progressive hit team instead of making false charges against Glenn Beck.

They were silent, for example, when Sugar-Daddy George Soros used the anti-Semitic canard that the Jews control the media.

“The pro-Israel lobby [a polite way of saying, those dammed Jooose] has been remarkably successful in suppressing criticism.”

They were also silent when General Merrel McPeak, former Obama for President Co-Chair, was asked during an interview why there isn’t peace in the Middle East. He answered, “New York City. Miami. We have a large vote — vote, here in favor of Israel. And no politician wants to run against it.” (In other words those pesky Jews, who control America’s policy on the Middle East.)

And there are plenty of other examples, comments made by one-time Obama appointee Chas Freeman, Obama Campaign adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, Progressive Congressmen Moran and Ellison just to name a few—all ignored by Media Matters. They also ignore that two major progressive websites, the Daily Kos, and the Huffington Post are usually loaded with anti-Semitic references.

They were even silent when Soros wrote in his book that George Bush used Nazi-tactics. Move On, an organization seeded with some of George Soros’ money, created a TV commercial comparing George Bush to the Nazis, and many of their progressive supporters on TV made similar analogies.

Even though this seventh example does not at all mention the Fox broadcaster, it is the most important because it makes the first six even lamer. You see without number seven those other charges are just a series of half-truths, lies and disjointed logic. But the examples in this section make the charges made by Media Matters' and the other progressives more than lame but hypocritical. The fact that they make fake charges against Glenn Beck and ignore real examples of Antisemitism proves that they don't give a rat's arse about Jews, despite the fact they profess to be defenders of the Jews and the memory of the Holocaust. There is just one way to describe the charges made by Media Matters and "Spooky Dude's" Progressive hit team:

...At least its "Grade A"

2011-02-06T15:56:00.002-06:00

Ten Liberal Revisionist Lies about Ronald Reagan (Doug Ross)

ThinkProgress Celebrates Ronald Reagan's Birthday By Marketing Its Top Ten Lies Intended to Smear the 20th Century's Greatest President

That was quick--ThinkProgress attacks Ronald Reagan with their usual slate of laughably fraudulent fabrications

It didn't take long for the loons at ThinkRegress to begin attacking the memory of the 20th century's greatest president. The culmination of their effort -- '10 Things Conservatives Don’t Want You To Know About Ronald Reagan' -- is a list of Reagan's policies that conservatives supposedly want to hide from the general public.

Reagan was not the man conservatives claim he was. This image of Reagan as a conservative superhero is myth, created to untie the various factions of the right behind a common leader. In reality, Reagan was no conservative ideologue or flawless commander-in-chief. Reagan regularly strayed from conservative dogma — he raised taxes eleven times as president while tripling the deficit — and he often ended up on the wrong side of history, like when he vetoed an Anti-Apartheid bill.

ThinkProgress' "top 10 things conservatives rarely mention when talking about President Reagan" are as follows:

" 1. Reagan was a serial tax raiser" - Reagan suffered from overwhelming Democrat majorities in Congress when he took office. While he desperately wanted to strip away huge swaths of government (including eliminating the then newly created Department of Education), he had no choice but to compromise with the Democrats who controlled the budgetary purse-strings. When Reagan left office, the top marginal tax rate was 28% (today's it's 35% and under Bill Clinton it was nearly 40%).

"2. Reagan nearly tripled the federal budget deficit by enacting a major tax cut his first year in office and government revenue dropped off precipitously" - Another flat-out lie. Before his 25 percent across-the-board cut in individual income-tax rates went into effect, government receipts from individual income taxes trickled in at $244.1 billion. The year Reagan left office, they totaled $445.7 billion -- an 82 percent jump. As for the deficits, Democrats outspent every one of the nine budgets Reagan proposed but one. Further, Democrats refused to make corresponding cuts in wasteful domestic programs to offset the defense appropriations Reagan needed to combat the Soviet Union after the Carter administration's foreign policy disasters (e.g., Iran, Afghanistan, et. al.).

"3. Unemployment soared after Reagan’s 1981 tax cuts" - Before the full tax-relief package was passed -- against the wishes of many Democrats, by the way -- the jobless rate hit 9.6 percent. But as the cuts rippled through the economy, unemployment dropped every year after 1983, reaching a low of 5.3 percent in 1989. And tax cuts benefited minorities, too. The jobless rate among blacks plunged from 19.5 percent in 1983 to 11.4 percent in 1989.

"4. Reagan grew the size of the federal government tremendously" - this again omits the role of Congressional Democrats who controlled the purse-strings and refused to axe the programs and agencies that Reagan requested. In fact, the media portrayed Reagan as "heartless" and depicted him as "laughable and malevolent" for his attempts to strip away the federal bureaucracy. But the only way the Democrat Congress would accept a defense buildup and tax cuts was for Reagan to agree to their domestic spending agenda. In fact, the budget deficits of the 1980s made the surpluses in the 1990s possible; the balanced budget was aided by surging tax revenues from a healthy, low-tax economy and immense defense savings made possible by the fall of the Soviet Union.

"5. Reagan did little to fight a woman’s right to chose [sic]" - Reagan was adamant about ending the practice of 'abortion on demand' and proposed that legislation be drafted to do so (you can hear Reagan's 1983 address on this subject); but he "had little success in gaining its acceptance by Congress."

" 6. Reagan was a “bellicose peacenik.”" - this is sheer revisionist idiocy; Reagan believed, first and foremost, in peace through strength. He gave dozens of speeches on this topic, rebuilt the U.S. military after Carter had stripped it bare, and created the impetus for the oft-derided SDI ("Star Wars") program that has since become an essential part of U.S. national security strategy. His famous slogans on this topic were "peace through strength" and "trust but verify".

" 7. Reagan gave amnesty to 3 million undocumented immigrants" - The Democrat leadership in Congress promised to enact strict enforcement measures as a trade for a one-time amnesty deal. In an effort to control the border, Reagan went along with the deal. At the time (1986), the measures were marketed by Democrats as as being able to stop illegal immigration. Ted Kennedy himself sold the enforcement clauses of the law as strong enough to ensure that only a one-time amnesty would be needed. But, as is their standard practice, Democrats lied about sealing the border.

Reagan himself said, "This country has lost control of its borders. And no country can sustain that kind of position."

" 8. Reagan illegally funneled weapons to Iran" -Democrats launched a six-year, $40 million investigation of Reagan in a politically inspired witch-hunt. Reagan was, in fact, found guilty of absolutely nothing. Furthermore, indictments were intentionally handed down mere days before the 1992 election that pitted George H. W. Bush against Bill Clinton -- presumably to levy the maximum amount of political damage on the GOP candidate. Near the end of the investigations, The Baltimore Sun reported that a "federal trial judge in Washington dismissed Oliver North's conviction" and that "[c]riticism of Mr. Walsh's prosecution and of the law that authorized it will become more intense [because the] public has gotten precious little from his [at the time] $30 million, four-year effort".

"9. Reagan vetoed a comprehensive anti-Apartheid act" - Reagan vehemently opposed apartheid ("Apartheid is morally wrong and politically unacceptable [... the] United States cannot maintain cordial relations with [such] a government") but he did not support the approach advocated by Congress. He issued an executive order restricting trade with the Pretoria government and virtually ended inter-bank dealings. But he believed that Congress' unilateral sanctions would harm blacks most of all and eradicate all of the leverage he wanted to bring to bear on South Africa. He wanted a timetable for the elimination of apartheid laws, the release of all political prisoners (especially Nelson Mandela) and a removal of the ban on black political movements. He felt he could not negotiate with the South African government if he had nothing to trade. His 1986 speech -- "Ending Apartheid in South Africa" -- comprehensively described his plans and approach.

" 10. Reagan helped create the Taliban and Osama Bin Laden" - Gee, next they'll be complaining that we had to side with the Soviets to defeat the Nazis. This sort of leftist lunacy simply rewrites history. We needed to sabotage the Soviets' efforts in Afghanistan to prevent a dramatic power-shift in the Middle East. Blaming Reagan for the Taliban and Bin Laden is like blaming Henry Ford for the problem of too many scrap tires.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Happy Birthday, Mr. President. Rest assured that the Left is just as stupid, dishonest and disingenuous as they were when you were in office.

2011-02-04T13:24:00.002-06:00

Yes, folks. Believe it or not, I am posting an article from the Huffington Post. But it is so well written and impressive, I could not resist the opportunity.

Israel's Never Looked So Good
David Suissa

They warned us. The geniuses at Peace Now warned us. The brilliant diplomats warned us. The think tanks warned us. Even the Arab dictators warned us. For decades now, they have been warning us that if you want "peace in the Middle East," just fix the Palestinian problem. A recent variation on this theme has been: Just get the Jews to stop building apartments in East Jerusalem and Efrat. Yes, if all those Jews in the West Bank and East Jerusalem would only "freeze" their construction, then, finally, Palestinian leaders might come to the table and peace might break out.

And what would happen if peace would break out between Jews and Palestinians? Would all those furious Arabs now demonstrating on streets across the Middle East feel any better?

What bloody nonsense.

Has there ever been a greater abuse of the English language in international diplomacy than calling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the "Middle East peace process?" As if there were only two countries in the Middle East.

Even if you absolutely believe in the imperative of creating a Palestinian state, you can't tell me that the single-minded and global obsession with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at the expense of the enormous ills in the rest of the Middle East hasn't been idiotic, if not criminally negligent.

While tens of millions of Arabs have been suffering for decades from brutal oppression, while gays have been tortured and writers jailed and women humiliated and dissidents killed, the world -- yes, the world -- has obsessed with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

As if Palestinians -- the same coddled victims on whom the world has spent billions and who have rejected one peace offer after another -- were the only victims in the Middle East.

As if the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has anything to do with the 1,000-year-old bloody conflict between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, or the desire of brutal Arab dictators to stay in power, or the desire of Islamist radicals to bring back the Caliphate, or the economic despair of millions, or simply the absence of free speech or basic human rights throughout the Arab world.

While self-righteous Israel bashers have scrutinized every flaw in Israel's democracy -- some waxing hysterical that the Jewish democratic experiment in the world's nastiest neighborhood had turned into an embarrassment -- they kept their big mouths shut about the oppression of millions of Arabs throughout the Middle East.

They cried foul if Israeli Arabs -- who have infinitely more rights and freedoms than any Arabs in the Middle East -- had their rights compromised in any way. But if a poet were jailed in Jordan or a gay man were tortured in Egypt or a woman were stoned in Syria, all we heard was screaming silence.

Think of the ridiculous amount of media ink and diplomatic attention that has been poured onto the Israel-Palestinian conflict over the years, while much of the Arab world was suffering and smoldering, and tell me this is not criminal negligence. Do you ever recall seeing a UN resolution or an international conference in support of Middle Eastern Arabs not named Palestinians?

Of course, now that the Arab volcano has finally erupted, all those chronic Israel bashers have suddenly discovered a new cause: Freedom for the poor oppressed Arabs of the Middle East!

Imagine if, instead of putting Israel under their critical and hypocritical microscope, the world's Israel bashers had taken Israel's imperfect democratic experiment and said to the Arab world: Why don't you try to emulate the Jews?

Why don't you give equal rights to your women and gays, just like Israel does?

Why don't you give your people the same freedom of speech and freedom to vote that Israel does? And offer them the economic opportunities they would get in Israel? Why don't you treat your Jewish and Christian citizens the same way Israel treats its Arab and Christian citizens?

