Our Word and Welcome to It

Opera Wednesday

2012-01-25T18:13:00.000-06:00

In a 2010 Greenville Light Opera Works performance of Gilbert and Sullivan's Trial by Jury, set in a South Carolina courtroom, one of the Gentlemen of the Jury was hearing a 2008 Hendrick Motorsports tee-shirt with the #5 team. Now that may sound innocent considering I had seen this performance and discussed it in a previous column on this blog. When seeing the full show, you will understand more of this comedy when news came from the Charlotte Motor Speedway Media Tour.

Wednesday's events included a stop at Hendrick Motorsports, with three of the team's four drivers at the event. The fourth, Kasey Kahne, the 2012 driver of the Hendrick #5, was absent. What was his excuse for not being at the "required" event?

Mr. Kahne was on Jury Duty.

Hopefully he won't be called "Juror Number Five" in any of his cases. But this was life imitating art! A juror in a Hendrick shirt, and now the current driver is on jury duty. Things do think alike! ◙

Life report: 15 years of life!

2012-01-20T06:52:00.002-06:00

Our South Carolina Citizens for Life's Life Weekend 2012 (my 15th that I've attended) was busy, but worth every minute of the action. Friday night, the ceremonies began (it's become a frequent event for a Friday event to precede the March for Life, as I remember attending the ones in 2006 (Suzanne Vitadamo) and 2011 (Rick Santorum). This year's "Proudly Pro-Life Dinner" was scheduled to hold 200 people at Our Lady of the Hills Catholic Church, but with over 250 attended, someone forgot and dinner wasn't served to a considerable number of those in attendance, including the children of our keynote speaker! How could that have happened, I can't remember, but a local restaurant was called to finish supplies for those (and the speaker noted that!) deprived. If that wasn't enough, the union airline attendants lost the luggage of our Saturday keynote speaker and she arrived in town without it . . . and the worst part of it was she was shabbily dressed when the contingent were in business suits (and I never appear at major events without a suit)! Oh to think of the old days when people were dressed to the nines for airline flights!

As most who read this blog understand, I've had a long fight with bad church music. Imagine to my surprise to see three violins from three of the nineteen Duggars (four children were at the weekend) playing an Irish sacred song. Their parents, Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar, were the keynote speakers for the event.

The Stand Up for Life March and Rally XXXIX was attended by over two thousand people, including notable dignitaries such as Griffin Perry and Elizabeth Santorum, representing their fathers' Presidential campaigns, dignitaries including State Senator Larry Grooms, the father and (step)son pair of Congressman Joe* and Attorney General Alan Wilson, Joshua Putnam (the youngest member of the South Carolina House, just elected), and a contingent of many pro-family organisations (Palmetto Family Council, the Diocese of Charleston, the South Carolina Baptist Convention, Nurses for Life, and many organisations that I photographed) and representatives of various Presidential campaigns in addition to the two children of candidates. Once again, the karaoke of North Greenville's "Joyful Sound" (now why am I no fan of this karaoke material that typically comes from the Michael Jackson Library or false doctrines of Hillsong, VIneyard, or Lakewood!) entertained this audience.

Abby Johnson, a former Planned Parenthood worker in College Station, Texas, was our keynote speaker and exposed some dangerous information on the group of which she was the 2008 Employee of the Year.

One in three pregnancies result in an abortion, she noted, with 72% of those who attend the abortion mill are active church members, and in the black community, 50% of all pregnancies end by infanticide known as abortion. Planned Parenthood exploits college students, which is an ideal hunting ground for them, as they "have saturated college campuses with their lies, deceits, and (pro-abortion propaganda)." With the taxpayer funds sent to the organisation (including $400 million in 2010), they built a 78,000 square feet building where she had an office on the third floor, with the late term abortions being serviced there. When she evaluated the fiscal year 2010 plans with officials, she noted the family planning budget was the same, but the baby killing numbers were wanting to be doubled, as the money was in doing the baby murders, so the quota of babies to die in the mill were to be doubled. On September 26, 2009, she visited an abortionist who had a new "ultrasound guided abortion" technique to be taught.

What she then warned us was how blindly the abortion was, with a suction tube placed in the mother's uterus. The slaughterhouse technician is to "poke" the child until it was "done" and they were never to see the ultrasound, in order to sell the murder. If the woman saw the ultrasound, the live baby would be seen, and she asked would the baby feel that. As she noted, the baby jumped, recoiled, and fled from the attempt to kill him. That was enough of it for her, and she left Planned Parenthood shortly after. As she noted with the prayer chain around Planned Parenthood, she had to enter from the back door in order to be counseled after what she had seen, and noted, "There was nothing but forgiveness. We are not fighting a political battle. We are fighting a spiritual battle on abortion."

The gruesomeness of her story was followed by the benediction delivered by the Duggars, and Michelle broke down discussing the recent miscarriage of what would have been the 20th child.

Another successful March for Life in South Carolina came with stories directly from the mill, and an emotional breakdown by the Duggars. And those of you attending Monday's National March for Life, we'd like to hear from you. ◙

Classic Sports Thursday

2012-01-19T06:53:00.003-06:00

Dan Martin at the fine site Sports Man Dan sends us this fascinating detail: an infographic that shows us the pricetag for the "business of football." Of course, we all know that football, or any sport for that matter, long since ceased being a sport. And, in fact, the business of sports is often more interesting than the competition itself, at least for me. Even so, this is still a startling visual breakdown of what it's really all about.

Wish I'd Written That

2012-01-18T21:01:00.000-06:00

The great fallacy is that the game is first and foremost about winning. It's nothing of the kind. The game is about glory. It's about doing things in style, with a flourish, about going out and beating the other lot, not waiting for them to die of boredom.

- Danny Blanchflower

Blanchflower, a former soccer great and later commentator, was speaking about sports. But it applies equally well to other walks of life, don't you think? Like politics, perhaps? ◙

Life Weekend

2012-01-17T20:38:00.002-06:00

Photos from Life Weekend 2012, as part of the South Carolina March for Life XXXIX. A further report will be written this week.

At the Friday Night Proudly Pro-Life Dinner, three of the 19 Duggar children play "Be Thou My Vision" on the violin.

Me with the three daughters

A crowd of over 2,000 appeared at the South Carolina March for Life XXXIX.

Numerous organisations at the March for Life, 2012

Abby Johnson speaks of the gruesome stories from her penthouse offices at Planned Parenthood when she worked there.

Me, Abby Johnson (author, Unplanned), Holly Gatling (executive director, South Carolina Citizens for Life), Michelle and Jim Bob Duggar.

◙

For your consideration...

2012-01-16T15:44:00.000-06:00

Our last, best hope for president, apparently.

See here for more details. ◙

Retro TV Friday

2012-01-13T16:05:00.001-06:00

This week's look back - as soon as I can get to it - is another goofy retrospective on covers of TV theme songs, reminiscent of our Sammy Davis Jr. essay from a while back.

UPDATED: And here it is - better late than never! ◙

The chase is on!

2012-01-12T18:32:00.000-06:00

Last year, Rick Santorum appeared at the South Carolina March for Life, and everyone seemingly ignored him until Iowa's caucus led to what Mike Joy calls a "Where did he come from" moment, where the caucus came down to a resounding photofinish.

This year, Mr. Santorum has a press conference with Abby Johnson (the 2012 keynote at our March for Life Saturday) scheduled, according to her note. Next Wednesday, Mr. Santorum has an appearance smack in the middle of the hometown, reminding me that in 2000 what happened when a candidate came to speak at the Fairgrounds.

Meanwhile, Rick Perry is scheduled for a Thursday luncheon at a barbecue restaurant, which will likely be the type of venues that we'll see the remaining candidates for this battle (Romney, Paul, Huntsman, Santorum, Perry, Gingrich) find themselves in the ten day war that ends next Saturday. Of course, in the Palmetto State, it has to be one of the three forms of "Palmetto 'Cue," which is considerably different than barbeque from any other part of the country. There won't be Kansas City, Memphis, or Texas style, and tomatoes are not the primary source of the sauce. This showdown will involve copious amounts of Midlands' German mustard-based sauces, the Lowcountry Scottish vinegar and pepper, and the variant in the Upstate and Savannah River, tomato with Scottish vinegar and pepper (similar to the North Carolina Piedmont). As a long-time Midlands resident, I am biased towards the mustard, although in some parts here, the mustard is mixed with a little tomato, the golden mustard is still the evident colour.

Start the barbecue pits, roast the hogs, and cue the candidates! Perry hopes to start his charge, Huntsman is showing life after New Hampshire, Gingrich is on the recovery attempt, Santorum is gaining ground, and Romney is the leader. The next ten days of barbecue, meetings, marches, and rallies will create one exciting showdown that ends next Saturday and will end at the Tampa Bay Times Forum. ◙

Classic Sports Thursday

2012-01-12T06:57:00.000-06:00

Have you ever noticed how many times people use the phrase, “I could care less,” when what they really mean to say is, “I couldn’t care less”?

Think about it. If it is true that, as Rush Limbaugh often says, “words mean things,” then it’s only fair that we look at how these words are used. To say “I could care less” in essence means that there are indeed things that would be even less important to you than that in question. Now, if someone told me I’d just won a million dollars, I doubt that my first reaction would be to say “I could care less!” but it would be true – there would be many things that I suddenly cared much less about than having won one million dollars. My job, for instance.

So when I say that I could not have cared less about the election returns Tuesday night, I may be guilty of a slight hyperbole; no doubt the New Hampshire primary carries more interest to me than, say, the latest episode of “American Idol.” Nevertheless, the foregone result of Tuesday's vote was far from the most important thing in mind – not when one had the option of watching Thierry Henry’s return to Arsenal.

Henry is probably one of the greatest soccer players ever, and likely the greatest ever to play for Arsenal, so given the choice – well, there was no choice, really, between watching Fox News’ election returns and Fox Soccer’s replay of Monday’s FA Cup match between Arsenal and Leeds United at London’s Emirates Stadium. (Especially when I hadn't seen the live broadcast Monday.) It was a triumphant, and storybook, homecoming for Henry, who came on as a substitute for the last 25 minutes and ten minutes later scored the only goal in the Gunners’ 1-0 victory over Leeds, advancing them to the fourth round of the FA Cup.

It was also a rare opportunity to see an all-time great return to the scene of some of his greatest triumphs, even more rare if those previous moments occurred beyond your memory. Being a relative latecomer to the world’s most popular soccer league, England’s Premier League (sorry, MLS), I knew of Henry’s exploits in Arsenal only through highlights on retrospective shows: the three FA Cups, the two Premier League titles, the undefeated season in 2003-2004. No, the Henry I was familiar with was the one from Gillette commercials, from his time with Barcelona , from the disastrous French play at the 2010 World Cup, and his late-career move to the New York Red Bulls.

A very good, perhaps exceptionally good, player – but not the great Henry. The one voted greatest Arsenal player of all time. The one memorialized with a bronze statue outside the Emirates. The one who would sit in the stands during MLS’ off season, wearing his red-and-white striped Arsenal scarf.

The prospect of Henry’s return to Arsenal, even if for only a couple of months while on loan from New York (whose season doesn’t start until March), was something akin to what the younger generation must have felt when Schumacher came out of retirement to race again in F1. But with that anticipation also came concern: would Henry wind up the same way as Schumacher, not even very good (relatively speaking) but only good enough to not embarrass himself, which would in itself be embarrassing? Would the crowd's roar as Henry prepared to enter the match be the highlight of the evening?

Well, as it turns out, it was more than a night for nostalgia. As Steve Rushin pointed out in this terrific article, Henry's match-winning goal, coming as it did, was a reminder of why we watch sports on TV. Because for just a moment it was as if time had stood still, and for someone who had never appreciated the Arsenal years, that was time enough. ◙

Wish I'd Written That

2012-01-11T06:58:00.002-06:00

I don't thank you for coming," [Wolfe] said. "I'm not disposed to thank you for anything. I have reason to believe that you are withholding information that would be of value. Indeed, I think you have lied. Don't bother to deny it. I tell you that only to establish the temper of the conversation. I'll be trying to find support for my opinion. What will you be doing?"

She would be staring. She was staring. "I know what I ought to be doing," she said. "Leaving. I ought to be on my way out."

"But you're not. You wouldn't, even if I'm wrong, because you want to know why. That's what makes us the unique animal, we want to know why and try to find out. We even try to discover why we want to know why, though of course we never will."

- Rex Stout, Please Pass the Guilt ◙

Retro TV Friday

2012-01-06T17:39:00.000-06:00

It seems odd with the AT&T Cotton Bowl tonight that it's the only New Year's postseason game left that's on broadcast network television (Fox) when it stayed on network television when the major games all switched to pay television. But that leads to the bigger story of today's column.

To think about it, if it's an SEC matchup, then you'd expect to hear the Super Bowl XXI theme for a major game -- that's right, twenty-five years ago, at the Rose Bowl. CBS decided it would not be used for NFL coverage, but for college football (College Football Association) games at the time, and by 1995 it would be used for the network's Southeastern Conference coverage, a gamble considering CBS was by that time a minor network and wasn't available in suburban areas of some major markets (Detroit and Milwaukee most notably) because of their low-powered affiliates, and two SEC markets were in trouble, as in Georgia, CBS lost its affiliate to Fox and the former Fox affiliate chose to join the WB, so CBS came close to the weakest station in the market (channel 69) before independent channel 46 agreed to join CBS (ratings are still worse than the Spanish language station and independent stations in the area), and in South Carolina, the local CBS affiliate took a partial United Paramount affiliation, and was contemplating joining Paramount full-time if the NFL had not returned to CBS in 1998, leaving cable companies in their metropolitan area ready for backup from the Augusta, Florence (similar to NBC, which had no Florence/Myrtle Beach affiliate until 2008), Charlotte, or Charleston affiliates had WLTX bolted to Paramount full-time in order to boost the Star Trek franchise (which was the main reason they took a partial Paramount affilation). The CBS/SEC gamble worked, as by 2001 the CBS/SEC deal became one where the CBS game would become the only guaranteed national Game of the Week, which has the ESPN-affiliated conferences crying foul, since their games are regional while the SEC's game was national.

I do think the first Louisiana State-Alabama game, however, will have drawn more viewers than the rematch for the BCS title, because of the CBS/SEC tie-in instead of ESPN. ◙

Poetry Wednesday: Journey of the Magi

2012-01-04T08:35:00.001-06:00

A special return of Poetry Wednesday is here as we celebrate the Epiphany tomorrow, while today marks Day Eleven of Christmastide, and those eleven pipers piping represent the eleven faithful disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ.

The Journey of The Magi

T.S. Elliot

A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a journey:
The ways deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.'
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.

Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires going out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty and charging high prices:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped in away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we led all that way for Birth or Death?
There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death. ◙

Opening Night

2012-01-03T20:48:00.000-06:00

Well, after months and months and years of anticipation (not to mention debates), the Republican presidential race finally began in earnest tonight, with the caucuses in our neighbor to the south.* At this point we don't know for sure who the winner is, although it looks as if Santorum is having a good night. The pundits are suggesting that Romney is not breaking through his ceiling of support, and Paul may be unable to expand beyond his core.

