American Minute – William Penn

Exclusive: William J. Federer’s

American Minute

King Charles II gave him land in America in payment of a debt owed to his father. As he had been imprisoned in the Tower of London for being a Quaker, he invited persecuted Christians of Europe to join his colony of religious toleration. Soon Quakers, Mennonites, Pietists, Amish, Anabaptists, Lutherans, Reformed, Moravians, Scotch-Irish Presbyterians, Dunkers (German Baptist), Brethren, Schwenckfelders, French Huguenots, Catholics and even Jews joined his “holy experiment.” His name was William Penn, and he died JULY 30, 1718. His first city was named Philadelphia, meaning “Brotherly Love.” It allowed the only English-speaking Catholic Church in the world in 1733. Philadelphia’s first synagogue was built in 1782. The Charter granted March 4, 1681, stated: “Whereas our trusty and well beloved subject, William Penn, Esquire, son and heir of Sir William Penn, deceased, out of a commendable desire to enlarge our English Empire…and also to reduce the savage natives by gentle and just manners to the Love of Civil Societe and Christian religion, hath humbly besought leave of us to transport an ample colony unto a certain country hereinafter describe in the parts of America not yet cultivated and planted.”

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North Dakota Is Drilling HERE! Drilling NOW! Dems Say: Huh? What Oil? Where?

Democrats Ignore North Dakota Oil

Oil drilling equipment in Western North Dakota. Photo by Spencer Please click on above image for a larger view in a new window.

In their efforts to demonize off-shore drilling and drilling in ANWR to make sure the U.S. never achieves energy independence, the Democrats in Congress have managed to keep the Bakken shale formation out of the headlines. The U.S. Geological Survey says it is the largest oil find it has ever assessed, with a potential of 3.65 billion barrels, second only to ANWR, with an estimated potential of 10.0 billion barrels.

“We are kidding ourselves if we think we can drill our way out of these problems”, House Appropriations Committee Chairman David Obey, D-Wisconsin said.

Bakken Formation

Map of Williston Basin oil fields with reservoirs in Bakken Formation Area 200,000 square miles (Saskatchewan is north border). Please click on above image for a larger view in a new window.

In April 2008 the USGS released this report, which estimated the amount of technically recoverable, undiscovered oil in the Bakken Formation at 3.0 to 4.3 billion barrels, with a mean of 3.65 billion.[11]Later that month, the state of North Dakota’s report [12] estimated that of the 167 billion barrels of oil in-place in the North Dakota portion of the Bakken, 2.1 billion barrels were technically recoverable with current technology.

Environment Florida spokeswoman Holly Binns told the Media General news group off-shore drilling has no immediate impact on prices. “It would take 7-10 years to bring those resources to shore – to have any measurable impact on supply,” Binns said, advocating renewable energy resources.  Sierra Club lands program director Athan Manuel told a House committee that drilling has been unsuccessful in driving costs down. Manuel said, “since the Arab oil shock in the
1970’s, the U.S. has produced almost 90 billion barrels of oil, so we’ve tried drilling our way out of the problem and it just hasn’t worked.” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Maryland, said ongoing calls for more drilling “is the Johnny One-Note of the Republican party.”

North Dakota Oil… Democrats Say: Oil, What Oil?

It seems the Democrats haven’t heard of the Bakken field, or are choosing to ignore it. OPEC and the oil speculators would not ignore it if they thought the U.S. was serious about having a national strategy to reach energy independence. This could bring down the price of crude immediately; we wouldn’t have to wait until the oil coming from Bakken was fully on stream. The following article tells what is happening in North Dakota. With gasoline prices at over $4.00 a gallon, this information should be blaring headlines in all mainstream media.

Oil Makes Millionaires In North Dakota

James MacPherson, Minneapolis Star Tribune

BEULAH, N.D. – Oscar Stohler was raised in a sod house in western North Dakota and ranched there for nearly seven decades. He never gave much thought to what lay below the grass that fattened his cattle. When oilmen wanted to drill there last year, Stohler, 83, doubted oil would be found two miles underground on his property. He even joked about it. “I told them if they hit oil, I was going to buy a Cadillac convertible and put those big horns on the front and wear a 10-gallon hat,” Stohler recalled. He still drives his old pickup and wears a mesh farm cap” but it’s by choice….

Read the rest here Oil makes millionaires in North Dakota

American Minute – 14th Amendment

Exclusive: William J. Federer’s

American Minute

The 14th Amendment was adopted JULY 28, 1868, because southern States, though forced to end slavery by the 13th Amendment, did not grant citizenship to freed slaves. Black Codes were passed requiring freed slaves to be “apprenticed” to “employers” and punished any who left. Illinois Republican Congressman John Farnsworth said March 31, 1871: “The reason for the adoption [of the 14th Amendment]…was because of…discriminating…legislation of those States…by which they were punishing one class of men under different laws from another class.” Republican John Bingham of Ohio, who introduced the 14th Amendment, said: “I repel the suggestion…that the Amendment will…take away from any State any right that belongs to it.” After the Amendment was ratified, though, Federal judges did just as Thomas Jefferson had warned Mr. Hammond in 1821: “The germ of dissolution of our…government is in…the federal judiciary…working like gravity by night and by day, gaining a little today and a little tomorrow…until all shall be usurped from the States.” Thus the 14th Amendment, written to give rights to freed slaves, became used by Federal Courts to take other rights, eventually religion, away from States’ jurisdiction.

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Kyoto – A Retrospective

IS THE KYOTO PROTOCOL A FLAWED IDEAL?

In one of the earlier posts (Kyoto 32) there was a comment made and the comment was a relatively simple one.

“I hope Kyoto will not fail.”

The actuality is that in all probabilities it already has failed, not because we have deliberately set out to make it fail out of sheer bloody-mindedness to purposely harm the environment, but because the original premise, (an ideal we could all aspire to) was inherently flawed.

Why is it flawed?

The very nature of the developed World is that it is industrialised. Because of that, vast amounts of electrical power are required. You may think I am concentrating a lot on electrical power when other areas of industrialisation also produce greenhouse gases, (in this case CO2) but the actual generation of that power accounts for 36% of that CO2 and is the largest single area producing that gas, in the main produced by burning coal in large coal fired power plants. This vast industrialisation means that 62% of that power is required in that sector while the lesser amount, only one third really, is used in the residential sector by households, this effectively being personal use, something we not only take for granted, but is now actually a staple of life.

To keep all that industrialisation going, that amount of power is required absolutely. It keeps us all in jobs, and without it, life effectively would just grind to a halt. This isn’t done to destroy the environment. It’s a by product, and I understand that sounds flippant, but that is not the intention.

To actually comply with the provisions of the Kyoto Protocol, you would need to shut down almost one third of all those coal fired power plants, and then find replacements for them. If the US produces nearly half its power from those coal fired plants, then effectively, that’s a cut of 15% of the total production of power. Now shutting all that down is not an option. It has to be replaced by less CO2 intensive means, so a way has to be found to replace them.

As I detailed in those 51 posts, this is something that might be able to be achieved, but it will come at an enormous cost and will take a very long time.

That doesn’t automatically mean this is a hopeless task, because it is being worked on within the US. People just have to get used to the idea that this is going to be achieved at that tremendous cost.

So, Kyoto itself. Why flawed?

(There is a distinct differentiation between the two words, developED, and developING, so keep that in your mind as you read here.)

The thrust of the Protocol is that those First World developed countries need to cut back their emissions. Those developing Countries, (automatically assumed to be the Third World) by their very nature are not industrialised, and because of that they do not produce a fraction of the electrical power that those First World countries do produce. Kyoto said that those developing countries are not subject to the Protocol other than to report their emissions.

Therein lies the dilemma, and what that then throws up is a further dilemma on two fronts.

If those developing countries are exempted from actually working towards a cleaner environment, then what actual physical difference will it make if we in those developed countries do cut back emissions, if as fast as we do it, those developing countries ramp up their emissions, replacing more than we cut back.

Stemming directly from that, two other things arise.

The first is this. We in the developed World will then effectively be cutting back on our standard of living if we cut back on power usage. For those replacement plants to come on line, if they can be introduced at all on a scale as large as what will be required, it will probably take decades, and that’s not just a worst case scenario, but the actuality of it. The theory has yet to be proved for large scale implementation, and only then can the scaling up and the construction take place. In the interim, our way of life will just have to change if we are to comply with Kyoto.

The second point is this. If we follow the premise that it is no good us doing this if the rest of those countries don’t also then do it, who are we to deny those countries the opportunity to move towards that better way of life. Here, consider the biggest two of those developing countries, China and India. They are not subject to Kyoto other than to report their emissions. However, only one family in six in both those countries has access to reliable electricity, or if the truth be known, has access to any electricity at all. Are we to say that they cannot have what we now take as a staple of life. See the point there.

Both those countries are ramping up their construction of power plants so that they can become like we already are. To that end, they are constructing the cheapest of all plants to build, (and here that means cheapest at the front end, because when the cost of the fuel, coal, is taken into account, then they are effectively more expensive than other forms of power production.) those coal fired power plants, the ones that produce the bulk of that greenhouse gas CO2. These plants, large by their very nature are also the quickest to construct and bring on line producing that electrical power.  Both China and India are currently bringing one of these large plants on line every seven to ten days, and that’s one in China AND one in India.