Why don't you study how Israel has struggled to balance religion with democracy -- a very difficult but not insurmountable task?

Why don't you teach your people that Jews are not the sons of dogs but a noble, ancient people with a 3,000-year connection to the land of Israel?

Yes, imagine if Israel bashers had spent a fraction of their energy fighting the lies of Arab dictators and defending the rights of millions of oppressed Arabs. Imagine if President Obama had taken one percent of the time he has harped on Jewish settlements to defend the democratic rights of Egyptian Arabs -- which he is suddenly doing now that the volcano has erupted.

Maybe it's just easier to beat up on a free and open society like Israel.

Well, now that the cesspool of human oppression in the Arab world has been opened for all to see, how bad is Israel's democracy looking? Don't you wish the Arab world had a modicum of Israel's civil society? Would you still be worrying about "stability in the Middle East?"

You can preach to me all you want about the great Jewish tradition of self-criticism -- which I believe in -- but right now, when I see poor Arab souls being murdered for the simple act of protesting on the street, I've never felt more proud of being a supporter of the Jewish state.

2011-01-20T22:14:00.001-06:00

The future, per Doug Ross...

Calling the Obamacare Emergency Line

Welcome to the ObamaCare Emergency Help Line!

For Espanol, press 1.
For Urdu, press 2
For Arabic, press 3
For Farsi, press 4
For Hmong, press 5
For all other languages, press 6

6

Thank you! Did you press 6? If yes, press 1. If no, press 2.

1

Thank you. To speed processing of your call, please key in your 9-digit social security number, whether it was illegally obtained or not.

5 5 5 4 4 3 3 3 3

Thank you. Did you enter five five five four four three three three three? If yes, press 7, if no, press 3.

7

Thank you. Please enter the nature of your ailment, condition or problem.

For Achondroplasia, press 1-0-0-0. For Acne, press 1-0-0-1. For Acrodysostosis, press 1-0-0-2. For Acromegaly, press 1-0-0-3. For Adenoids, press 1-0-0-4. For Adrenoleukodystrophy, press 1-0-0-5. For Age-related macular degeneration, press 1-0-0-6. For Agoraphobia, press 1-0-0-7. For Albinism, press 1-0-0-8. For AIDS, press 1-0-0-8. For Alcohol poisoning, press 1-0-0-9. For Alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency, press 1-0-1-0. For Alport syndrome, press 1-0-1-1. For Altitude sickness, press 1-0-1-2. For Alzheimer's disease, press 1-0-1-3. For Amyloidosis, press 1-0-1-4. For Anaemia, press 1-0-1-5. For --

*

Thank you. To enter the nature of your ailment, condition or problem by name, use the touch-tone keypad to spell the name, then press the pound sign.

4 (h) ... 3 (e) ... 2 (a) ... 7 (r) ... 8 (t) ... 2 (a) ... 8 (t) ... 8 (t) ... 2 (a) ... 2 (c) ... 5 (k) ... #

Did you select HEART ATTACK? If yes, press 2, if no, press 9.

2

On a scale of 1 to 9, with 9 being excruciating pain, how much pain are you in?

9

Enter your age, followed by the pound sign.

7 4 #

I'm sorry, the maximum age of treatment for this condition, as determined by Federal Coordinating Council for Comparative Effectiveness Research is Seventy-three. Thank you for calling.

Good-bye.

7 2 # ... 7 2 # ... 72 #

*** Click ***

[Call recording terminated]

2011-01-16T22:34:00.001-06:00

These are the words of Don Surber, but it could have easily been from me as well...

I do not want civil discourse

For a decade, from the election of Bush 43 forward, the Left has lied and cheated as it tried to return to power. Al Gore made a mockery out of the American electoral system by being a spoilsport over Florida, which Bush indeed won by 537 votes. Dan Rather forged a document to try to derail Bush’s re-election. Twice Democrats stole U.S. senators from the Republicans. After voting to support the war to get by the 2002 election, many Democrats quickly soured on the war. The profane protests were cheered by liberals who misattributed “dissent is the highest form of patriotism”to Thomas Jefferson; the words belong to the late historian Howard Zinn.

Once in power, liberals were the opposite of gracious.

For two years now, I have been called ignorant, racist, angry and violent by the left. The very foul-mouthed protesters of Bush dare to now label my words as “hate speech.”

Last week, the left quickly blamed the right for the national tragedy of a shooting spree by a madman who never watched Fox News, never listened to Rush Limbaugh and likely did not know who Sarah Palin is.

Fortunately, the American public rejected out of hand that idiotic notion that the right was responsible.

Rather than apologize, the left wants to change the tone of the political debate.

The left suddenly wants civil discourse.

Bite me.

The left wants to play games of semantics.

Bite me.

The left wants us to be civil — after being so uncivil for a decade.

Bite me.

There is grown-up work to do now. Liberals ran up the federal credit card, destroyed the American medical system and undermined the rule of law — which is the foundation of capitalism — with a bunch of unconstitutional fiats from the president and his bureaucracy.

The economy is a mess. The president “inherited” a 7.6% unemployment rate. It’s now 9.4% — after we spent a record $787 billion on a stimulus.

I was not consulted on that stimulus. I had a very good argument against it. I said the money supply was too large and printing more money would fail. I said let the economic downturn run its course.

Lefties were too busy celebrating the 2008 election to listen.

When people protested lefties made vulgar remarks about tea-bagging and giggled.

So screw you and your civil discourse.

I don’t want to hear it.

I have been screamed at for 10 years.

It’s my turn now. I am not going to scream back. But I refuse to allow anyone to dictate what I say or how I say it. I refuse to allow the same foul-mouthed, foul-spirited foul people who dumped on me to now try to tell me what I may or may not say.

My free speech matters more than the feelings of anyone on the left. You don’t like what I say? Tough.

I will not allow people to label my words Hate Speech or try to lecture me on civility. I saw the lefty signs. The left’s definition of civil discourse is surreal.

We have a terribly unfit president who has expanded government control beyond not only what is constitutional but what is healthy for our freedom.

Indeed, this call for civil discourse is itself a direct threat to my free speech.

So screw you.

You don’t like my words? You don’t like my tone? You feel threatened?

Too bad.

No.

Actually, that is what I want. I want the lefties to feel bad. I want them to feel hurt. I want them to cry to their mommies.

That way the field will be cleared so we grown-ups can fix the nation and the economy. If you can’t put up with a little excrement, get the hell out of the barn.

2011-01-16T02:35:00.004-06:00

From Rodger...

The 11 Most Ludicrous Free Passes Given to The Obamas

"One of the most infuriating events in the last few years for conservatives is surprisingly not the election of Barack Obama. What burns conservatives most of all is the refusal of the journalistic community to do its job where Obama is involved. Historically, the American press tends to be hard on a sitting president and the American people expect it. This keeps everybody honest. Never have we witnessed the media so willing to forgo its purpose for the advancement of one man." Megyn Fox

“

11. The Most Ethical and Transparent Government In History
Obama promised to deliver the most transparent government the world has ever seen.

10. Lobbyists for me but not for thee…
When Obama was on the campaign trail he had a lot of tough words for evil lobbyists.

9. No interest in Obama’s history, plenty of interest in his “historical significance”
Short of repeating, verbatim, Obama’s two autobiographies (seriously, who writes two autobiographies before the age of 50) the Obama-loving media showed no interest in Obama’s history, Chicago connections, or experience.

8. Occidental College, Columbia College and Harvard grades…still sealed
I can only guess that Obama was a terrible student with all the effort that has gone into sealing his educational records. The press had a field day skewing George W. Bush for getting Cs.

7. The President’s Security Blankie
President Obama, the man they said was the greatest speaker of all time has a curious quirk.

6. Michelle O No!
Many years ago there lived an Emperor, who was so excessively fond of grand new clothes that he spent all his money upon them, that he might be very fine.

5. Verbal Gaffes
I will never forget when Dan Quayle misspelled “potato” in a school classroom.

4. Excessive Vacations
The press went wild reporting on Bush’s many “vacations.”

3. Encouraging Racism
Far from becoming the Great Uniter between the races,

2. From a Tiny ACORN Grows a Giant Tree of Corruption
This might be the worst of the events linked to Obama that the networks ignored until the last possible minute

1. Dismal Response Time
From the very beginning, Obama has been an absent executive

”

2011-01-11T01:11:00.001-06:00

From Doug Ross....

Validating Aspects of 'The Cholla Jumps' Backstory

Within hours of the shootings in Tucson, Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik made the questionable decision to appear on as many national television programs as possible. In each appearance, he made the rather bizarre assertion that talk radio, the Republican Party or other dark forces motivated young Loughner to commit mass murder. These statements were completely unfounded and Dupnik admitted as much when pressed.

Furthermore Dupnik actually confessed that Loughner had made prior death threats against a person who was not Rep. Giffords.

What the The Cholla Jumps site is alleging – and which has not yet been confirmed- is the following:

Jared Loughner has been making death threats by phone to many people in Pima County including staff of Pima Community College, radio personalities and local bloggers. When Pima County Sheriff’s Office was informed, his deputies assured the victims that he was being well managed by the mental health system. It was also suggested that further pressing of charges would be unnecessary and probably cause more problems than it solved as Jared Loughner has a family member that works for Pima County.

The question is, is this true? We don’t know – yet – but it’s certainly plausible.

Indeed. And we can validate elements of the back-story to help determine veracity. Consider this claim from the Cholla story: "Amy Loughner is a Natural Resource specialist for the Pima County Parks and Recreation."

This appears to be a true statement.

Her name is listed in several places around the web as affiliated with Pima County.

Amy was married to Randy Loughner in 1986.

Who is Randy Lee Loughner?

An unconfirmed report describes him as also affiliated with local government, working in -- of all places -- "Child Protective Services."

The question arises, in part because of the sheriff's odd behavior: did the fact that one or both parents worked in local government allow them to "pull strings" to protect a troubled child?

Karl Denninger thinks that is a distinct possibility.

What's your response to this Mr. Dupnik? A bit of truth comes out, eh? Exactly how many felonies did you decline to investigate and prosecute? Are you going to slink away from the white-hot light of truth or will you "man up" and admit that your scurrilous allegations were disseminated simply to try to save your own hide from the entirely-appropriate wrath at the ballot box that is certain to ensue come next election?

The suspect didn't just post one threat on an Internet forum and there wasn't "just one" incident - it's alleged here that he made multiple death threats against the staff of the college he was ejected from, radio personalities and local bloggers.

Each and every one of those threats was an offense and had just one of them been prosecuted it would have resulted in the suspect being blacklisted in the NICS database - and thus he would not have been able to buy the gun he shot the people in Tuscon with.

And before you go off on this guy and his blog being some sort of nut, here's the credentials from his page:

James Kelley is a native of Tucson, born here in 1961. A Navy veteran, he graduated twice from the Defense Language Institute in Monterey CA majoring in Albanian and Persian-Farsi. He was a Balkan area, Middle East North Africa, Southwest Asia, and Gulf Area analyst for the Naval Security Group and the National Security Agency. He received his Bachelor of Science in Sociology from the University of the State of New York, Albany. Since leaving the service he has worked as a premium cruise line representative, telecommunications specialist, real estate broker, and as a substitute teacher in local school districts... Presently, Mr. Kelley is a contributing columnist for the Arizona News-Telegraph and the Executive Director of SocialNetworkingWatchdog.Org, a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to educating youth and seniors on personal security while using social networking.

