GONE BUT NOT FORGOTTEN

I always thought they looked a little alike: Walter Cronkite and Arthur Fiedler.

But I trusted Arthur Fiedler's music a lot more than I trusted Walter Cronkite's news.

Yeah...I know that's heresy.

Walter was supposed to be some kind of "daddy" figure to Americans.

I didn't see him that way.

When Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. came to St. Augustine for one of his peaceful marches and sit-ins at the local restaurants, I joined with him, believing in what he was doing and his methods of doing it.

That day, Dr. King was arrested.

That night on the CBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite, they carried the story of the sit-down and the arrest.

But the pictures they showed of Dr. King's arrest were of him being arrested in another city, yet CBS failed to make that clear.

Since I was present at his arrest, I knew immediately that the pictures on TV did not match the story they were telling.

For the first time in my life I began to realize that not everything you hear or SEE on TV news is real. I learned that it can be fixed, altered, or just plain used to lie.

As I began to pay closer attention, I became more and more convinced that very little of TV news is objective or even true.

For instance, when there is an event held by liberals that is sparsely attended, but the MSM wants you to think lots of people were there, they simply draw in close on the "crowd," proclaim that many people attended and leave your imagination to fill in the rest of the picture.

On the other hand, when there is a conservative event at which there may be thousands, MSM will find a pocket of people that are somewhat spread apart and declare, "Not as many people as expected turned up."

You, then, accept that as truth, not necessarily because you are evil, but because the power of suggestion, particularly suggestion that suggests something that SEEMS corroborated by the pictures, is very strong, indeed.

This happens on every national newscast every evening, usually without your awareness.

Now, both Walter Cronkite and Arthur Fiedler are no longer with us.

I really miss one of them.

IMAGINARY CONFIRMATION

The following is an interrigation of a potential candidate for one of the most important jobs in the universe.

Would you hire this person?

Questioner: You said in a speech that certain ethnic groups of a certain gender would make better decisions than their counterparts who are in the majority ethnic group and who are more often in high positions. Do you stand by that statement?

Candidate: Well, I didn't mean to imply that certain ethnic groups of a certain gender would make better decisions than their counterparts in the majority ethnic group and who are more often in high positions. What I meant was that hard decisions need to be made and that they should be made and made correctly.

Questioner: But what I am trying to get at is whether you really believed what you said in the heretofore mentioned speech.

Candidate: There are times when a speeches' main purpose is to inspire people who aspire to be a part of this profession without preventing them from knowing that hard decisions need to be made and that they should be made and made correctly.

Questioner: Does that mean that you did mean what you said in that speech or that you didn't mean what you said in that speech?

Candidate: Yes

Questioner: Thank you. I appreciate your professionalism and know that you have come a long way from humble beginnings. Can you tell us what you think about people being able to prevent those whose purpose it is to inflict bodily harm upon them from doing so with a powerful apperatus?

Candidate: That is bound to be a decision I will have to make someday, so it would be inappropriate for me to pass judgement on it in the context of this interrogatory.

Questioner: I see. Thank you for your integrity. Let's talk in the hypothetical. Suppose one of those afore mentioned perpertrators accosted your own personal abode or the relatives residing with you therein. Would you then feel justified in using said powerful apperatus to prevent such accostation?

Candidate: In the past people who have acheived prominence in this vocation have faced this very hypothetical and have indicated their opinions on same.

Questioner: I see. Well, how do you understand the issue?

Candidate: My understanding harkens back to the humility of my roots and my ancestrial heritage as it relates to the grandure of the position for which I am being considered.

Questioner: Can it be said, then, that you mean what you say, or that you say that which is bound to be interpreted as evasive and/or a necessary refusal to project a particular stance?

Candidate: Yes.

Questioner: Thank you Madame Candidate. Your forthrightness in asuaging the fears of those present in this interrogation is exceeded only by your ability to side-step the issues and bury your responses in verbage that contradicts the veracity of events both in your past and in your future.

Now I ask you: do you think that candidate would make a good employee in your business?

Then what makes you think she would make a good employee in this most important of positions in the universe?

SMART AS A CLUMP OF SEAWEED

I wish I had thought of it!

Some years ago, a divorce, job loss and medical bills ran me into personal bankruptcy.

(Now before you libs go all postal on me, I am still paying back all of the debts I incurred...just not as quickly as my creditors would have liked.)

Had I known then what I have learned today, I would have taken what little I had left in my savings account and SPENT it! It would have kept me out of bankruptcy!

That's the advice we have gotten from our venerable Vice President, Joe Biden.

