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At the time, I didn't think anything was wrong with 1960's music, since Dick Clark on a typical Saturday on his 'American Bandstand' would agree with a teenage member of his dumb audience that the tune was good, 'because you can dance to it.' 'Nuff said.
Creedence Clearwater's 'Suzy Q' is a good example. I think it has four words in the lyrics. Well, maybe a few more, but not many more. This awful song made it all the way to the number 11 spot on the Top 100.
How about the one-hit wonder 'The Kingsmen' and their stupid tune 'Louie Louie', mostly associated with the movie 'Animal House.' Other than the title, most of the remainder of the lyrics are unintelligible, which is probably a good thing.
Many, many more bad tunes abound in the 1960's: 'Young Girl,' by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap, really bad writing. And a really bad name for a band as well, but I digress.
Of course, there was 'In A Gada Da Vida' by Iron Butterfly, who could forget this bad tune? I was in the service in the early 1980's, and was cruising along the back woods around San Angelo, TX, where four or five of my buddies and I noticed on a rusty neon bar sign the headline that stated 'Featuring Iron Butterfly.' We were curious, walked into the bar, and nobody was there, except the bartender and the band, apparently taking a cigarette break. They saw us come in, and they started up their one and only tune, 'In A Gada Da Vida.' It was really them, a bunch of burnt out old hippies living off of their one old hit. We didn't stay for the entire tune, we finished our beers and left. They were still only halfway through the never ending, tedious drum solo when the screen door slammed after the last of us left.
I hear 'The Monkees' are getting back together (sans the late Davy Jones). Boy, I can hardly wait.
For the two guys that read my posts, you are aware that I disagree with President Obama on just about everything he says, does, believes and thinks.
But when he's right (every other blue moon or so), he's right. And rather than blindly disagree with a glaring truth (being the right wing nut job that I am), I will back up President Obama's assertion: you are in virtually (statistically speaking) no danger of walking out of your front door and getting mowed down by a terrorist wielding an AK-47. You just aren't.
Donald Trump's acceptance speech was criticized by Obama as being dark, alarmist and exaggerated about the danger that Americans face today, and he says that we have never lived in a more peaceful world than now. That's unarguably true, if you look at the statistics.
We are all aware of ISIS and their tactics; blow up a very public place, encourage lone wolf assholes to take out as many innocent victims as possible while shouting 'alahu ahkbar,' and make as big of a splash in the headlines as they can. The body count in Nice was 90 innocents. 49 were killed in Orlando. 14 people were killed by terrorists in San Bernardino. Home grown Black Lives Matter murderers ambushed and killed 5 officers in Dallas, and another 3 in Baton Rouge.
Very big headlines. Lots of hand wringing about the world gone to hell in a hand basket. But the body count is just not what it was in the 'good ol' days.' It just flat out isn't.
In the American Civil War (or the War of Northern Aggression, if you are a dumb yokel who doesn't know any better), 750,000 people were killed during 1861-1865. In World War I, another 53,000 Americans died in that conflict. In World War II, 291,000 Americans were lost. Vietnam saw 47,000 U.S. soldiers die.
Those were dangerous times. A million deaths in times of war in U.S. history over the last 100 plus years, that is living in dangerous times. The likelihood of a mother losing her son back in those days was relatively high in times of armed conflict.
But only a couple of hundred deaths (not counting Chicago, where black on black crime is considered normal every day life and death) in the last year? That's relatively nothing, statistically speaking. This is living in peace, given the violence we have seen in our history over the long term.
We are not at a full scale war with any existential threat, such as was the case with the Empire of Japan and the Nazi threats 70 years ago.
Donald Trump is taking the headlines of a few deaths, as awful as they are, and blowing things out of proportion to advance his political agenda (as all politicians do). We are still living in a country where we can go to the mall, go to the ball game and not really worry about getting killed.
We are living in peace, currently.
Relatively speaking. And this is Obama's point. He is right.
You perhaps recall the 2012 campaign, where Mitt Romney's sons accompanied Mitt on the stump and stood out as decent, hard working and well cultured children despite being born with silver spoons in their mouths.