Effectively, within the US, to follow the outlines of the Kyoto protocol, you will be asked to shut down and somehow find replacements for 50 large coal fired plants. Those 50 plants might take up to 20 years to replace. Just China and India alone will bring on line that same number of coal fired plants in six to eight months.

If the US takes those twenty years to replace those plants, and that time is a best case scenario, then China and India, at the current rate of construction, will have added not only those 50 plants the US has shut down, but a vast number more, probably a multiplied factor of 30 times that many.

The Protocol is in force until 2012, when hopefully, a new Protocol will be introduced, and we can only hope that it is a better option than the one already in existence.

Even so, in that time, until Kyoto expires,  both China and India, if they continue at that current rate, they will have brought on line a further 300 coal fired power plants. This sort of puts the whole thing into stark relief right about now. Even then, the vast populace of both those countries will still not have access to reliable electrical power because as with the US, the bulk of that power will be required by Industry and commerce. So, for the people to actually get to the same level of power usage that we take for granted, construction of those plants will still have to go on at the same rate, and in other directions also, not just in the coal fired sector.

So, the two things again stand out. We go back a level in our standard of living, at enormous expense, and for a long time, or we ask that those developing countries be directed to follow our lead, and in so doing, we are then effectively denying them access to what we already have, a case of “Sorry, but you can’t have what we already have, for the sake of the environment.”

Either we go back to the dark ages or we allow them to move, not into the twenty first century, but into the last century.

If we ask them to cut back, we effectively condemn them to live in the poverty they are now living in, and to stay there forever.

Now the dilemma of Kyoto can be seen. It might seem like a win win situation, but in actual fact it’s a lose lose situation.

Anything we do will be utterly cancelled out, and long before it is even off the drawing board here.

Kyoto is flawed, not because of who it includes, but for who it leaves out. It’s a great thing to aspire to, but it is effectively unachievable in every respect. This is not an us and them situation.

Those amongst us who say that we need to show leadership and to start doing something like this are too sanguine in their outlook. We can make a start and show leadership, but if it is as bad now as we are being told, then if those developing countries do not come along with us, and the fact is that they cannot, then the start we make will be futile, saving the merest fraction while, through no fault of ours, or theirs, the situation becomes comprehensively worse.

That is the dilemma. What we the people need most is to be told the truth about the situation, and not just being scared into following an ideal that will cost us more than we have, and will come to no effect.

This is not the fault of The United Nations who implemented the Kyoto Protocol, because they can probably see the inherent futility of asking those developing countries to become used to the fact that they are resigned to living in poverty. This is the fault of those who might think it convenient not to tell us the whole truth.

I don’t have the answer. I’m just a tiny fish in a huge pond. The thing I really want to do is to bring the real implications to the forefront of people’s thinking, to try and inform people that just hoping Kyoto will not fail is not enough unless you know just what it really means.

What Would The FBI Find If They Raided Your House?

By Wendi Medashefski

As I was working on my next political dissent article, trying to decide between an Obama hit-piece or one that encourages citizen revolt, I was surprised to hear the sound of my front door crashing to the ground. As quick as lightning, in enters four, five, six men in tactical gear. I wasn’t exactly shocked to see the FBI raiding my house. We’ve had several incidents of flashlights being waved outside our windows, an obvious clue that Big Brother is watching. My children ran screaming to my arms and my husband tried to find out just what the heck was going on.

We were informed that we are suspected terrorists and they had a warrant to search our home for any potential terrorist supplies. I asked what “terrorist supplies” meant, offering a short list in my inquiry:

“Box cutters? Shampoo bottles? Oh no, I think we even have matches here somewhere!”

My husband hushed me, so as not to give away any more evidence of our crimes. The kids were whispering to each other about whether they should gang up on the intruders. Believe me, the six of them could do damage like you can’t imagine — especially if they wake up before I do and there isn’t enough Golden Grahams for everyone! I assured them that the “nice” men were just doing their jobs trying to protect America, and we should let them do it. But if the SWAT team touched their GameCube, they could have at it.

So, the kids sat quietly while every nook and cranny was torn apart. My living room started to look like Saturday morning after a freakishly chaotic slumber party of 13-year-old girls. I watched as these men in black lifted up my couch, cut the cushions apart, and then threw the pieces all over like a festive Christmas snow. I offered them the chance to keep any small change they found. Except quarters. My six-year-old son LOVES quarters …

The team found an old painting I bought at a local yard sale several years ago for $3. The scene shows a tree branch on the top left corner, hanging out over a serene winter lake with snow-capped mountains behind it. The men insisted that this was a coded terrorist message. One of them told me he understood the code — the painting was showing that there are plans to inject diseases and poisons into our lakes and streams, and the only way to survive would be to stay above the risks until time had cleaned the water supply.

Wow. Even I didn’t know that, and I had been staring at this painting for YEARS! I was starting to feel less like the artsy type I had imagined myself to be. This guy was certainly in the wrong job. He should consider becoming a gallery owner. Or a public school teacher!

I saw another man checking out my PC. He asks if it’s really a computer, and I assure him it is. He wants to know who it belongs to. Well … it belongs to US. Another black-clad figure demands to know if we conduct any of our terrorist actions on this particular computer. I offered that I only use my laptop for political efforts, and they confiscated my brand-new HP laptop. Ouch! I hope they don’t find the file marked “Dad.” They might find out about our illegal pornography ring.

The kitchen was the next stop. This one made me nervous because we keep our cleaning supplies under the sink. There’s extra dish soap, de-greaser, hand soap, and my old mop bucket to catch that never-ending drip. The bucket and its contents are taken into FBI custody under the premise that it held noxious chemicals at some point in time. They even knew it was likely Pine-Sol and Clorox that were used. Now they suspected we were also meth dealers! This was not going well.

We made the trek into the dark recesses of my basement, where the agents found, and confiscated, the offending bleach container, along with some old USB cords. I didn’t think they’d be so thorough as to find those. We once used them to upload coded terrorist paintings to the knowing internet underworld, and there may still be traces inside the wiring. After a quick look inside the washer and dryer, I was asked to explain why there was very little buildup in the lint catch. “Well,” I said, “this is the high-efficiency Whirlpool Duet set. Or maybe we don’t have a lot of dust? I’m not really sure.” Well, this was apparently not a good response, because they decided they should take my abnormally-clean lint filter into their custody for testing!

Nothing else was found until we hit the bathroom upstairs. This is where we store our shampoo, conditioner, and God-forbid — Vaseline! I was praying they wouldn’t find my box of Sudafed, although I was betting that using my driver’s license to buy that allergy product 10 months ago was probably our undoing. Or maybe it was when I checked that book out of the library entitled “Protect Yourself from Your Government – What to Do When the FBI Raids.” I had to say goodbye to my bottles of Herbal Essences shampoo and conditioner. Apparently, they might contain flammables. That would explain the “explosion” women feel when washing their hair!

More bad news — my name showed up on a flight manifest for a trip to France. I explained that I have never flown, nor do I have any desire to do so. And while I speak better French than Barack Obama, I have not seen Paris, Nice, Versailles, or any other French-speaking community, unless you count my trip to Niagra Falls when I was 11.

As the search came to its end, the agents demanded to know where our stockpile of guns was located. Good grief!  How could we have forgotten that simplest rule of domestic terrorism — weapons?? After everything the men took into evidence — my favorite painting, drip bucket, couch change, my laptop, 3/4 empty bleach bottle, lint filter, ice-cream covered USB cords, and my explosive shampoo — we became concerned about all the stuff they had missed. For instance, if they looked deeper into my daughters’ rooms (and I don’t blame them for not doing it; that is a frightening place, even for a grown FBI agent), they might have found the odd wardrobe of a terrorist-in-training. I am certain that child is a sleeper. Her style of dress is a spaghetti-strap knee-length dress, topped with a dragon-embroidered black pullover hoodie, and a pair of ripped jeans underneath (although sometimes it’s plaid pajama pants). Oh yeah, she’s SCARY alright!! I’ll have to keep that evidence to myself.

What began as possible domestic terrorism turned into a definite domestic terrorist, meth-making, porn-distributing, bomb-holding, French-sympathizing operation.

Rien je suis bon. (Damn I’m good.)

The Generations Of Music. (Part 3)

Change did happen. The advent of the CD.
Luckily, around that time I still had about 8 stylus, so that kept me going for a while. I would only occasionally buy a new album, and was very slow to get into the CD craze as I could still play the albums, and those original quality CD players were pretty expensive. As the record player slowly degraded, I was lucky because I had recorded most of them to cassette, so I could always play them as well when I needed music, which was on a regular basis.