Said Joe: “Now, people when I say that look at me and say, ‘What are you talking about, Joe? You’re telling me we have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt?’” Biden said. “The answer is yes, that's what I’m telling you.”

Oh how I wish I had known that!

I could have saved seven years of scrimping. I could have prevented all of those collection calls.

(Aside: One collector suggested that I take out a loan to pay of my debt that day. I responded, "What a great idea! Will you loan me the money?" She said, "I'm not going to lend you anything." I answered, "Well, neither will the bank. So, let's just go with what the court said to do.")

One of my outstanding business bills is going to take me at least 10 more years to finish paying off.

Jokes on them.

I probably won't live 10 more years.

But I digress.

How on earth did you libs ever fall for Joe Biden.

He is a professional buffoon.

Do you think he realizes how buffoonish he is?

Does it embarrass him, do you think?

He seems to have the IQ of a radish.

Actually, I shouldn't insult radishes.

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ADDENDUM - Read A Very Important Letter to President BO: An Email From Us All

JUST ONE MORE-THEN I'LL LEAVE IT ALONE

I actually watched a good portion of the confirmation hearings with Sonya Sotomayer.

As I read the MSM, she was cool, refreshing, precise, warm, fuzzy, and lovable.

They were watching a different hearing than I was.

To me, Sotomayor answered the Nerf-ball questions from the Democrats with practiced ease...that is, I believe she knew what the questions would be and had a scripted answer prepared.

When the Republicans asked her questions about her speeches, her rulings and her history she answered with long...long pauses and strings of words that had no subjects or predicates and said virtually nothing.

When pressed on an issue, she looked vexed, stern, and almost angry that her first evasive answer didn't satisfy the questioner.

My wife and I kept looking at each other and saying things like, "Did she just switch her answer to one that would fit a question she wanted to answer instead of the one actually asked?"

"Did she just give a non-answer?" was another question we asked each other.

"Wait! Wait! She just couched the Party line in words that were designed to misdirect the questioner's thinking!"

When Sotomayor was being questioned by a Democrat, she tended to smile at the end of each question and after her answer.

When she was questioned by a Republican, her expression was grim, and the smile she gave at the end of her answer seemed sardonic...not the same smile she gave the Democrats.

Her note pad scribblings were fast and furious when Republicans were doing the asking. They were much more relaxed when Democrats posed the questions.

If you watched her hands, arms and body positions, you noticed that she tended to really lean into the table and her head jutted forward when Republicans were her questioners, but she tended to move slightly back from the table and sat up much straighter when asked the soft-ball Democrat questions.

As I watched her responses to Jon Kyl this morning, she continued the same body language.

She refused to admit that the Supreme court had ruled...all nine of them agreeing on the issue...that at least one of her rulings was inappropriate on its face, but tried to persuade Kyl that the Supreme Court did not say what they actually said.

In my professional opinion, Sonya Sotomayer engaged in a great deal of side-stepping, covering over, denying her past, and outright lying about her positions on such things as abortion, gun control and other significant issues.

When she is confirmed, she will be a great help to the Socialist agenda being put forth by President BO and his lawmakers.

And she will be confirmed, absent some "smoking gun" revelation.
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ADDENDUM - Read A Very Important Letter to President BO: An Email From Us All

PREDICTION:

SHE WILL BE CONFIRMED

AND SHE WILL BE MUCH MORE LIBERAL

THAN ANYONE HAS IMAGINED SO FAR.

ISN'T THIS STIMULATING!

Education, highways, environmental, health and human services, energy and law enforcement.

Those are just some of the "benefits" New Hampshire has realized due to the stimulus package emanating from the Democrat legislature under the guidance of President BO.

New Hampshire received $413.6 million in stimulus money.

Just think of the jobs! Just think of the tax revenues! Just think of the security of New Hampshire's citizens!

According to the Office of Legislative Budget Assistant, that $413.6 million has resulted in 50...count them...50 jobs, 34 of them FULL TIME, all of them TEMPORARY!

Of those wonderful temporary jobs, 5 (five) are "full-time temporary" positions with OES (Office of Economic Stimulus) itself, which positions will end in September of 2011.

Now I have no idea how much each of these "full-time temporary" jobs will pay, nor do I know how much the other "part-time temporary" jobs will pay. The yet to be hired Director of OES will "earn" $110,000.00 per year and will receive a substantial benefits package.

This I know: The cost to U.S. tax payers for these wonderful opportunities for temporary employment is $9.9 million EACH!

Does that make sense to you?

How does that make sense to you?

Do you wonder, as I do, how many top quality people are going to apply for work that they know going in is only going to last a couple of years?