* Sample Iowa joke: A man from Iowa runs up to the border with Minnesota, holding a stick of dynamite. "I've had it with Minnesota! I'm not going to take it anymore!" With that, he threw the dynamite across the border. It landed at the foot of a Minnesotan who bent down and picked it up, lit the fuse, and threw it back.

The big winner tonight just might be "none of the above." Should the winner wind up with less than 25%, it suggests to me that none of these candidates is really turning on the voters. What this means for the fall election, who knows. As for what the true influence of Iowa is, your guess is as good as mine. Whatever the influence is, it's probably more than it deserves.** Bachmann is probably out, Gingrich and Perry have been hurt but will likely stay in until South Carolina at least, and we won't know about Huntsman until New Hampshire.

** Another Iowa joke: The Universities of Iowa and Minnesota are playing football. A train running past the field blows its horn. Minnesota, thinking it means halftime, runs off the field. Iowa scores four plays later.

It's often said that the campaign is a marathon, not a sprint. Prepare for a long grind. Prepare also to ask yourself, more than once, "Is this the way to pick a president?" ◙

Has New Year's lost its luster thanks to Pay TV having the Bowls?

2012-01-02T14:49:00.000-06:00

Does it seem that New Year's Day is no longer the “major” television event it was years ago? The big college football games are no longer staples for local television affiliates, as pay-television has acquired the entire kit and kaboodle, and the major New Year's Day sporting event on network television is the NHL Winter Classic, which thanks to its NBC deal (a new ten-year deal starting today) while the college bowls have moved to pay-television means the only “New Year's Day” bowl left on network television is the AT&T Cotton Bowl, which is not even played at the said stadium, but in Arlington at Jerry Jones' billion-dollar edifice on a Friday night. CBS is left with just their regular daytime programming on New Year's (the game shows and dramas have original programming today).

With the bowls likely moving to pay-per-view in the future, it seems the lustre of the big games has been lost. We learned the first year of the pay-television revolution the ratings dropped considerably, and when the BCS Championship rematch draws less than the same two teams on broadcast network television in November, we've seen that pay television is worse. What we're seeing now is the same thing Britons will see when F1 moves to pay television this year with a price of over $500 for the season (for F1 races only; this subscription for F1 must be ordered to have F1) so the Beeb could save coverage of The Open Championship and Wimbledon – two events that in the US have moved to pay-television exclusively.

With no New Year's programming left on broadcast television, what does this say about the quality of television when raunchy programming is the “standard” of quality? ◙

Notable Quotables: Best of 2011

2012-01-01T16:08:00.001-06:00

It seems the mocking of faith has become clearer each and every day, and Albert Herlong's Communist Goals of 1963 keep marching towards the goals of the CCCP in that bad "art," this time mocking God, is acceptable in the eyes of the modern Left. Pushing such bad art is helping towards the goals of demolishing the church while anything insulting to God is acceptable, as we saw in the last Congress." -- in light of the "Crash the Super Bowl" promotion with a sacrilegious advertisement from a Life Enhancement Centre.

"In the mid-90's, Charleston radio station WTMA (a news-talk radio station that is receivable in the day here) hostess Nancy Wolf ranted on her afternoon-drive show about abusive spending in the Charleston County School District where she called the newly built Calhoun Street building ताज महल , a mausoleum in Agra, India." -- on the bad educational system of today, where many schools in Charleston County were listed on the nation's 100 worst schools list.

"Whatever happened to civility with a former KTUU anchorwoman? It's clear we have uncivilised liberals who attack any conservative at any time, and with both Mr. Morgan's and the Missoula Children's and Community Theater's attacks of this woman." -- on a Mikado and a Saturday Night Live attack each on Sarah Palin.

"We have seen secularism run rampant when the odds of Poulenc's Gloria are more to be heard in the symphony hall than in the church, which is dead-set on rock or karaoke settings of 'The Climb,' 'It's My Life,' or the latest hit from a Sony television series (Granger had their congregation vote on which tune from Glee to perform there) in today's Warrenist Life Enhancement Centre every church wants to become. " -- after a Dawn Marie Wolski concert.

"There was a little irony in watching the Keselowski Brothers draft their way to Daytona and it came as I saw a YouTube video of Rich Mullins and Mitch McVicker performing 'Brother's Keeper' in that Brad was Brian's keeper in making him a Daytona 500 bound driver. I remember Darrell presented an award to Mullins (who had died 18 months prior to his presentation) and McVicker for a song that won a major award at Bridgestone Arena ('My Deliverer') and thought of the irony that 'Brother's Keeper' was the perfect theme for this race." -- to Mike Joy, on a Rich Mullins song that came to me when watching Daytona qualifying. The top two non-exempt drivers in each "heat" race (Brian was not exempt) advanced to the feature by racing their way in.

"Sorry men, you are the weaker sex and women deserve clubs where No Boys Allowed is the rule, but it doesn't work the other way." -- could federal authorities make men's sports illegal in schools in the future?
"After checking (a video with friends), I am starting to feel depressed about not (participating) with the team that I want to take my life by jumping off the Ponte Vecchio into the Arno. That's how distraught I am about it. " -- After an event. How bad have you got it for opera?

"Humanism, especially Gaia worship, is now recognised by Washington but not the Resurrection of the Saviour. " -- after learning the government won't celebrate Holy Week but instead observed Lenin's Birthday in official statements. Just this week we learned Christmas was ignored, while the White House celebrated Kwanzaa, a Communist-influenced racist event.

"Why has it come to the point where dance, not singing, is the effective mandate of church music? " -- after a choral event at church for youth."That's it. Maybe my truck had a National Guard sticker!" -- on my frustration on attempting to make it to a concert. Failed both times. The National Guard reference was to Memorial Day, when J. R. Hildebrand goes into the wall with just 1,800 feet from the 500-mile point at Indianapolis, and Dale Earnhardt Jnr runs out of E15 just 1,000 feet from the 603-mile point at Charlotte. As Mike Joy said it in the last 1,000 feet at Charlotte, "And as at Indy, the leader at Turn Four does not get to the flag!"

"Is the Humanist Manifesto the official standard, as we see governments persecute churches on the request of sexual deviants?" -- problems with churches today.

"Isn't this the problem with society today, with welfare, freeloaders, and people who want something for nothing, and would discourage those who work the hardest to provide the wanted product? " -- on illegal streaming, welfare, and other major issues today.

"(I)t's clear (Occupiers) want a utopia reminiscent of the CCCP that will fail." -- on Occupy. ◙

New Year's Eve, 1965

2011-12-31T23:11:00.001-06:00

Those of us of a certain age remember seeing Guy Lombardo ring in the New Year from New York, usually on CBS. If you're a little younger, you probably grew up watching Dick Clark and his New Year's Rockin' Eve on ABC. Easy enough, because neither of those networks had regular late-night programming on a consistant basis.

Nowadays, NBC has its own show, with Carson Daly. But for many years the peacock network stuck with its regular programming - that is to say, Johnny Carson and the Tonight Show. Johnny didn't do a regular New Year's special per se, but especially during the years when he broadcast from New York, he'd cut away as the clock approached midnight to provide live coverage from Times Square. Here's a rare clip from New Year's Eve 1965, as Johnny goes to (I believe) Ben Grauer to watch the ball drop. (Note how the studio broadcast is in color, but the live remote is still black and white.) Frankly, from the looks of this footage, I think they'd already been celebrating back at the studio.

2011 has not been a great year, and there's a lot of apprehension about 2012 - the economy, the state of the nation at home, tensions overseas, the election. It's somewhat poignant listening to Ben talking about 1965 and all that had happened, particularly the escalation of the war in Vietnam, and his hopes that 1966 will be better. In fact, I thought as I watched this, the worst was yet to come - even more war, even more drugs, even more death, MLK, RFK, riots, and more. John Lindsay, the new mayor of New York, will turn out to be a disaster, and it will take the city until the time of Rudy Giulianni to return to its former glory. Carson himself will leave New York for Hollywood in a few years.

Tonight we hope that 2012 will be a better year. Personally, I think that it will - at least, let's hope that 2012 will be kinder to us than the end of the 1960s was to that crowd in Times Square on New Year's Eve, 1965. ◙

The Our Word Awards: Best of 2011

2011-12-31T16:28:00.000-06:00

I'd love to have all of you involved in this new project for Best of 2011, the Our Word Awards! And this time, we're inviting our readers to vote! What do you think was the best of 2011?

Most Insulting Ideas of the Year:

Pepsi's Crash the Super Bowl promotion that included an ad that mocked Communion at Church
A South Carolina state legislator proposing cutting the school year to 144 days from 180.
New York state legislators betraying the people to redefine marriage in order to persecute the church.
The shutdown of the US Armed Forces in favour of establishing the Department of Social Engineering, Special Rights Division.
Macy's protects sex offenders by firing a worker who catches a man in a woman's dressing room.

Quotes of the Year:

"Within ten years, I wonder how many fine orchestras will survive Generation Gaga? What will happen to talent like this?" – Ingrid Schlueter
“I for one welcome our new computer overlords” – Ken Jennings
“But Governor Walker has freed the government union serfs from (union leader Richard) Trumka's plantations in Wisconsin.” – Peter Ferrara
“We will not allow the goodness of the traditional value system in our military, an ethos which has kept us safe all these years, to be undermined by misguided and deviant interpretations of American history.” – Bill Connor
"Being in a bookstore helps me to think. I find that my mind makes connections between authors and books and ideas as I walk along the shelves and look at the tables. When I get a case of writer’s block, I head for a bookstore. The experience of walking among the books is curative." -- Albert Mohler

Heartbreak of the Year:

J. R. Hildebrand crashes in Turn 4 on Lap 200 of the Indianapolis 500.
The United States House is unable to pass any of the reforms promised because of Dingy Harry.
Butler is stopped again at the Championship Game of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament.
Boise State, a top 10 team, is relegated to a pre-Christmas postseason game in Las Vegas.
The millions of Japanese affected by the earthquake and tsunami.

◙

Retro TV Friday

2011-12-30T10:35:00.001-06:00

Over at the It's About TV site, I reprise a piece from last year, on TV Guide's look at New Year's Day, 1961. ◙

Classic Sports Thursday

2011-12-29T10:20:00.002-06:00

Back in the day, New Year's Day used to be the holy grail of the college football season. It was known to many as "Bowl Day," and invariably one of the games would settle the national championship.

Today, of course, the season drags on, with mostly meaningless games on New Year's (or January 2, as the case may be), and even more games leading up to a fabricated championship game a week later. But this wasn't always the case, as illustrated by this classic showdown, the 1973 Sugar Bowl* between undefeated, top-ranked Alabama and undefeated, third-ranked Notre Dame (undefeated and second-ranked Oklahoma was on probation). Here's the climatic sequence from Notre Dame's thrilling 24-23 win, with the incomperable Chris Schenkel providing the call.

*OK, so this year the Sugar Bowl was played on New Year's Eve, to try and keep the game from getting lost amidst the other three games on New Year's Day. They did that for a few years, went back to playing on January 1, and now the game's all over the calendar. ◙

Opera Wednesday

2011-12-28T10:09:00.001-06:00

In the opera world, nothing says New Year's Eve quite like Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus, which certainly has one of the great English-translated titles in all opera - "The Bat."*

*I've often wondered why, in the memorable scene of Christopher Nolan's first Batman movie where young Bruce Wayne's parents are murdered coming out of the opera, they didn't use Fledermaus for the music. I think they used music from Faust instead, which was also a good choice, but I could be wrong.

Fledermaus is frequently performed around New Year's Day, often with big-nbame guest stars in cameo roles. (The Met's doing it on its radio broadcast this Saturday, New Year's Eve.) But you don't need a big-name singer when you've got a big-name conducter like Herbert Von Karajan, who brings us the delightful overture here with the Vienna Philharmonic in a 1987 New Year performance. ◙

A story that's more Boxing Day...

2011-12-26T21:09:00.001-06:00

When the Christmas shopping bag had a few cans of canned food that would be donated to a food pantry as part of Christmas Eve Midnight services and communion, and the focus was more for those that need help more than the self, it's evident the story is about those in need.

And one story on this Boxing Day that makes you think about it is this from the 1970's, when brothers Kevin and Keith Parsons (yes, the Keith Parsons who would spend much of his sportswriting career for the AP based in North Carolina, covering the ACC) helped their father remind us of the disadvantaged, and how their father and his peers helped kids in rural North Carolina.

Tom Higgins reports on this story . . . ◙

Celebrating the Feast of St. Stephen

2011-12-26T21:07:00.001-06:00

Who is St. Stephen, the man whose feast is celebrated on December 26? ◙

Happy Boxing Day!

2011-12-26T09:33:00.000-06:00

Wait - you mean that's not what it means? ◙

O Church, Oh Why, O Church, Are You Resting on His Birth?

2011-12-25T21:06:00.001-06:00

Christmastide has started! Starting today (Sunday) until near the end of the first week in January (January 5), we are in the Christmas season, and as is tradition, we are in the season.

Pondering on the gift of the Only Begotten Son, I drove past numerous churches and saw no morning Bible studies happening, save for a minute number of churches that were doing a full plate of morning studies, and most venues had relegated themselves to one short service that was more party, and discarded Bible studies, even though denominational study books carried a Christmas study. The last time Christmas fell on a Sunday, the church responded with kids cheered as they "danced" to a butchered "Ave Maria" from a teen pop artist that wasn't even the sacred song itself that claimed to be one thing and was another.

The trendy Life Enhancement Centres promoted big parties on the days leading to Christmas, but come Christmas morning, there was nary anyone, as they were shuttered, while restaurants (some quick-service, but also sports-themed, since the NBA season opener was Christmas Day, and hotel-attached ones), movie theatres (the Oscar nominees need to have their releases made on Christmas), and gambling halls were wide open on Christmas Day. Does something feel wrong when the world is open, but not a House of God?

Why the complacency of such an important day? Christmas is not the time to keep Houses of God silent. It's the right time to sing the sacred songs and observe such an important day! When I have to find a place that's not in party mode and doing the right thing, we know how serious it has become. ◙

Merry Christmas, Everyone!

2011-12-25T12:07:00.000-06:00

Hope you found everything you wanted under the tree this morning! ◙

Classic Sports - Friday?

2011-12-23T06:55:00.001-06:00

Yes, it's a special Friday edition of Classic Sports Thursday, to celebrate the Yule season. (After all, if the NFL can have special "Sunday Gameday" editions on Saturday, we can do whatever we want, right?)

This is a quick link to this story at SI.com by Don Banks, clearly a man after my own heart, as he remembers back to Christmas Day 1971, and the longest football game ever played (not counting a playoff game from the USFL, but who's counting?) between the Miami Dolphins and the Kansas City Chiefs.