Now, my son, when he reached that same high school age he too had that endemic feeling that only age decreases, that of it was his generation that ‘invented’ music and that everything prior to his time was not worth listening to. His was the Kiss era. He later followed me into the Air Force, and at one stage we were actually at the same base, while he was undergoing training and I was teaching. He’d occasionally visit, and isn’t it strange with 17 year old boys. They could live within a mile and Mum would ask him to drop in every so often, and his priorities seemed to be somewhere else. Oh, well, we were all like that at that age I guess.

When he did visit, he’d, er, borrow a dozen or so of those tapes, and those sort of disappeared into the ether from my collection. Later, he’d come back and tell me that the Pink Floyd stuff wasn’t really all that bad. Then another dozen tapes would vanish, and next I’d hear that Neil Young wasn’t too bad either. Then, yes, and on it went. I only had a dozen or two tapes left. A little worried now and almost down to the last stylus, I taped madly a couple of dozen or so of the best stuff, and then that old record player gave up the ghost, not bad after nearly 20 years.

I had some tapes, and I was gradually getting some CD’s but I’d look at that collection of 450 records and despair of actually being able to play them again. They had been lovingly packed for three house moves and then carefully unpacked and added to the bottom shelf of my large cabinet, but they hadn’t been played for so long. I was actually debating whether or not to let them go, and was discussing the prospect with my sister who is a computer programming tech. She had got rid of her collection, and upon hearing that, I wished I had have been there to root through them before they passed into oblivion.

She told me that she had a computer program that she just couldn’t work out that could digitize music by playing the record into your computer, working on it with the program, and converting the music to a digital form. The fact that she, a computer tech, could not get the program to work worried me, as I was nowhere near as au fait with computers as she was. She sent me the program, and it looked beyond me. After a month or so I finally worked it out, and it was nothing simpler than getting a new sound card with a ‘Line In’ port. I had to get a record player from somewhere, and, in of all places, I found one at Tandy, a fairly good deck with a pre amp which was a requirement for the program. Then a lead to the sound card, and I got it to work. That took another couple of weeks to work it out and then was it full steam ahead. As I later found out, programs like the one I had are available from quite a number of sources, some average, and some good. Luckily I had hold of one of the relatively good ones, and even though it was hard to work out, I found that the capabilities of the program were quite exceptional. Even though a little dated now at around 4 or so years, it has everything I would need to do the work I wanted to achieve. There are better programs out there I’m sure, but I know how to work with this one, and it has accomplished the task I set out to do.

Over the next ten months I worked with all those LP’s and turned them all to digital. I’d do between two and four albums per day, and I think my good lady wife was heartily sick of my spending so much time working at this task.
The program was such that I just played the record and it recorded it all as a wave file. I could then work on each individual track, almost down to the fraction of a second. I could literally remaster the original from the record. Any noise I could master out, and if there were any scratches, they could be edited out cleanly, and there was virtually none as the albums had been so carefully looked after. Once the mastering was done, I could edit out the tracks I really didn’t want, and then just keep the ones I did. Then I could convert it from a wave file to an MP3 file, which takes up only a fraction of the disk space compared to the wave file. There are a dozen or so sample rates in MP3. Those on the new tiny players are kept at the lowest rate, because this takes up considerably less space, so I selected an upper level and converted them to MP3 192 or higher.
Then I could save it to its own dedicated hard drive, and then name and catalogue the tracks in their albums for ease of location. That gives me just over 2100 tracks taking up just on 14 Gig of space.
Any time I want to play a selection, I just plug the hard drive into the caddy and into the computer, and run it through my computer’s sound card. I can just minimise the music while working on other things at my computer.
Any time we travel long distances to visit family, sometimes up to 10 hours in the car travelling through areas of poor radio reception, I just burn a list of favourites onto a disk, and play that in the car.
This is just something that has worked out so well.

My good lady wife’s taste in music are similar, to an extent. She has a bit more than 100 albums, and after doing all mine, I went through her albums and selected the ones she liked the most, and I proceeded through the same task with those. Along the way, I found a lot of that music that I really liked as well. Stuff like that from Johnny Mathis, Jim Reeves, Englebert Humperdinck, Tom Jones, Marty Robbins, Tony Bennett, Guy Mitchell, Patti Page,  and the orchestras that did the rounds in the 60’s and 70’s, Bert Kaempfert, James Last, Paul Mauriat, Ray Conniff, and Percy Faith, all good stuff. Burt Bacharach, The Bee Gees and even Barry Manilow. She also just loves Mario Lanza and has a collection of his stuff as well, and when you sit down and listen, you realise that good voices like those still hold their place today. Now I just burn her up discs and she can have them playing up the other end of the house while I sit here and quietly listen to some of my ‘stuff’. Hidden away in her records was one by Hank Williams, and when I listened to that, the voice just reached across the eras. Listen to his Lost Highway, and you’ll see what I mean. To hear Patsy Cline singing Willie Nelson’s Crazy makes your heart soar. The purity of Roy Orbison’s voice. The smooth steel guitar of Santo and Johnny Farina’s Sleepwalk.

So, three generations of music. It’s always there. It’s always good. There’s some good stuff around even now. New stuff I’ve got, and now I have a collection of nearly 100 CD’s as well, is the Eagles new twin, David Gilmore, Bonnie Raitt.

So, even though music in incidental, and in most cases is just there in the background, it shapes you life. Each time you hear one of those songs it takes you back to where you were at that time. It just stays timeless. So when younger generations say that it was they who really invented music, you know, and as they get older, they too will know that throughout time there has been music that has shaped life as we know it. Even though all of it good, I still feel that time from the late 60’s through to the end of the 70’s was one of those Golden Eras. As many names as I have mentioned here, there are a hundred I’ve left out, all of them just as good.

You just need to really listen to it.

Obama is NO Harry Truman!

Barack Hussein Obama: He’s no Harry S. Truman

THE FOUNDATION: AMERICA

“We are firmly convinced, and we act on that conviction, that with nations as with individuals our interests soundly calculated will ever be found inseparable from our moral duties, and history bears witness to the fact that a just nation is trusted on its word when recourse is had to armaments and wars to bridle others.” -Thomas Jefferson

INSIGHT

“I don’t pass the buck, nor do I alibi out of any decision I make.” -Harry S. Truman

FOR THE RECORD

“Barack Obama had ample reason to recall the Berlin Airlift of 1948 during his dramatic speech in the German capital last week. The airlift was an early and critical success for the West in the Cold War, with clear relevance to our own time, the war in Iraq, and the free world’s conflict with radical Islam.

But having reached back 60 years to that pivotal hour of American leadership, Obama proceeded to draw from it exactly the wrong lessons.

The Soviet Union had blockaded western Berlin on June 24, 1948, choking off access to the city by land and water and threatening 2.5 million people with starvation. Moscow was determined to force the United States and its allies out of Berlin. To capitulate to Soviet pressure, as Obama rightly noted, ‘would have allowed Communism to march across Europe.’ Yet many in the West advocated retreat, fearing that the only way to keep the city open was to use the atomic bomb-and launch World War III.

For President Truman, retreat was unthinkable. ‘We stay in Berlin, period,’ he decreed. Overriding the doubts of senior advisers… Truman ordered the Armed Forces to begin supplying Berlin by air. Military planners initially thought that with a ‘very big operation,’ they might be able to get 700 tons of food to Berlin. Within weeks, the Air Force was flying in twice that amount every day, as well as supplies of coal. … It would take nearly a year and more than 277,000 flights. But in the end it was the Soviets who backed down.

On May 12, 1949, the blockade ended-a triumph of American prowess and perseverance, and a momentous vindication for Truman.

But not once in his Berlin speech did Obama acknowledge Truman’s fortitude, or even mention his name.

Nor did he mention the US Air Force, or the 31 American pilots who died during the airlift. Indeed, Obama seemed to go out of his way not to say plainly that what saved Berlin in that dark time was America’s military might.

Save for a solitary reference to ‘the first American plane,’ he never described one of the greatest American operations of the postwar period as an American operation at all.

He spoke only of ‘the airlift,’ ‘the planes,’ ‘those pilots.’ Perhaps their American identity wasn’t something he cared to stress amid all his ‘people of the world’ salutations and talk of ‘global citizenship.’…

Sixty years later, it is a very different kind of Democrat who is running for president. Obama may have wowed ‘em in Berlin, but he’s no Harry Truman.” -Jeff Jacoby

CAMPAIGN WATCH

“The early precincts are in, and it looks like a landslide. Unfortunately for Barack Obama, these are only the early precincts. America votes later. The public-opinion polls show the American idol winning by extraordinary margins in the precincts of the fantasists: by 51 percent in France, 49 percent in Germany, and 30 percent even in Britain, where voters speak English and understand American politics a little better than in the rest of Europe or, for that matter, the Upper East Side of Manhattan. Here at home, where there are early, tentative signs that Americans are beginning to come off a roaring drunk, he’s effectively tied with John McCain.” -Wesley Pruden

LIBERTY

“A view of the world means you might like London and I might prefer Paris, but each preference can be equally valid because it is a matter of individual taste. A correct worldview is a way of not just looking at other countries and people, but having an intellectual and moral center that allows one to distinguish between good and evil; right and wrong; sound economic, social and political policies and bad ones. There is a reason America is what it is. The economic power and military might are effects, not causes of America’s greatness. It is because we offer the lives of our young and much of our fortune to defend liberty for ourselves and promote it for others that we are blessed with liberty. Too many other countries-especially European countries-receive liberty as America’s gift, but contribute little to it.” -Cal Thomas

SELECT READER COMMENTS

To submit or to view reader comments visit our Reader Comments page. Join the debate at the Patriot Blog.)

