A Blog for the People...
Try, Try Again.
Amen to good advice,
good people, and good thinking.
Keep close those who love you,
and keep their advice in mind as you advance in life.
Sometimes, the Will is just as important as the Way...
to Those Who Trust in His Ways.
We the daughters and sons of Him,Thanksgiving in August!~
who built the valleys and plains...
Praise the wonders our God has done,
in every heart that sings.
In His wisdom He strengthens us,
like gold that's tested in fire.
Though the power of sin prevails,
our God is there to save...
Glory and praise to our God,
who alone gives light to our days.
Many are the blessings He bears...
to those who trust in His ways.
Every moment of every day,
our God is waiting to save.
Always ready to seek the lost,
to answer those who pray...
"Look, Ma, No Hands!"
American workers understand:
When the call goes out for All Hands on Deck (or, "Everybody In"), there is precious little time to spare for measuring...
Pass the word.
It's not the hidden emails...
it's what was being hidden in the hidden emails that is of importance to the American public.
We deserve to know.
(and the more the Washington media tells us Mr. Trump is a bad, bad man... the more we want to know what they too might be covering up.)
You gotta report something of substance sometime soon, surely, no?
(Cutesy doesn't last forever.)
American men won't be "boys"...
---------------
My impressions of the Games?
American athletes are either young girls prancing and posing, very athletically, or old boys playing at the amateur levels while being compensated at verrry professional rates.
Why do we do that in America?
Why not let our athletes age and grow up? Sure, Michael Phelps is an amazing swimmer. He's a professional. What other job has he held?
Personally, I think it is sad to think of all the time the man has spent, underwater, going back and forth and back and forth, in a pool... That's child's play.
Sure, it worked for him, as a career. But what comes next? What of the others -- the lost boys? Why don't we let these young men grow up, become fully immersed in the adult world, and compete as grown-ups once their amateur swimming days are over?
They would be healthier overall, no matter their physical conditioning. Goodbye too, to all the tats, the boyish haircuts, and all the other distinguishing factors that kept so many American males competing as boys well into their 20s and 30s, not as men.
Let's see if police and journalists can get to the bottom of this matter, figuring out the truth of what really happened:
“This incident has caused so much damage to Rio’s brand abroad that I think Brazilians deserve a clear, consistent account of what happened,” said Brian Winter, vice president for policy at Americas Society and Council of the Americas.
The entire episode, Winter said, “has tapped into one of Brazilians’ biggest pet peeves — gringos who treat their country like a third-rate spring break destination where you can lie to the cops and get away with it.”
When you think of all the things you want, but don't have...
Don't forget to count all the things you don't want that you don't have...
#HealthyBodiesHealthyMinds
#IndependentLife
#SelfReliance
#RoamFree
"Please, Sir, I want some more..."
RIP John McLaughlin.
During the December 26, 2014, year-end awards episode of The McLaughlin Group, JohnMcLaughlin ended the show saying:His show was legend.
"Person of the year: Pope Francis, especially now that he's told that animals can go to heaven. And Oliver is up there waiting for me."Oliver Productions, Inc., is named after McLaughlin's pet dog — a basset — and is seen in an animation as part of the brand logo shown at the close of each show. Oliver shared their Watergate apartment during McLaughlin's tenure as speechwriter for President Nixon.
In a 1992 profile in The Times, Mr. McLaughlin defended his style. “Does this depreciate journalism?” he asked. “Not one damned bit. Journalists can get very pompous, especially in the formalized days of ‘Meet the Press,’ when they took themselves so damned seriously. This show demythologizes the press, and I think people like that.”
Crazy TrainImagine if we could devote as much attention and resources to ... retaking some of the combat zones in the inner cities of our own country, before we go picking more fights in lands far, far away?
Crazy... but that's how it goes.
Millions of people living as foes.
Maybe? It's not too late....
To learn how to love, and forget how to hate...
Mental wounds not healing...
Life's a bitter shame...