Does Arizona have a recall process for so-called "elected officials" who behave like this and refuse to accept responsibility for their conduct - including but not limited to blaming others for their own failures that result in the death of innocent people? How about some sort of impeachment procedure? If you don't, you need both - right now.

Best-a-luck in the next election Sheriff. You're gonna need it.

Perhaps some "professional journalists" could actually "investigate" this matter if they could take time away from inventing new lies about Sarah Palin.

2011-01-10T14:30:00.002-06:00

Here's comment to an article on the Charleston Post Carrier, from someone named and_there_it_is:

Just to reiterate;
I dont remember Rush, O'Reilly, Hannity , Palin or FOX News being around for the following;

Abraham Lincoln (1865) - killed by John Wilkes Booth, a Democrat

James Garfield (1881) - killed by Charles J. Guiteau, a Democrat

William McKinley (1901) - killed by Leon Czolgosz, Democratic Anarchist

John F. Kennedy (1963) - killed by Lee Harvey Oswald, Communist

Attempts on:Andrew Jackson by Robert B. Randolph, Democrat Liberal

Franklin D. Roosevelt by Giuseppe Zangara, Democrat Liberal

Harry S. Truman by Pedro Albizu Campos, Nationalist Socialist

Gerald Ford by Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, a follower of Charles Manson, Socialist

Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley, Jr., Registered Democrat (or course in Reagan's case, the then left leaning media and democrats went out of their way to demonize Reagan.)

Well said!

2011-01-02T22:04:00.002-06:00

Melanie Phillips address to Honest Reporting conference, Jerusalem, 14 December 2010

Useful Idiots and Fifth Columnists: The Media Role in the War Against the West

We are living through a global campaign of demonetization and delegitimisation of Israel in which the western media are playing a key role.

The British media are the global leaders of this campaign in their frenzied and obsessional attacks on Israel. In the BBC in particular, such virulence attains unparalleled power and influence since it is stamped with the BBC’s global kitemark of objectivity and trustworthiness.

Israel’s every action is reported malevolently, ascribing to it the worst possible motives and denying its own victimisation. Instead of the truth, which is that every military action by Israel is taken solely to protect itself from attack, it is portrayed falsely as instigating the violent oppression of the Palestinians.

Tyranny around the world — such as the 20-year genocide in southern Sudan, or the persecution of Christians in Africa or Asia — goes almost unreported, as does Palestinian violence upon other Palestinians.

Yet Israel is dwelt upon obsessively, held to standards of behaviour expected of no other country and, with its own victimisation glossed over or ignored altogether, falsely accused of imposing wanton suffering.

Time after time, otherwise cynical, reality-hardened journalists have published or broadcast claims of Israeli ‘atrocities’ which are clearly theatrically staged fabrications or allegations. The false narrative of Arab propaganda is now so deeply embedded in the consciousness of journalists that they cannot see that what they are saying is untrue even when it is utterly egregious and indeed absurd.

The war against Hamas in Gaza in 2008/9 was a case in point. The British media had scarcely reported the constant rocket bombardment from Gaza. Most of the public were simply unaware that thousands of rockets had been fired at Israeli citizens.

But when in Operation Cast Lead Israel finally bombed Gaza to put a stop to the attacks, it was denounced for a ‘disproportionate’ response and for wantonly and recklessly killing ‘civilians’ — even though, according to Israel, the vast majority were targeted terrorists. Nevertheless, the media gave the impression that the Israelis were a bunch of bloodthirsty child-killers.

Israel is further accused of causing a humanitarian catastrophe in maintaining a blockade of Gaza. But there is scant mention of the many supplies Israel does allow through, nor the steady stream of Gazans being routinely treated in Israeli hospitals, nor the fact that it is Egypt which maintains a much tougher blockade on its own Gazan border.

This is because Israel’s crime is to defend itself militarily. To much of the media, Israel’s self-defence is regarded as intrinsically illegitimate. It is routinely described as ‘vengeance’ or ‘punishment’. Thus Sir Max Hastings wrote in the Guardian in 2004: ‘Israel does itself relentless harm by venting its spleen for suicide bombings upon the Palestinian people.’

Israel’s attempt to prevent any more of its citizens from being blown to bits on buses or in pizza parlours was apparently nothing other than a fit of spiteful anger. The Israelis were presented by Hastings not as victims of terror but as Nazi-style butchers, while the aggression of the Palestinians was ignored altogether.

In short, Israel is presented as some kind of cosmic demonic force, standing outside of humanity.

To what should we ascribe such unique malice towards an embattled and besieged people?

The first thing to say is that this phenomenon is characteristic not just of the media but the wider intelligentsia and political class.

In Britain, the established church, the universities, the Foreign Office, the theatrical and publishing worlds, the voluntary sector, members of Parliament across the political spectrum, as well as the media — have signed up to the demonetization and delegitimisation of Israel.

It’s the home of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.

It’s where human rights lawyers threaten to arrest Israelis for war crimes as soon as they step off the plane at Heathrow.

It’s where an English judge virtually directed a jury to acquit anti-Israel activists, who cheerfully admitted committing criminal damage against an arms factory because it sold equipment to the Israelis, on the grounds that the Israelis were making life in Gaza ‘hell on earth’, and were behaving like Nazis and that if they had done this during World War Two they ‘might have got a George Medal’.

It’s where Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron told the Turkish Prime Minister that Gaza was a prison camp, that the Israeli ‘attack’ on the Turkish terror flotilla ship was ‘completely unacceptable’, and where the British Foreign Secretary ‘deplored the loss of life’ in that Israeli attack.

Britain has effectively become a kind of global laundry for the lies about Israel and bigotry towards the Jews churning out of the Arab and Muslim world, sanitising them for further consumption throughout English-speaking, American and European society and turning what was hitherto confined to the extreme fringes of both left and right into the mainstream. Where Britain has led, the rest of the west has followed.

What is striking is the extent to which a patently false and in many cases demonstrably absurd account has been absorbed uncritically and assumed to be true.

History is turned on its head; facts and falsehoods, victims and victimisers have their roles inverted; logic is suspended, and an entirely false narrative of the conflict is now widely accepted as unchallengeable fact, from which fundamental error has been spun a global web of potentially catastrophic false conclusions.

In Britain and much of Europe, the mainstream, dominant view amongst the educated classes is that Israel itself is intrinsically illegitimate. Its behaviour is viewed accordingly through that prism.

Much of the obsession with Israel’s behaviour is due to the widespread belief that its very existence is an aberration which, although understandable at the time it came into being, was a historic mistake.

People believe that Israel was created as a way of redeeming Holocaust guilt. Accordingly, they believe that European Jews with no previous connection to Palestine — which was the historic homeland of Palestinian Muslims who had lived there since time immemorial — were transplanted there as foreign invaders, from where they drove out the indigenous Arabs into the West Bank and Gaza. These are territories which Israel is now occupying illegally (even after its ‘disengagement’ from Gaza in 2005), oppressing the Palestinians and frustrating the creation of a state of Palestine which would end the conflict.

Every one of these assumptions is wrong. Moreover, many of these errors and distortions not only promote falsehoods but actually turn the truth inside out. This is because the west has swallowed the Arab and Muslim narrative on Israel which acts as a kind of global distorting mirror, appropriating Jewish experience and twisting it into a propaganda weapon against the Jews.

Thus while Muslims deny the Holocaust, they claim that Israel is carrying out a holocaust in Gaza. Antisemitism is central to Jewish experience in Europe; Muslims claim that ‘Islamophobia’ is rife throughout Europe. Israel gives all Jews the ‘right of return’ to Israel on account of the unique reality of global Jewish persecution; the Muslims claim a ‘right of return’ – not to their own putative state of Palestine, but to Israel. They even claim that the Palestinians are the world’s ‘new Jews’.

These and many other examples are attempts to negate Jewish experience and appropriate it for themselves to obtain what Muslims want from the world in terms of status, power and conquest. They are giving rise to hallucinatory levels of genocidal hatred towards the Jewish people as well as serial falsehoods, fabrications and distortions about Israel.

One might have thought that the supposedly rational west, so quick to condemn religious obscurantism or prejudice of any kind, would object. On the contrary: they ignore, dismiss or excuse it – and far worse, they have even internalised and reproduce many of these tropes which they appear to believe represent the truth.

The core reason that Muslims insist that ‘Palestine’ is theirs is that they believe the Jews have no rights within any land Muslims have ever conquered. The western intelligentsia have bought so heavily into the Arab and Muslim narrative of ‘Palestine’ in part because they fail to understand the fanatical theological sophistry from which it derives.

But it’s also because the western intelligentsia has itself turned evidence and logic upside down. Moral and cultural relativism – the belief that subjective experience trumps moral authority and any notion of objectivity or truth – has turned right and wrong on their heads.

Because of the dominant belief in victim culture and minority rights, self-designated victim groups — those without power — can never do wrong while majority groups can never do right. And Jews are not considered a minority because – in the hateful discourse of today – Jews are held to be all-powerful as they ‘control’ the media, Wall Street and America.

So the Muslim world cannot be held responsible for blowing people up as they are the third world victims of the west; so any atrocities they commit must be the fault of their victims; and so the US had it coming to it on 9/11. And in similar fashion, Israel can never be the victim of the Arab world; the murder of Israelis by the Arab world must be Israel’s own fault.

This inversion of reality and morality echoes the Islamic narrative. This holds that, because Islam is considered perfect, its adherents can never do wrong. All their aggression is therefore represented as self-defence, while western/Israeli self-defence is said to be aggression. So justice and injustice, oppression and freedom, truth and lies are reversed.

Instead of attacking Arabs and Muslims for such irrationality and falsehoods, it’s the defenders of Israel whom the western intelligentsia accuse of lies and even insanity. Instead of backing Israel against genocidal violence, the British took to the streets, while Hezbollah rockets were raining down on Israel’s northern towns in 2006, with placards declaring ‘We are all Hezbollah now’.

Israel’s perceived ‘oppression’ of the Palestinians, its ‘disproportionate’ attacks on them and its supposed violations of international law are actually the very opposite of the truth. This is behaviour of which it is the victim, not the perpetrator.

The treatment of Israel is a spectacular example of the phenomenon of ‘psychological projection’ – when people ascribe their own bad behaviour to others who are innocent of it and are even its victims — through which the west is mirroring the murderously warped thinking of the Islamic world.

However, the animus against Israel can only be understood if it is set in a far wider context. It is part of a wholesale denigration of and onslaught upon the west and its values by the media, progressive intelligentsia and political class.

The BBC, for example, acts not just as cheerleader for Hamas but for the Islamic world. During the Iraq war the crew of the British aircraft carrier Ark Royal threw their radios overboard because of the demoralising effect that the defeatist and slanted BBC reporting was having on soldiers going to fight for the defence of the west.

The media has systematically presented the war in Iraq in a distorted way. For example, it presented the reprehensible American humiliation of prisoners in Abu Ghraib as infinitely worse than the bestial torture inflicted under Saddam Hussein’s tyranny.

Iraq has been misreported through distortion and omission. It has been repeated ad nauseam that we were ‘taken to war on a lie’ on the grounds that Saddam possessed stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. But a glance at speeches made by President Bush or Tony Blair shows this simply wasn’t so. The reason was Saddam’s continuing threat to the west posed by his terrorist record, regional aspirations and pursuit of WMD programmes.