“Once again, in his essay, ‘The Obama-philes: Barack’s Leftmedia Sycophants,’ Mark Alexander clearly exposed Barack Hussein Obama as the most expert flim-flam man we have ever witnessed-a master of deceit. Unless the MSM begins to recognize the evil, simple people whose image of Obama is full of glamorous promises of hope for change will select the Hollywood candidate. He will be president. God bless the USA, and God have mercy upon those poor souls duped into Obamania.” -St. Charles, Missouri

“Barack Obama’s speech in Germany was downright chilling-a frightening combination of Neville Chamberlain, Karl Marx and Jimmy Carter. Obama apologized for America’s existence, our abilities and our hard-earned wealth. One line that got the Germans cheering was that there ought not be any nuclear weapons in the world. He said we all have to trust each other, and we must be more equitable. Never has so much world socialism been promised in a single hour. If you heard or read that speech, you can’t say you don’t know who Barack Hussein Obama is anymore.” -Rock Rapids, Iowa

THE LAST WORD

“John McCain has figured out that one way to build enthusiasm among conservatives is to confront his former best friends in the liberal media. As the media glorify Barack Obama the ‘statesman’ on his trip abroad, with the three network anchors lining up for interviews like a gaggle of smitten fan-club presidents, the McCain campaign suddenly acquired a surprising ‘Annoy The Media’ flavor… McCain’s campaign is now running Internet ads mocking Chris Matthews for his ‘thrill up the leg’ comments about Obama and other assorted media goo, complete with Frankie Valli crooning ‘Can’t Take My Eyes Off You’ in the background. It’s quite clear that the media are hypersensitive about any mockery of Obama. So mocking his pitter-patter valentines in the media may be the best hardball [McCain] can throw.” -Brent Bozell

Veritas vos Liberabit-Semper Vigilo, Fortis, Paratus, et Fidelis! Mark Alexander, Publisher, for The Patriot’s editors and staff. (Please pray for our Patriot Armed Forces standing in harm’s way around the world, and for their families-especially families of those fallen Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen, who granted their lives in defense of American liberty.)

Read more excellent articles at The Patriot Post The Patriot Post.US

The Generations Of Music. (Part 2)

As my tastes in music evolved, the guy who ran the record shop got to know me pretty well, and he would direct me to new stuff that he thought I would like. I gradually started up a fairly decent sort of library of albums. The second great album I got at those early stages, among all the other good ones was ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’ by Pink Floyd. Looking back now, it’s hard to imagine how this album failed to win a Grammy at the time. This was in one of Stevie Wonder’s golden periods, and hindsight is always 20/20, but this album still sells more than 5000 a week. It spent 29 years on the Billboard charts and 15 years in the top 200. Each new Floyd album saw Dark Side flip back into the top 100. It’s the second highest selling album on Planet Earth, and they say that since its release, someone somewhere on Earth is playing a track from that album, continuously since 1973, and it’s almost hard to believe the album is 35 years old, so current is the style of music on it. As is mostly the case, some albums age so gracefully, they just get better, and this is one of them. At the time it may have been considered to be a little out there, as concept albums were just starting to make their way to the people. Whether this was indulgence on the part of the band, or incredible foresight is only told by historians, but this album did not really see mainstream airplay on popular radio because they didn’t quite know where it fitted, but those people who actually purchased the album realised that this was just something that was going to stand that test of time, which it has. That album prompted me to get all their earlier albums right back to the Syd Barrett days, and I have all 13 studio albums and four of their others, compilations. Knowing my love for Floyd he put me onto The Alan Parsons Project from his first solo album, Tales Of Mystery And Imagination, Edgar Alan Poe. Alan was the engineer on Dark Side and at the time was affectionately referred to as the fifth member of the band. He worked at Abbey Road for The Beatles, The Hollies, and later McCartney on two of his big ones, Red Rose Speedway and Band On The Run. When that great artist Randy Newman won his Grammy after so many nominations without getting a gong, it then fell to Alan Parsons as the most nominated artist never to win a Grammy, with his 13 nominations in all. His first album was followed by I Robot, probably his biggest, but I distinctly love his Side 2 on that first album, most of that side taken up with the one 15 minute piece, The Rise And Fall Of The House Of Usher. Play that track with headphones on and you’ll hear the best thunderstorm sequence put down on anything that has been recorded.

My record guy put me onto Steely Dan with Pretzel Logic, and Katy Lied. I was already into McCartney’s Wings so I had a collection of them. I loved Electric Light Orchestra, Clapton, the Early Elton John stuff, Paul Simon, and the list kept growing. I got hold of every Neil Young album as it was released, each album a revelation as his directions changed. The record shop guy was now comfortable that he never had to hard sell albums to me, because every time I came in the shop I would leave with an album. He just pointed me at any new stuff, and left it for me to decide. He directed me to a band credited with starting the Techno music genre, the German outfit Kraftwerk with their fabulous Autobahn. He directed me to Blondie and who can forget Debbie Harry rapping Rapture in the first crossover from that genre into mainstream Pop culture. With each album I tried to cover as many bases as my tastes led me to. I would find a way to like as many songs from each album as I could, but the limitation was that old portable record player, and I soon found a way to really find the true nuances of all that great music.

That old record player was getting long in the tooth, so I needed to upgrade. Around that time, the Air Force was trying to encourage their people to stay on, especially those trained with engineering qualifications in the aircraft maintenance trades. To that end the Government of the time decided on a monetary bonus to sign on again. That bonus was a relatively paltry $1000, and even in those days was not really much of an incentive. Admitted, it was one third the total cost of a new car, but most guys took the bonus and in most cases it was frittered away.
I decided to spend mine on a good stereo system, and a lot of the guys thought I was crazy for doing that. My record shop guy put me onto a good hi fi dealer, and I spent most of one day sorting out just what to get. He asked me how much I wanted to spend, and what I wanted, and we worked from there.
I got a good direct drive turntable, a pre amp, a good 40 Watt amplifier, an AM FM receiver, a bit redundant at the time because FM was still nearly 10 years away, a good twin deck cassette recorder, four quality speaker boxes, two large and two small, and hi fi headphones. We added it up and it came to $950. Then he sprung the surprise. He knew I had the cash on me, and he just upgraded each of the items to the next model higher up the range, and threw in 3 dozen blank CD cassettes. I was literally stoked at this surprising good fortune, especially being as picky as I was for most of the day taking his time like that.

I was on the way.
After setting it all up, the first album I played was Dark Side Of The Moon, lapping up the soaring guitar of David Gilmour, the haunting vocals of a backup vocalist, Clare Torry, the imagery that album set up. Hearing music on a quality crafted hi fi system opened up things I had never seen before. I could feel the thump of the bass from those 12 inch woofers, hear the delicate top notes from the tiny tweeters. That upgraded 60 Watt Amp barely got above half volume.

From that point, I had a regimen that I would follow with my albums. I would buy the album, play it at my leisure, and if it was really good, then I would commit it to cassette, so if I wanted to keep playing it then I could play the tape, thus preserving the record itself in pristine condition. To that end, along with my growing list of albums, I built up a collection of around 8 dozen tapes, and I would just buy a new box of a dozen blanks every so often. The advantage here was that using UDC90’s I could get virtually the whole of one album on one side and a second on the other side. I tried the new Memorex Chrome Dioxide and Metal tapes but each time just went back to those Ultra Dynamics.  I had no need to buy the music cassettes as I would just get the album and add it to my library. I had the odd turkey, but surprisingly, I was selective enough to only get what I thought I would like and now I like virtually all I do have.

One thing that hi fi guy impressed upon me was to buy good quality Diamond stylus’, and not the cheaper Sapphire ones, and every couple of months I would go in and get a new one so I had a good store of at least six of them if anything should happen.

The music now became a part of the whole of my life. I could have it as backing while I read, something else I reaslly enjoyed doing. It was on while I relaxed, or I’d just crash in the bean bag, put on the headphones and catch things missed from just listening on the radio.

American Minute – Benjamin Franklin

Exclusive: William J. Federer’s

American Minute

On JULY 26, 1775, Benjamin Franklin became the first U.S. Postmaster General, a position he held prior to the Revolution under the British Crown. He established a volunteer fire department, a circulating public library, an insurance company, a city police force, a night watch and a militia. He set up the lighting of city streets and coined the electrical terms “positive” and “negative.” On June 28, 1787, as Governor of Pennsylvania, Benjamin Franklin hosted the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, where he moved: “That henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessing on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning.” Franklin wrote April 17, 1787: “Only a virtuous people are capable of freedom. As nations become corrupt and vicious, they have more need of masters.” Benjamin Franklin wrote his own epitaph: “THE BODY of BENJAMIN FRANKLIN – Printer. Like the cover of an old book, Its contents torn out, And stripped of its lettering and gilding, Lies here, food for worms; Yet the work itself shall not be lost, For it will (as he believed) appear once more, In a new, And more beautiful edition, Corrected and amended By The AUTHOR.”