I'm goin' off the rails on a crazy train.
I'm goin' off the rails on a crazy train.
I've listened to preachers;
I've listened to fools;
I've watched all the dropouts who make their own rules.
One person conditioned to rule and control.
The media sells it and you live the role.
Mental wounds still screaming
Driving me insane
I'm goin' off the rails on a crazy train.
I'm goin' off the rails on a crazy train.
I know that things are going wrong for me
You gotta listen to my words, yeah, yeah
Heirs of a Cold War,
That's what we've become
Inheriting troubles,
We're mentally numb.
Crazy, I just cannot bear.
I'm living with something that just isn't fair...
Mental wounds not healing.
Who and what's to blame?
I'm goin' off the rails on a crazy train
I'm goin' off the rails on a crazy train
We're going off the rails on a Crazy Train!
~ Ozzy, of course.
You'll Loooove Hillary Clinton!
Establishment,
establishment,
establishment...
(Entitlement,
entitlement,
entitlement...)
Are the millennial Bernie voters young enough, and dumb enough, to fall for the false promises of the Clinton campaign?
Time will tell...
(I'm betting not. They might be young and green about the workings of the world, but surely they are not that stupid still...)
By the time I went to high school, in the ’50s, track and field was as popular among my friends as baseball was among kids my age in Brooklyn. My heroes were the runners who had triumphed at Helsinki. Noel A. White, one of our country’s most revered coaches, joined Foster to coach my high school to Champs victory in 1957. White was also my homeroom and history teacher, and he coached me after school, free of charge, to the top of my graduating class and a university scholarship.
But the institution is only part of the answer. These efforts succeeded because of an abundance of very healthy children and young people — the result not of Jamaica’s mountainous terrain, as some have claimed, but of the extraordinary success of a public health campaign partly spearheaded in the 1920s by specialists from the Rockefeller Foundation.
The program began in the small town of May Pen, where I later grew up. It emphasized hygiene, clean water and fecal and mosquito control. The old mantras “healthy bodies, healthy minds” and “cleanliness is next to godliness” took hold in our communities and primary schools, whose teachers were recruited in the public health campaign. Running, as the cheapest sport, was the natural beneficiary of this movement. As a child, Usain Bolt received his initial training at a remote, poorly equipped rural grade school.
The result was what the historical demographer James Riley calls the Jamaican paradox: one of the rare instances of a poor country with the life expectancy of an advanced society, a health transition that began in the 1920s and improved at one of the fastest paces on record, from 36 years at birth in 1920 to 70 by 1977. It’s no accident that the oldest individual medalist in Olympic track history is a Jamaican woman, Merlene Ottey, who was still sprinting in international meets at age 52.
Yet another factor is Jamaicans’ combative individualism, the dark side of which is the country’s chronic violence. Its bright side, though, is extreme self-reliance — which, along with effective health policy, is Riley’s main explanation for the life-expectancy paradox. But it also dovetails nicely with running, in which performance is entirely up to the athlete.
Jamaican track is a far cry from the British ethic of winning with grace. One Olympic medalist and alumnus of one of the dominant schools at Champs was quoted by the writer Richard Moore as telling young athletes:
“One thing we go out there for, and that’s to win. To win. To win. To win. To win. To dominate. To crush them!”The world got a taste of Jamaica’s cutthroat track culture in Beijing, where Bolt, on the verge of winning the 100 meters in record time, slowed down, thumped his chest and spread his arms in a taunting, triumphant gesture. “We are a confident people,” he later told the BBC.
...
The remarkable success of Jamaicans in building the institutions of a globally dominant sports enterprise and a complementary system of public health is a positive story, but it raises another question: Why have they failed so badly in developing a successful economy?
The answer is complex and incomplete. But it might lie in a deeper truth about the island. Political and economic successes are often top-down, relying on leadership that adapts and manages appropriate institutions that also benefit the non-elite. But things like health reform and sports success — and the reggae industry, for that matter — are largely bottom-up. Jamaica is yet to acquire the leadership for national development it deserves. But it has no lack of talent, energy and self-reliance — qualities as evident in health statistics as they are on the track.