We are now seeing Donald Trump's children speak out about their dad, and they are truly inspiring to listen to: well spoken, articulate and cultured. And yes, Donald Jr., the oldest, and Tiffany, the youngest, were not only born with silver spoons in their mouths, they were born with silver coal shovels in their mouths; these kids were filthy rich when they were in diapers.
Of course, so was Chelsea Clinton. Her parents (despite their incredulous claims of being 'dead broke') were multi-millionaires by the time Chelsea was a teenager, although perhaps she was not born uber rich. Certainly, however, Chelsea Clinton has shown nothing of the gumption displayed by the Trump kids.
After her graduation from Sidwell Friends HS, Chelsea was off to Stanford (BA), and ultimately Oxford where she was awarded a Doctor of Philosophy degree. Dr. Clinton was then unleashed into the world to make her mark. Her first gig was a no-show job at NBC, where she pulled down hundreds of thousands for doing basically nothing, owing to the fact that she had no journalistic chops whatsoever. And in the ensuing years, she has spoken on the lecture circuit in affiliation to her family's dubious 'Clinton Foundation,' which is nothing more than a slush fund to finance the Clinton's high falutin' lifestyle. In other words, Chelsea Clinton has never really worked a day in her fabulously wealthy life.
The Trump kids? Donald Trump put these kids to work as early as the age of 12. He urged them to rub elbows not with the management of his many companies, but with the laborers: masons, carpenters, iron workers, to get a feel as to what kind of effort makes the real world work. He then gave them jobs at the bottom, where they worked their way up the ladder based on merit, and not on who they were related to. Donald, Jr. when asked a few years ago what would happen to them if they goofed up on the job, replied that if their performance started to suffer, his dad Donald Trump would 'fire us like dogs." Results were expected and indeed achieved. The Trump children are all involved in Trump businesses, and are not just sitting on their name, they actually work for a living.
Unlike Chelsea Clinton, who is frankly about as worthless as a screen door on a submarine.
The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Or so they say.
What are the characteristics of this enemy? They are convinced that they fight for a greater cause, and that their spiritual leader is no mere mortal. They believe that if they cannot convert you to embrace of their beliefs, you will either be enslaved or die. They are all willing to die to the last man over their beliefs, to include suicide attacks.
We already defeated this enemy: the Empire of Japan in 1945.
The Rising Sun was destined to spread over the entire planet, and the spiritual leader of the empire, Hirohito, was the son of God. Their military had orders to annihilate any opposition regardless of age, race, religion, color, etc. Kamikazi suicide missions wreaked terrible damage on the Allies.
The only way we defeated this enemy was to demonstrate to every man, woman and child in Japan that we were capable and willing to destroy everything they ever loved. We did so with nuclear strikes against two major Japanese cities.
They surrendered unconditionally.
We have done this before. We are facing essentially the same existential threat that we did 70 years ago: an enemy that is willing to die to forward their global caliphate's destiny. There is virtually no difference between today's radical Islamic terrorists and their leaders and the Empire of Japan. Same same.
We already know how to defeat an enemy of this nature. We simply have to demonstrate the capability and national will to destroy everything they hold dear. And we certainly have the capability to destroy them.
When we finally developed the nuclear technology capable of destroying great swaths of territory, we warned Japan that unless they surrendered immediately and unconditionally, we would unleash a terrible wave of destruction upon them. They refused and continued their aggression. We annihilated Hiroshima to demonstrate our will and capability. Hirohito and Tojo still refused to surrender. A few days later we annihilated Nagasaki. And we would have in time destroyed every major Japansese city until a surrender was inevitable. They surrendered after Nagasaki.
We can do the exact same thing to this enemy we face today. We can destroy ISIS HQ in Raqqa, Syria, and we don't even need to use nuclear weapons. We have conventional weapons that are more than capable of destroying square miles per single attack. We can then destroy Mosul, Iraq, where ISIS has a stronghold. The devastation and loss of life would be terrible. We would offer to accept unconditional surrender at that point.