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The Obama-philes: Poser Baracks Leftmedia Sycophants

Barack Tour Groupies (click here for full-size version in a new window)

“History bears witness to the fact that a just nation is trusted on its word when recourse is had to armaments and wars to bridle others.” -Thomas Jefferson

PATRIOT PERSPECTIVE

The Obama-philes: Barack’s Leftmedia Sycophants

By Mark Alexander

Having previously asserted that the primary anthropogenic (human) contributor to global warming is Albert Arnold Gore, I am now prepared to qualify that statement. Given all the hot air expelled by Barack Hussein Obama during his Middle East tour this week, it’s apparent that Gore now has some stiff competition.

Obama’s campaign stops in Iraq and elsewhere in the region would qualify as nothing more than silage for satirists were it not for the big three MSM talkingheads worshiping his every utterance. Of course, Leftmedia sycophants are nothing new to Democrat presidential campaigns.

Typical of the coverage was NBC’s description of the campaign trip as a “Tour of Duty.”

And the print media weren’t far behind.

Washington Post columnist David Broder fawned, “[A]s millions of Americans who watched the primary campaign learned, Obama is invariably articulate. There would be no verbal gaffes” on his tour. Perhaps David missed Obama’s most astute example of “invariable articulation”: “Um, let me be absolutely clear. Israel is a strong friend of Israel’s.”

Obama traveled with dozens of his “national security advisors” selected from his staff of more than 300 (yes, that’s THREE HUNDRED) foreign policy advisors. There were dozens more-strategists, campaign gofers, makeup artists and court jesters-enough to create an entourage that looked genuinely imposing in transit. As John McCain’s campaign spokesman Brian Rogers quipped, “Who does he think he is, Clay Aiken?”

It’s no small irony that if Obama’s celebrated 2007 Senate legislation to cut and run from Iraq by March 2008 had passed, the only photo ops he would’ve been able to muster in Mesopotamia this week would be with jihadis.

In ‘07, Obama said, “Let me be clear: There is no military solution in Iraq. There never was. The best way to protect our security and to pressure Iraq’s leaders to resolve their civil war is to immediately begin to remove our combat troops. Not in six months or one year-now.”

Of course, none of his press toadies asked him about that because the campaign did not allow unmanaged press interviews in Iraq.

At least one reporter, though, NBC’s Andrea Mitchell, saw right through Obama’s carefully scripted press releases from Iraq and Afghanistan: “What you’re seeing is what some would call fake interviews because they’re not interviews from a journalist. So there’s a real press issue here. Politically it’s smart as can be, but we have not seen a presidential candidate do this in my recollection ever before.”

Still, being “politically smart as can be,” the networks swallowed them whole.

Clearly, Obama has changed his tune regarding Iraq and the Long War: “We have to win the broader war against terror that threatens America and its interests. I think that Iraq is one front on that war, but I think the central front is in Afghanistan and in the border regions of Pakistan.”

However, Obama is still calling for a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq.

Joint Chiefs chairman Adm. Michael Mullen believes that Obama’s arbitrary withdrawal timetable is “dangerous,” saying, “Making reductions based on conditions on the ground is very important. We’ve been able to do that. We’ve reduced five brigades in the last several months and, again, if conditions continue to improve, I would be able to make those recommendations to President Bush in the fall to continue those reductions.”

The surge that Obama so vigorously opposed has been so remarkably successful that the last of the five brigades military commanders deployed to Iraq as part of the surge will be out by next week. Indeed, Obama is calling for a surge in our forces in Afghanistan. Yet he can’t seem to admit what everyone else-including the USA Today editorial board-has come to acknowledge: that he was and remains dead wrong about military operation in the region.

Perhaps it has something to do with Obama’s arrogance.

David Gergen, former White House advisor to Presidents Nixon, Ford, Reagan and Clinton, strongly rebuked the candidate for releasing a statement outlining his discussions with the Prime Minister of Iraq. “We have a long tradition in this country that we only have one president at a time. [President Bush] is the commander in chief and the negotiator in chief. I cannot remember a campaign in which a rival seeking the presidency has been in a position of negotiating a war that’s under way with another party outside the country. I think he leaves himself open to the charge that he’s meddling, that this is not his role, that he can be the critic but he’s not the negotiator. We have a president who does that.”

Of course, there is another Democrat senator and former presidential nominee who did a little negotiating with foreign powers during a time of war. That same senator, Jean-Francois Kerry, took the then-obscure Obama under his wing and launched his ‘08 presidential bid by tapping him for the keynote speech at the 2004 Democrat National convention. In fairness to Barack, who never served in the military, Jean-Francois did his negotiating with the Vietcong in Paris, while he was still on active duty with the U.S. Navy. (For that reason, we continue to seek his prosecution for treason, along with the rest of his cadre of anti-American protestors.)

But I digress.

In Israel, Obama, the consummate national security neophyte, who has strongly condemned the Bush administration for not talking to our enemies, insisted this week: “Israel should not talk to Hamas as long as it poses a threat to its citizens. If someone was to fire at my house, where my two daughters sleep, I would do everything within my power to stop him and I expect Israel to do the same.”

There aren’t too many gangbangers shooting up cribs in Obama’s posh Chicago suburb, but if they were shooting at his house, I suspect he’d open a window and call for negotiations and dialogue, adding something about the oppressed and the need for hope and change.

Working his way through Europe, Obama hosted a big rockin’ rally in Berlin, ironically, a place that had a lot to do with populating Israel. Wall Street Journal political analyst John Fund writes of Obama’s JFKish rally at Berlin’s Victory Column: “Team Obama insists the speech will not be a campaign rally. ‘It is not going to be a political speech,’ a senior Obama foreign policy adviser told reporters in Jordan this week. ‘When the president of the United States goes and gives a speech, it is not a political speech or a political rally.’ ‘But [Obama] is not president of the United States,’ a reporter gently reminded the adviser. After all, this is the campaign that sometimes has to be told the inconvenient truth that the election remains to be held.”

While the Barack Tour was commanding the media’s attention abroad, there was further evidence of media “favoritism” stateside. That old, haggard, gray spinster, The New York Times, refused to print an op-ed by John McCain in direct rebuttal to an op-ed it published last week from Obama entitled, “My Plan for Iraq.”

The Times’ Op-Ed editor, David Shipley, formerly special assistant to Bill Clinton and his senior presidential speechwriter, explained that the McCain op-ed did not mirror Obama’s. No kidding. Shipley actually told McCain’s staff, “It would be terrific to have an article from Senator McCain that mirrors Senator Obama’s piece. I’m not going to be able to accept this piece as currently written. I’d be pleased, though, to look at another draft.”

Shipley added, “The Obama piece worked for me…”

Well, apparently.

What did not work for Shipley is that McCain’s op-ed made the case: “Progress has been due mainly to an increase in the number of troops and a change in their strategy. I was an early advocate of the surge at a time when it had few supporters in Washington. Sen. Barack Obama was an equally vocal opponent… I am dismayed that he never talks about winning the war-only of ending it. If we don’t win the war, our enemies will. A triumph for the terrorists would be a disaster for us. That is something I will not allow to happen as president.”

McCain’s campaign added, “The paper simply does not agree with the senator’s Iraq policy, and wants him to change it, not ‘re-work the draft’.”

The Washington Post’s media observer, Howard Kurtz, had a keen-sense-of-the-obvious moment regarding the Leftmedia: “[T]he media in general seem to be covering Obama as if he was already president… You have one candidate, Barack Obama, getting more than twice as many covers, Time and Newsweek, than John McCain…[T]here is clearly an imbalance…[T]here could be a big backlash against news organizations if this trend continues.”

C’mon Howard. “This trend” has been around for more than a century. Can you imagine how beautiful the political landscape would be if the media were actually impartial?

In fact, columnist William Tate conducted a review of federally required campaign donation disclosures, and determined that those who identify their occupation as media contributed $315,533 to Democrat presidential candidates, but only $3,150 to John McCain. Tate did not have to use a calculator to conclude that’s “a ratio of 100-to-1. No bias there.”

The final analysis, his Leftmedia sycophancy notwithstanding, the Barack Tour certainly exposed how inept he is when unscripted.

Quote of the week

“I think that the coverage [Barack Obama] is getting is beyond presidential. It’s papal. I mean, a president never has all three anchors on the way with him. If you needed any evidence of how much in the tank the mainstream media are, this is it.” -Charles Krauthammer

On cross-examination

Barack on Iraq:

January 2007-”And until we acknowledge that reality, uh, we can send 15,000 more troops; 20,000 more troops; 30,000 more troops. Uh, I don’t know any, uh, expert on the region or any military officer that I’ve spoken to, uh, privately that believes that that is gonna make a substantial difference on the situation on the ground.”