Or take the mantra that because no WMD were found none had ever existed – a totally brainless non-sequitur. This also ignored the evidence that was discovered there of WMD programmes.

In his 2003 interim report as head of the Iraq Survey Group, Dr. David Kay reported that he had discovered ‘dozens of WMD-related program activities’ that had been successfully concealed from the UN inspectors, and that ‘right up to the end’ the Iraqis were trying to produce the deadly poison ricin.

‘They were mostly researching better methods for weaponisation’, he said. Not only that, Saddam had re-started a rudimentary nuclear programme. Kay also told Fox Television: ‘We know there were terrorist groups in state [Iraq] still seeking WMD capability. Iraq, although I found no weapons, had tremendous capabilities in this area. A marketplace phenomenon was about to occur, if it did not occur; sellers meeting buyers. And I think that would have been dangerous if the war had not intervened.’

In other words, what Kay found bore out the concerns laid out by Bush and Blair as the case for going to war in Iraq. Yet this was presented as demolishing that case.

And even more absurdly the argument was then broadened to claim Saddam had no connections to terrorism at all — despite the fact he had been the godfather of international terrorism — and so posed no threat to anyone outside Iraq.

Such distortions, omissions and selective reporting over Iraq are all part of the much bigger media failure to report the really big story in the region that continues to this day. That story is the increasing dominance of Iran.

Astonishingly, there has been virtually no reporting of the part Iran has played in Iraq – actually killing British and coalition troops and destabilising the country. There has been virtually no reporting of Iran’s takeover of Lebanon, its grip on Gaza, its steady establishment as the regional hegemon posing an ever greater threat not just to Israel but to the west. Instead the media present the wars in Iraq or Israel as discrete and unrelated events.

Strikingly, it is the intelligentsia, the people of reason, who are the main problem. Bigotry is now correlated with education and class.

The lower down the social and educational scale, the more people are sane and realistic and decent about the Middle East and the threat to the free world from radical Islam. But as soon as you get people who’ve been through higher education, you find that so often they’re the ones who are bigoted and irrational about such matters.

They make truly ridiculous claims about Israel, such as its perpetration of apartheid or ethnic cleansing – claims which, to anyone with even a passing knowledge of the situation, are demonstrably ridiculous.

So how can it be that the most educated are now the most irrational?

The short answer is that among the progressive intelligentsia, evidence and truth have been supplanted by ideology – or the dogma of a particular idea. Ideologies such as moral and cultural relativism, multiculturalism, feminism, environmentalism, anti-capitalism, anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism.

Across a wide range of such issues, it’s no longer possible to have a rational discussion with the progressive intelligentsia, as on each issue there’s only one story for them which brooks no dissent.

This is because, rather than arriving at a conclusion from the evidence, ideology inescapably wrenches the evidence to fit a prior idea. So ideology of any kind is fundamentally anti-reason and truth. And if there’s no truth, there can be no lies either; truth and lies are merely ‘alternative narratives’.

So the way has been opened for mass credulity towards propaganda and fabrication. The custodians of reason have thus turned into destroyers of reason – centred in the crucible of reason, the university.

Far from promoting enlightenment, western universities are not only the prime source of falsehoods about the Middle East and hatred and bigotry towards Israel, but also of intimidation against those who try to present a balanced and factual picture and who find themselves professionally and socially ostracised as a result.

All these different ideologies are utopian; in their different ways, they all posit the creation of the perfect society. That is why they are considered ‘progressive’, and people on the progressive wing of politics sign up to them. That helps explain the distressing fact that so many Jews on the left also sign up to Israel-hatred, since they too sign up to utopian ideologies to which Israel is such an impediment.

But when utopias fail, as they always do, their adherents invariably select scapegoats on whom they turn to express their rage over the thwarting of the establishment of that perfect society. And since utopia is all about realising the perfect society, these scapegoats become enemies of humanity.

For Greens, such enemies of humanity are capitalists; for anti imperialists, America; for militant atheists, religious believers. Anti-Zionists turn on Israel for thwarting the end to the ‘Jewish question’: the reproach to the world over Jewish suffering which Europe believes would be redeemed if there were peace in the Middle East. The key utopia that Israel’s never-ending wars are thwarting is the redemption of European guilt for the persecution of the Jews in which they have been complicit through the centuries.

What these various very disparate ideologies of environmentalism, scientism, anti-imperialism, moral relativism, anti-Zionism and Islam also have in common is – remarkably — hostility to Judaism, Israel and the Jewish people.

It was Judaism that laid down the moral law which forms the very foundation of Western morality which is under attack from moral relativism.

It is the Book of Genesis that draws the wrath of the environmentalists, who wrongly interpret the Biblical ‘dominion’ of mankind over the earth as an example of divine imperialism or colonialism—a hierarchy which must be destroyed by removing man from the pinnacle of Creation and substituting the natural world itself in his place.

It is Jews who are the principal targets of the attacks by anti-Americans and anti-imperialists on the ‘neoconservatives,’ the euphemism for those who were alleged to have formed a conspiracy to subvert American foreign policy in the interests of Israel.

And it is that issue, Israel, which is now the greatest symbol of Western irrationality.

The hatred of Israel and the Jews that drives the Islamic jihad against the west is not acknowledged or countered by the west because its most high-minded citizens share at least some of that prejudice.

Both western liberals and Islamists believe in utopias to which the Jews are an obstacle. The State of Israel is an obstacle to both the rule of Islam over the earth and a world where there are no divisions based on religion or creed. The Jews are an obstacle to the unconstrained individualism of western libertines and to the onslaught against individual human dignity and freedom by the Islamists.

Both the liberal utopias of a world without prejudice, divisions or war and the Islamist utopia of a world without unbelievers are universalist ideologies. The people who are always in the way of universalising utopias are the Jews.

So is this all hopeless? After all, irrationality cannot be fought with reason.

But no, it is not hopeless. First, many who spout this irrational discourse are not themselves irrational, merely profoundly ignorant. They are ignorant because no-one is telling them what it is they don’t know and are getting so very wrong about Israel, the Middle East or Jewish history.

But for those who are indeed irrational, we have to change our approach. We have to stop trying to argue with bigots. We must instead set out to defeat them.

To do that, we must first realise many of us are fighting on the wrong battleground. We are on the battleground selected by our enemies as the most conducive to victory.

The Arabs successfully redefined the Middle East conflict from a story about Arab aggression towards the Jews to a story about Palestinian suffering at the hands of the Jews.

They reversed victim and victimiser by recasting an existential conflict as a battle between two peoples with rival claims to the land. Inevitably this casts Israel, which is reluctant to go along with the implications of this false analysis, as the villain of the piece.

The problem that cannot be overstated is that Israel has lent itself to this false narrative.

After all, forcing a country which has endured six decades of existential siege with no end to give any ground to its attackers amounts to forcing a victim to surrender. This is expected by the civilised world of no other country.

Yet for reasons of realpolitik Israel has meekly gone along with this mad pressure. It has never said it is totally unconscionable. It has never put the all-important argument from justice on its own account. So it has allowed its enemies to appropriate this argument mendaciously as its own.

And if Israel doesn’t make this case on its own behalf, how can anyone else?

There is therefore an overwhelming need for Israel to alter its strategy. Indeed, it needs to have a strategy.

It needs to recognise that the battleground on which it is being forced to fight is not just military. It is also a battleground of the mind.

The Arab and Muslim world long ago realised if they set the narrative in their own image, they would recruit millions of fanatics to their cause and also confuse and demoralise their victims. In this they have wildly succeeded.

So both Israel and diaspora Jews have to rethink. It’s time to change the narrative.

Time to stop conniving with the premise of their enemies that the Middle East impasse would be solved by establishing a state of Palestine to which the settlements – and thus by extension, Israel — are the obstacle. Time for them to stop agreeing that the Jews are to blame for their own predicament.

Time to stop the hand-wringing. Time to stop fretting over how much better it is to play along with the narrative of Israel’s enemies in clear English rather than a thick Israeli accent – almost totally irrelevant.

Both Israel and diaspora Jews have to stop playing defence and go onto the offence.

We should be demanding of the world why it expects Israel alone to make compromises with people who have tried for nine decades to wipe out the Jewish presence in the land and are still firing rockets at it.

We should be demanding why America, Britain and the EU single Israel out for pressure which they apply to no other victims of genocidal aggression. For in any other such conflict, their cause of the aggressors would be deemed totally forfeit by their behaviour.

We should be asking so-called ‘progressives’ – including Jewish ‘progressives’ — why they support the racist ethnic cleansing of every Jew from a future state of Palestine.

We should be asking ‘progressives’ why they are not marching against Hamas on account of its tyrannical oppression of Palestinians in Gaza.

Why they are not mounting a boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign against Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority on account of his Holocaust denial and the PA’s continued incitement of Arab children to Jew-hatred, murder and genocide.

Why they are ignoring Arab and Muslim persecution of women and homosexuals.

And we should be telling the Jews’ own story of refugees and ethnic cleansing – the 800,000 Jews expelled from Arab lands after 1948, and who now make up more than half of Israel’s population. It’s good to see that at last Israel is beginning to bring this to the world’s attention. In Britain virtually no-one knows about it. At a stroke it takes the ground from under the feet of those demanding the ‘right of return’ for Arabs.

We will never convince bigots that facts are as they are, or that the evidence of history tells a different story from the one they believe. We cannot fight prejudice with reason.

But we have a duty to bear witness to the truth. And we have a duty to fight in our defence.

We can best do this by getting off our back foot and putting western fifth columnists on theirs. We should accuse them, not of Jew-hating motives we cannot prove but of absurdities and contradictions and untruths they cannot deny.

We should ridicule them, humiliate them, destroy their reputations; boycott them, not invite them to our houses, show them our disapproval and contempt. Treat them as pariahs. Turn their own weapons against them.

In short, we must get up off our collective knees and fight. Justice, human rights and truth are on our side, not theirs. We must reclaim them as our own.

***An amplification of this argument can be found in her book The World Turned Upside Down: The Global Battle over God, Truth and Power, published in the US by Encounter.

2010-12-25T23:14:00.002-06:00

This is, to me (being Jewish) the quintessential Christmas song. To all my Christian frends and followers, Merry Christmas:

Met my old lover in the grocery store
The snow was falling Christmas Eve
I stole behind her in the frozen foods
And I touched her on the sleeve

She didn't recognize the face at first
But then her eyes flew open wide
She went to hug me and she spilled her purse
And we laughed until we cried.

We took her groceries to the checkout stand
The food was totaled up and bagged
We stood there lost in our embarrassment
As the conversation dragged.

We went to have ourselves a drink or two
But couldn't find an open bar
We bought a six-pack at the liquor store
And we drank it in her car.

We drank a toast to innocence
We drank a toast to now
And tried to reach beyond the emptiness
But neither one knew how.

She said she'd married her an architect
Who kept her warm and safe and dry
She would have liked to say she loved the man
But she didn't like to lie.

I said the years had been a friend to her
And that her eyes were still as blue
But in those eyes I wasn't sure if I saw
Doubt or gratitude.

She said she saw me in the record stores
And that I must be doing well
I said the audience was heavenly
But the traveling was hell.