Prescription or not?
By Garrison Keillor August 9 at 3:33 PMI really think he needs to overcome his fear of Lyme's, and go for a nice solitary walk in the woods already.
Garrison Keillor is an author and radio personality.
Summer weather leads toward cranial relaxation and you know it and I know it. You walk out your front door into the heat and an 800-pound anvil falls out of the oak tree on your head and flattens you like a pancake. It’s the anvil you bought because it cost $150, which is a good deal for an anvil that size.
You put the anvil up in the tree because you didn’t want your wife to know. You already had two anvils, and it’d be hard to explain why a man requires three. And you walk under the tree and see the chain hanging down and you’re like “What’s this?” and you yank on it and your last thought on this earth is “Oh, for dumb.”
This is what 90 degrees can lead to. You go to the bus stop and a man in a yellow plaid sport coat sells you a house in Mexico for $6,000. A stucco house with a red tile roof: He shows you a picture. He swipes your credit card on his iPad and you board the bus and realize there’s no address on the deed. And it’s dated Aug. 10, 2106. And the taxidermy business he sold you along with the house, turning deceased pets into bronzed statues, how is that going to work if you can’t find the house?
And so a large contingent of people who sat way in back in high school history class and now need to blame foreigners for their lack of progress in the world have nominated a bloated megalomaniac for president, running on a platform of contempt and fantasy. It seems to make them happy, judging from the crowds who attend the gentleman’s performances.
Down With Individualism
By Garrison Keillor August 3
Garrison Keillor is an author and radio personality.
August already and I’ve so far avoided Lyme disease by staying indoors with the windows shut, and if I need to go someplace, I take the car. And I never offer rides to deer. Headaches, fatigue, painful joints, diarrhea, nausea, facial paralysis: It’s not worth it. If you need wilderness, Ansel Adams took pictures of it. And you won’t wake up the next morning feeling like you’re 87 years old. Unless, of course, you happen to be 87.
Just because it’s summer doesn’t mean we should be sitting beside a pond writing profound thoughts in a journal, like Thoreau. One of his profound thoughts was “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.” And right there you have the campaign motto of the Republican nominee. He dreamed of being saluted by uniformed personnel other than doormen and chauffeurs, and now he’s advancing confidently in that direction.
...
A great many menopausal white men like myself have a problem dealing with smart, ambitious women. They like waitresses. Waitresses know this. They know not to make old men feel stupid, especially the ones who are. That’s the side the bread is buttered on.
Sen. Lindsey Graham said, “There’ll come a time when the love of country will trump hatred of Hillary.” We shall soon see if that time has come. Meanwhile, no matter what happens, I do not have Lyme disease. I intend to never have Lyme disease. It is preventable if we just follow a few simple rules. See Paragraph 1.
Bad news for the Clinton campaign if this newfound respect for rules and honest competition carries over from Olympic playing fields to ongoing political campaigns:
Where once there was polite, if sometimes awkward, silence, there is now direct confrontation. Much of it is along old political fault lines from the Cold War as, coincidentally or not, athletes from the West go after once-barred athletes from Russia and China.
“Antidoping is all about trust: trusting your competitors, trusting the drug testers, trusting the sports admin types,” said Richard Ings, a former antidoping official from Australia.
“What I believe you are witnessing is evaporated trust. Remember, nearly 100 positives have now been found at the Beijing and London Games. Sochi was corrupted. Russia had state-sponsored doping, and the International Olympic Committee caved in, unlike the International Paralympic Committee.”
...
The friction has been most pronounced at the swimming competition, where Yulia Efimova of Russia and Sun Yang of China, who have served suspensions for doping, have been vilified by rivals.
Whether it is antidoping activism by athletes who do not trust the Olympic committee or vigilantism, the denouncements have created plenty of awkwardness, overshadowing some of the athletic performances.