If ISIS refused, and continued their terrorist aggression, we would escalate our destruction of all they hold dear: first Medina, Saudi Arabia, a holy city within Islam, would be targeted for destruction. Prior to destroying this holy city, we would offer terms for their unconditional surrender. If they refused, Medina would disappear from the map.
We would continue to escalate the total destruction of all they cherish: Mecca would be next.
We have already done this to a terrible enemy 70 years ago, and it worked to bring to an end their hostilities immediately. We can do this again against this scourge that terrorizes the world today.
Do we have the will, however, to do what needs to be done? We did in 1945, what about in 2016?
Just when I give up on expecting anyone on the GOP side of the aisle in Congress to display any hint of a spine, I am now pleasantly surprised. Turns out that not all of them are the invertebrates that we have all watched in action on Capitol Hill over the last 10 years or so.
Jason Chaffetz (R-Ut) just made it official this morning, referring charges to the U.S. Attorney's office in Washington D.C. (and cc to the U.S. Attorney General's office) that Hillary Rodham Clinton lied under oath to Congress in addition to the FBI - both felonies. This is the beef that Martha Stewart was nailed on. The same beef that Scooter Libby plead out. And the same beef that hung the Old Crone's ball-n-chain hubby Bill Clinton out to dry during his last term in office. This is a real serious beef that America has with the Old Crone.
A felony in the law books of the good ol' U.S. of A, every bit as real as hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet. Hey, how about that? Ol' Fredd is a poet. I wonder how much a poet's gig pays these days?
But I digress.....
FBI Director Jim Comey as much as confirmed the validity of these accusations during his press conference last week as he was deferring recommendations of indictment. Of course, when asked by Congressman Chaffetz why these obvious lies to Congress and the FBI were not pursued, he flatly stated that by law, they weren't asked to do so (with a congressional referral), and accordingly he was not inclined to unilaterally press charges. Immediately, to his credit, Congressman Chaffetz replied "you now have your referral."
This is not simply chit chat among buddies on Capitol Hill. This is still a serious charge of several felonies, not to be dismissed as simply partisan politics by the Left and the media. The Old Crone is not out of the woods yet.
Not yet. Stay tuned, ladies and gentlemen.
I just have to wonder how the voters of Chicago have enough brain power to even keep their vital functions operating. Chicago voters have to be the dumbest people in America, even dumber than those of you in Rio Linda.
And that's pretty dang dumb.
The average property owner in the city of Chicago just opened up their second installment property tax invoice and many found that their property tax rates shot up as much as 400%. They howled, shrieked and carried on about this injustice. There was in general great wailing and gnashing of teeth in the Windy City.
How can these dopes be shocked...SHOCKED!? They have all voted in droves for Democrats to run the city for nearly a century now. And the Democrats they love to vote for have run the city's finances into the ground. The projected shortfalls in the opulent, lush public worker pension funds are in the billions of dollars, and this 'little tax adjustment' is merely the Democrat way of making stop gap ends meet for their current pension obligations. Most of this money that has been extorted out of Chicago property owners goes towards current funding of the Cadillac pensions of police and firefighters.
The bond rating for the City of Chicago is now in junk status. The borrowing still continues at a healthy pace, and the city will gladly pay the usurious rates that junk status requires, and the projected shortfalls in pension obligations continue to mount. Amazingly, not one of these Chicago voter dunces have figured out that the Democrat way of running the city is heading towards sure fire bankruptcy.
But just watch the next round of elections. There is not one Republican on the ballot that has a snowball's chance in hell of getting elected. You know, those rascally racist evil Republicans who think that a balanced budget is a good idea. Chicago voters will have none of that, no siree Bob. Balanced budgets? Why, that's just crazy talk.
They think their property tax rates are killer now, it's only a matter of time before the Democrat chieftains let the caterwauling over this latest outrage die down. The Democrats in power know that the voters of Chicago have the memories of a common housefly, but maybe not quite the brains that this housefly has, and they will jack up the property tax rates again in a year or two.
Keep voting for Democrats, you dumb Chicago voters. You deserve these sky high rates.
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