July 2007-”Here’s what we know. The surge has not worked. And they said today, ‘Well, even in September, we’re going to need more time.’ So we’re going to kick this can all the way down to the next president, under the president’s plan… My assessment is that the surge has not worked and we will not see a different report eight weeks from now.”

September 2007-”After putting an additional 30,000 troops in… we have gone from a horrendous situation of violence in Iraq to the same intolerable levels of violence that we had back in June of 2006. So, essentially, after all this we’re back where we were 15 months ago… It is a course that will not succeed.”

January 2008-”I had no doubt, and I said when I opposed the surge, that given how wonderfully our troops perform, if we place 30,000 more troops in there, then we would see an improvement in the security situation and we would see a reduction in the violence.”

Now: “What I said was even at the time of the debate of the surge, was if you put 30,000 troops in, of course it’s going to have an impact. There’s no doubt about that.”

Open query

“Obama has a problem: What do you do when you’re a lightly accomplished one-term senator, a former state legislator from Illinois, a Harvard law graduate who has no substantive record of accomplishments, and you are running against a war hero whom polls show that Americans overwhelmingly view as far more fit to be commander in chief? Pose, of course. What else can a guy like Obama do?” -Maggie Gallagher

Read more excellent articles at The Patriot Post The Patriot Post.US

The Generations Of Music. (Part 1)

Sometimes. If a man gets really lucky, he can have four great loves in his life, his Mother, his wife, a sport, and music. I’m one of those really lucky guys. I still have my Mother, and my good lady wife has been with me now for nigh on thirty years.
The other two are pretty esoteric, and almost pass by without notice, but are always part of your life. As a boy, my parents directed me towards tennis, and as a youth I was an average player. As I grew, I became a little better, but my real love was cricket. I worked hard at the game and became a middle level player, and I ended up playing at a relatively high level for 8 years and then competition level for a further 12 years or so until, around forty, I was not able to do the things I could when younger. Those younger guys loved to have me on the team, because I had a good brain for the game, and I was more of a mentor than a real contributor, although some batsmen wondered how an old guy could do that with the ball as they trudged back to the pavilion. During the Winter months, I played Australian Rules football to stay fit for the cricket, but even though I made the team, I was only a plodder so to speak. I still played Grade Tennis, squash and golf and actually got my handicap into single figures for two years, and down as low as five for a while. However Cricket was my real love, and I played into my early forties. Now, I can’t play any longer but I can still always catch a game during the Summer here in Australia on the radio and the TV, and I just love the ‘Game they play in Heaven’. I know that I just could not write enough posts to explain the nuances of the game to people who can’t work the game out, but just like you guys in the US who love ‘the Summer Pastime’ of baseball, I have that some love for Cricket.

However, music is something that is with you all your life. You really start to become acutely aware of around the last years of grade school and into that first year at high school. When that time came for me, The Beatles started to break, and music became just great. That’s when it became something for me. I liked The Beatles, but so much of it was good. I remember my first small 45 I bought with my own money. It was Theme For Young Lovers by The Shadows. My first LP was an Australian band, The Seekers. It was one of their early albums, and featured mostly ‘covers’. The two haunting songs were Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land and Ian Tyson’s Four Strong Winds. They also did two Dylan songs.

I joined the Air Force as a young trades apprentice not long after that. The music was always there and there was so much of it so good. This was before cassette tapes even, so all you really had other than the radio was a record player, and not many of the guys had them, so the main source was the radio, which was on nearly all the time out of the trade schooling we were going through, and then with my flying Squadron’s as a tradesman.

There was such good music from all corners of the English speaking World. The Beatles and that magic era, Peppers, the White Album, Let It Be, and Abbey Road. I loved the cross section of music from Hendrix and The Wind Cries Mary, David Gate’s Bread with Guitar Man, Don McLean’s American Pie, The Beach Boys and Do It Again, Glen Campbell and True Grit, and nine great songs out of every ten played.

My tastes in music covered the whole range, and I even loved some classical stuff, especially by the three Russian composers from the turn of the last century, Dmitri Shostakovich foremost of them. About the only genre I wasn’t all that keen on was opera, and some of the musicals which were big at the time. I don’t share the opinion that is so prevalent, that no matter which generation you were from, it was your generation alone that ‘invented’ music. There’s good from all generations.

In 1972, I had a small portable record player and around ten or so albums, and they didn’t really get played all that much, because to get it out and set it up was more time consuming that just switching on the radio, and this is in the days prior to FM, which didn’t come to Australia until the early 80’s, so all we had was AM radio.
In that year, 1972, I heard a song on the radio that just changed everything for me. It was a minor song from a huge album, and the radio played to just say, ‘hey, here’s another song from this album’. The album was Harvest from Neil Young, and the big hit here in Australia was Heart Of Gold. The song was okay, but had I not heard this other song, then all this becomes moot I would guess. I would have just gone through life with the radio I guess.
That song was ‘Old Man’. When it came on the radio, I just stopped and had to listen.
The following payday, I shelled out my hard earned $4.99 and went and purchased the album. Every song was a revelation, and other than Old Man, the title song itself Harvest, became a firm favourite. Hearing that song Harvest actually prompted me to go out and buy a guitar, because I wanted to play that song. That guitar cost me a hundred, which sort of made it a middle ranking cheapie of the day, but the neck was strong, and I used steel strings, which really hurt my fingertips, but I worked at it. I had twelve lessons, and spent the next six months just doing scales and getting my fingers working and the tips hardened, My room mates were so sick of the scales, I would go outside and practice. I purchased the sheet music for the whole album, in a foolscap like paperback picture book, and the first song I learned whole was Old Man, and then Harvest. I played the guitar for nigh on twenty years, but only for my own joy. My good lady wife tells me she just loved the way I played. My voice was only average, but I got by enough to make me, and those close to me happy.

However, the music then became the real love. From that one album, I would then purchase a new one every second Friday.
I would spend an hour in the tiny record shop flicking through albums. I got all Neil Young’s earlier stuff right back to Buffalo Springfield. There was the ladies too, Joan Baez, Joni Mitchell, Carole King, Carly Simon, Linda Ronstadt, and others. The bands ranged from Bread through to Aerosmith, ZZ Top, The Beach Boys, The Shadows, The Moody Blues, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Manfredd Mann’s Earth Band, The Doobies, The early Fleetwood Mac, and the later revival of that same band, Jethro Tull, and Hawkwind, and the Eagles, and who can ever not hear their Last Resort from Hotel California without wondering how music ever got so good. The guys numbered Jackson Browne, Jim Croce, Stevie Wonder, Gordon Lightfoot, Ry Cooder, and of course Bob Dylan including his mid life purple patch of Blood On The Tracks and Desire. The list just grew and grew. I even have the ABBA opus Arrival. Who cannot fail to feel a shiver run up their spine when Billy Joel whistles that eerie verse on The Stranger. Jim Morrison’s vocals on The Crystal Ship, Jackson Browne’s The Pretender, the clean guitar of Mark Knopfler on Going Home, that soaring violin of Jean Luc Ponty on Elton John’s Honky Chateau album, Paul Simon’s magic American Dream, Stevie Wonder’s Living For The City, Floyd’s Wish You Were Here, Picasso’s Last Words from McCartney’s Band On The Run, and Steely Dan’s tribute to the Count, East St Louis Toodle oo, and Led Zeppelin’s Kashmir. Close your eyes and see the big bird soar with Peter Green’s original Fleetwood Mac on Albatross. Here Eric Clapton’s blinding guitar on Derek And The Dominoes Layla. Listen closely to The Kinks Waterloo Sunset. Imagine the imagery of Carlos Santana on Samba Pa Ti. Be happy with Chuck Berry as he tells us of young love on You Never Can Tell.

There is just so much good music, and for every song I mention there are a hundred others. It’s just there, all the time, and if you’re really lucky, you learn to appreciate it. Each song takes you to a place once remembered, and never forgotten. It’s an aid to memory for all the times in your life.

Answer to a Comment on The Obama Tidal Wave

[This comment Is too good to languish in the Comments section.  ---ed]

To Stephanie and Others of her ilk,

Re: Comment on The Obama Tidal Wave

By Marlin6

I am sorry that you are afflicted with what Charles Krauthammer calls “Bush Derangement Syndrome”. Please find my article on this malady as a post on PA Pundits.

President George W. Bush will be vindicated by history for liberating Iraq.

If you want to know the reasons for invading Iraq,

• Ask the relatives of the men and women Uday Hussein dropped alive (screaming) into plastic shredders.
• Ask the Shiite Marsh People that Saddam starved by draining the marshes after the first Gulf War.
• Ask the relatives of the 5,000 Kurds he killed with poison gas.
• Ask the women that Uday raped, including a dancer with a Russian ballet.
• Ask the relatives looking for their loved ones in the mass graves in Iraq.

Maybe the Messiah Obama and his fellow appeasers will make the world better for the Mullahs in Iran.

Just remember, atomic bombs do not discriminate between Democrats and Republicans.

Marlin

Read Marlin6 Bio.