...
“They don’t belong in a sport,” Camille Lacourt, a star French swimmer, said Monday night in comments reported by the French newspaper L’Équipe.
“They should make up their federation of dopers and have fun among themselves. It disgusts me to see people who’ve cheated standing on podiums. Sun Yang, in the 200 free, he pees purple.”
...
“I’m just happy I’m here and racing,” said Efimova, who looked miserable. She appealed to people “to try to understand me,” but (her competitor Lilly) King, who sat stone-faced through Efimova’s answers, did not appear moved.
At one point, Efimova switched from English to Russian. The moderator nudged a pair of headphones toward King and told her she could use them to listen to the English translation. King declined...
What is striking is that the antidoping chorus in Rio has consisted of newcomers and veterans alike...
“I think what you’re seeing is the desire of Olympic athletes to uphold the values of the Olympic Games without exception,” said Adam Nelson, an American shot-putter and athlete-rights activist.
Nelson was named the winner of the 2004 Olympic shot-put competition eight years after it was contested when the original champion, Yuriy Bilonog of Ukraine, retroactively tested positive for a banned substance.
“These athletes know, when an athlete cheats, he or she will experience a residual physical benefit for many years,” Nelson added. “But there’s also a residual sentiment that negatively impacts the sport moving forward.
"The clouds of suspicion that linger over doped athletes who return to competition continue to take a toll on the value of the clean athlete.”
"Again and again, we discovered members of Journolist working to coordinate talking points on behalf of Democratic politicians, principally Barack Obama. That is not journalism, and those who engage in it are not journalists. They should stop pretending to be. The news organizations they work for should stop pretending, too. ... I've been in journalism my entire adult life, and have often defended it against fellow conservatives who claim the news business is fundamentally corrupt. It's harder to make that defense now. It will be easier when honest (and, yes, liberal) journalists denounce what happened on Journolist was wrong."To paraphrase Ronald Reagan: Don't look now, but... there they go again! Personally, I think their persuasion skills have gone soft though; they're better at convincing each other than they are the American people of their spin/propaganda.
Listen to the rivers and the lakes that you're used to...
Make it a great weekend out there, folks!
Let It Be*...
The attacks are the first time that the United States has flown armed drone missions from Jordan, a staunch ally in the fight against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. The Pentagon also conducts drone flights from a base in Sicily, but those missions are restricted to surveillance. A spokeswoman for the Jordanian Embassy in Washington declined to comment.Mercenary Force / Soldiers of Fortune
Under the procedures set up for the Surt operation, Libyan ground commanders meet at a Libyan operations center outside Surt with American Special Operations forces who have been in the country for months. The Libyan commanders request targets they want the Americans to hit, such as the T-72 tanks.
The American forces, working with military spotters and officials at the United States Africa Command in Stuttgart, Germany, analyze the prospective targets using imagery from American surveillance drones and other intelligence. If deemed valid and not too great a risk to civilians, the targets are approved for attack.Next time we'll get it right?
The president, during his news conference Tuesday with the visiting prime minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong, expressed regret that the 2011 NATO-led bombing campaign that had driven Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi from power in Libya had also led to the deterioration of the country.After America helps bomb the hell out of yet another country, who will care for the displaced people?
“I think that all of us collectively were not sufficiently attentive to what had to happen the day after and the day after and the day after, that in order to ensure that there were strong structures in place to assure basic security and peace inside of Libya,” Mr. Obama said.
The United States of America continues its undeclared war on Libya, on the African continent...
Meanwhile, the U.S. press continues its coverage of Gold Star mother, made to publicly cry about her military son's death, to further Hillary Clinton's campaign...
There is no end to these wars. Just more losing, losers and tears to come...
#LifeMatters
#UnconstitutionalWars
#LockHerUpBeforeSheDoesMoreDamage...
