August 16, 2009 – Referring to a 1990 report in The Economist, the editors recently said, “To revisit the Arab world two decades later is to find that in many ways history continues to pass the Arabs by. Freedom? The Arabs are ruled now, as they were then, by a cartel of authoritarian regimes practiced in the arts of oppression.”

The central problem affecting the Middle East and much of northern Africa where Arabs rule is Islam. The Islam of the Middle East is utterly resistant to change. Not all of the world’s billion-plus Muslims practice Islam with the same intensity as many Arabs do (and we should note, as Iran’s Persians have pursued since their revolution in 1979.)

August 14, 2009 – It doesn’t happen very often, but every once in awhile some one else will write something that I find important enough to print out and take to work for people to read. Such was the case with Mike Vanderboegh’s column entitled Eat Me.

I have gotten pretty used to people not agreeing with what I write, but today something entirely different happened. After one of the guys I gave Mike’s article to had finished reading it, he told me that someone had glanced at it and said something along the lines, ‘Get that communist propaganda out of here.’

August 14, 2009 – Les Paul, the virtuoso guitarist and inventor whose solid-body electric guitar and recording studio innovations changed the course of 20th-century popular music, died Thursday in White Plains. He was 94.

The cause was complications of pneumonia, the Gibson Guitar Corporation announced.

Mr. Paul was a remarkable musician as well as a tireless tinkerer. He played guitar with leading prewar jazz and pop musicians from Louis Armstrong to Bing Crosby. In the 1930s he began experimenting with guitar amplification, and by 1941 he had built what was probably the first solid-body electric guitar, although there are other claimants. With his electric guitar and the vocals of his wife, Mary Ford, he used overdubbing, multitrack recording and new electronic effects to create a string of hits in the 1950s.

… must be flu-season with the Joads.

“I dun toldja we shoulda nary taken the family fer them damned flu shots. Now lookatcheer what dun happened to Bud. Them damned Swine!”

August 13, 2009 - The issue of Nationalized Obama Care (not national health care) has captured the nation again, as it did with Hillary Care in 1994, that cost the Democrats the loss of the House and the Senate to the Republicans.  This over 1000-page, legal mumbo-jumbo monstrosity is one of the most dangerous pieces of legislation ever proposed by any American government since the American Revolution.  It will take over every aspect of our lives, remove any semblance of individual privacy and drive the price of health care and just about everything else, through the roof.  Income taxes will be increased on everyone to pay for it and it won’t be enough.  Government, in order to manage our health care for us, will have access to our income tax records, our medical records and our employment records.  All this information will be collected in giant government computer data bases and then dumped into lap tops that can be lost or stolen.  None of our private information will be safe.  Every single American will be just a social security number to these over-paid politicians and bureaucrats.

Our economy will suffer big time.  Jobs will be lost in response to health-care penalties on small businesses.  Small businesses will go out of business as nationalized health care picks winners and losers.  Being “big” will get you an exemption, or outright favorable treatment.

1961 – My name is Ronald Reagan. I have been asked to talk on several subjects that have to do with the problems of the day. It must seem presumptuous to some of you that a member of my profession would stand here and attempt to talk to anyone on serious problems that face the nation and the world. It would be strange if it were otherwise.

Most of us in Hollywood are very well aware of the concept or the misconception that many people, our fellow citizens, have about people in show business. It was only a generation ago that people of my profession couldn’t be buried in the churchyard. Of course the world has improved since then, we can be buried now. As a matter of fact, the eagerness of somebody to perform that service gets frightening at times.

August 12, 2009 – Sheesh -  what a day – one that is bringing up so many memories of events that I have been involved in one way or another over the past few years..  This is only the ‘recent’ memories…

As I was reading the article by Mike V that mentioned J.J. Johnson and the sniper gun aimed at J.J.’s back in the Macon GA fiasco…  it reminded me of when I first really came across J.J. Johnson.  It was his stand in Illinois when government thugs went after a woman named Shirley Allen in Roby, IL. (http://www.apfn.org/apfn/shirley_allen.htm)

Old timers on WGEN will remember the almost hourly posts WGEN was  sending out on the life threatening situation that the corrupt police chief Terrance Gainer led.  He went on later to be promoted to the IL gangster political circles.  The Land of STINKIN Slinkin.

The following was received on the evening of August 11, 2009, shortly after the author submitted his questions and concerns to his duly elected Senator, Dianne Feinstein of California. We have chosen to publish said letter, in the hopes that it might give others ideas as to how to write to their respective elected officials. Good Luck to us all. (JB)

NOTE: I don’t expect a reply, and I said as much. But this is going out to every office Feinstein occupies, by fax, e mail and snail mail. I have no vacation time to go to any town hall meetings, and none are scheduled in my area when I am off. So this is the best that I can do. (NR)

Senator Feinstein,

As your constituent, I would appreciate hearing your thoughts on my concerns regarding HR 3200, the House version of a universal health care plan.

In the past I have written to you on a wide range of subjects, from illegal immigration to second amendment rights. On those occasions I received the usual form letter that did little to address my specific questions and concerns.

However, this time I believe that the importance of my questions deserve a more thoughtful, and specific reply.