Randy Pausch, the ‘Last Lecture’ Professor, Died

In Memoriam:
Randy Pausch, Innovative Computer Scientist at Carnegie Mellon,
Launched Education Initiatives, Gained Worldwide Acclaim for Last Lecture

Byron Spice and Anne Watzman

PITTSBURGH-Randy Pausch, renowned computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, died July 25 of complications from pancreatic cancer. He was 47.

Celebrated in his field for co-founding the pioneering Entertainment Technology Center and for creating the innovative educational software tool known as “Alice,” Pausch earned his greatest worldwide fame for his inspirational “Last Lecture.”

That life-affirming lecture, a call to his students and colleagues to go on without him and do great things, was delivered at Carnegie Mellon on Sept. 18, 2007, a few weeks after Pausch learned he had just months to live. Titled “Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams,” the humorous and heartfelt talk was videotaped, and unexpectedly spread around the world via the Internet. Tens of millions of people have since viewed video footage of it.

Pausch, who had regularly won awards in the field of computer science, spent the final months of his life being lauded in arenas far beyond his specialty. ABC News declared him one of its three “Persons of the Year” for 2007. TIME magazine named him to its list of the 100 most influential people in the world. On thousands of Web sites, people wrote essays about what they had learned from him. His book based on the lecture became a #1 bestseller internationally, translated into 30 languages.

A Gifted Teacher

Many who knew Pausch before he became famous were not surprised that he touched others so deeply. They had seen this ability in him during his years as a professor.

“Randy had an enormous and lasting impact on Carnegie Mellon,” said University President Jared L. Cohon. “He was a brilliant researcher and gifted teacher. His love of teaching, his sense of fun and his brilliance came together in the Alice project, which teaches students computer programming while enabling them to do something fun – making animated movies and games. Carnegie Mellon – and the world – are better places for having had Randy Pausch in them.”

“Randy was a force of nature,” said Gabriel Robins, a computer science professor at the University of Virginia and Pausch’s former colleague. Robins recalls Pausch drawing large crowds, long before he was famous, for his entertaining and thought-provoking lectures about time management. “He had a very visceral, fundamental resonance to the core of humanity. It’s not an accident that people flocked to him; people of all ages, cultures and religions. I thought of him as a genius of many things – not just science and research, but marketing, branding, selling, convincing, leading and showing by example.”

Pausch was well-known within the academic community for developing interdisciplinary courses and research projects that attracted new students to the field of computer science. He also spent his career encouraging computer scientists to collaborate with artists, dramatists and designers.

“Good teaching is always a performance, but what Randy did was in a class all by itself,” said Andy van Dam, co-founder of the computer science department at Brown University, which Pausch attended as an undergraduate. Van Dam, a longtime mentor to Pausch, was impressed by “the care and affection he lavished on his students. They responded to him as athletes do to a great coach who cares not only about winning but about the team players as individuals.”

Pausch, the father of three young children, saw it as his mission to help enable the dreams of his students. In his last lecture, he spoke of how grateful he was to those who had helped him along the way: professors, colleagues, a football coach, and especially, his own parents. He explained how he had dreamed of writing a World Book Encyclopedia entry, experiencing zero gravity and creating Disney attractions – all dreams that were fulfilled. He said he learned even more from dreams that didn’t come true, such as being a pro football player. He also shared a host of lessons – about finding the good in other people, about seeing “brick walls” not as obstacles but as challenges, and about living generously.

“If you lead your life the right way, the karma will take care of itself,” Pausch said. “The dreams will come to you.”

At the end of the talk, he revealed that he had given it mostly to serve as a roadmap for his three young children. The book based on the talk has a similar purpose. As he explained it: “I’m attempting to put myself in a bottle that will one day wash up on the beach for my children.”

The book, titled “The Last Lecture,” was a #1 New York Times bestseller, and also topped bestseller lists in USA Today, Publisher’s Weekly, and other publications around the world. It was co-written by Jeffrey Zaslow of the Wall Street Journal (a 1980 Carnegie Mellon alumnus). The lecture and book led to intense media interest in Pausch. He appeared twice on The Oprah Winfrey Show. Pausch and his wife Jai were also the subjects of an hour-long ABC News Primetime special in April hosted by Diane Sawyer and viewed by 8.2 million people.

Bridging Computer Science and the Arts

Pausch joined the Carnegie Mellon School of Computer Science faculty in 1997 with appointments in the Computer Science Department, the Human-Computer Interaction Institute and the School of Design. He soon launched an interdisciplinary course, called Building Virtual Worlds, in which student teams designed interactive animations. The results were so spectacular that roommates, friends and even parents of the students would attend class on days when projects were presented. A showcase of the projects attracted a standing-room-only crowd to the campus’ largest auditorium. These end-of-semester shows have established themselves as a premier event on campus during finals week.

Pausch and Don Marinelli, professor of drama and arts management, extended this approach by creating the Entertainment Technology Center (ETC), a joint program of the School of Computer Science and the College of Fine Arts. This master’s degree program trains artists, engineers and computer scientists to work together as they spearhead developments in digital storytelling and other new forms of entertainment technology.

“In an era of ever-increasing specialization, Randy promoted interdisciplinary teams based upon mutual respect, building bridges between fine arts and computer science,” said Dan Siewiorek, head of the Human-Computer Interaction Institute. “Randy’s legacy is his technology that made computer science accessible to the non-specialists.”

Inspiring New Generations of Computer Scientists

Perhaps his most ambitious effort was Alice, a computer programming environment that enables novices to create 3-D computer animations using a drag-and-drop interface. “The best way to teach somebody something,” Pausch explained, “is to have them think they’re learning something else.” With Alice, students concentrate on making movies and games, but they also are learning to program.

Carnegie Mellon makes downloads of the Alice software available for free at www.alice.org. Eight textbooks on Alice have been written. Alice is used by 10 percent of U.S. colleges and in many high schools. Also available is a version for middle school children called “Storytelling Alice,” which was designed by Caitlin Kelleher, Pausch’s Ph.D. student, to appeal in particular to young girls with hopes of increasing female interest in computer science careers. A new version of Alice, featuring animated characters donated by Electronic Arts from its best-selling game “The Sims,” is slated for release in 2009.

In his last lecture, Pausch said: “Like Moses, I get to see the Promised Land, but I don’t get to step foot in it. That’s OK. I will live on in Alice.”

A Footbridge to the Future

Pausch earned his undergraduate degree in computer science at Brown University in 1982 and his Ph.D. in computer science at Carnegie Mellon in 1988. Before joining the Carnegie Mellon faculty in 1997, he served on the computer science faculty at the University of Virginia from 1988 to 1997 and spent a 1995 sabbatical working at Walt Disney Imagineering’s Virtual Reality Studio.

A fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), he is the recipient of the ACM’s Karl V. Karlstrom Outstanding Educator Award and the Award for Outstanding Contribution to Computer Science Education from the ACM’s Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education (SIGCSE). He authored or co-authored five books and more than 60 reviewed journal and conference articles.

Last September, Carnegie Mellon announced a plan to honor Pausch’s memory. A computer scientist with the heart of a performer, he was a tireless advocate and enabler of collaboration between artistic and technical faculty members. That role will be signified by the Randy Pausch Memorial Footbridge, which will connect the Gates Center for Computer Science, now under construction, with an adjacent arts building. “Based on your talk, we’re thinking of putting a brick wall on either end,” joked President Cohon, announcing the honor. He went on to say: “Randy, there will be generations of students and faculty who will not know you, but they will cross that bridge and see your name and they’ll ask those of us who did know you. And we will tell them.”

Pausch is survived by his wife, Jai, and their three children, Dylan, Logan and Chloe. Also surviving are his mother, Virginia Pausch of Columbia, Md., and a sister, Tamara Mason of Lynchburg, Va. The family plans a private burial in Virginia, where they relocated last fall. A campus memorial service is being planned. Details will be announced at a later date.

The family requests that donations on his behalf be directed to the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, 2141 Rosecrans Ave., Suite 7000, El Segundo, CA 90245, or to Carnegie Mellon’s Randy Pausch Memorial Fund (www.cmu.edu/giving/pausch), which primarily supports the university’s continued work on the Alice project.

Read more here:  In Memoriam: Randy Pausch

Read our previous article: The “Last Lecture” By Randy Pausch

To read a PDF Transcript of this video please click here > Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

For the Complete Closed Caption Video, in English or Chinese, go here > “Last Lecture” by Professor Randy Pausch

[This is Sad, so much to give, so much to live for, and a fantastic attitude! At times like this it seems only the Good die young. But this is more that a Memorial, this is a Celebration of an Inspiring Life! ---ed]

The Media’s Favorite Son – Obama

Obama and the Media

Even here in Israel, the local media has fallen in love with Obama. The idea that the American voting public would reject the obvious shining light of “change” and who the media has decided that the next President will be, seems far-fetched.

So what’s your prediction?

Who do you think will win in November and become America’s next President?

(McCain, if people finally wake up!  —Ed, Al & Annie)

[Barf! Excuse me while I Vomit. I shouldn't be surprised at the World's and our Mad LeftMedia. History is a guide to the present.