Like Banks, I would sit at the dinner table with one eye on the food and one eye on the field when big dinners and big games happened to collide. (When I was really spoiled, I'd be allowed to eat in the living room, in front of the TV, while everyone else was in the dining room.) Unlike Banks, I was not rooting for the Dolphins that day - never did, really. At the same time, I don't recall that I was rooting for the Chiefs, either. I do remember, though, the drama that accompanied that double-overtime thriller, and how it pretty much ended the NFL's playing football on Christmas for many years. They do now, but it's only one game, at night, when the movie theaters have opened and restaurants are serving and people are looking to wind down anyway. I think a lot of dinners were ruined that day, waiting for men to come in from a game that seemed it would never end. What a Christmas!

As Banks mentions, the NFL Network is doing a one-hour retrospective on that game on, appropriately enough, Christmas. Don't interrupt your dinner for it, but set the DVR. It should be a lot of fun. ◙

A Christmas Miracle: The Story of the 2010 Carolighting

2011-12-22T07:07:00.001-06:00

Last year, at the South Carolina State House, the Governor's Carolighting, which had been lost two of the past three years, was in danger of being lost to complacency when the volunteers were able to rescue it in time, with a volunteer chorus and musicians, for Mark Sanford and the boys to light their final State House Christmas Tree.

Unfortunately this year, when we had the all-state crews back and ready for this year's Carolighting, the event, moved to Monday night this year, was called off as a result of weather, the third time in five years the state's annual Christmas Tree lighting ceremony did not take place, meaning Nikki Haley would not have the ceremony for her first year in office. 38-year Raycom newsman Bill Sharpe, the unofficial dean of South Carolina newscasts (joined WCSC in 1973, and has stayed with the station since then), was set to host the event.

Let's remember back when a group of hearty volunteers made a State House tradition as a miracle on Gervais Street. Raycom's Dawndy Mercer Plank had the honours. ◙

TV Guide: Christmas, 1977

2011-12-21T19:05:00.000-06:00

Over at It's About TV!, I've got a longish piece on Christmas 1977 as seen in the pages of TV Guide. Hop the first sleigh and hightail it over there. ◙

Rockin' Christmas

2011-12-20T06:50:00.001-06:00

For reasons that don't really bear going into, here are some Christmas classics I'm fairly confident you haven't heard in quite this way before. First, a medley of seasonal favorites by Jimi Hendrix, including "Silent Night," "The Little Drummer Boy," and "Auld Lang Syne," with a little bit of "Taps" thrown in for good measure.

As if that wasn't enough, here's a Jim Morrison impersonator with a surprisingly effective rendition of "Jingle Bells":

Just goes to show that Christmas music comes in all shapes and sizes, doesn't it? Say what you will, this beats Celine Dion and Mariah Carey any day. ◙

Cool Yule Links

2011-12-19T06:48:00.001-06:00

A couple of neat sites to keep you in that Christmas spirit:

As seen on the Travel Channel (at least that's where I found out about it), the National Christmas Center in Paradise, Pennsylvania, is indeed Paradise for anyone who wants to recapture the Christmas memories of their youth. I've come to see this not as a desperate attempt to relive the past, but rather to find out just what it is about Christmas back in the day, and to share it with those who never lived through that time. There's no doubt that the way we celebrate Christmas isn't what it used to be, and I think what is missing from it is the sense of awe and wonder, not to mention the general acceptance that Christmas was a fundamental part of American culture, something to be shared and celebrated.

Speaking of back in the day, for me one of the highlights of the kid Christmas season was the arrival of the Christmas catalogs from Sears, JC Penney, and Montgomery Ward. Again, it's hard to find the modern-day equivalent - online shopping has replaced the mail-order catalog, and it has its own charms, but imagine shopping for Christmas decorations, toys, artificial trees, cards, even candies and nuts - all from the same store. This terrific site helps bring back those memories of the epic days when the catalogs arrived, and immediately became dog-eared with the items that I hoped would wind up under the tree. And a lot of times, they did! ◙

Even our name spells Christmas

2011-12-16T07:48:00.001-06:00

Wrapping up our week-long look at Christmas commercials is probably my favorite of all the old-time commercials - the Norelco Santa. As one of the commentators says, it wasn't Christmas until you saw the Norelco Santa on television.

In this version from the early 70s, Santa flies through the village, meeting some decidedly odd but charming snowmen.

By the 80s the look had been updated, but it was still classic.

The great news is that this year the Norelco Santa is back! Some differences, to be sure (while it would have been nice to have the famous "Noëlco" ending, as is it isn't bad), but it retains almost all the elements that make the original so endearing. Great to see that there's still a place for tradition, at this most traditional time of the year.

A cornucopia of Christmas music

2011-12-15T19:45:00.001-06:00

In February, I celebrate ten years since a 26-year old college graduate decided to have fun and take voice from a 24-year old master's student earning the degree in vocal performance who needed it to fulfill her degree requirement, and over the years, it has blossomed into an enjoyable friendship with Dr. LaRoche, her pets, her friends, and her (newlywed) husband. I've sung sacred Christmas works at the 2010 Governor's Carolighting (the ceremony was not held in 2011 because of weather) when a makeshift choral group was required because of the lateness of its organisation, and have been part of two one-offs with church choral groups because of the laziness of our own church with Christmas music becoming extremely secular in nature. Monday night is the annual sing-along at Washington Street that I've enjoyed over the years, with Dr. LaRoche, The Brittnee, and the Rattrays in the past.

As someone who appreciates the serious church music of Christmas, and is sad to see many of the works disappear from our daily grind, being replaced by winter songs that are not sensible for the season (remember half of the world it's summer!), let's open a cornucopia of wonderful song for Christmas.

Paderborner Domchor's - Veni Veni Emanuel

Johannes Kalpers - “Hush, hush, hush, for the little child wants to sleep!”. This Austrian folk tune from Salzburg is about the infant Jesus and Mary as they sleep. The song was given to me for the informal recital with friends, and it's become a favourite of mine.

I'm guilty of always (especially the first verse) wanting to sing this in Latin. One of my first Christmas music selections I purchased was a Luciano Pavarotti album (are you kidding me?) and why would he be an inspiration for a college student who hadn't heard much classical music? Once I anchored my boat with the young Mississippi Squirrel, I had gone classical and my steps haven't turned back. A Montréal, chanson "Adeste Fideles," avec Pavarotti . . .

Say it with Andre

2011-12-15T08:54:00.001-06:00

I always loved this commercial for Andre's sparkling wine. We think about this as being a Christmas commercial, but as I recall (and I'm always open to correction), it only ran between Christmas and New Year's.

Now, maybe it's just because I was still going to school when these were on, and therefore I would have been on break between Christmas and New Year's, but I'm convinced that back in the day, people recognized that New Year's Day was an extention of the Christmas season - you still heard Christmas music, parties were still being held, and ads still featured holly and other Christmas trimmings. In other words, the Christmas season didn't end at the stroke of midnight on December 26. I kinda liked that. ◙

The family that sleds together drinks Coke together

2011-12-14T08:47:00.001-06:00

Yesterday I shared a clip of a 1958 Coke Christmas commercial featuring the "Santa Doll." Here's a different commerical from the same Christmas - a typical example of the animation that was so prevalent in commercials of the 50s and early 60s. I think many of us are used to seeing the polar bears or remembering the "I'd like to teach the world to sing" Coke commercials; it's fun to see something different. I guess it's true that if you stick around long enough, the old becomes new. ◙

The Real Thing

2011-12-13T08:39:00.003-06:00

As far as I'm concerned, Coke has always been the official soft drink of Santa. Last year, the Swedish Institute here in Minnepolis had a magnificent exhibition of the Coke Santa illustrations of Haddon Sunblom. So it's no surprise that this 1958 Coke commercial prominently features the big guy himself. You can read more abou the Coke Santa Doll here.

Hot Pepper!

2011-12-12T20:38:00.001-06:00

We're doing Christmas commercials here at Our Word this week, and let's start with this one for a Christmas beverage tradition I'm not previously familiar with: hot Dr. Pepper. Enlighten me, anyone who's tried this. ◙

Retro TV Friday

2011-12-09T09:18:00.001-06:00

Over at the "It's About TV!" website, I've got a piece on the 1960s Christmas special "Carol for Another Christmas." I've written about it before, but it's got some new links, and it's worth checking out. In my humble opinion, that is. ◙

Cleaning up on Christmas

2011-12-08T20:42:00.000-06:00

During our Christmas carnival of features a few years ago, I posted this picture with a comment to the extent that nothing says Christmas like finding a vacuum cleaner under the tree.

Well, as it turns out, I guess there's more truth to this idea than I realized. It just goes to show that I really don't understand what women want, apparently.

The YouTube description says this is a 1962 commercial from Australian television. Proof that all the mad men weren't in the United States. ◙

The most wonderful time of the year...

2011-12-07T09:11:00.000-06:00

It's December, and that means it's time once again for our parade of Christmas-themed videos and stories. Believe me when I say that this is not only the best time of the year, it's also the time when it's the most fun for me to write this blog.

Speaking of the most wonderful time of the year, let's get it started with Mr. Christmas himself, Andy Williams, in this clip from one of his great Christmas shows, from around 1965. ◙

Opinion Digest

2011-12-06T20:57:00.000-06:00

The sands of time tick away, yet the run to the primaries is less than 30 days away until the first caucus of the 2012 election season!

Neal Boortz interviewed Jack Chambliss of Valencia College, who assigned students in economics a project on "The American Dream". The sad state of what is being taught in schools and media show their true colours in this report.

Paul Jacob talks about junk science.

Amy Oliver Cooke and Michael Sandoval uncover the disaster of "clean energy."

David Limbaugh believes the President is moving the goal posts, and benefiting from each move. ◙

Wish I'd Written That

2011-11-30T21:04:00.000-06:00

The law is an envious monster, and you represent it. You can't tolerate a decent and swift conclusion to a skirmish between an individual and what you call society, as long as you have it in your power to turn it into a ghastly and prolonged struggle; the victim must squirm like a worm in your fingers, not for ten minutes, but for ten months. Pfui! I don't like the law. It was not I, but a great philosopher, who said that the law is an ass."

- Nero Wolfe, as written by Rex Stout, The Red Box

Crazies at it again

2011-11-28T06:36:00.000-06:00

So here I am, after picking up parts for our small business easily, on Friday morning without any traffic and being very peaceful (it's good for B2B work, too, to save money and see no traffic at brick and mortar places), I join a close friend who is running the Rock n Roll Las Vegas Half Marathon next week in a tiring 90-minute cardio and weights workout, before heading back to the shop at lunchtime, all of which came just a day after I disappointed myself being sixteen seconds slower than last year's turkey trot (my tenth).

Meanwhile, the looniness of the big-box stores and malls with “Black Friday Doorbusters” rears its ugly head with land-rushes worse than the “sooners” before 23 April 1889. Stores turn into Krzyzewskiville on Thanksgiving, some even piling the lines with tents and sleeping bags after lunch, waiting for the 20.59.53 ignition of the first red light, all the way to having the five red lights turn off at 21.00.00, or others with the same procedure at 21.59.53 or 23.59.53. Some places the lights were on at 4.59.53, but they were mostly malls and those who turned on the red lights later later were late-comers with few shoppers except for those with sense.

Those parked under the starting gantry watching the five red lights come on and running immediately to the department of the store where they wanted to buy the must-have item within tenths of the lights extinguishing were the ones who showed little class. In Los Angeles, a woman used pepper spray, typically used ins self-defence against stalkers, to spray those trying to purchase a video game system at deep-discount prices. In Arizona, a shopper hid a video game in his clothes, which led officials to worry a shoplifter or was a terrorist, since homicide bombers load explosives under clothes in the acts of terror, resulting in his beating. In North Carolina, shootings took place at malls. The numerous violence of Black Friday with shoppers standing outside as if they were in Krzyzewskiville, watching the red lights at the gantry prepare for their five-second rundown, has gone too far. We have lost our standards of decency.

What gives? Oh to just do a Turkey Trot (27:42) with one friend and then a hard workout with another on the ensuing Friday instead of being packed at the “worst day of the year in the malls” ensures knowledge that there are things more important, such as health and a day at work, instead of the obsession that has taken place. Might track clubs seriously consider Black Friday half marathons starting at 5 AM to keep real runners on course and not in the malls? ◙

Let the holidays begin!

2011-11-24T11:24:00.000-06:00

◙

Classic Sports Thursday

2011-11-24T08:26:00.000-06:00

Today Steve Spurrier, head football coach for South Carolina, is known as "The Old Ball Coach." But back in the day he was a Heisman Trophy winning quarterback at the University of Florida. Here he is appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1966 as part of the All-America team.

Great, isn't it? First the camera misses Spurrier altogether, then when Ed has him out later in the show, you can hear him mistakenly refer to Spurrier being from "Miami" rather than "Florida." Oh well, that's Ed - gotta love him. ◙

Opinion Digest

2011-11-21T06:30:00.000-06:00

Paula and Jason Coyle uncover another Life Enhancement Centre that has released another piece of apostasy called a "Bible Study" that's built around another piece of pop culture, and not on God's Word. When will these ministers learn that these studies of popular culture are not appropriate for God's House?

Albert Mohler describes the defeat of Mississippi's "Personhood Amendment" as one where "We're All Harry Blackmun Now," a reference to the Supreme Court justice who authored the legalisation of baby murder.

Jonah Goldberg notes how the President is now blaming regular Americans for the employment crisis, when the problem has been the policies in place since Pelosi took power in 2007.

Dan Doherty talks about the Leftist indoctrination on college campuses -- and as I've noted, the leftist indoctrination there is why school policies protect pedophiles, which has launched the recent round of troubles on campus with sex offenders.

Janice Shaw Crouse writes on liberal activists' attempt to normalise pedophilia -- it is indeed an outrage, and normalising it would protect pedophiles further, as the sexual deviants' agenda has successfully barred policies against pedophilia.

Victor Davis Hanson asks why the United States defends Israel, Taiwan, Kurdistan, Greece, and Armenia. ◙

Retro TV Friday

2011-11-18T19:38:00.001-06:00

With the news Time Warner (owner of Lorimar) and their cable channel TNT will air a sequel to Lorimar's 1978-91 series "Dallas" that could in theory be called "Dallas: The Next Generation," as it focuses on John Ross Ewing III (the son of J. R.) and Christopher Ewing (the adopted son of Bobby Ewing), two characters when last we saw them were children, we look back at the anniversary to a legendary moment in television that still is one of the biggest in television because of a two-month delay caused by an actors' union strike. The episode is still the most watched non-special or season/series finale shows of all time. While it was the most-watched show of all-time when it first aired, the last M*A*S*H* and Super Bowl XLIV (the end of CBS Sports' 50th NFL season) have surpassed it but they were not regular episodes.

350 million watched the episode worldwide, with 83 million in the United States alone, carrying a 76% share.

Sunday is an anniversary of a television legend. ◙

Classic Sports Thursday

2011-11-17T07:34:00.001-06:00

As part of our Tribute to Joe Frazier, we remember the Foreman-Frazier bouts. This from 1973, and we know the famous call.

"I think Joe is hurt. Angie (sic) Dundee, Ali's trainer right next to me is saying it. You may hear him . . ."

