66? He died at
66 of a
heart attack?! Oh, man! I can can still remember the girls in my 6th grade class loudly arguing over who was their
fay-voh-rite Monkee (Davy edged out Michael Nesmith and Mickey Dolenz with Peter Tork in last place). All the guys in my class really cared about was the
Monkeemobile, that customized Pontiac GTO with the supercharged engine and long white "ragtop". Wow - another celebrity from my childhood memories gone; my condolences to his family and friends.
After hearing about how actors, writers, and directors have shafted by the Hollywood studio commissars, I wonder about the treatment of the "serfs": the technicians, make-up artists, hair-stylists, wardrobe personnel, and other service "grunts" that handle all the thousands of necessary little tasks of movie production. I'm sure these people could come up with some really riveting exposes about the "seamy, sweaty underbelly" of the Hollywood movie industry.
Kevin Jennings - the man who once counselled a gay teenager on how to conduct a "safe" sexual affair with an older man. The only safe thing about schools that Jennings seemed to be promoting was the ability for students, especially gay ones, to have sex wherever and with whomever they wanted.
"As cornball as Norman Rockwell’s illustrations were, their sentimental scenes would be a welcome break from the violence, uncertainty, poverty, rape and sexual abuse that besets the lives of many women and children." as seen in inner-city neighborhoods across the country whose residents - dysfunctional families headed by single women - depend mainly on government subsidies for their survival, and whose children are ill-served by government-run, union-controlled schools. And while the WaPo writer mocks the safe, stable lifestyle of Rick Santorum and his family, her solution is more government dependency funding more dysfunctional behavior that traps more young women and their children in poverty and domestic violence.
The Black Book of Communism, edited by Stephane Courtois, and first published in 1997, states that approximately 100 million people worldwide have died due to Communist terror and repression. The book, compiled by people, many of whom were former Communists, details the various acts of murder and terror by Communist regimes from the Bolshevik regime in Russia to the various Marxist regimes still in power in the early '90's. The Marxist website, Maoistrebelnews.Wordpress.com, calls it "one of the largest, most blatant distortions of history" and claims that the death tolls listed in the book are "fraudulent" (probably because those Maoists firmly believe that all those people who died were "capitalist, running dog reactionaries" who deserved their grisly fates).
"The Lord commonly gives riches to foolish people, to whom he gives nothing else." - Martin Luther (not, not Martin Luther King, but Martin Luther, some old dead white guy; but I'm certain that Dr. King would regard Kanye West as a foolish rich person).
There are plenty of conservatives who argue for, if not the legalization of drugs, the decriminalization of them as well as to an end to the "War on Drugs" as waged on American citizens by government at the city, state, and Federal level. Furthermore, initial news reports indicate that it was probably Xanax as well as other legally-obtained prescription drugs that did Ms. Houston in - not crack, crank, heroin, or any other legally proscribed drug (prescription drug abuse is also a growing problem among adolescents). Also, the end of Prohibition has done little, if anything to stem the spread of alcohol abuse, particularly among adolescents. And, while liberals may advocate the legalization of drugs, a lot of them, particularly in cities like New York and San Francisco, want to proscribe the "excessive" comsumption of salt, sugar, and trans-fats, either through outright bans or through excessively high taxes on foods containing said substances. After all, it's liberals who also want to restrict the emission of carbon dioxide, a gas exhaled by humans and other fauna.
The French and the British could have defanged the Nazi threat had they reacted with force before the invasion of Poland: (a) when Hitler had sent troops into the Rhineland in contravention of the Treaty of Versailles, or (b) when Hitler sent troops to occupy the rest of Czechoslovakia after they had been given the Sudetenland. When the bulk of German troops were committed to war in Poland in September, 1939, the French and the British could have invaded Germany from the west, throwing a big freakin' monkey wrench into the gears of the German war machine. Instead, both France and Britain "sat on their hands" throughout the entire German operation against Poland even though both countries had declared war against Germany. Also, there was a very strong sentiment against "foreign intervention" in Europe among the US population (and no, not just among Republicans, as the "progressive" revisionist historians would have people believe).
California has turned into what Mark Steyn claims Britain has become: a place where the state polices everyone but the actual criminals.
I've recently discovered some amazing foreign-language movies at my local public library: "Katyn", a Polish-language film about the massacre of Polish armed forces officers by the Soviets in WWII, "Burnt by the Sun", a Russian-language film about a Red Army officer and veteran of the Russian civil war caught up in the Soviet purge in the '30's, and "Brother", a Russian-language film about a Red Army veteran who becomes involved with organized crime in 1990's St. Petersburg. My point is that the really original, groundbreaking cinema is not being made in Hollywood or even by those Sundance Festival poseurs. I'll probably have to wait for a DVD of this film to get to my local public library because I'll guess that it's not going to see much distribution in the US outside the "art house" cinema circuit (maybe it'll make it to some theater in or near the Polish neighborhoods on the north and northwest sides of Chicago).
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