We drank a toast to innocence
We drank a toast to now
And tried to reach beyond the emptiness
But neither one knew how.

We drank a toast to innocence
We drank a toast to time
Reliving in our eloquence
Another 'auld lang syne'...

The beer was empty and our tongues were tired
And running out of things to say
She gave a kiss to me as I got out
And I watched her drive away.

Just for a moment I was back at school
And felt that old familiar pain
And as I turned to make my way back home
The snow turned into rain --

2010-12-19T06:52:00.002-06:00

This and That

A Bay Area attorney filed a complaint on behalf of the National Organization for Women (NOW) in San Francisco Thursday claiming the Hooters restaurant chain violates state and local laws by marketing itself as an adult-oriented business while selling food and products to minors. It seems the folks at NOW are in a tizzy over youngsters being exposed to the scantily-clothed waitresses.

While in theory, I can see their point, in reality I have two real big issues with this. First of all, what these youngsters are exposed to on TV, at beaches and certainly on the Internet and the movies, are far more revealing than anything you will find at a Hooters restaurant.

The second issue has to do with the organization itself. While NOW sanctimoniously comes out in defense of the children - and also calls itself the largest organization of feminist activists in the United States, nary a word is spoken by them in defense of women being tortured, abused, murdered and enslaved in Muslim countries around the world. Until they prove they are anything but just another leftist front group that treats ALL women equally, I'll pay them no mind.

*******************

So the Senate voted to end "Don't Ask Don't Tell." It should be noted that this policy was not of the Republicans making. It was Bill Clinton who proposed this law and it went into effect in 1993.

Now personally, I don't understand what the hubbub's about. DADT simply stated that the military does not want to know the sexual preferences of their soldiers. If someone was Gay, he simply kept it to themselves. The advantage was to allow homosexuals to serve in the military without duress.

By removing this law, while on paper it frees Gays from having to hide their sexual preferences, the Senate has opened up a whole new can of worms. Just yesterday, a special Defense Department working group appointed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates has recommended that the military should “expressly prohibit” heterosexuals from using separate showers, bathrooms and bunking facilities from homosexuals when the repeal of the law banning homosexuals from the military goes into effect.

What this means is that heterosexuals will not be allowed to NOT share a shower, or bathroom facilities with homosexuals. Considering homosexuality means being sexually attracted to members of their own sex, how is this not going to cause more problems than before?

I'm all for acceptance and tolerance. But I see no difference in allowing heterosexual men and women to shower together than in allowing them to share bathing facilities with homosexuals. If one isn't proper, than clearly the other isn't either. In addition to the awkwardness this creates, I truly believe the abuse Gay soldiers will be forced to deal with will be astronomical.

At least the lawyers will be happy.

*******************

Lately, I've heard in a number of places that Christmas is under attack by the government. In my view, it's not just Christmas, but Christianity in general. And it isn't just under attack by our government. All over the world, governments everywhere are silent to the global crusade by Islam to destroy Christianity. On a daily basis, I read countless articles about Muslims torturing and murdering Christians throughout the Arab world (and in many cases, in western countries as well).

It's never been a secret how Islam treats the Jews. And considering worldwide antisemitism, it isn't all that surprising that the governments of the world don't care what happens to the Jews. But considering the enormous number of Christians throughout the world, I'm stunned by the lack of outrage regarding the constant ethnic cleansing of Christians in the world.

Regrettably, I believe that the rise of European socialism has been the main culprit of this apathy. Once Europe began eliminating G-d from the mainstream - through art, prayer and teaching - strength that comes from faith all but perished. In addition, the void that was left after the decline of Christianity has been filled with Islam. Since Islam is completely incompatible with freedom and democracy, the future of a free Europe is is fading fast.

As horrible as it sounds, I fear it will be in our lifetime the overthrow (and beheading) of the Queen in Trafalgar Square. As Muslims continue to immigrate to Britain, and as London continues to overlook (and in many cases support) the Islamization of England, it is just a matter of time.

*******************

Worldwide temperatures continue to plummet and records are being broken daily. Snowfall totals are exceeding record amounts and not a has gone by over the past few years where you don't see further proof that Global Warming is a complete and total hoax. And yet, Janet Napolitano - our less-than-esteemed Secretary of Homeland Security - has announced that her department is creating a new task force to battle the effects of climate change on domestic security operations.

I have an idea for you, Ms. Reno, I mean Napolitano, how about creating a task force to stop illegals from pouring over our borders and murdering our citizens? At least that one is a real threat.

I've said this before and I'll say it again - if the Obama administration meant to destroy this country all along, they couldn't have done a better job that what they're doing now. What a joke. Too bad it isn't funny.

*******************

So, it's Cowboy-Redskin week. It sure has lost it's luster over the years, hasn't it. With Dallas at 4-9 and Washington at 5-8, the only meaning this game has is who will end up in last place for the season. The last time I recall a Cowboy-Redskin game to have lesser meaning was in 2001, when both teams went into a Monday Night matchup tied at 0-4. What a special game THAT was (Dallas won a "thriller" 9-7).

This year, the talk is all about the underachieving Dallas Cowboys and the Redskins' benching of Donovan McNabb. I've mentioned it before, but I believe McNabb has been one of the most overrated quarterbacks in league history. Yes, he led his team to a Super Bowl (they lost) and also, he led them to four NFC Championships. Pretty much the same thing could be said about Danny White. Yet I don't see him being compared to the all-time greats, like I do McNabb.

Rush Limbaugh once said McNabb was overrated, and he was called a "racist" for it - which just goes to prove my point. I've been watching McNabb for a long time now. While he certainly has had his moments in the sun, he has more often than not proven to a reason the Eagles have never won it all. The last two games last season (both against Dallas) proved this better than anything.

Andy Reid, the Philadelphia coach, had seen enough to get rid of McNabb and replace him with Kevin Kolb. Kolb was so good that he isn't even the starting quarterback anymore. Philly fans - a group who either loves you or hates you with a passion - were equally ready to see the QB go. It was believed that all McNabb needed was a change of scenery. But really, when has that ever been enough? I can't recall another successful NFL quarterback who really succeeded after changing addresses. Even the great Joe Montana - who arguably had a decent season with Kansas City - really only went to the Chiefs for one more shot at glory. Like Brett Favre, he didn't go to his new team to turn his career around.

And now it looks like McNabb's career in Washington has reached the end. Will he try to latch on to another team? There are franchises who will take him with open arms, regardless of his diminished skills. I could see he playing in Oakland next year. Couldn't you? He'd certainly be an improvement over what they have today. And how ironic that he would replace the man (Jason Campbell) whom he replaced in Washington just a year ago?

*******************

I'll leave you with a link to a post by the esteemed Professor William Jacobson, from Legal Insurrection blog. This is sure to make your blood boil.

2010-12-18T17:39:00.001-06:00

We're afraid she's gonna let you down
Take your money and drop you to the ground
Wouldn't want to see you messed around
After all the love you think you've found
She's gonna let you down

Doesn't matter what we say
Love's the stubbornest game to play
Given time you might see it our way
And we'll be sorry boy until that day
She's gonna break away

Remember all the times you helped us through
Now here's our chance to do the same for you
Guess the thing to do is wait around
Lend a hand when you are on the ground
She's gonna let you down

2010-12-15T12:39:00.002-06:00

The Fire Is Out

When I last wrote on a regular basis, the NFL season had not yet begun.

What the hell happened? As a die hard Dallas Cowboys fan, I had tremendous hopes built into this season. Granted, I wasn't a fan of the head coach (I remember rolling my eyes in disgust when I found out Wade Phillips was hired). But they had proven over the end of last season that their goal of being the first host team to go to the Super Bowl wasn't far-fetched.

Of course, there were holes in the lineup that needed addressing - most notably at safety and on the offensive line. But every team, in the age of parity, had some issues that needed to be addressed. And the ones that Dallas had seemed no more daunting that any other.

So again, what happened?

As far as I can tell, after watching these past 13 weeks, the problem(s) were there all along. However, whether it be by luck, smoke and mirrors or some other unnatural source, these problems all came together at once. And when you through in a hyper-meddlesome owner, who really can't help but micromanage, well that is a recipe for disaster.

The holes in the lineup became very obvious from the start. Somehow, someway, the offensive line got very old, very fast. What was a Pro-Bowl laden line, just two short years prior, seemed to completely fall apart all at the same time. In some instances, age took it's toll. In others, injuries deleted their talent. However, that alone doesn't make these players as inept as they've shown. My believe is that, aside from the age and injury factor, these players also began believing their press clippings and started to feel entitled to the championships they were sure to come. This led into motion a piss-poor work ethic that permeated the entire roster.

Of course, no player will consider himself anything less than the best at what he does. Therefore, it is up to the Head Coach to keep these men motivated towards shared glory, and not personal triumphs. Of course, as well all well know, Wade Phillips was never the kind of coach who excelled at that.

I often compare Wade to another undeserving Cowboy Head Coach - Barry Switzer. Sure, Barry was an outstanding college coach. But his style of coaching doesn't really work in the NFL. While Barry was a great motivator, he was not a great "coach." Wade, on the other hand, is a great "coach" but an awful motivator. Certainly, the players loved playing for Wade because he never challenged them to go the extra mile it takes to win at this level. For that reason, he was an exceptional defensive coordinator - where it was his job to teach the defense how to run the plays. But when it came to managing and motivating the squad, he fell woefully short.

But the offense really wasn't the demise of this team. After all, since Jason Garrett took over a few weeks ago, the Cowboys are once again in the upper echelon on offense - even with their quarterback being sidelined for much of the season.

The other side of the coin is the defense - which had become extremely efficient at the end of last season. They were so go, in fact, that they pitched consecutive shutouts (over the last two games) for the first time in franchise history. Now considering that the only real diffence between the defensive roster at the end of last year and this year is the replacement of a starting defensive back, who was widely considered the weak link, how could this unit go from one of the best to one of the worst so quickly?

Well I have a theory. My belief is that the coaching staff refused to adjust for the fact that the rest of the league studied what the team did last year and figured them out. Instead of creating an adjustment, they doubled down and made excuses for the poor play.

In addition, because of the lax atmosphere - which I attribute to both the Head Coach AND the owner - mindless mistakes, costly errors and lack of focus (leading to the team only making 4 interceptions through the first 6 games) ended up costing them the opportunity to win games. In the NFL today, there is not a whole lot that separates the haves from the have-nots. Any little edge can be the difference between 11-5 and 5-11. We saw it early in the season when a much more talented Cowboy team went 1-7.

Bill Parcells used to say "you are what your record says you are." To an extent, if taken literally, I guess that's true. But no one can tell me they believed this year's Dallas Cowboys had 1-7 talent. But then, no one really knew the depths of the lack of heart this team had, or the fragile psyche it carried over.

So when the chips were down, because this team believed they were "entitled" to win (and why? After all, all they had done was win one stupid playoff game in 15 years), they simply gave up. The 45-7 loss to Green Bay, in week 8, was all the owner needed to see before he finally accepted the teams fate. They had not so much given up for Wade Phillips, but they had given up for themselves. They truly deserved the ridicule bestowed upon them by their fans and enemies alike.

So what now?

I would love to say that since under Jason Garrett, the team has shown some life, therefore he should be retained. However, two things come to mind - wasn't he in complete control of the offense when they were 1-7? What has he done that is any different that before Phillips was fired? In reality, he has since tried to change the culture to the point that personal responsibility is now expected. That is a great thing and it has shown in the effort on the field. Perhaps the embarrassment and the realization that no one is safe from losing their jobs will motivate these guys to get working.