The media has snatched the meme being presented in Democratic circles that Donald J. Trump has insulted a Muslim family for responding to their insults and allegations against him.
Don't you believe it...
Mr. and Mrs. Khan (he being the spokesman for the both of them) lost a son. A captain. 12 years ago.
While we all feel their pain, not every American agrees that their son was a hero, or that their family has somehow "sacrificed" more than the rest of us, enough so that the man can continually lecture us in his broken English. (He needs to learn to use personal articles like "a" and "the" before he tells Americans that we have "black souls" and his family has somehow sacrificed more than the rest of us because of his dead son. America does not work that way, sir. Shame on you for not knowing better.)
Sir? Your wife is A gold-star mother. Not just "gold-star mother". Do you know how many fathers and mothers have lost children to the Democrat's continuation of George W. Bush's war? You, and your wife -- let's not forget her, in her non-speaking role -- are in good company. Plenty of dead children, and adult children even, to go around...
Instead of sacrificing to send your son to college and build a thoughtful career in a peacetime nation, he made a different decision and joined the U.S. military. Voluntarily. He lived by the gun, he died by the gun. He was a big boy, he chose his path, and I think he would not want to be called out as a "hero" for political purposes on a festive "ain't life good?" convention stage, when others whose families also made the ultimate sacrifice are not selling out their sons' memories for political gain.
Sample comment: "It’s nice that Captain Khan served his country, but I don’t need lessons in the Constitution from Pakistani Muslim immigrants, or advice on voting."
Captain Khan was a victim, not a national hero.
He died -- not fighting terrorists in Saudi Arabia -- but in overthrowing another country's government. Some hero.
Many many men have raised engineers, nurses, attorneys, teachers, mechanics, garbage men, welders, electricians, skilled laborers even. You raised a soldier. He was committed to his cause, and it cost him his life.
The Khan family was conned into "sacrificing" for a war America should never have fought. I understand, at this late date, they want his life to mean something.
So, the family is letting their son be used again. In death, and in life. God bless all the other Gold-Star families who have a better understanding of the gravity and sacrifices that come with voluntary military service, who are letting their own dead warriors rest in peace.
Perhaps Mr. Khan should read the Constitution before he goes offering himself up as someone who is better than the rest of us, somehow more American, because his son lost his life for a hopeless cause -- creating democracy by gunpoint, to be imposed by a foreign power.
Mission Fail.
ADDE: Turns out, Mr. Khan is not just an emotionally outspoken father, still grieving the death of his soldier son 12 years after the fact. He is selling his son's memory for political profit. Turns out, Mr. Khan is more American than he lets on... heh.
August 1, 2016
Who is Khizr Khan, the father of a fallen US solder?
By Clarice Feldman
Khizr Khan is the father of a U.S. soldier who died in Iraq who spoke poignantly of the loss of his son and then used that platform to attack Donald Trump. On Sunday he tweeted further disparaging remarks about Melania.
Google shows this for his law practice:
His NYC address is here (but the phone number is in DC)
Khan, Khizr M. CFC
Law Offices of KM Khan
415 Madison Avenue
15th Floor
New York, NY 10017
Phones: 202.279.0806
Fax: 646-673-8401
Contact Us
I was surprised that a NY law office would list a D.C. telephone number, so I called it to check and was told by the man who answered it was not Khazir Khan's law office, but the man who answered would not tell me who it was.
So I did more digging and learned that is also the phone number of a group called American Muslims Vote, which says its mission is to:
To create an enlightened community by providing and developing Patriotic American Muslim leadership and
Encouraging American Muslims to participate in the democratic process at local, state and national level and vote on the election day.
I did some further research into who registered this domain name and when? Khizr Khan registered it on July 23, 2016.
He's looking increasingly like a plant to me -- a Muslim Cindy Sheehan playing on people's sympathies to foster a Democratic Party political agenda. And of course, in that goal he has the full throated support of the American media...
"Nothing you can do that can't be done. Nothing you can write that can't be run..."