The end of the sequal of Foreman-Frazier:

And one more for the show, the Ali-Frazier battle had a fourth chapter, in the turn of the century. The daughters had a 21st century battle more about determination than skill, boxing at its grass roots, in eight two-minute rounds (in women's boxing, rounds may be no longer than two minutes) on the Boxing Hall of Fame Weekend. ◙

Opera Wednesday

2011-11-16T19:33:00.001-06:00

During the runup to an aborted election to determine if video poker would be stopped by the next July, a famous evangelical minister, Anthony Evans Snr, spoke to a large crowd about the issue after the video poker lobby (“pokies” to our Australian mates) had bought the preceding year’s gubernatorial election, eventually leading to expanded gambling in our state that has hurt it. Isaiah 65:11-12 warns those who forsake God and sets a table for luck, and furnishes an offering to it will be killed, as they ignored God in favour of luck.

While we stopped the pokies and had them banned the next July (it was my only time I could celebrate winning that fall; I had just graduated from college in the middle of a terrifying losing streak and that fall was a winless year; it was so bad I contemplated taking the family’s Mercedes and dipping it into the pond near the home or entering it into a demolition derby, as everyone in town supported the rival and they cheered at my expense; my car couldn’t stand it and a head gasket blew out after the season), sadly, our state a year later (mostly because of a certain group that voted for it) sold out to the casino lobby with the state “LOOTtery,” and people have forsaken God in favour of luck, with luck being a virtue now in schools.

Now what does that have to do with opera?

Ah, it reminds me of a recent attendance of a twin-bill of Menotti operas, The Old Maid and the Thief and The Medium, with my discussion based on the latter that I attended, along with a plethora of old friends I’ve known (Mr. and Dr. LaRoche, Miss Heintzkill, Dr. Stallard, et al) from my Decade of Classical Music.

Looking at the number of media that appear on television in the past decade, with infomercials for the “psychic friends” organizations prominent during late-night television, and the popularity of New Age spirituality among Hollywood with ideas such as Harry Potter teaching a generation into the New Age, seeing old friends sing again (one posted me a message that she was emotional as it was her last with the university opera company), I thought about what I had seen in The Medium. Seeing Mme Flora (the medium) away, her daughter Monica and servant Toby are playing your typical children’s dress-up games and upon the return of Mme Flora, they haven’t prepared the home for the upcoming session with the Gobineaus and Mrs. Nolan.

The medium is supposed to “speak” to the deceased sixteen-year old daughter, after which Mrs. Nolan, infuriated at what she thinks is her girl but is Monica and Toby running an elaborate light and telephone scheme, tries to meet Monica, but is restrained by the other family in the psychic’s home, the Gobineaus, which then attempt to speak, using the medium, to their deceased daughter, but it is the laughing voice of the medium’s daughter too! The result was the psychic thinks the servant has pulled trucks, and refunds the two parents of the deceased. Still, the deceased’s parents think they truly spoke to their dead children. Thinking the servant, who was in the puppet theatre, was a spirit, she kills the servant.

What came to my attention was how gullible people are to “crossing over” with the deceased. The Gobineaus and Mrs. Nolan both believed they spoke to their dead children, when it was Monica and Toby’s games. They had been suckered, and Mme Flora was too, as she thought the servant she hired for the ruse was too a ghost.

The Gobineaus, Mrs. Nolan, and Mme Flora all had forsaken God in favour of finding cups to fortune. Two were lied and never believed it, and Mme Flora thought her own servant was a ghost to be killed. Regardless, the lesson I learned was never to trust psychics, and that Bible verse posted at the start of this column should be a warning why we cannot trust media such as those in the Menotti opera. ◙

This was from the practice session:

In Flanders Fields

2011-11-11T18:16:00.000-06:00

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

- John McCrae ◙

Occupiers' Reign of Terror continues

2011-11-11T09:17:00.001-06:00

The Occupy Wall Street crowd's antics continue to trouble me. In Mount Pleasant, on the U. S. S. Yorktown, docked at Patriot's Point (where we went on field trips), Congressman Michele Bachmann made an important speech on foreign policy when Occupy protesters started screaming and whining about "diving America" and complaining about the rich (their modus operandi). It is evident we have a group who wants America like the first two years of Obama, where it was they hold all speech cards, and nobody could speak but they can. They want another four years of one-sided liberal rule, and to disrupt Mrs. Bachmann's speech shows their entire goal is a CCCP. ◙

We've converted the military from a fighting force to defend this nation from enemies to ramming down indoctrination of the sexual deviants' agenda down our throats. This continues the troubling mess of the Left.

This Just In

2011-11-10T12:34:00.001-06:00

Classic Sports Thursday

2011-11-10T07:50:00.002-06:00

I wroter earlier this week about the "Fight of the Century" between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali. Here it is, from 1971, in all its glory and splendor. The legendary Don Dunphy is at the mic, with assistance from former champ Archie Moore and Burt Lancaster (!). ◙

The real problem is protecting pedophiles in policy and law

2011-11-09T16:16:00.000-06:00

In recent years, sexual deviants have been running ruses to protect their own at the expense of the children, and this is a troubling story in our education system, especially when deviants have written policies making "sexual orientation," "sexual preference," or any other form of sexual deviancy a protected class. Such policies can be used to force schools to hire pedophiles, and in the Obama Administration, we've seen Shepard-Byrd and the law that replaced the armed forces with a Department of Social Engineering, Special Rights Division.

We have seen states redefine marriage or enforce "civil union" laws that redefine marriage to the requests of activists, and punishment against churches, which can no longer offer foster children as laws give sexual deviants special protections in violation of the Bible in such states.

The real tragedy in the Penn State case is the push for protection of sexual deviancy by installing such protection of sexual deviants in nondiscrimination clauses, Shepard-Byrd, and the DSE/SRD is that child molesters and pedophiles can hide under such "sexual orientation" or "sexual preference" protections by educational institutions, corporatiosn, and governments. And that is the real problem we face today -- the sexual deviants' agenda has created an atmosphere that is pedophile-friendly, and unfriendly to its victims. For these deviants violate standards in the Bible.

For further research, see the following verses of the Bible: Romans 1:26-32, Leviticus 18:22-30, Leviticus 20:13, 1 Corinthinians 6, and Jude 7-9. ◙

Just Asking

2011-11-09T12:47:00.000-06:00

There's no doubt that the situation at Penn State is a horrible one. And yet -

I can't help but wonder whether the same people who continue to decry the abuse of "the most defenseless in our society" show the same concern about the kids who are still in the womb?

Or the elderly?

Or the terminally ill?

Not accusing - just asking. ◙

Opera Wednesday

2011-11-09T08:38:00.002-06:00

Aweek ago Saturday the Met broadcast Mozart's Don Giovanni, a spectacular production with Mariusz Kwiecien in the title role.

Don Giovanni is a terrific opera to be sure, but it's not one of Mozart's best, and I think part of that is due to what, in my humble opinion, is a rare mistake in judgement by the great Wolfgang. It comes in the final scene, where the wicked Don is dragged off to hell by the ghost of the Commendatore, whom Giovanni murdered earlier in the opera.

This is a tremendous scene, building to a resounding climax, and it should be the end of the opera. But no - for some reason, Mozart sees fit to stick in a final ensemble in which various characters whom Giovanni has wronged come together to pronounce their final judgement on him. It's a totally unnecessary coda - the music builds to its natural climax in the death scene, the audience is ready to applaud, the lights dim, what more could anyone ask for? We get what the moral of the story is, we don't need to have it pounded into our heads.

In the past, many conductors would leave this last scene out altogether, understanding that the dramatic flow of the opera demands that it conclude with the Commendatore scene. Unfortunately, the opera is rarely performed that way today - directors who seemingly have no problem cutting, moving and bastardizing other productions apparently freeze up when it comes to one simple little cut in Don Giovanni. Oh well. (Although, thankfully, there are exceptions.)

Be that as it may, it's still a terrific opera. But if you want an idea of how it should end, here's a televised performance of that scene, with Tadeo Giorgio as the Don. Now tell me: after seeing this, need anything more be said? ◙

Joe Frazier, R.I.P.

2011-11-08T20:23:00.001-06:00

One of the problems with growing old is that the icons of your youth grow old as well, and die, and every time it happens a piece of your youth dies as well, and in the end it reminds you - all of us - of our own mortality.

"The Fight of the Century," as it was called, was one of the seminal sporting events of my young life. It was March 8, 1971, and I was ten years old. It was Joe Frazier vs. Muhammad Ali, and boxing was only part of what it was all about.

It's difficult to explain it to someone who wasn't alive at the time or (in the case of my wife) wasn't into sports, what an event it was. In my 5th grade class we discussed it animatedly, all of us aware of how high the stakes really were. I ran across this description from Yahoo! Sports, and I think it summarizes the atmosphere about as much as anything can:

The occasion itself transcended sports. The buildup to the fight was a cultural phenomenon, splitting America (beyond those who were already fans of either fighter) into two factions: the pro-establishment, pro-war camp rooting for Frazier, and the countercultural, anti-war group pulling for Ali, who was stripped of the heavyweight title and his boxing license in 1967—at the height of the Vietnam War—for refusing to be inducted into the U.S. Army.

It was an iconic event in American history, on a level that could never be approached by any other combat sport. The who's who—from Rat Pack member Frank Sinatra, who served as a photographer that evening for Life magazine, to New York Knicks guard Walt "Clyde" Frazier—were at the Garden to witness Frazier's epic battle with Ali in the flesh.

At least that begins to describe it. Burt Lancaster was one of the announcers on the closed-circuit broadcast, and the artist LeRoy Neiman painted the men as they fought. Everybody who was anybody was there, in the arena that thought of itself as the Center of the World, Madison Square Garden.

There was a deep aura of mystery about the event. There was no home television, so if you wanted to see the fight you had to go to a movie theater and plunk down your money (an early form of pay-per-view). There was no radio, either - only a round-by-round summary that was read from the studio after each round ended. I don't remember the host of that radio broadcast, only that the commentator was the former champion, Floyd Patterson, who refused to call Ali anything other than his given name, Cassius Clay.

And that was part of it too, of course. Ali was a tremendously controversial man, not the beloved figure remembered today through a gauzy film. He was arrogant and taunted his opponents with a blistering, almost dehumanizing cruelty. (Called, by writer Tex Maule, a "barbarous display of cruelty.") The memorable 1996 ceremony in which his "lost" Olympic gold medal was replaced, happened in the first place because he had thrown the original in the river after refusing to fight in the Vietnam War. And there was his association with the Nation of Islam, which resulted in his 1965 title rematch with Sonny Liston being moved from Boston to Lewiston, ME. (I've been in Lewiston; trust me, you don't hold a heavyweight title fight there just for the fun of it.)

Patterson called him Clay, and so did many others, as did my mother, who disliked Ali and what he stood for intensely. I recall us staying up late into the night, far past my bedtime, listening to the summaries on the radio as they were presented, her keeping score by using one of the pages of advertising from the TV Guide (the middle section that was from the Columbia Record Club, I believe), marking down an "F" for each round Frazier won, and a "C" for those won by Ali. The fight was, everyone supposed, a cliffhanger, and Frazier's 15th round knockdown of Ali figured to be the decisive blow. It wasn't; Frazier had a big enough lead to have won anyway, but the image of Ali on his back, the tassels of his shoes flying, was imprinted on one's memory.

I didn't know much about Joe Frazier prior to that night, but I was thrilled that he'd beaten the hated Ali (or "Cassius Clod," as one talk show host referred to him), and I was tremendously impressed by the dignity with which he conducted himself in the face of Ali's caterwauling bluster. From then on Frazier became my favorite fighter, through a couple more title defenses until he was shockingly knocked out by the surly young George Foreman (years before Foreman himself would become a loveable hero). There was another Frazier-Ali bout, which Ali won, and then the "Thrilla in Manila," in which Ali, now the champ, defeated him once again, a result that left me as bitter and disappointed as had ever any sporting event.)

Frazier was never the same after that fight (nor, for that matter, was Ali). And for a good while, he never received the credit due him - for being the first man to beat Ali, for being a powerful and proud heavyweight champion. It was easy to be overshadowed by Ali, especially as his bravado became more and more the mainstream in professional sports. And then there was that embarrassing episode on SuperStars where he almost drowned during a swimming competition - that didn't help much either. But he kept on, fighting for a few more years until he was beaten once again by Foreman, in a bout between two former champs now on the has-been trail (or so it seemed for Foreman). He started a second career as a singer, and made a hilarious commercial for Miller Lite.

And eventually, people came to appreciate that Joe Frazier was a great champion, and a man who'd handled his fame and career with grace. There was widespread shock last week at the news that he was suffering from liver cancer and hadn't long to live, and when he died Monday night at the age of 67, there was a heartfelt outpouring of grief, including statements from Ali and Foreman, his two biggest rivals.

I realize that much of this seems to have been a celebration of Joe Frazier more for who he wasn't than for who he was, but sometimes that's how you measure a man. And lest we forget, today people warmly remember Smokin' Joe Frazier as a man who, through it all, never lost sight of what it meant to be a champ. ◙

Wish I'd Written That

2011-11-07T08:19:00.000-06:00

When I'm pushed, I shove."

- James Garner, in his new autobiography, The Garner Files. Just goes to show that you don't need a lot of words to make a statement. ◙

Retro TV Friday

2011-11-04T08:14:00.001-05:00

The last couple of weeks at the It's About TV site, I've been writing about television coverage of John F. Kennedy's funeral. A fascinating study of the relationship between television and religion - check it out! ◙

Classic Sports Thursday

2011-11-03T07:52:00.003-05:00

We're getting down to crunch time in college football, and this Saturday features the first time in five years that the number one and two ranked teams in the country meet in the regular season, when #1 LSU takes on #2 Alabama.

Back in the day, before the BCS guaranteed an annual #1 vs #2 "championship game," a matchup like this would have been called "The Game of the Century." College football has seen a number of these over the years, at least one a decade (which leads one to wonder exactly how sportswriters define a century), but few of them match up to the hype. One that did, in a most unexpected way, was the 1966 game pitting #1 Notre Dame against #2 Michigan State.

Mike Celizic’s wonderful book The Biggest Game of Them All illustrates just how this game profoundly changed the way in which television looked at sports. Among other things, it created a demand for media credentials unsurpassed in sports to that time (it took the Super Bowl years before it became as big a media sensation), caused Catholic churches throughout the nation to change confession times so as not to conflict with the game, and became the first sporting event telecast live via satellite in Hawaii.

It may be hard to believe now, but through the 60s and early 70s the televising of college football was a closely regulated business. Teams were limited to the number of appearances they could make on TV each season, and even the biggest games were frequently seen on a regional, rather than national, basis. The Notre Dame-Michigan State game, which was hyped to a level that would be remarkable even today, threatened to change everything. College football fans everywhere were on the edge of their collective seats throughtout the game, but nobody was prepared for what wound up happening. Here are the climactic final minutes of the controversial finish, with Chris Schenkel and Bud Wilkinson calling the action:

Well, that was something, wasn't it? How many of you expected that?