My problem is why now? As professional athletes, these guys get paid obscene amounts of money to play a game. If they really were this talented all along, why the hell did they give up so early?

To me, this leads me to this conclusion. It really doesn't matter if Jason Garrett is rehired for next year, or not. As far as I'm concerned, the same brain trust that hired Wade Phillips (and also the previous mentioned Barry Switzer) is still running the show. Unless Jerry Jones hires someone to run the whole show, as he did with Jimmy Johnson, arguably the two most successful coaches in the post-Tom Landry era, nothing at all will change.

Sure, they will continue to compete, because these guys really are a talented group of players. But it takes a whole lot more than talent to win at this level. It takes a commitment that Mr. Jones wants to believe he has, but is truly fooling no one. As long as he continues to treat the head coach as a puppet - with the clear understanding of who really is in charge - and as long as he makes decisions based on marketing strategy, instead of what's best for the team's ultimate success, this team will continue to disappoint and fall way short.

The Dallas Cowboys have been one of the most successful franchises in the history of professional sports. But aside from a 4 year stretch in the early to mid-90's, have never really won championships consistently. Yes, they had 20 consecutive winning seasons. But how many of those teams seemed to lack a killer instinct? They won a Super Bowl in 1971 with a team that should have won 4 or 5 in a row, from 1967-1972. But were always beaten by a hungrier team. When they won again in 1977, they were so much better than all the other teams, there was little doubt they would win it all. But even then, they played a lackluster game on offense (the defence, however, was superb that day).

And then what? With the tremendous talent they had, they lost the next year's game to Pittsburgh and then, after losing in the first round to the Rams the next year, went on the lose in the NFC Championship game three years in a row. The teams that beat them didn't really have the talent that Dallas had. But instead they had the hunger and the drive that Dallas lacked.

That drive was evident once Jimmy Johnson ran the show and he built that hunger into that team - which was one of the best the league ever saw. But once Jimmy was gone, Jerry took over and subsequently sucked the fire out of them. Parcells built it back up and, just when they were about the become the best team in the league, left it in the hands of Jones again. And we know the rest of the story.

So to Jason Garrett, I apologize. I believe you are and will continue to be an outstanding head coach in this league. But as long as the Dallas Cowboys are built in Jerry Jones image, it will ot be with the Dallas Cowboys. For what it's worth, this franchise would be better off gutting this lineup and starting with a whole new staff, and a whole new identity - one that isn't built in Mr. Jones image. But unfortunately, as long as people buy the tickets, Jerry will see no reason to change the personality - his personality - of this team.

And that's my rant.

2010-12-15T02:15:00.002-06:00

Yoo-hoo, I'm Back!

Well maybe my long break from blogging has run it's course. Over the past few months, I have toyed with the idea of just shutting this thing down, perhaps blogging under a pseudonym or changing the entire focus of my writing. But something I read tonight reinvigorated my desire to start writing again. It doesn't really matter what it was I read. But it lit the fire that I had believed had gone out.

Instead of writing about any particular topic tonight, I thought I would reintroduce myself and explain why I started this blog in the first place.

A little over 8 years ago, I suffered a massive heart attack that eventually led to a stroke (minor), a 4 week coma and a subsequent heart transplant. Upon beginning my recovery, I discovered a couple of things about myself. Number one, I no longer felt a desire to compromise what I truly believed in, for the sake of other's sensitivities. No, I wasn't about to go beat up on people over their beliefs. However, I decided instead to verbalize what I believed, in the hopes that it would influence and open the eyes of others who either didn't know, or didn't understand.

Another thing I realized was that I loved writing. Never before had I had any affinity to see my words published. But upon receiving this gift of a new life, I became motivated, inspired or whatever you wish to call it, to create. I always wanted to be a musician - or even a lyricist (my sister has that talent). But I was never talented enough to succeed in those endeavors. But suddenly, I discovered I did have a gift. Perhaps I'm never going to be another Jeffery Archer, or Thomas Sowell. But do you really have to aspire to be the best? Can't you just hope to make a difference - even if it's just a tiny one?

Look, I know that my political, sociological and religious views are not the same as everyone else. If they were, there would be no point in any of this. But if I can help just one person to see the world as I see it, and to motivate them to try and make even a small difference themselves, then I can really feel I've made a difference. So what if it takes me 8 years to accomplish what Michelle Malkin does in 30 minutes (by the way, she rocks!). I bet she didn't go through what I went through, either.

So my blog, which really has been consistent since it started back in 2004, is all about what I believe and what I want to say. You don't have to follow it, nor do you have to even agree with me. All I ask is you accept and appreciate the honesty that is embedded in each of my posts. They could be about politics, Israel, the Dallas Cowboys or even American Idol (assuming I'll continue watching). Or it could be about my job as a new restaurant manager, or even the local Chicago weather.

Whatever it is, it is and will continue to be for as long as I am capable of writing it. I make no excuses or apologies about and I refuse to hold my tongue for fear of being politically incorrect. Hypocrisy abounds nowadays and if I can stop one tiny bit of it from spreading, then I truly can say I've made a difference.

So I do hope you'll forgive my absence and indulge and support me. I look forward to feedback and hope I can make something out of my little corner of the blogosphere.

2010-10-25T13:55:00.003-05:00

There are moments when I feel I have nothing left to write about. Some of these moments last pretty long, as you all can tell. I often consider whether or not I can continue this and think how free I will be once I stop. But then, sanity prevails and slaps me in the face. It makes me remember why I started this little blog in the first place.

And all is right again.

Today is not the day for something new, however. That probably will come tomorrow, or the next day. However, today I wish to repost something I wrote over two years ago. On that day, April 25, 2008, I wrote about the tortured history of the Texas Rangers baseball club, and how I have been condemned to a life of following one of the most inept franchises in the history of modern sports.

And now, as we are on the brink of the first World Series game this team has ever known (I still can't believe I'm saying that), I think it's only appropriate to revisit the frustration I had felt all these years in order for you to fully understand why these past two weeks (and the following week forward) are so meaningful for me.

There were three notable deaths in the entertainment industry this week.

The first of the three was singer/songwriter Paul Davis, what at 60-years-old, died of a heart attack in his hometown of Meridian, Mississippi. Davis was a struggling artist in the 1970's when he hit paydirt with his single, "I Go Crazy," which at the time held the record for most consecutive weeks on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

After "I go Crazy", and it's follow-up single, "Sweet Life", Davis returned to the charts in 1980 with the Christian-themed, "Do Right," featuring a terrific a Capella arrangement. The following year, he charted again with two singles off of his album Cool Night, which featured the title track and his last major radio hit, "'65 Love Affair." After that, Davis retired to anonymity.

The second death this week was of soul singer Al Wilson. Ironically, Wilson was also from Meridian, but had less chart success than Davis.

Mostly known for his only number one hit, "Show and Tell" in 1974, Wilson was a major player in the soul circuit through most of the 1970's.

Both artists, although not heard from for years, will be missed.

The third death is not of an artist, but of a team. I, of course, refer to the Texas Rangers.

Yeah, I know they die early most every year, but this year is quite different. You see, I have been a big fan of the Rangers since their inaugural year of 1972 and never have I seen a team as inept for so, so long. You can say want you want about the Cubs or the Red Sox, but at least they went to a World Series. In fact, aside from Tampa Bay Rays - who have only been the league for 10 years, the Texas Rangers are the only team to have never won a playoff series.

Their moment of true glory came in 1996, when through some force of luck, they took a 1-0 series lead on the New York Yankees in the playoffs. It was the only playoff game the team has ever one. The curse/bad luck of the team is legendary. Two years earlier, the Rangers actually stood atop the division when the season ended for the first time in history - only to have the playoffs cancelled due to the strike. But even during that magical year, they could only muster a 52-62 record.

Here is a breakdown of the "bad luck" this team has dealt with:

1973 - after losing 100 games the year before, Texas fires manger Ted Williams and turns the team over to Whitey Herzog. Herzog loses 105 games and gets fired before the season ends. He then goes to Kansas City and becomes a wildly successful manager there.

1974 - Upon hiring Billy Martin to manage, Texas needs to make up 5 games on Oakland to win the division. With a month to go, they have 2 of the winningest pitchers in the league in Fergie Jenkins (21-10 at the time) and Jim Bibby (19-14). Over the last four weeks, Bibby losses all of his games and finishes 19-19. The Rangers lose the division by 5 games. Martin is fired the next season and Texas becomes the only team he didn't lead to a World Series.

Also in 1974, to boost attendance, the Rangers sign 18-year-old David Clyde and immediately promote him to the big leagues where he wins his first game in front of the team's first sellout. Clyde, a "can't miss" high school prospect goes on to lose a lot of games and is out of baseball in two years.

1977 - While starting off the season poorly, Texas fire manager Frank Luccesi and replace him with former big leaguer Eddie Stanky. Stanky promptly quits the very next day, saying he was homesick. Connie Ryan replaced Stanky for 6 games before they settled on Billy Hunter, who would lead Texas to a 60-33 record over the last 93 games, just missing the playoffs.

1978 - Hunter is fired. Before the start of a game against the Detroit Tigers on April 12, 1978, starting pitcher Roger Moret was spotted in the Ranger locker room in a catatonic state, with his arm extended holding a shower slipper. He was immediately taken to a psychiatric facility.

1981 - With a players strike looming, the Rangers lose to Oakland and fall one-half game behind the A's. Unfortunately, the strike began the next day. When play resumed after the strike, the league decided the winners from each half of the season would meet in the playoffs. The Rangers lost the second half of the season to Kansas City (and Whitey Herzog) and missed the playoffs altogether, although the team had the best combined record in the American League.

1984 - To punctuate another brutal year, California Angels starter Mike Witt throws a perfect game against Texas on the season's last day. The Rangers finish 69-92. Dead last, again.

1985 - Because they can't find an easier way to suck, the Rangers send Ron Darling and Walt Terrell to the New York Mets for Lee Mazzilli, who apparently lost his legs a couple of years prior. Darling goes on to be a main reason the '86 Mets win the World Series.

1986 - Pete Incaviglia Hits 30 home runs, which come to one home run for every 6 strikeouts - a new league record in futility.

1989 - The Rangers continue their decent into future decline by trading Sammy Sosa and Wilson Alverez to the Chicago White Sox for 93-year-old Harold Baines and a bag of magic beans. Baines lasts less than a full season with the club. Sosa goes on to hit 1,874 home runs.

1993 - Bobby Valentine sets a club record by managing his 7th straight non-playoff qualifying Texas Rangers.

Also in 1993, Jose Canseco let's a ball bounce off of his head,and then blows out his arm pitching the final inning of and early season game. Losing his bat in the middle of the order destroys any change at reaching the playoffs.

2000 - After reaching the playoffs 3 times in 4 years, the Rangers inexplicably change their colors back to Blue (they had been red since they began winning).

2001 - Owner Tom Hicks gets pwned by Scott Boros and signs Alex Rodriguez to a 10-year, $250,000,000 contract. In layman's terms, that means Rodriguez will receive $156,250 every time he plays a game. Or in other words, $219,000 every time he has a bowel movement - guaranteed.