Why? Because the Past is Ignored by Fools as they Obliviously repeat the same past mistakes.

Look at the Love Orgy the Media had with Hitler and Mussolini.

The Brain Dead Leftists rush headlong into Oblivion while being enamored with Fluff.
So why wouldn't these Incompetent Fools Lust after this Obama?

However, as Dangerous as Obama is, I don't think he will be as Devastating to this Great Country of ours as Hitler & Mussolini were to theirs.

But, then again, I've been wrong before.  ---ed]

Read more Great ToonLogs at Dry Bones

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American Minute – Tennessee

Exclusive: William J. Federer’s

American Minute

Tennessee’s Constitutional Convention composed its State Constitution in 1796. The U.S. Congress accepted it and President George Washington signed the bill admitting Tennessee as the 16th State on June 1, 1796. The Tennessee Constitution, Article XI, Section III, stated: “All men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of their own consciences.” Though Article XI, Section IV, stated: “No religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under this State,” Article VIII, Section II, stated: “No person who denies the being of God, or a future state of rewards and punishments, shall hold any office in the civil department of this State.” After the Civil War, Tennessee was the first State readmitted to the Union on JULY 24, 1866. President Andrew Johnson issued a Proclamation of Amnesty and Pardon to former Confederates on September 7, 1867: “Every person who shall seek to avail himself of this proclamation shall take the following oath…’I do solemnly swear, in the presence of Almighty God, that I will henceforth faithfully support…the Constitution of the United States…So help me God.’”

Read more articles from Family Security Matters

Sen. Robert Menendez is Blocking the E-Verify Program – Help! Send A Free Fax

Sen. Robert Menendez is blocking the E-Verify program

This new fax has been posted in your Action Buffet based on your answers to the Interest Survey.

You can find this fax by proceeding to
http://www.numbersusa.com/faxes?ID=10337

Sen. Robert Menendez of New Jersey has put a hold on the reauthorization of the E-Verify program. As you know, E-Verify allows employers to determine the legality of their potential new hire. This program is up for reauthorization and many anti-American worker congressmen have been trying to hold the bill up.

Sen. Menendez has placed a hold on the bill and refuses to release the hold until the Congress agrees to increase the number of work-based visas. It is absolutely appalling that a United States Senator would do this to American workers. Not only is he holding up a program that prevents illegal aliens from finding work (and thereby allowing Americans to fill jobs), he is holding it hostage for more skilled worker visas (which keep educated Americans out of a job).

Send your Democratic U.S. Senator as fax and urge him/her to keep Sen. Menendez in line. Remind him/her that this is probably not the message that the Democratic party wants to send heading into the November elections.

Click here NumbersUSA to read Roy’s latest blog on the subject.

American Minute – Carl Sandburg

Exclusive: William J. Federer’s

American Minute

“A baby is God’s opinion that the world should go on,” wrote poet Carl Sandburg, who died JULY 22, 1967.

A son of Swedish immigrants who worked on the railroad, Sandburg left school after 8th grade, borrowed his father’s railroad pass and traveled as a hobo. He volunteered for military service, was sent to Puerto Rico in the Spanish-American War, and then attended college on a veteran’s bill.

Carl Sandburg wrote children’s fairytales, called Rootabaga Stories, and mused of his wanderings in American Songbag. In 1926, he wrote Abraham Lincoln – The Prairie Years, and in 1939 he wrote Abraham Lincoln – The War Years, for which he received a Pulitzer Prize.

In 1959, Sandburg was invited to address Congress on Lincoln’s birthday. In his Complete Poems, for which he won a Pulitzer, 1951, Carl Sandburg wrote: “All my life I have been trying to learn to read, to see and hear, and to write.

At sixty-five I began my first novel…It could be, in the grace of God, I shall live to be eighty-nine…I might paraphrase: ‘If God had let me live five years longer I should have been a writer.’” Carl Sandburg wrote: “I see America not in the setting sun of a black night of despair…I see America in the crimson light of a rising sun fresh from the burning, creative hand of God.”

Read more articles from Family Security Matters

Hare Trigger – Satire

Hare Trigger

Note: I am on vacation. This is an auto-posted story from March 3, 2006:

Berkeley, California

This week we made real progress in the war against hunting. It all started with my offhand remark to some Bambi-killing Neanderthal that I’d consider hunting to be a sport when the prey is also armed. Scooter overheard this and paid a visit to a friend who designs human prosthetics and had him adapt a brain-triggered mechanism that could be linked with a firearm, and voila, the Hunter-B-Gon^(TM) was born! Just like the prosthetic hand that grips when signaled by the brain, this trigger mechanism is activated by a small probe in the part of the animal’s brain that senses fear. Cool.

I went to the neighborhood pet store and purchased the largest rabbit they had. I named him “Fluffy.” Scooter immediately started Fluffy on an intense training program by dressing as a hunter and scaring the crap out of him repeatedly. Once Fluffy was conditioned, our vet friend inserted the little probe into his brain and wired it to the featherweight Kel-Tec P3AT automatic pistol we had taped to his body. It worked perfectly, as every time hunter Scooter jumped at Fluffy, we would hear the “clicking” of the trigger mechanism. Die, hunter! We were ready to release Fluffy into a popular hunting spot outside of town.

In a spirit of fairness, we posted signs in the area that said, “Caution hunters! Animals in this area are armed, and if threatened, will shoot!” We figured this would turn back all but the stupid ones, and they probably deserved to get shot by an animal. Scooter double-checked the apparatus, brushed and fed Fluffy, then loaded the magazine into the gun.

Fluffy took two hops, turned, and shot Scooter in the knee! Oh crap! Apparently scared by the sound of gunfire, Fluffy then shot me in the ankle, shot our car, shot the sign, then shot Scooter (the genius) again, in the crotch. At this point I started clubbing Fluffy with a tree branch as the homicidal bunny fired off another shot which thankfully missed me, but hit Scooter once again, this time in the elbow. Damn, that bunny really had it in for Scooter! Finally I killed Fluffy, but not before he looked up at me with a twisted little grin accompanied by one last “click” of the trigger – thank God the gun was empty.

While Scooter’s idea of arming innocent animals was brilliant, his assumption that they possess any kind of reasoning skills was not. As for Fluffy, well, he almost killed us both, and frankly I enjoyed clubbing the snot out of him. One unfortunate result of this whole episode is that Scooter has applied for a hunting license and I fear for rabbits everywhere. On the positive side, Fluffy probably did the world a favor by shooting off Scooter’s testicles – knowing he can’t reproduce gives me a certain amount of peace.

Read more Satire from The Peace Moonbeam Chronicles and the Hilarious Comments!

Serbia is Bombed (1999) – Serb Leader Captured (2008)

Serbia is Bombed (1999)

Today’s news is the arrest, in Serbia, of Radovan Karadzic, the Serb leader who has been in hiding since the late nineties.

* * *

Today’s golden Oldie is from March 22, 1999 when America (under Bill Clinton) signaled that it was ready to bomb Serbia. Two days later the bombing began. Here’s the story from Wikipedia:

“NATO’s bombing campaign lasted from March 24 to June 11, 1999, involving up to 1,000 aircraft operating mainly from bases in Italy and aircraft carriers stationed in the Adriatic. Tomahawk cruise missiles were also extensively used, fired from aircraft, ships and submarines. All of the NATO members were involved to some degree-even Greece, despite publicly opposing the war. Over the ten weeks of the conflict, NATO aircraft flew over 38,000 combat missions. For the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) it was the first time it had participated in a conflict since World War II.” -more

Read More Dry Bones by Yaakov Kirschen

UPDATE: Illegal Alien Beaten to Death in Shenandoah

Exclusive UPDATE: Illegal Alien Beaten to Death in Shenandoah

by Wendi Medashefski

Lt. William Moyer of the Shenandoah, PA police department returned my call a while ago. He said that they were given a heads up about the “Luis Zavala” warrant for the assault charges, but that the “DA’s office” supposedly checked it out and decided they were two different people because their pictures are different. This raises even more questions — why would they base an ID on a 4-year-old photo rather than fingerprints?

I have a call into the DA’s office and am awaiting a response. I intend to see if they will email me the pictures so we can compare them ourselves. While it has not been proven that Luis Zavala is the same person as Luis Ramirez, it has not been proven that they are two different people (born on the same exact day in the same exact year).

Additionally, the Republican Herald reported his full name as “Luis Eduardo Ramirez Zavala.” A staff member of that publication said the name was taken from his obituary notice that appeared in Friday’s edition (7-18). I am attempting to find out who provided the obituary information. It seems more and more likely that the fugitive Luis Zavala, and the beating victim, Luis Ramirez, are one and the same person, Luis Eduardo Ramirez Zavala.

Keep checking back for more updates.

Original Article:  Illegal Alien Beaten To Death In Shenandoah

“A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious, but it cannot survive treason from within.” ~ Cicero

“Lord, Keep your arm around my shoulder and your hand over my mouth.” ~ Anonymous

• [The opinions of our Contributors are their own, and do not necessarily reflect those of PA Pundits or of the other Writers.]