It's hard to imagine now, since overtime guarantees a winner in every college football game. It was even harder to imagine, back then, that the "Tying Irish," as they became known, would let the clock run out rather than go for the win. But there was a method to Irish coach Ara Parseghian's madness - he calculated the AP voters would be unlikely to drop Notre Dame out of the top spot because of the tie, particularly since they had rallied from a ten-point deficit without their star quarterback Terry Hanratty, who had been injured early in the game, and star running back Nick Eddy, who missed the game altogether due to an injury getting off the train in East Lansing.

Parseghian also had another ace in the pocket: this game was Michigan State's last, while Notre Dame would finish their season the following week against USC. (Neither team would play in a bowl game that year; Notre Dame had a longstanding policy against bowls that would not end until the early 70s, while the Big 10 prohibited any team from going to any bowl other than the Rose. Michigan State, which had played in the Rose the previous year, was ineligible because of another of the Big 10's rules, the "No-Repeat Rule" that prevented teams from playing in the Rose Bowl in consecutive years.) Notre Dame crushed USC the next week, 51-0, and indeed won the national championship.

Someday when I've got more time I'll go into the cultural rammifications of this game, which were immense, in more detail. But for now let's just concentrate on the game, for which autumn Saturday afternoons were created. ◙

Opera Wednesday

2011-11-02T07:38:00.002-05:00

From Rossini's charming comeday L'italiana in Algeri, The Italian Girl in Algiers, here's one of its many charming arias, with the great Marilyn Horne singing "Cruda sorte." This is from a Met Opera performance in 1986, with James Levine conducting.

And here's a Marilyn Horne encore, with another of her greatest hits. ◙

How to curse someone with class

2011-11-01T10:30:00.000-05:00

Where has this been all my life? The Elizabethan Curse Generator - no well-read person should be without it. ◙

Cost of education increases similar to sports: bidding war on professors similar to ones on athletes

2011-10-31T09:35:00.001-05:00

A very common complaint about professional (and to an extent, collegiate too) sports has been the high cost of tickets in order to pay for the extensive salaries of professional athletes, as the two highest salaried stars in sports are Spanish F1 driver Fernando Alonso Diaz of Scuderia Ferrari ******** (Because of censorship laws, the team's full name must be censored) at a $40 million salary, and Cameroon footballer Samuel Eto'o of ФК "Анжи" Махачкала (СОГАЗ Russian Football Championship), who is paid $29 million a year – greater than any MLB or NFL star. The bidding wars on star players has sent ticket prices soaring in sports.

But with complaints about college tuition roaring into massive debt, the nationalisation of student loans passed in ObamaCare, and here in South Carolina, the cost of education soaring after the state government was massively expanded with the mockery called the “state lottery,” there's one issue I haven't heard in the discussion of education costs that is similar to sports, and that is the bidding war on professors.

As schools begin adding further research arms to their institutions, they are needing professors to lead these research divisions. To do so, they often engage in bidding wars with each other in order to hire the best talent, similar to sports. In once case over a decade ago, a professor's pay went from $90,000 to over $200,000 after a bidding war for him. Another case featured Ivy League rivals in a bidding war on a professor. When the bidding wars are as heated in the academic field as they are on an athletic field, the result will be the same. And with the “we must try the latest and greatest experiment” mentality in academics, the new buildings carry the most expensive experimental equipment. All of these are increasing the cost of schools on the level of sports. Has anyone noticed the similarities of academic bidding wars to athletic bidding wars? A generation of protesting students do not seem to understand that, but it's clearly evident with a bidding war, trying to entice professors, building new buildings, housing allowances, extra academic freedom for the professor, and the lure of such, the same things we see in professional sports are there in academic prices. ◙

This Just In

2011-10-31T09:23:00.002-05:00

The Peggy Lee campaign

2011-10-25T09:02:00.000-05:00

I include the above in order to explain the title of this post, since anyone younger than me probably won't get it. (Your loss; you should get Peggy Lee, at least once in your lifetime.)

I can't help but think, though, that this was the question on the lips of many Republicans after last week's demolition derby of a debate in Las Vegas. It was great theater, at least for people you like David Mamet plays, but does this kind of attack politics really do any good? It made the candidates look small, like the children that fill the stage at the National Spelling Bee. And it leaves me asking one more question: "If this is the best we have to offer, how in the world are we going to beat Obama?"

By all rights, we shouldn't even be discussing the possibility of the President winning reelection, giving the state of things in general. And yet even the chance that such an outcome might be possible speaks volumes about the composition of the Republican field. Herman Cain is likeable, the most Reaganesque in his optimism about America, but the questions as to whether or not he's really qualified continue to mount. Mitt Romney is the frontrunner, to be sure, but he's becoming our version of Obama: arrogant, cold, with an unlikeable air of superiority. Should he win the nomination, next fall's debates could be the first in which neither candidate can see the audience, their noses will be so far in the air.

To say that Rick Perry stumbled coming out of the gate is an understatement. His campaign so far has been a disaster, and only time will tell whether or not his new flat tax proposal can save it. His gladitorial combat with Romney may hurt the Mittster, but I don't know if Perry comes out of it looking any better. The other Rick, Santorum, has been a pain in the ass, putting it mildly. He's like the smartest kid in the class; some of his answers are brilliant, but you still want to beat the crap out of him after the final bell. Michele Bachmann also has some great ideas, but too many of her answers are canned, and few of them even address the main point of the questioner. John Huntsman often sounds as if he showed up at the wrong party's debates, while Gary Johnson keeps getting the wrong directions on where it's being held.

This leaves Gingrich. Longtime readers of the blog know where I stand on Newt; he's been my candidate for three years. His debate performances impress more and more, and remind his supporters why they joined his bandwagon in the first place. In my mind, he's clearly the best candidate on the stage. He's picking up support, true, but despite my brilliant analysis of thre years ago, I still have a hard time seeing him crossing the finish line first, and that's perhaps the most frustrating thing of all.

Hence, Peggy Lee. The list of non-candidates - Pence, Daniels, Ryan, Christie, Jindal, Bush, Barbour, Huckabee, Palin, Giuliani - is at least as impressive as the current field. There's no lack of talent in the party. So why, one can ask, can't we find a better candidate for next year?

The answer, I think, is a simple one, although it won't satisfy many out there. But let's be blunt: aside from Reagan, name me one conservative who's been the titular leader of the GOP.

Go on, I'll give you a minute.

Right. We've had Bush senior, Dole, Bush junior, McCain. The party establishment has been dominated for over twenty years by moderates. The Tea Party movement has been a great andidote to this, and it's produced some wonderful talent: Marco Rubio in Florida, Ted Cruz in Texas, and others - but you don't rebulid a party overnight. It shouldn't be a surprise that many of the most respected young conservatives are just that, young. They're either too new to the national spotlight, or they're not yet ready for their closeup. They will be; it's hard to imagine Ryan, Rubio, Haley, Cruz and Jindal (among many others) not being major players in the next decade.

Any baseball fan will tell you that many is the successful team that's built on a strong farm system. The teams that go for the quick fix might win right away, but they're rarely around for the long term. It's the team that recognizes young talent, that brings it along patiently, bringing it up to the big club when the time is right, that has the ultimate staying power. Yes, this country needs help now, but you know what happens when you rush those young arms to the big leagues too quickly.

Lest you accuse me of looking at this election through rose-colored glasses, though, let me close on this unsettling thought. While it's true that the future of the Republican Party looks promising, the question (to carry through our sports analogy) is: what about the future of the league? Jesus asked, "When the Son of Man returns, will he find faith on Earth?" Help is coming for the beleagured conservative movement, but will it be in time? Otherwise, we could be singing another song. ◙

Are they for real?

2011-10-25T08:25:00.000-05:00

Guest post by Cathy of Alex

It's easy to make fun of the Occupy Wall Street and it's offshoot demonstrations in various cities - including one locally in Minneapolis, MN. I'm sure they are still laughing in downtown Tripoli too! Minnesota is usually, at least, a season behind the fashions and the music that are on the streets and on the radio (for those dinos that still listen to the radio) everywhere else in the U.S. so it makes sense while the Arabs had their Spring we are into Fall.

I hesitate to call the Occupy Wall Street a movement. It's not a movement, per se, in that it is not a cohesive and organized event positioning itself toward a common goal. It's almost like a "be-in" (remember those, you folks that are still listening to the RADIO!?) or Summer of Love or Woodstock or even an Andy Hardy film. Hey, kids, let's put on a show!? How about a bunch of us just show up someplace at a certain time and try and get something going, see what happens... It seems like a flash mob but the mob has no flash.

Occupy Wall Street, to me, is part of a current cultural phenomenon that is sweeping the globe. Really, it is - look around. Arab Spring, demonstrations in Rome, Greece, those periodic World Trade Organization dust-ups, the Tea Party, appear, on the surface, to have absolutely nothing in common. But, I think they do. They are all started by disaffected and disengaged youth. It's tempting to yell out: Get a job you hippies! or wonder why these kids appear to have so much free time on their hands that they can camp out in downtown New York for weeks. No kids? No families? Turn on, Tune in, Drop out?

I used to date this super-prog guy about 15 years ago (I was prog then but he made me look like a "Contract with America" supporter) who claimed that Generation Y was going to put the Baby Boomers to shame as far as protesting and radicalism goes. I thought he was full of crap (actually, not the reason we broke up). Now, I wonder if I should find him and apologize.

Except I think neither one of us saw a day when so many young people literally cannot get jobs, don't have a stable home life (if a home life at all), can't afford college, don't believe that they'll ever be able to own a home, are paying child support before they are out of high school, and perceive that education is meaningless as there isn't anything to prepare you for other than debt, unemployment and take-out.

What is different with some of today's youth-started protest phenomenon from those of 3 - 5 decades ago is the resulting demographic of the protesters is not just Gen Y and Millenials - a lot of older, employed people with families have joined in. Perhaps, relieving their protest days of yore, or, perhaps, we have finally seen a day when all generations have the same gripes.

I'm not saying I agree with this new youth-driven phenomenon; but I also acknowledge that I don't see the world as they do. I'm pretty well established. I had a stable home growing up. I have a life full of purpose with Christ. I have a job. I don't have trouble putting food on the table. But, I've also got over 2 decades of head start.

It's true that no two people in the Occupy Wall Street can identify the reason why the collective is protesting. They are not even sure what they are protesting. There are probably some people who don't even realize they are at a protest but it just seemed like a great place to get laid! There is no common platform. However, I just caution us as a society to refrain from thinking Occupy Wall Street is meaningless and nothing will come from it. Revolutions have started this way. We may not have to break out the guns, but new ideas can sometimes be as powerful and scary as any armament. ◙

Occupy Wall Street and related activists: Communist perpetrators

2011-10-18T21:10:00.000-05:00

Listening to Neal Boortz discuss he demands of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement reminds states their demands will destroy the economy, with the current realistic unemployment rate of nearly 20% ready to soar if these leftists' agenda is met.

The crazy mandates wanted by the organisers is to raise the minimum wage, which four years ago was raised 40% from $5.15 to $7.25 per hour, to $20 per hour. When the Pelosi Reign of Terror led a 40% hike in the minimum wage in 2007 by a no-debate, no-discussion supermajority forcedown, the beginning of the current American crisis in jobs began, as Walter E. Williams noted in [i]Race and Economics: How Much Can Be Blamed by Discrimination [/i]? Youth unemployment starts at the 15% range and in some groups is over 40%, as noted by Charles Payne this summer on Fox Business Network, as a byproduct of the Pelosi stupidity. James Sherk of the Heritage Foundation noted rescinding the 40% minimum wage hike would encourage such hiring of novices, and create more entry-level hiring. He notes this on the job training results in most workers accelerating skills that result in raises, including interacting with co-workers and bosses. The result of the last severe round of minimum wage hikes led to a lack of entry-level hiring as the value of hiring such workers was lacking. Some states have added further hikes to destroy their states.

A nearly 150% hike in the minimum wage to $20 would destroy jobs for good, and businesses would choose to locate their businesses in Mexico, or worse yet, the rising four nations of the BRIC (Brasil, Россия, India, and Communist China).

A related demand is to guarantee such income – regardless of the person is employed or not. This has no logic. Another is “free college education,” but thanks to ObamaCare, the federal government, not private parties or financial institutions, is the only place for student loans, and we are paying the price for having gambling money subsidise college education in South Carolina after over a decade of such outrageous policies. A government monopoly is the worst possible idea, and the passing of ObamaCare gave us one, and a mandate by these activists is to fully implement ObamaCare by adopting the Canadian-style single payer system that outlaws private industry and kill health care.

Another demand of these liberals is to outlaw oil, gas, coal, and nuclear energy to push the standard liberal mantra of “wind and solar only”. However, as SCANA investors were told at a meeting, wind energy requires a minimum of 3.6 m/s of constant wind, and turbines shut down if the wind speed exceeds 20 m/s. The total demand of outlawing oil, gas, coal, and nuclear, with related “ecological restoration,” reminds me of the Taliban's anti-industry push. Many Communists have adopted the extreme environmentalist movement in order to push the idea of government in control of everything, and Lenin's Birthday (22 April 1870) is celebrated under the disguise of “saving the planet,” which popular culture has taught is more important than anything, and we see it in our trashy schoolbooks, where math, science, history, writing, and classics are ignored, while the fads of the trash are mandated in schools.

These activists demand gross Keynesian economics of spending on infrastructure, and have no regard on how they will pay for this, including a request of forgiveness of all debt, thereby creating a massive “spending without responsibility,” thinking we are a massive credit card that by law they will pay our debt. Money does not grow on trees, and they want spending without paying for it. What lesson does this teach a generation? Spend even past being broke, and get away with it?

Other demands mandate “card check,” which is part of the Left's push to unionise the entire nation, which would likely include a ban on replacement workers and legalisation of closed shops. And of course, we have the sexual deviants, successfully imposing speech codes and replacing the military with an activist organisation pushing their agenda, who want to occupy America to impose marriage laws and adoption policies in their form, banning churches from anything.

Regardless of the agenda by separate activists in Occupy Wall Street and related left-wing events, it's clear they want a utopia reminiscent of the CCCP that will fail. ◙

Las Vegas tragedy

2011-10-17T20:57:00.000-05:00

I had just finished some housekeeping chores when I turned on our Vizio HDTV to our ESPN Broadcast affiliate and saw the IZOD IndyCar World Championship had been stopped for what was cleanup.

After finishing our Bible study tonight, on the drive home, I learned the horrifying tragedy of what happened, and saw what was clearly X-rated clips (violence) of the Bowers & Wilkins Honda flying into the catchfence. In the past three and a half years, we've seen fatal crashes in drag racing from various classes of cars flying into netting at the end of drag strips when cars are unable to slow down sufficiently in the sand trap. Now we've had another INDYCAR* fatality with a car flying into the catchfencing, open cockpit first.