2004 - In a fit of sheer brilliance, Hicks decided that although Alex Rodriguez has broken every team record during his three years with the club, it makes more sense to send him to the rival New York Yankees - although he will still be paid by Texas.

2005 - Kenny Rogers beats up a cameraman. It is the first sign of any fight in the teams history.

2006 - In two years of wheeling and dealing, manager Buck Showalter trades pitcher Chris Young and Adrian Gonzalez to the Padres for Okinora Otsuka and Adam Eaton. Young and Gonzalez lead a resurgent San Diego baseball franchise, while Otsuka is out of baseball and Eaton is sucking for another team.

2007 - Because you can never have too few good pitchers, the Rangers send John Danks to the Chicago White Sox for Brandon McCarthey. Danks is currently the ace of the Sox staff while McCarthey leads the team in games lost due to injuries.

2008 - In another shrewd move only the Rangers can make, Texas releases Armando Galarraga ad trades Ednison Volquez (the second of the famed DVD boys - Danks, Volquez and Diamond. They keep Diamond because he is keeping the 60-day disabled list warm). Both Galarraga and Volquez (along with John Danks) lead their respective teams in ERA. Texas, on the other hand, ranks dead last at 5.54.

So now, my friends, with a 7-16 record, the worst in the American League, I pronounce the 2008 Texas Rangers. While the minor league teams affiliated with the Rangers look strong, it of course, is only a matter of time before the best prospects there as well will be sold off for that magical bag of beans.

Iam still in shock over the Rangers' fortunes and while football (and of course, the Dallas Cowboys) will always own my heart, for the first time in my life, I am holding my head high as a lifelong fan of the American League Champion Texas Rangers.

Did I really just write that?

2010-09-27T14:42:00.002-05:00

After a long summer hiatus, the remarkable Mark Steyn has returned with perhaps his finest commentary to date. This isn't about Left and Right so much, as it's about the disease known as "political correctness - Islamic version." I urge each of you to please read this:

Bowing to Islam's view of us (JWR)

While I've been talking about free speech in Copenhagen, several free speech issues arose in North America. I was asked about them both at the Sappho Award event and in various interviews, so here's a few thoughts for what they're worth:

Too many people in the free world have internalized Islam’s view of them. A couple of years ago, I visited Guantanamo and subsequently wrote that, if I had to summon up Gitmo in a single image, it would be the brand-new copy of the Koran in each cell: To reassure incoming prisoners that the filthy infidels haven't touched the sacred book with their unclean hands, the Korans are hung from the walls in pristine, sterilized surgical masks. It's one thing for Muslims to regard infidels as unclean, but it's hard to see why it's in the interests of us infidels to string along with it and thereby validate their bigotry. What does that degree of prostration before their prejudices tell them about us? It’s a problem that Muslims think we’re unclean. It’s a far worse problem that we go along with it.

Take this no-name pastor from an obscure church who was threatening to burn the Koran. He didn’t burn any buildings or women and children. He didn’t even burn a book. He hadn’t actually laid a finger on a Koran, and yet the mere suggestion that he might do so prompted the president of the United States to denounce him, and the secretary of state, and the commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan, various G7 leaders, and golly, even Angelina Jolie. President Obama has never said a word about honor killings of Muslim women. Secretary Clinton has never said a word about female genital mutilation. General Petraeus has never said a word about the rampant buggery of pre-pubescent boys by Pushtun men in Kandahar. But let an obscure man in Florida so much as raise the possibility that he might disrespect a book – an inanimate object – and the most powerful figures in the Western world feel they have to weigh in.

Aside from all that, this obscure church’s website has been shut down, its insurance policy has been canceled, its mortgage has been called in by its bankers. Why? As Diana West wrote, why was it necessary or even seemly to make this pastor a non-person? Another one of Obama's famous "teaching moments"? In this case teaching us that Islamic law now applies to all? Only a couple of weeks ago, the president, at his most condescendingly ineffectual, presumed to lecture his moronic subjects about the First Amendment rights of Imam Rauf. Where's the condescending lecture on Pastor Jones' First Amendment rights?

When someone destroys a Bible, U.S. government officials don’t line up to attack him. President Obama bowed lower than a fawning maitre d’ before the King of Saudi Arabia, a man whose regime destroys Bibles as a matter of state policy, and a man whose depraved religious police forces schoolgirls fleeing from a burning building back into the flames to die because they’d committed the sin of trying to escape without wearing their head scarves. If you show a representation of Mohammed, European commissioners and foreign ministers line up to denounce you. If you show a representation of Jesus Christ immersed in your own urine, you get a government grant for producing a widely admired work of art. Likewise, if you write a play about Jesus having gay sex with Judas Iscariot.

So just to clarify the ground rules, if you insult Christ, the media report the issue as freedom of expression: A healthy society has to have bold, brave, transgressive artists willing to question and challenge our assumptions, etc. But, if it’s Mohammed, the issue is no longer freedom of expression but the need for "respect" and "sensitivity" toward Islam, and all those bold brave transgressive artists don’t have a thing to say about it.

Maybe Pastor Jones doesn't have any First Amendment rights. Musing on Koran burning, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer argued:

[Oliver Wendell] Holmes said it doesn’t mean you can shout 'fire' in a crowded theater... Why? Because people will be trampled to death. And what is the crowded theater today? What is the being trampled to death?

This is a particularly obtuse remark even by the standards of contemporary American jurists. As I've said before, the fire-in-a-crowded-theater shtick is the first refuge of the brain-dead. But it's worth noting the repellent modification Justice Breyer makes to Holmes' argument: If someone shouts fire in a gaslit Broadway theatre of 1893, people will panic. By definition, panic is an involuntary reaction. If someone threatens to burn a Koran, belligerent Muslims do not panic - they bully, they intimidate, they threaten, they burn and they kill. Those are conscious acts, at least if you take the view that Muslims are as fully human as the rest of us and therefore responsible for their choices. As my colleague Jonah Goldberg points out, Justice Breyer's remarks seem to assume that Muslims are not fully human.

More importantly, the logic of Breyer's halfwit intervention is to incentivize violence, and undermine law itself. What he seems to be telling the world is that Americans' constitutional rights will bend to intimidation. If Koran-burning rates a First Amendment exemption because Muslims are willing to kill over it, maybe Catholics should threaten to kill over the next gay-Jesus play, and Broadway could have its First Amendment rights reined in. Maybe the next time Janeane Garafolo goes on MSNBC and calls Obama's opponents racists, the Tea Partiers should rampage around town and NBC's free-speech rights would be withdrawn.

Meanwhile, in smaller ways, Islamic intimidation continues. One reason why I am skeptical that the Internet will prove the great beacon of liberty on our darkening planet is because most of the anonymous entities that make it happen are run by people marinated in jelly-spined political correctness. In Canada, an ISP called Bluehost knocked Marginalized Action Dinosaur off the air in response to a complaint by Asad Raza, a laughably litigious doctor in Brampton, Ontario. Had his name been Gordy McHoser, I doubt even the nancy boys at Bluehost would have given him the time of day. A similar fate briefly befell our old pal the Binksmeister at FreeMarkSteyn.com: In other words, a website set up to protest Islamic legal jihad was shut down by the same phenomenon. In America, The New York Times has already proposed giving "some government commission" control over Google’s search algorithm; the City of Philadelphia, where the Declaration of Independence was adopted and the Constitution signed, is now so removed from the spirit of the First Amendment that it's demanding bloggers pay a $300 "privilege" license for expressing their opinions online. The statists grow ever more comfortable in discussing openly the government management of your computer. But, even if they don't formally take it over, look at the people who run publishing houses, movie studios, schools and universities, and ask yourself whether you really want to bet the future on the commitment to free speech of those who run ISPs. SteynOnline, for example, is already banned by the Internet gatekeepers from the computers at both Marriott Hotels and Toronto Airport.

But forget about notorious rightwing hatemongers like me. Look at how liberal progressives protect their own. Do you remember a lady called Molly Norris? She's the dopey Seattle cartoonist who cooked up "Everybody Draws Mohammed" Day, and then, when she realized what she'd stumbled into, tried to back out of it. I regard Miss Norris as (to rewrite Stalin) a useless idiot, and she wrote to Mark's Mailbox to object. I stand by what I wrote then, especially the bit about her crappy peace-sign T-shirt. Now The Seattle Weekly informs us:

You may have noticed that Molly Norris' comic is not in the paper this week. That's because there is no more Molly.

On the advice of the FBI, she's been forced to go into hiding. If you want to measure the decline in western civilization's sense of self-preservation, go back to Valentine's Day 1989, get out the Fleet Street reports on the Salman Rushdie fatwa, and read the outrage of his fellow London literati at what was being done to one of the mainstays of the Hampstead dinner-party circuit. Then compare it with the feeble passivity of Molly Norris' own colleagues at an American cartoonist being forced to abandon her life: "There is no more Molly"? That's all the gutless pussies of The Seattle Weekly can say? As James Taranto notes in The Wall Street Journal, even much sought-after Ramadan-banquet constitutional scholar Barack Obama is remarkably silent:

Now Molly Norris, an American citizen, is forced into hiding because she exercised her right to free speech. Will President Obama say a word on her behalf? Does he believe in the First Amendment for anyone other than Muslims?

Who knows? Given his highly selective enthusiasms, you can hardly blame a third of Americans for figuring their president must be Muslim. In a way, that's the least pathetic explanation: The alternative is that he's just a craven squish. Which is odd considering he is, supposedly, the most powerful man in the world.

Listen to what President Obama, Justice Breyer, General Petraeus, The Seattle Weekly and Bluehost internet services are telling us about where we're headed. As I said in America Alone, multiculturalism seems to operate to the same even-handedness as the old Cold War joke in which the American tells the Soviet guy that "in my country everyone is free to criticize the President", and the Soviet guy replies, "Same here. In my country everyone is free to criticize your President." Under one-way multiculturalism, the Muslim world is free to revere Islam and belittle the west's inheritance, and, likewise, the western world is free to revere Islam and belittle the west’s inheritance. If one has to choose, on balance Islam’s loathing of other cultures seems psychologically less damaging than western liberals' loathing of their own.

It is a basic rule of life that if you reward bad behavior, you get more of it. Every time Muslims either commit violence or threaten it, we reward them by capitulating. Indeed, President Obama, Justice Breyer, General Petraeus, and all the rest are now telling Islam, you don’t have to kill anyone, you don’t even have to threaten to kill anyone. We’ll be your enforcers. We’ll demand that the most footling and insignificant of our own citizens submit to the universal jurisdiction of Islam. So Obama and Breyer are now the “good cop” to the crazies’ "bad cop". Ooh, no, you can’t say anything about Islam, because my friend here gets a little excitable, and you really don’t want to get him worked up. The same people who tell us "Islam is a religion of peace" then turn around and tell us you have to be quiet, you have to shut up because otherwise these guys will go bananas and kill a bunch of people.

While I was in Denmark, one of the usual Islamobozos lit up prematurely in a Copenhagen hotel. Not mine, I'm happy to say. He wound up burning only himself, but his targets were my comrades at the newspaper Jyllands-Posten. I wouldn't want to upset Justice Breyer by yelling "Fire!" over a smoldering jihadist, but one day even these idiots will get lucky. I didn't like the Danish Security Police presence at the Copenhagen conference, and I preferred being footloose and fancy-free when I was prowling the more menacing parts of Rosengard across the water in Malmö the following evening. No one should lose his name, his home, his life, his liberty because ideological thugs are too insecure to take a joke. But Molly Norris is merely the latest squishy liberal to learn that, when the chips are down, your fellow lefties won't be there for you.