Does this use of tax payer money give you more or less confidence in President BO and his congress?

Really? You LIKE the idea of spending $9.9 million for a job that pays, at the most, a median income?

Do you understand that the government is spending about 100 times what the private sector would spend to establish each of those jobs?

Does that matter to you?

What's wrong with you?

You must be over-stimulated.

WILL YOU STAND UNITED WITH ME?

In his last public speech in March of 1799, Patrick Henry declared, “Let us trust God, and our better judgment to set us right hereafter. United we stand, divided we fall. Let us not split into factions which must destroy that union upon which our existence hangs.”

(As noted in the picture to the left, he's the same fellow who, when we were considering whether to go to war against Great Britain, said, "Give me liberty or give me death.")

I bring this up because we seem to be a "nation divided against itself," as warned against by Abraham Lincoln in 1858.

Why is that? Why are we so divided?

There are lots of reasons, but the core reason is the very nature of freedom, that is, that each citizen of this great land, according to our Declaration of Independence, has a God given right to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness."

That is, you have a right to live, you have a right to live free of governmental encumbrances, and you have a right to live your life pursuing that which makes you the most satisfied.

The problem is that in a country of 360 million people there are at least 360 million ideas of how that notion should manifest itself.

In one sense, if we are to be united somebody will have to compromise their thinking.

I, of course, think it is you who should compromise yours, while you may suffer under the delusion that it should be I who compromise mine.

Should you not, for instance, adjust your thinking to agree with me that the union of a human sperm with a human egg results in an entity whose DNA can be distinguished from that of every other life-form on earth; whose DNA is different from his/her mother's and therefore is not "her body;" whose cell division results in growth; who takes on nourishment; who gives off waste and who therefore meets all of the scientific qualifications of human life which must be protected?

Since I believe that each individual should bear the responsibility of creating wealth for himself, his family and the economic well being of the "national product," and thus recoil at the thought of the governmental redistribution of wealth, should you not adjust your thinking to conform to mine?

Because it is clear to me that taxes should be equitably collected and therefore a low, flat tax rate should be imposed on every earned dollar above the poverty level by both individuals and businesses, should you not adopt the same concept?

It is my belief that The United States of America has consistently been the most generous, giving, altruistic country ever to have graced the surface of this planet, giving aid to countries in deep need...even those who had been our enemies, and so I cannot accept the concept that we have ever been, are now or ever will be arrogant, and thus should not apologize for it. You should agree with that, shouldn't you?

Having read a great many of the writings of our founders, I have concluded that they deliberately and specifically set out to establish a nation in which the government was disallowed from interfering with the freedom of an individual or collection thereof to worship anywhere, any time, including in governmental places, and that they simply did not want the government to establish a state religion. It seems that you would see how obvious that is.

You should agree with me that protecting its citizens is of special interest to our nation, and so our military defense should be the finest anywhere in the universe, ready to show all potential enemies that you mess with us at your peril, and that we will defend liberty and freedom anyplace on earth. Therefore, sustaining the strength of our military should remain the largest part of our national budget.

For unity's sake, you must accept my notion that legal immigration to this country should be encouraged, as we are a nation of immigrants, but illegal immigration must be stopped in its tracks immediately.

If you seek unity with me, you surely understand that effective communication demands that we leave the redefining of time-tested terms such as "marriage" to dictionarians, and not to the government.

In order to enjoy a "more perfect union," you must surely understand and accept the fact that Israel is a nation that deserves our support, our encouragement and our assistance in defending herself against those who seek to crush her.

Having experienced the arbitrariness of our government run health care systems (read: Medicare; Veterans Administration and Medicaid), you surely understand why you should agree with me that, although our private health care system needs some adjustment, it is still the best in the world and should not be placed in the hands of the government.

You would certainly agree with me that people who choose entertainment as their life's work do not therefore deserve to have some special voice in forming public opinion by using their platform to mock and attack everything we as a nation have historically stood for, by promoting perversions of every kind, by making every effort to turn the sacred name of Jesus into an abased curse word, and to tolerate everything except intolerance of what they tolerate.

As I have, you would surely see that our leaders have made every effort to remove the name of God or Jesus Christ from our Society, have challenged capital punishment, the right to bear firearms, and the most basic principles of our criminal code; they have attacked one of the most fundamental of all Freedoms, the right of free speech, and you would stand with me against those efforts.

So, if we are to remain "...one nation, under God, indivisible, and with liberty and justice for all," you will recognize the urgency of changing your view of life in The United States of America to conform with mine.

Better hurry...before it's too late.