The ultimate irony is that INDYCAR was criticised for a Nerf Bar (something that's seen on a NASCAR Modified) style tail for the new Dallara cars that will be used starting in March. After seeing the gruesome tragedy of today, maybe the Nerf Bars are a must. And the Nerf Bar may not be good on aerodynamics, but to prevent cars from flying is the most important issue. Wheel-to-wheel contact, regardless of it being an IndyCar, F1, GP2/3, Modified, or Formula Nippon (built in California), is the most dangerous because exposed wheels in contact with exposed wheels is easily grounds for launch. This bar may have prevented three cars from going airborne.

It was horrifying to see replays of what happened. Our thoughts and prayers go to the Wheldon family.

Réquiem ætérnam dona eis Dómine; et lux perpétua lúceat eis. Requiéscant in pace. Amen.

Let's Flash Back: 2005. 2011.

* The stylebook issued by Indy Racing League LLC states INDYCAR, the trade name of the IRL (the legal name of the organisation is Indy Racing League, LLC). All rule books posted by the organisation in regards to the sanctioning body has the name in all capital letters. ◙

Retro TV Friday

2011-10-14T07:35:00.001-05:00

I enjoy listening to talk radio, and often the catchy theme songs on the radio are some of the craziest you will hear. While many hosts will select various tunes they think are catchy theme songs, some are always stuck in your head, associated with the hosts. From "My City Was Gone" (Limbaugh), "Independence Day" (Hannity), "Heart of Rock and Roll" (Boortz), and the local radio talk show hosts, the themes are an integral part of any talk radio programme.

This was the theme song to a news/talk radio show from the mid-1990's. She responded, "Oh yeah. The opening to the show. Been awhile."

But it's Retro TV Friday. Why are you discussing old talk radio? There's a reason. In that time, I owned interest in CBS, including the CBS Cable operations. And I do miss the old Nashville Network, shut down by MTV after parent Paramount purchased CBS and sent the CBS Cable operations to MTV, allowing MTV to use the CBS Cable operations to shut down the outdoor and country channel in favour of a channel that sounds like it's a volleyball-talking channel but is an explicit adult channel.

This was the theme song to the radio talk show in question, as a performance on The Nashville Network's "Prime Time Country," with Gary Chapman hosting. ◙

Mr. Jobs' Eastern Mysticism: was he an advancer of the New Age cause in the nation?

2011-10-13T12:50:00.000-05:00

There are some news cartoons that can go over the edge, and in some instance, they are highly inappropriate in light of Steve Jobs' death. One inappropriate cartoon I saw was one of Steve Jobs at the Pearly Gates with St. Peter -- and when I read his belief system and worldview was built in Buddhism, where he becomes dust after death, it was highly inappropriate to draw considering his worldview is built in a religion of nothingness, as I've learned is the view of Zen Buddhism, which he believed, and was married to his wife in a ceremony conducted by a Buddhist monk. Was one of Mr. Jobs' legacies the advancement of Eastern Mysticism to the point even today's Life Enhancement Centres are embracing such "contemplative spirituality" even in our houses of worship where we are supposed to study God's Word?

Forbes found this on his New Age beliefs:

Another perspective of Mr. Jobs. ◙

Opera Wednesday

2011-10-12T12:50:00.000-05:00

Opera, as I've learned over the years, is a place where the fun and frolicking can happen. As I've learned from many a round of lessons from Dr. LaRoche in the decade past, we can have humour as I've shown my anger parodying Magda, and even Lauretta. Now the Seattle Opera Blog has found a humourous look at the life of opera. They asked the question, "What would Sevilla look like with Carmen and her friends were on a social networking site?" Oh, this one is funny and it makes us love our opera! ◙

Three stories to steam

2011-10-11T12:43:00.000-05:00

Sorry that I've been on the sickly side the past few days, I have not been able to write much thanks to falling ill and being busy at work, as you might expect.

The controversy over Gibson: All the attacks on Gibson aside, I remind myself that Gibson claims to be a victim of political contributions to opponents, which is true, but those who rally for Gibson forget that Gibson shut down the Baldwin piano plants in Arkansas in favour of opening plants in China. I remember the Baldwin pianos in my youth, and in the past five years, Gibson's idea of taking pianos to China and away from the States has now occurred. Where is the discussion of Gibson's piano plants now being in the PRC?

As for my take on Steve Jobs: Earlier this year, I noted how Apple has caused the demise of music stores and even bookstores to the easily manipulated portable file formats of readers such as the iPad and music players such iPod and iPhone concern me. Compression is nary a problem pop music because they do not have the quirks that perfectionists in classical music demand. Furthermore, we are not sitting there with 25-minute pieces (often 10-12 minutes a suite) in pop music when a song can start and finish in four minutes. As for the portable e-readers replacing books, the biggest concern has indeed come true with Amazon's advertiser-supported Kindles. Truly it can now be abused where you may read a conservative pamphlet and see ads for the 2012 campaign for President Obama, or read a Bible on the e-reader and see sexual deviant activists' push for their agenda come. Do "all your base belong to us," as the video game lore states, now?

The White House's recent launch of "We The People" to give citizens petition ideas has shown its Leftist colours. Some of the crazier ideas have included removing "God" from the Pledge and "In God We Trust" from currency, banning churches from tax-exempt status, ban coal mining, releasing drug offenders, legalising prostitution, redefining marriage to appease leftist activists, unemployment benefits for life, and banning the Bible from the country. We also have recognition and praise for those who are blockading Wall Street as another petition. What type of losers do we have on that site, trying to push every leftist cause? It's a dangerous utopia. ◙

Steve Jobs, R.I.P.

2011-10-10T07:44:00.000-05:00

Hullo there, remember me? I used to write for this blog from time to time.

I can't say whether or not this represents a permanent return to form, but I didn't want to be the only person in the Western world who hadn't commented on Steve Jobs' death.

Actually, I'm even cheating here, since all I'm really doing is linking to this fine piece by Philip Terzian at the Weekly Standard. It speaks to me on several levels: the danger of sanctifying the dead, a trap into which we all fall at one time or another; my ambivilence at the technological revolution, which Jobs without a doubt spearheaded; and the ultimate question of how we treat the people with whom we interact. Is it merely me, or is there a real irony in the fact that Jobs, who did so much through the iPad and the iPhone and the iPod to minimize actual human interaction, was apparently so bad at human interaction himself? Chicken or egg?

Concludes Terzian, "It does take a genius of sorts to make technology adaptable to a mass market, and to persuade consumers they need to consume. But that is not quite the same as 'changing the world.' It is one thing to influence human behavior -- which might be said of figures as disparate as Sigmund Freud or Jesus -- but quite another to understand human behavior, and profit handsomely." ◙

Cybersquatting by leftist activists on a presidential campaign, and poor Lacey Schwimmer . .

2011-10-01T09:25:00.000-05:00

In January, I had the opportunity to participate at my fourteenth South Carolina Citizens for Life March for Life Weekend, with Rick Santorum as the keynote speaker at the event. Mr. Santorum is now officially registered as a Candidate for the Republican Nomination for the President of the United States.

The issue today is something more disturbing that came to my attention but uses the former Pennsylvania Senator who was defeated in the Pelosi Revolution that has led to the current economic crisis. If you type “Rick Santorum” on a search engine, one of the top three links will be to a sexually explicit site run by sexual deviant Dan Savage, best known for promoting his “anti-bullying” campaign, a cover for advancing sexual deviants’ agenda (it has successfully clinched in the 111th Congress both a speech code similar to “progressive” nations that makes the Bible criminal speech, forcing Dr. Laura Schlessinger to pay radio, which was a goal of liberals to throw her off public airwaves, and the elimination of the military, replacing it with the Special Rights Division of the Department of Social Engineering).

Recently, a Catholic minister I know from classical music events promoted Mr. Savage's social agenda on his social networking page, promoting sinful behaviours in violation of Romans 1, resulting in a phone call to the local Diocese, and the local church where he is employed, but they refused to discipline him for his promotion of sinful behaviour that violates doctrinal teachings (and it doesn't matter if it's Catholic or Protestant, sexual deviancy is a sin).

This form of cybersquatting will make people associate Mr. Santorum not to the Presidential candidate, pro-life advocate, and father, but to the explicitness of the sexual deviant activist Mr. Savage. Worse yet, the campaign in question has aggressively pushed the campaign for the deviants on network television during family-friendly programming, and it was responsible for pushing for the redefinition of marriage in many states, including the prohibition of Catholic and Protestant charities from running adoption agencies or foster homes as part of the banishment of faith through these new laws.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen inappropriate searches with common names in the news. A recent image search of a Daytona 500 champion and current Chase driver did not give me the gentleman in question, but of a teen actress few people know. This is a well-known celebrity it seems has been cybersquatted, and the person they show is not known by anyone outside of a few obscure places.

And don’t forget the number of times anyone wants to discuss the corrupt socialised medicine act, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, a. k. a. ObamaCare, where searches will advance users to sites promoting the President and his propaganda.

Search engines are selling out to extreme left-wing causes, as we’ve seen with Mr. Santorum and the fight against socialised medicine. But when a Daytona 500 champion’s name can be abused too, this issue is over the edge. Penny Nance has a report on it.

And speaking of sexual deviants’ craziness, I agree with those who believe we should not watch the local version of Strictly Come Dancing. Pity poor Lacey Schwimmer, who has to be partnered with a woman this season. Ballroom dancing is for people of the opposite sex. What is Disney doing? Ron and Diane Miller have seen the betrayal of her father’s company from the start, and this shows what is truly crazy, considering too that the show’s producer, the BBC, has just banned “Before Christ” and “Anno Domini”. Next? ◙

This Just In

2011-09-28T09:26:00.001-05:00

Message bodyImplosion of Atlanta National League Ball Club Results in True North Acquiring Team, Renaming it Goldeyes.

WINNIPEG, MB -- Following True North Enterprises' acquisition of the City of Atlanta at a bargain-basement price in June, True North Enterprises has announced Canad Inn Stadium will be the host of the National League's newest team, the Winnipeg Goldeyes, which will replace Atlanta National League Ball Club, Inc.

The Goldeyes will become a National League team and be slotted in the East Division.

"Obviously, True North is excited about having a professional hockey and now baseball team in Winnipeg, and as part of being the new headquarters for Home Depot, Delta, UPS, and other major firms that had been in Georgia until our acquisition of an entire city to be converted to a landfill, we are excited about the continuing growth of Winnipeg," posted officials in Winnipeg. The Goldeyes' 2012 schedule and roster will be announced at a later date.

The death of the United States armed forces

2011-09-21T09:46:00.000-05:00

The United States Armed Forces. 1776-2011. Killed by President Obama, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, Stefani Germanotta, and Tim Gill. Replaced by a secular humanist indoctrination force designed not to defend this nation but to advance the causes of humanism.

Réquiem ætérnam dona eis Dómine; et lux perpétua lúceat eis. Requiéscant in pace. Amen.

Bill Connor on the "jihad" that killed our military in favour of the new left-wing indoctrination force for secular humanism. ◙

Searching for Snoopy

2011-09-20T09:16:00.000-05:00

As a veteran space travel buff, this is way cool. The lunar module of Apollo 10 (code name: Snoopy) - the final lunar orbital test run prior to the moon landing - came within a few miles (relatively speaking) of the moon's surface. At the mission's conclusion, the LM was jettisoned to orbit around the sun. Now, astronomers are searching to find that spacecraft! ◙

Opinion Digest

2011-09-19T09:46:00.000-05:00

I remember boys complained in schools about the girls' dress code, and they wanted to have the girls' dress code adopted for school, and they won the complaint -- the school was forced to adopt the girls' dress code for boys (only thing that matters is if it touches the top of the knee, but the hem line moved up regardless of gender).

Seems the increased pop culture "flashing" as shown by certain pop culture stars is enough, as are the cases of girls pulling off copycat moves, impersonating their heroines with similar hiking tactics. Officials in some British schools have told girls the boys' dress code will be enforced on them, banning articles of clothing that often are used to create the mess in the first place. Turnabout is fair play, is it?

The censoring of the West, and the enforcement of Shariah are both troubling. Have we seen a rise of Islam since Usama attacked the US? Diana West's thoughts.

Thirty-nine men came to Philadelphia to form a more perfect union two hundred twenty-four years ago this weekend. Yet the courts today are eliminating their document in favour of adopting foreign laws today, and even abolishing the Bill of Rights (1-10 and 27*). Katie Pavlich reports.

Professor Krugman's rude commentary on Patriot Day was seriously offensive to the soldiers and those who lost family members in the attacks of Usama's Henchmen. Michael Reagan's thoughts.

Marc Morano reports a Nobel Prize winner resigned from the American Physical Society because of their embracing of false anti-industry "science" pushed on a generation.

------------

* There were twelve articles in the Bill of Rights; The first article assigned the House to one representative per 40,000 people, and once it went to 200 representatives, the limit was one per 50,000; thar article did not pass, and it would be compex today, as it's nearly 650,000 people per Representative. The second article took 201 years, and 28 more states that was needed when originally proposed, to ratify and is the 27th Amendment. The third to twelfth articles are the first to tenth Amendments to the United States Consitution, henceforth, the Bill of Rights are actually the 2nd to 12th articles of articles sent to the legislators on March 14, 1789. For historical purposes, the 27th Amendment is part of the Founding Fathers' documents.

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Those words

2011-09-12T09:54:00.003-05:00

The words on Fox News Channel on the day have been played every 8:26 AM since then, as usual. We see the 8:46 AM report of the first crash on Fox & Friends, and we see clips of the numerous attacks. Those words said by the newsmen reflect on that day.

"Another plane just flew into the second tower. This has to be deliberate, folks. We just saw on live television as a second plane flew into the second tower of the World Trade Center. Now given what has been going on around the world, Some of the key suspects come to mind, Usama bin Laden, who knows what." -- 9:03 AM, Jon Scott

"We are hearing right now of another explosion that has taken place in the Pentagon. We have the heart of the financial district of America being been attacked now we understand now there . . . has been an explosion in The Pentagon, the heart of the military command center of the United States of America. Jon, it can't be worse I hope." -- 9:37 AM, David Asman,

"As we watch these pictures, the World Trade Center, 110 storeys, literally starting to fall" -- 9:59 AM, Mr. Scott

"It's gone. The whole tower( bleep). They knocked the whole freaking thing down." -- News chopper pilot.

"America, offer a prayer." (Second tower implodes) -- Jon Scott, 10:28 AM

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We Remember The Day. Ten Years Ago. 8:46 AM.

2011-09-11T09:51:00.001-05:00

I reflected being behind the wheel of my Buick LeSabre, the infamous "Heather" on the way to the shop when the 8:46 AM attacks took place, and listening to the radio desperately to find out what happened that day.

I looked at the books I've read, and they include a pair of Barbara Olson books, Hell to Pay and The Final Days, both on the Clinton Administration.

I saw the collection of memorabilia of the local (Charleston) ECHL team, the South Carolina Stingrays.

Both fit the day. Both are relics that remind us of what we lost ten years ago. We lost an author, headed to Los Angeles for Bill Maher's television programme when killed on AA77. We lost Mark Bavis, a former Stingrays player, on UA175.