ELECTION NOTE
I'm looking forward to getting back to the U.S. and weighing in on November's fun and frolics. But a quick word on Christine O'Donnell, the GOP Senate candidate from Delaware whom the politico-media establishment have decided is this season's easiest conservative target. If I understand their current plan to save the Dems, it rests on the proposition that America is about to be delivered into the care of a coven of witches who want to take away your right to masturbate. Two thoughts: First, any young woman (as she then was) willing to go on MTV, before a live audience, and attack masturbation certainly doesn't want for courage. As to her alleged dabbling with "witchcraft", so what? Several readers suggest Ms O'Donnell use Sinatra's "Witchcraft" as her campaign theme song. No, no, no. She should use the theme from "Bewitched": All she had to do was twitch her nose, and Mike Castle vanished. If it's a choice between Elizabeth Montgomery and Democrats cackling as they toss another trillion dollars into their bubbling cauldron, it's no contest.

Always loved the lyric to "Bewitched", which you never hear. If Ms O'Donnell wins, I'll be singing it on election night.

Thank you to everyone at the Danish Free Press Society who helped make my trip to Copenhagen such fun - especially Lars, Eva, Kit and Katrine. You can scroll down for the links to the audio of my acceptance speech plus various interviews. Afterwards, I nipped across the water to enjoy a livelier-than-usual Swedish election campaign, despite the best efforts of the dreary enforcers of its one-party media. As I always tell my Danish pals, Sweden is insane even by Scandinavian standards.

2010-09-17T16:12:00.003-05:00

From James Taranto, at the Wall Street Journal...

"There is no more 'Molly'"

Does Obama believe in the First Amendment for anyone other than Muslims?

"There is no more Molly," reports Seattle Weekly. Molly Norris, formerly a cartoonist for the alternative paper, has gone into hiding. At the suggestion of the FBI, "she is, as they put it, 'going ghost': moving, changing her name, and essentially wiping away her identity."

Why? Because, as the New York Times reports, imam Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Islamic supremacist who is himself in hiding in Yemen, issued a fatwa in July declaring that Norris "should be taken as a prime target of assassination" because of a cartoon she drew two months earlier titled "Everybody Draw Muhammad Day."

In October 2001, by the way, the New York Times described al-Awlaki, who then ran a mosque in Virginia, as someone who "is held up as a new generation of Muslim leader capable of merging East and West." How's that working out?
Here's another question: Where is President Obama? Last month, speaking to a mostly Muslim audience at the White House, the president strongly defended the right of another imam held up as a moderate to build a mosque adjacent to Ground Zero. The next day, and again at a press conference last week, Obama said he was merely standing up for the First Amendment. As far as we recall, it's the only time Barack Obama has ever stood up for anybody's First Amendment rights.

Now Molly Norris, an American citizen, is forced into hiding because she exercised her right to free speech. Will President Obama say a word on her behalf? Does he believe in the First Amendment for anyone other than Muslims?

Unfortunately, I think we all know the answer to that question.

For all my Jewish friends, I wish you an easy fast and may you all be sealed in the book of life!

2010-09-15T22:47:00.005-05:00

The Born-Again Rangers

Way back in April 2008, I wrote a post about the tortured history of the Texas Rangers baseball club. At that time, the team was at 7-16 and looking like they were done before the season really got under way. I announced their death that day and while the season proved me right (they finished 79-83 and , although officially in second place in the AL West, a full 21 games out in the division standings.

But while I called them "dead" that day, they were, in fact, about to be born again.

That previous summer, prior to the All-Star break, Texas made three trades that completely reversed the franchise' horrible history. On July 31, 2007, the Rangers stunned their fan base when they traded their star first baseman, Mark Texeira, to the Atlanta Braves, for catcher Jarrod Saltalamacchia and four minor leaguers. Later that same day, they traded pitcher Eric Gagne (who had an all-star past and seemed on the verge of a comeback) for David Murphy, the Red Sox top draft pick a couple of years earlier, and a minor leaguer.

But the third trade happened the summer of 2008 and it put the Rangers in place to be reborn. On June 20th of that year, the team sent one of their best young arms, Ednison Volquez, to the Cincinnati Reds for Josh Hamilton.

Most pundits, following all of these moves, felt Texas was still 2-3 years away from winning. After all, the players they gave up - Texiera, Gagne and Volquez - were already performing at the major league level (and in Texiera's case, starring at that level). Team General Manager Jon Daniels, the youngest GM in the league, we looked upon as being way over his head.

But Daniels has proven them all wrong, hasn't he? Much like what Jimmy Johnson did to Mike Lynn, when the Cowboys dealt Herschel Walker to the Vikings back in 1989, this trade was not about what veterans the Rangers were getting. It was about the future.

Now, with the ability to use hindsight, we see that these trades not only boosted the big league roster (Murphy and Hamilton), but because of these acquisitions, the Ranger farm system ranked among the top 2-3 in all of baseball. And this year, it has finally come to the surface.

You see, the minor leaguers that were included in the deals included shortstop Elvis Andrus, pitchers Neftali Feliz, Matt Harrison and Beau Jones, and outfielder Angel Beltre.

This year, Andrus is an all-star, and perhaps the best young shortstop in the game, Feliz is among the best closers in baseball - as well as the leading candidate to win Rookie-of-the-Year, Harrison is a solid long reliever/spot starter, and Jones and Beltre are tearing up the minor leagues (Beltre was just voted minor league player of the year in the organization).

But perhaps the biggest contributions this season have come from Hamilton and Murphy. Murphy has been primarily used as the teams fourth outfielder for the past couple of years. Solid, but not spectacular. But because of injuries to Nelson Cruz and Hamilton, he has proven himself invaluable and likely to displace started Julio Borbon as a starting outfielder (when Hamilton comes back). Since Hamilton went out with a ribcage injury a couple of weeks ago, Murphy has hit over .400, with towering home runs and multi-RBI games (he had four more RBI tonight).

But the MVP of this team is Josh Hamilton. What Hamilton has been able to accomplish has not been seen in these parts before. After starting off slowly for the first month an a half, Ham-bone has been nothing short of remarkable. Since May 20th, he has hit over .400 (his current batting average is whopping .362), and has displayed tremendous power and outfield range. In addition, he plays with the intensity and desire of a true champion.

The play that epitomizes Josh Hamilton that comes to mind was when he scored from second on an infield single (he has done that twice now). In the same game, he homered, doubled twice and made two outstanding, highlight reel catches in the outfield.

Suddenly, the future has arrived in Arlington. With the new ownership of Chuck Greenberg and Nolan Ryan, the emergence of guys like C.J. Wilson, Nellie Cruz and Ian Kinsler, as well as the stability of Cliff Lee, Michael Young and Vlad Guerrero, this Rangers team is vastly different that I've ever seen before.

No more are the 10-9 shootouts common in Texas. Today, you are more likely to see a 2-1 game here. In the past, a win required Juan Gonzalez or Rafael Palmeiro to hit enough home runs to survive suspect pitching. But these days are no more. And the games are even more exciting than ever. Who know "small ball" could be so much fun? Of course, there is still a lot of power in the lineup. But there is also a lot of speed.

But more importantly, there is good pitching. And a GM who isn't afraid of making deals.

I don't know if this is the year the Rangers finally have playoff success. But I do know that for perhaps the first time in the team's 38 years, the future looks bright and sunny.

2010-08-29T22:43:00.002-05:00

This has been a very busy summer for me and that's why I haven't been posting very much lately. Unfortunately, it will be a few weeks before I get back to posting regularly. I appreciate your patience and will still post a sporadically until then.

In the mean time, here is something I thought I'd share:

2010-08-25T01:09:00.001-05:00

You stay classy, liberals.

2010-08-19T20:24:00.001-05:00

Watch. Clip. Send.

H/T C&S

2010-08-17T22:11:00.003-05:00

Xenophobia Has Nothing To Do With It

As you may have noticed, I haven't written much over the past month. Part of that reason is because I've been traveling a lot this summer. I've been back for about a week now, but still have a difficult motivating myself to write. I think there are two reasons for this.

For one thing, life has been a bit overwhelming lately. Between family and social obligations, plus looking for a real job, my time has been limited as of late. The other reason is the following:

There has been so much written about the Ground Zero Mosque that I just don't think I can add anymore to the discussion. The reality is that those who I wish to convince of my point refuse to accept that I am anything but a racist xenophobe. It seems to matter not to them that I have made it perfectly clear that I accept the "right" for them to build wherever they darn well please. Of course, as much as they wish to make this a "First Amendment issue," that amendment does not authorize that a religious group can build whatever structure they want on private property in contravention of local zoning and use laws.

However, my point has always been that if this Imam is building this to bring the community together, he is doing just the opposite by ignoring the 70% who are vehemently opposed.

To me, slapping the very people wish to bring together in peace and harmony in the face is ill-conceived at best.

Of course, when Governor Patterson offered land to move the center away from the area were Moslems, in the name of Allah, murdered 3,000 people, his refusal told us a great deal about his willingness to work with the community. Many people understand that Islam has a dark history of conquest and even the name of the organization that is building this Mosque (Cordoba Initiative) are named for the famous Mosque built over the ruins of the Moslem conquest of Spain. Furthermore, it seems to have escaped those on the left (and some on the right, but not many) that the target date to open this Mosque is September 11, 2011 - exactly 10 years from the day the 3,000 victims of 9/11 were murdered.

A dedication ceremony by a religious group that follows the tenets of a religion that was directly responsible for these murders is beyond insulting to the memory of those who perished, as well as their families.

Of course, there is also the issue of just who this Imam is and where he is getting his backing. Aside from his deeply troubling comments following 9/11, as well as his open admiration for the terror group Hamas (that alone should disqualify him from building a "peace" center), the Imam himself has some very dubious and troubling connections.

With all this weighed in the mix, it is obvious why so many people are against this Mosque being built where it is planned. As far as the xenophobia, I do not recall hearing one conservative say that they have no right to build Mosques. Just this one there.

It's shameful that my liberal friends can not get past their desire to paint us conservatives with this brush of intolerance. By refusing to acknowledge that there may be valid, non-xenophobic reasons for opposing the Mosque, they are once again showing exactly who the intolerant are. It is the same regarding President Obama. The left's constant refrain is that anyone who opposes Obama must be doing so on racial grounds. It couldn't possibly be because he is the most far-left radical President we have had in at least my lifetime, and perhaps ever.

I honestly could care less what color the leader of my country is. As Martin Luther King, Jr. wanted, I care about the content of ones character, rather than the color of their skin. It seems to me, that the left is overly concerned with race and attempt to interject it at every chance they get.

The shame is, the more they play this race card, the more hollow and meaningless it becomes.

All I can say to my liberal friends is please take off the blinders and realize that Keith Olbermann (or whomever you get your news from) is crazy. I don't know if it's a matter of the left projecting, or if they have just been so brainwashed to believe the right is the true enemy. We clearly disagree in a great many things and I recognize that we all have our own strong opinions. But calling us racists, xenophobes, homophobes or whatever you call us, just makes you look foolish and convinces no one of the value of your points.

That's my rant.

2010-08-03T18:46:00.002-05:00

The Brilliant Zo...