We lost thousands others at the hands of Usama bin Laden, the most wanted man in America, and led to the President's painting of Usama has a desperado who needed to be stopped.

It has been ten years today. Listening to "Evocation: In Memoriam September 11, 2001," a piece of the day by the Upton Trio, makes you reflect what happened.

Here is a clip of the real-time coverage from that day, on WTMA's Dan Moon Show. ◙

The New Tolerance bans Christians at 9/11 memorial services

2011-09-09T06:26:00.001-05:00

The ACLU proudly mentioned when they redefined “marriage” in New York, they removed freedom of religion. It was also removed in the former Armed Forces when the military's goals were changed from a fighting force to defend the country to an indoctrination force for sexual deviants by Public Law 111-321, an Intolerable Act, creating the new Special Rights Division of the Department of Social Engineering.

Now we are seeing New York and Washington, both areas where false marriage is legal because of the sellout to the Gill Agenda, run roughshod over religion because of the new regulations.

In Washington, the Episcopal Church USA, facing a split with many conservative organisations for its theological liberalism, has shown its intolerance of groups opposed to its doctrine under the new intolerance for the traditional freedom of religion by selecting the organisations involved in Sunday's memorial services at Washington National Cathedral, which they own and operate. The organisations chosen for the memorial service Sunday are Episcopal leadership in Washington in both the Bishop of Washington nd the Dean of the Cathedral, a rabbi, a Buddhist nun who is also called the incarnate lama, a Hindu priest, a Muslim musician, and the President of the Islamic Society of North America. There are no Catholic or mainstream Protestant (Southern Baptist Convention, the North American Presbyterian and Reformed Council – includes the ARP and PCA , Lutheran Church – Missouri Synod) denominations involved in this “interfaith” service.

In New York, Mayor Bloomberg, who was directly involved in the redefinition of marriage, has outlawed clergy from appearing at the official ceremony remembering the time of the terrorist attacks.

It's clear in a world where sexual deviants are now rewarded with false “marriage” recognition and the changing of the military's purpose into an indoctrination force for deviants, and the abolition of the freedom of religion that was part of the Founding Fathers' call, that this weekend's memorial services display the New Tolerance that is the goal of modern liberalism. When God's Word is eliminated in favour of humanism's agenda, and a new state religion of secular humanism, nothing is sacred, even in remembering over 3,000 who died under the auspices of Al Qaeda, for the want of 19 men whose goal was to make it to paradise by killing thousands of infidels.

Has this nation lost its way when New Tolerance dictates the outlawing of God's Word? Are we pushing Eastern mysticism by force in this nation? Surely it fits with the Obama goal of turning Patriot Day into a community service day, similar to Communism. ◙

The worst of the homers - Galvaão Bueno (Brasil)?

2011-09-08T06:25:00.000-05:00

We've long criticsed the "shouters, screamers, and homers trying their hardedst to get on SportsCenter" that are prevalent when we watch or listen a sporting event. I was driving home from church Sunday night when the sports radio station (one of the few stations we can catch, an Eastover station 50 miles away) plays highlights of radio calls, which results in hearing the worst cheerleading during major scores. Some of the worst calls I remember in my youth were Georgia Bulldog broadcaster Larry Munson's homer calls but there are other worse ones on the market today that it makes listening to national calls better when the lead man is not cheering for one team, and one prevalent trend came with the Mexican soccer broadcaster style that seem to be everywhere now (best known for the crazy goal screaming).

In observing Senna (I arrived late thanks to a commitment that ran late) Saturday in Charlotte and the inside story of Ayrton's life (noted the interviews with numerous faces), SBT, which has F1 broadcast rights in Brasil, made the top shelf complaint list we have on the worst types of broadcasters, with homers and screamers look lame. During the film, numerous times they ran the broadcasts of various F1 broadcasts at the time (BBC, SBT, TF1, ESPN) and you could hear the difference between Murray Walker and the Brasilian television broadcasts. When Ayrton won (I later learned it was for any Brasilian driver winning), play-by-play man Galvaão Bueno would turn into those haywire homers and scream, while special music plays and the cheering continued on the winner while the action behind that could play crucial points of the race were ignored in favour of unprofessional behaviour.

That's an extreme homer. Imagine listening to a college sporting match, and after a big score, the engineer cues the winning fight song and the rest of the game discussion is ignored. That is the effect of a Brasilian F1 win would be on SBT, and as I learned later, it was not just for Ayrton -- Rubens and Felipe were treated that way, and if Vivienne's boy Bruno Lalli (who uses the grandmother's maiden name for similar reasons!) wins, SBT would do the same too. Maybe we've seen the worst with Brasilian television. ◙

Opera Wednesday

2011-09-07T06:23:00.000-05:00

The NFL season starts Thursday, and the college gridiron just lit up its season last week with a plethora of big games. But why are we talking gridiron in our opera column? Yes, we have former warriors singing on the opera fields. Kari Barbic wrote about it in The Weekly Standard, "Arias in the End Zone," and we'll share a few of those opera singers.

Former University of Colorado running back Keith Miller, who tried out with the Denver Broncos, is now a well-known rising young bass/baritone on the opera field today.

Lawrence Harris, a former offensive lineman for the now-defunct Houston Oilers, is a heldentenor who also with his wife run a management company for opera singers. Originally a baritone, he credits his skills on the front lines to the mentality of the Wagnerian roles he sings.

Ta'u Pupu'a, a Weber State defensive lineman, was drafted by the Cleveland Browns by Bill Belichick the year before they were suspended in the controversial moves in late 1995. But a foot injury ensured he would never play a down, and became a young tenor on the prowl. Still, he credits a great master with teaching him the mind game. ◙

SAD NEWS - Salvatore Licitra

2011-09-06T13:58:00.000-05:00

S
icilian tenor Salvatore Licitra, 43, sufferred a cerebral hemorrhage while riding a Vespa scooter with his girlfriend, and crashed into a wall in Ragusa August 27. He was not wearing a helmet, she was wearing a helmet. The Bern (Switzerland) native was born to Sicilian emigrants, and made his singing debut in 1998 at Parma, and was Caravadossi in "Tosca" in 2002 at the Met when he replaced the man whom many thought he was the next, Luciano Pavarotti. He was rushed to a hospital in Catania, where after a week, he was declared brain dead Monday.

A sad loss for opera, one of the younger singers of this generation is gone so quickly. As a dear friend warns us, we have to watch our health.

Deborah Voigt commented on her social networking site, "So very sad to say goodbye to Salvatore Licitra. I will miss you."

Opera Chic has more here. ◙

The freeloading problem on television and sports

2011-09-03T07:43:00.000-05:00

A news commentator recently warned we are fast becoming a nation of freeloaders. Nowhere is it worse than on mass media, especially television.

As pay television consistently has outbid broadcast networks for sporting events, people are growing tired of the high per-subscriber rates for these channels used to pay for these rights fees, and these fees have become the source for advantages of pay-television over networks to the point some sports (boxing) have lost appeal with Middle America because of the pay-television exclusivity of the sport, while mixed martial arts has had a light broadcast network following, with a new Fox television contract coming this fall.

A recent report that News Corp had announced a minimum eight-day delay between the broadcast of any programme on the Fox broadcast network and the time they will stream the show on an online streaming service irked many such "freeloaders," who have been cord-cutting and watch (mostly) SD programming on their HDTV's, and prefer the convenience of a 15.4" screen over the 32" (or larger) high-definition televisions. The freeloaders feel they can watch any show, any time, even if it's illegal, and violate copyright infringement. They do not respect the staff involved in the production of a television programme, and the affiliates of the network involved, as affiliates have to pay numerous fees, and sell advertising to local merchants, with the popular programmes resulting in high 30-second rates that can be charged, which can be influential when the programme is the lead-in to the local late newscast that offers local teams' sports scores. They also disrespect copyright law to have their way. Some (especially the Chinese) are known for copying television formats from the major international format holders and robbing them blind, and claim because it's from another country, US copyright laws do not matter (they do, Berne Convention).

These freeloaders would steal signals and illegally stream the shows are the types who would rob a health food store of its premium groceries, stealing it, and forcing the grocer to suffer a financial loss.

Let's suppose too a pharmaceutical company holds a patent for a wonderful medication, and they hold the patent. After millions of hours in research, they have perfected the perfect drug to cure a serious disease, and have obtained the patent. But before something can be done, a freeloader decides to break down the drug, illegally make copies of it when the patent is live, and give it free. The legitimate company has been greatly punished, but that is what freeloaders on television have done.

A group of sports fans have asked for the elimination of sports blackout rules, which are designed to protect a team's revenue stream by prohibiting the broadcast of a sporting event on television by television markets that may have any part within a 120km radius of the stadium if tickets are not sold out within 72 hours of the start of the event, an NFL rule written in 1973 to eliminate the total blackout rule that was in play regardless of sellout that prohibited a broadcast from reaching a home market. Once again, these "fans" are not fans, but want to betray teams and fans by stopping the incentive to sell tickets to fans. Blackouts are effective because it makes local fans buy tickets to events they want to attend, and by telling the television broadcaster no games are allowed on air within the 120km rule, it forces locals to buy tickets.

I've wondered in college sports, why is there no blackout rule when over 10,000 seats are still available and they still allow the game to be televised in the local market. It's a silly model since there is no incentive to be at the game when it's on air. The NFL's model has worked. Four teams have never had a blackout under current NFL rules (GB, WSH, DEN, PIT), two teams have never had a blackout in history (BAL first game 1996, HOU first game 2002), and another (TEN) has not had a blackout since being in their current home (the Titans' were in Memphis when they last had a blackout). Seventeen NFL teams have not had a blackout in the 21st century.

Freeloaders would want to steal television signals, and ban sports teams from imposing restrictions to encourage ticket sales. Isn't this the problem with society today, with welfare, freeloaders, and people who want something for nothing, and would discourage those who work the hardest to provide the wanted product? That's what we see with illegal streaming, stealing signals, not imposing blackout rules, and the like. ◙

Alpha and Omega: Texas Terry's Florentine Conquests and Mr. Clutch

2011-09-02T22:36:00.000-05:00

RRemember, there isn't any Labour Day holiday here in South Carolina. The Ferko lawsuit took it away from us after 2004, our state's big Labour Day festival in Florence was moved to Fort Worth, Texas, in a rude and crude decision that could affect pro gridiron in Minnesota, especially if a California interest decides to sue the NFL or Vikings to force a move to Los Angeles. What happened to the Fourth Major in Florence should be a warning that you can be sued to lose an event.

Let's look back at Labour Day when it existed in South Carolina, with a big Florentine showdown, as it was Terry Labonte's Alpha and Omega . . .

1980: His first Sprint Cup win, in a major, no less. Think of the great golfers whose first career PGA Tour win was in a major, or a tennis star who wins their first ATP or WTA tournament in a major.

2003: Now 46, and a two-time Sprint Cup champion, his last Sprint Cup win, in the same major, in a clutch situation. The state's big Labour Day event was set to move to November the next year, and become a playoff showdown.

And those final moments of Labour Day in South Carolina were on a November evening in 2004, when Jimmie Johnson began his meteoric "Mr. Clutch" moniker, continuing a torrid playoff run that included wins at the oldest and most prestigious events in the playoff.

We want to be in Florence in the fall . . . ◙

What is the next goal?

2011-09-01T22:45:00.001-05:00

We're into September now, and I am seeing issues everywhere that have me pondering my reflections headed into this month.

MTV Beats Networks . . . Hmmmm? A degradation of society showed its ugly back Sunday night at the MTV “Video Music Awards” in Los Angeles. Looking at the ratings of the “awards show” full of no-talents who are gong-worthy, 12.4 million watched this utter disgrace, with 8.5 million of it from their core audience of 12-34, which evidently shows how a plethora of youth have discarded the timeless masterworks in favour of the hip and trendy, which has pilfered its way into houses of worship today, with the popularity of GIA, Oregon Catholic Press, the major secular publishers, and rock-based services. It outdrew any broadcast network television program during the entire week, but as should be the disclaimer, there were no pre-emptions caused by Hurricane Irene on MTV, while the networks had Irene coverage on the wall where parts of the populus East Coast couldn't watch the NFL pre-season games, Little League baseball, or the Irwin Tools Night Race.

On the other hand, for sports that count, the disgraceful “awards show” promoting raunchy “music” outdrew combined Brad Keselowski's run to the Wild Card at the Irwin Tools Night Race and Huntington Beach, California's Little League sixth-inning heroics combined. How far have we fallen when the hardest and most prestigious tickets are discarded in favour of the fads of the day?

And don't forget that MTV, not Fox News, is controlling how America moves thanks to a President who prefers MTV to FNC.

The Sexual Deviants At It Again. Sexual deviants have successfully replaced our military with a Department of Social Engineering, Special Rights Division, and it was reported that magazines promoting the agenda are now allowed on PX stores. Combine that with the ACLU boasting of the loss of religious freedom under the new definition of marriage in New York, and activists' goals to normalise pedophilia with an organisation attempting to eliminate all criminal codes relating to this disgusting behaviour, we are living in a dangerous era for Christians. Sexual deviants are now being rewarded, and we who live by an inerrant text of the Bible are now being persecuted.

Poor old Lacey Schwimmer! With apologies to David Hobbs, what can this past So You Think You Can Dance finalist do to catch a break? Now it turns out she will be the unfortunate woman paired with a woman who is acting inside the auspices of another form of sexual deviancy on the US version of the Strictly Come Dancing franchise. Same-sex ballroom dancing? Ugh! Cue the Zonk music!

Tougher Journalist? A ten-year old student asked tough questions than the White House Press Corps, according to a recent report on The Fox Nation. Reminds me of that old programme on the telly we must ask the White House Press Corps, “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?” You've shown you aren't, press. ◙

2011-08-29T06:48:00.002-05:00

Unlike Mitchell, I've never been that much of a baseball fan - football was always my game (and I don't even watch much of that anymore). But as I read this article, it began to become clear to me just why baseball doesen't cut it for me. Could this have something to do with it?

On Sunday, you could have flown from Los Angeles to Washington, D.C., and watched all of Gone With the Wind and quite a bit of Gandhi en route, while simultaneously undergoing -- start to finish -- an in-flight sex-change operation before landing, 4 hours and 15 minutes after takeoff, in an altogether different climate, as an altogether different gender.

Or, in the same 4 hours and 15 minutes, you could have watched the Red Sox and Yankees complete a single game of major league baseball.

You know how whenever people talk about the weather in desert climates they'll mention how it isn't the heat, it's the humidity? Maybe it's true that with baseball it isn't the time, it's the pace. But, like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives (to coin a phrase), and maybe there just aren't that many sands left to cover the infield of a baseball stadium and have anything left over? ◙

Retro TV Friday

2011-08-26T18:45:00.001-05:00

OOne of television's most endearing personalities is turning 90 today. Taking a look at some videos of Monty Hall, of things other than the franchise that he is best known for doing (and as last as last year, he even did a segment of that show).

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Today's society of misfits

2011-08-26T09:13:00.001-05:00

I am aghast with what I had seen the numerous practices adopted by modern youth who have adopted the culture of the deviants, and is excessively trendy, taken from their sports, entertainment, and other heroes they see on television every day. It has come to a point it seems every superstar in our culture (or so it seemed) has numerous body modifications, with professional basketball stars full of tattoos on their arms, and Major League Baseball even ordering players to wear long-sleeved undershirts to cover some of the most heinous body modifications, and part of the Ohio State scandal was based around discounts at a tattoo parlour. And the hairstyles worn by some figures are far worse than the haircuts you may receive at your local barber.

One teenager who just graduated from high school appeared at an event with a bizarre hairstyle that had me aghast and wondering what he was doing, and I considered was he attending college or going for a position other than an entry level position. At least two other teens were at the same event with multiple tattoos – some covering parts of the body that are usually covered by undergarmets, as an intent to expose their body and advertise something inappropriate. Adults are into this also, with many adults choosing to modify their bodies to show their love of popular culture, accomplishments, or their dates. The result is a trend in sleeveless shirts worn by men, and questionable undergarmets worn by both men and women, especially if their bodies (and in the case of questionable undergarmets, shown on things that normally would be covered by common sense people) full of tattoos in order to show their advertising. A friend from elementary school asked what is with the trend, and will they feel guilty years later?

That leads to the story that former Colts running Back Jerry Richardson, now the owner of Carolina, told his newly drafted star player no body modification (tattoos, piercings, et al) would be allowed. Good for Mr. Richardson.

Body modifications and crazy hairstyles would never be approved at a normal place of work, your local business, or even church. Many venues will not accept people with body modifications to work. Common sense has been lost. The money that people are spending for such deviant work is better off going to church, charity, the commodities, the market, healthy foods, reading books, taking arts classes, playing golf, or attending events. This sad trend has to stop with the craziness of body modification, all of which violates Leviticus 19:28, “Ye shall not make any cuttings in your flesh for the dead, nor print any marks upon you: I am the LORD.” ◙

Classic Sports Thursday

2011-08-25T21:09:00.001-05:00

Bristol, Baby!"

Anyone in motorsport will assure you that a NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Bristol (TN) Motor Speedway is regarded as the toughest ticket in motorsport, even if the recession has stripped it of its sellout status with 160,000 spectators.

One of the most famous feuds in the 1990's at the famous speedplant was the Terry Labonte - Dale Earnhardt battles in 1995 and 1999, with the score ending as a 1-1 battle between the Childress and Hendrick driver. ◙

The first Feud - 1995

Rattle the Cage - 1999

The bad business of business

2011-08-24T19:24:00.003-05:00

Is owning a sports franchise bad business? Should it be? That's the provocative question the always-provocative Malcolm Gladwell asks. Of course, I've always thought any sports franchise owner who expects to make a profit - who things, in fact, that a profit should be guaranteed - is not only insane, but is probably doing pretty well feeding at the public trough.

As a side thought, I was listening to someone talking to Jason Lewis about the scam that is higher education today, and how the whole college thing has been perverted into being something that people have to have just to get the most menial work. Fact is, not everyone ought to go to college, and there should be plenty of jobs that don't require a college degree. And this links to my first paragraph how? Well, substitute "life" for "owning a sports franchise" and you get your answer.

Life can't be measured purely in terms of profit and loss. Sometimes there are things in life - such as the old-fashioned liberal arts degree - that only give you what Gladwell called the "psychic" gain. In other words, they don't necessarily make you richer, but they do help make you more well-rounded. And that's a different kind of wealth altogether. ◙

Charity begins - with the government?

2011-08-18T06:36:00.000-05:00

Penn Gillette – the “Penn” half of the comedy/magic team Penn & Teller – is an endlessly interesting man. Now, this doesn’t mean that I always, or even usually, agree with him. I seldom agree with anyone that often, including myself. It does, however, mean that within the contents of any given comments of his, there are bound to be words of interest, ideas that bear exploration, repetition, even agreement. And so when he wrote about his recent appearance with Piers Morgan on CNN (catch Piers soon, by the way, before the British phone hacking scandal claims him), there was stuff that was good and stuff that wasn’t so good.

His atheism, for example, has never appealed to me. (I recall once reading about how he and his partner Teller were so adamant on this point that they even removed the Gideon Bibles from the hotel rooms in which they stayed.) I think he’s dead wrong about faith – requiring certainty about anything, including religion, is a formula for paralysis, in my opinion – but at least I understand where he’s coming from more than I did before. And just because I disagree – strongly – with it doesn’t mean that I can’t at least comprehend it. (I think he’s an outstanding candidate for prayer, by the way. The appearance of a divine intervention in his life might be difficult for him to explain away, which in turn might force him to acknowledge it as something worthy of further consideration.)

And just because I disagree with him on some things doesn’t mean that I can’t agree with him on others. He says that his thoughts on politics flow from the same insistence on certainty as do his thoughts on religion; but his demand for certainty, which fails him in the sacred, serves him much better with regard to the secular. Take, for example, his thoughts on government programs:

It's amazing to me how many people think that voting to have the government give
poor people money is compassion. Helping poor and suffering people is compassion. Voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral self-righteous bullying laziness.

People need to be fed, medicated, educated, clothed, and sheltered, and if we're compassionate we'll help them, but you get no moral credit for forcing other people to do what you think is right. There is great joy in helping people, but no joy in doing it at gunpoint.

Oddly enough, he might find himself in agreement with the great Catholic humanitarian Dorothy Day, who felt that government welfare programs tended to abrogate the individual’s moral responsibility to provide charity themselves. When you can have the government do your charitable work for you, why bother to get your own hands dirty?

Needless to say, there are many liberals, dedicated to taking your tax money from you to do good, who also contribute their own personal time, talent and money. I’m not saying that all they do is steal from the rich and give to the poor from the comfort of their own homes. But Penn’s comment that “There is great joy in helping people, but no joy in doing it at gunpoint” is a profound one. Make no mistake, he says – “When they come to get you for not paying your taxes, try not going to court. Guns will be drawn. Government is force -- literally, not figuratively.” Which leads to this conclusion:

I don't believe the majority always knows what's best for everyone. The fact that the majority thinks they have a way to get something good does not give them the right to use force on the minority that don't want to pay for it. If you have to use a gun, I don't believe you really know jack. Democracy without respect for individual rights sucks. It's just ganging up against the weird kid, and I'm always the weird kid.

There’s a great deal of truth in that statement. It’s classic libertarianism, and while that’s another –ism that I don’t completely agree with, there’s no doubt that it’s a vital and necessary part of contemporary conservative thought.

And proof, once again, that food for thought can come from surprising places.

(By the way, in the midst of this heavy discussion don’t overlook the hilarious story he tells about a Nobel-winning physicist, a community college teacher, and a talk show host. And no, they don’t walk into a bar together.) ◙

Opera Wednesday

2011-08-17T06:50:00.002-05:00

Moses as Bin Laden? Unbelievable but true, in Graham Vick's potentially vomit-inducing (I say that because I have to be fair, having not seen it personally) interpretation of Rossini's Moses in Egypt. Opera Chic has the lowdown here, with additional posts at her site. Here's what Vick has to say about Moses:

"It's true, he resembles Bin Laden -- on the contrary, he's an archetype. Moses summarizes in himself all of the fundamentalists. Let's not forget that every terrorist is also a freedom fighter in the eyes of someone else. And besides, Rossini presents him as always angry and threatening. His war against the Egyptians resembles very much a 'holy war' on which to speculate actual jihad. While rereading the works of Rossini, I felt the need to take into consideration how much had befallen the Middle East in the last ten years."

Doesn't quite sound like Charlton Heston, does it? ◙

Stories of the week

2011-08-16T20:05:00.000-05:00

Katie Kieffer takes a shot at the government's fuel economy standards, which are industry-killing ideas to force us into the tiny city cars liberals envision us to be riding as to force as many people into the big cities, where ultra-urban areas are the home of liberalism's biggest pockets.

Seeing too many tiny cars and jacked-up sedans masquerading the jobs of big trucks is senseless.

Colleges are now telling students to attend the Life Enhancement Centres that endorse sexual deviancy, a "proud" goal of colleges trying to tell kids to be indoctrinated into the values of Humanism. Mike Adams finds some disturbing details at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

Max Hastings in the UK discusses the London riots, and how "progressive" leftist teachings over generations has led to youth who refuse to have standards.

Tony Sewell believes, as many of us do, the gangster culture, as shown on MTV, is a dangerous poison.

Both kids and adults are extremely guilty in church (of all places) of wearing tee-shirts and jeans, shorts, or anything very unprofessional and rag-tag to church today. When these Life Enhancement Centres even have ragged dress of the band, and ministers follow along, we are truly troubled. Thomas Langford, however, thinks the societal changes of women in the workforce ended the era of the fancy dresses.

Part of the Problem with American Society today? Even the Girl Scouts are betraying values in favour of the latest fads among liberalism. When the Boy Scouts of America is now helping American Heritage Girls, it's clear the new organisation is on the way up. ◙

Classic Sports Thursday

2011-08-11T10:31:00.002-05:00

Sunday's INDYCAR race at New Hampshire Motor Speedway is the first IZOD IndyCar Series race since 1998 at the 1.058 mile speedway, and the first with Bruton Smith, who has INDYCAR races at Texas and Sonoma, in control.

Here was the last INDYCAR race from 1998, and note who is calling the race -- the man regarded as America's premier motorsport voice. (Courtesy INDYCAR.) ◙

This Just In

2011-08-11T06:15:00.000-05:00

News item: Tiger Woods dropped by sponsor Tag Heuer. But don't worry too much.

Of Requiem, hatred of industry, and corruption in Washington

2011-08-10T06:35:00.001-05:00

Packing It In! We packed the house literally during the first (Sunday) performance of Mozart's Requiem, and for the first time in my singing career I saw a full house (and more, as it was standing room only) for a concert. Big thanks to Susan Kelly, student conductor, Sarah Rich (soprano), Beth Mears (alto), David (tenor) and Lillian (conductor) Quackenbush, David Stephenson (bass), and Frances Webb (Steinway). Big thank-you to the team here guys. Enjoyed it and cannot wait to sing again!

Sarah, beautiful voice and be praying for you – there's a baby on the way for Sarah and her husband, as I had the opportunity to visit with him during dress rehearsals.

Dies iræ! Dies illa. Solvet sæclum in favilla: Teste David cum Sibylla!

Can You Watch What You Wear? Some singers seemingly forgot how to dress for concert. Our bulletin stated “concert dress” for women and men have to wear a white dress shirt, black slacks, and a tie (it's over 90 degrees outside in South Carolina, but I wore my jacket during pre-concert warmup). Two types of female choral dress violations were detected during the concert – sleeveless blouse was one, and the other was the little black dress and no stockings, but most of the women knew the right hem length (¾th or longer; many of the younger singers chose to wear black slacks, a popular trend in orchestra women, since black stockings are typically not required when the trouser option is chosen). Some men chose short-sleeve dress shirts (something I wasn't taught was permitted), and the big no-no was one singer did not wear a tie. What has happened to proper dress anymore anywhere? Most know the rule, but a this is a societal problem today.

The Downgrade and The Crash. Does it sound suspicious the debt limit issue and the downgrade of the debt of the leadership of the country refuse to see the problem lies within the eighty-year downgrade that President Roosevelt ran us through with John Maynard Keynes' philosophy, which is the problem we have had for the years? The excessive sellout to Keynesian economics, which is built on massive government spending, is the root cause of the problem with our economic system.

And a Hatred of Industry. So Obama has now imposed a 54 MPG standard for cars, effectively striking the auto industry to the same tiny cars in Europe, and electric cars, and he is now imposing new energy standards on trucks, buses, and industrial vehicles, which makes it clear he reminds me of the Taliban in that he hates industry and would love us to return to the Stone Age. Is this the country we want where industry is banned while we worship Gaia? We may see electric vehicles for industrial duty do the same things our current petrol and diesel cars use because of an arrogant anti-industry leadership. ◙

(Not) tickled pink

2011-08-09T06:25:00.000-05:00

As Mitchell mentioned yesterday, he's left The Three Stooges (Bobby, Steve and yours truly) in charge while he takes some well-deserved time off. Have a good time, chief, and come back refreshed!

A week or so ago I saw the following story over at Uni Watch, the go-to blog for sports fans obsessed with the aesthetic angle. The money line: "The Harvard Business Review has found that using the color pink in breast cancer awareness campaigns is actually counterproductive."

Hah!

I always have suspected that the pink movement, started by the infamous Susan G. Komen outfit, was more about "Hey, look at me and how much I care!" than anything else. Now, before anyone objects, I'm sure that there are hundreds of thousands of well-meaning women and men out there who wear the pink with an abundance of sincerity. And yet, how much good does it really do? As much good as those red AIDS ribbons, or yellow or any other color ribbon that seems to pop up these days. We have become a nation of ribbons, it seems.

(And by the way, just so you don't think I'm picking only on liberals - I never could understand those red, white and blue ribbons that people wore after 9/11. We have a perfectly good symbol for that already - it's called The Flag.)

Anyway, according to this study we now see that the pink phenomenon doesn't even do much good as a symbol of awareness: "[T]hose who saw a pink ad about breast cancer were significantly less likely to say that they’d contract the disease than those who saw an ad with neutral colors." And "[w]hen the site was geared to women, 33% of women recalled the ads. When it was gender-neutral, 65% remembered."

This is so endemic of our Oprahfied culture - when emotion is the most important thing, when we asuage our guilt feelings with symbolic acts, along with that faintly smug air of superiority that hints that "We're better than you."

So maybe the pink campaign doesn't really raise breast cancer awareness. Maybe it doesn't really encourage women to check for cancer. But really, it's all about looking good, right? Because when it all comes down to it, the important thing is to let people know we care. ◙

Summer winds

2011-08-08T19:51:00.000-05:00

I know I haven't had much to say the last few weeks, and the loyal readers we do have deserve better than that. So I'm going to formalize my inactivity, and take a little vacation for the rest of the month.

Depending on what captures my eye, I may pop in from time to time. What significant writing I do manage will probably be over at It's About TV! But for the most part, I leave you in the most capable hands of Drew, Bobby and Steve, who will carry you the rest of the way until just after Labor Day. ◙

Classic Sports Thursday

2011-08-04T06:51:00.000-05:00

Today is August 4, and an Indianapolis Motor Speedway legend turns 40 today, despite just falling short of reaching an upper level at the Brickyard of all-time race winners because someone else was smarter on strategy than he was a few days ago. Let's celebrate the career of this now 40-year old legend of the Brickyard with a blast from his past.

A fifteen-year old kid runs rampant during a summer meet for sprint car racing in Australia (remember the seasons flip, so this is December or January).

A Formula Vee test in Clermont's Lucas Oil Raceway, once the home of USAC Championship racing, but the track is now used for club racing along with the signature “Big Go”.

ESPN's Thunder interview.

And someone from the first 400 at Indy shot home video of the first finish.

Happy 40th Birthday today to Jeffrey Michael Gordon. ◙