Tucson Sammy

Thanksgiving is the last of the American religious holidays. It’s about gratitude; more specifically, it’s about thanking God. Expressing gratitude to God should not be a dry practice. It is a practice that is full of love and joy. Few things reach the core of the heart more than song, and few songs have been sung in celebration of Thanksgiving than “We Gather Together.”

Captivating melodies often originate in folk tunes, and such is the case with “We Gather Together”. It’s origins have been traced back to sixteenth century Netherlands. There, new lyrics were put to the melody to celebrate the end of Spanish oppression of the local protestants. It has been speculated that the Pilgrims may have actually been familiar with the song, having spent time in the Netherlands before sailing for Virginia and ending up in what was to become Massachusetts.

I don’t want to give away my age, but I am old enough to have fond memories of singing this hymn every year for the Thanksgiving concert at my local government school (we also sang Christmas carols in Latin, but that is a story for another time).

Actually, “fond” is an understatement. When I hear it, I get choked up and tears come to my eyes. If you want to see what I mean, click the following link and read the lyrics while the melody plays:

http://www.hymnsite.com/lyrics/umh131.sht

Happy Thanksgiving. Thank you God.

Sometimes…no, often the most interesting feature of an election, or any event of consequence, is that which does not happen. I fully expected that there would be much Democrat wailing and gnashing of teeth on the night of the election, and the morning thereafter – the usual claims of voter fraud, intimidation, racism, Diebold, homophobia, blah, blah, blah. I expected these because the Dems have established this pattern of behavior around Republican victories, of which I assumed there would be some of note. There were not, and there was no Democrat uproar. What does this reveal? The revelation is that Democrat accusations have nothing to do with facts, and are merely an attempt to de-legitimize Republican victories.

Speaking of voter fraud, this election begged for it. It is in very close elections that the few extra votes from the dead people, or the absentee ballots disqualified, that can really make the difference. As the title of Hugh Hewitt’s book succinctly puts it, “If It’s Not Close, They Can’t Cheat”. Almost all the pivotal races had razor thin margins.

So, did the Republican fix with the Diebold machines swing it, or did the people who voted six or seven times and the fake ballots from the reservations win it for the Democrats?

The answer is in the results.

If you ever hear another lefty whine about Republicans and the Diebold company, please smack ‘em.

Our country is entering a period of darkness. I’m referring, of course, to Britney’s divorce…just kidding. As I was saying, our country is entering a period of darkness, but we have endured similar states of affairs in my lifetime, the Carter administration comes to mind, and have come through them O.K.

Speaking of Jimmy Carter, can we put him under house arrest or something? I mean, he goes to North Korea and puts a deal together for President Clinton that helped create the problem we face today by handing them nuke technology, and looking the other way while the initiated their bomb program. Always warm for the dictator, he certifies the election in Venezuela that delivered Hugo Chavez to power. The “Carter Center” certified the election without checking the computer vote totals against the paper totals – as you recall, there were “problems” with the computerized machines, so officials had to go in and “fix” them in the middle of Election Day. Now Daniel Ortega, Soviet supported commie strongman from the eighties, gets elected in Nicaragua, and Jimmy has already had his first suck-up meeting with him. Unbelievable!

Carter is considered by some to be the first anti-American president. Now, we may have the first anti-American Congress. With committee chairmanships going to the likes of John Dingle, John Conyers, Charlie Wrangle, Henry Waxman …I must stop, the nausea is starting.

What will this mean? A veritable subpoenarama! Everyone in the Bush administration will be up for grabs. Impeachment is a definite maybe. Republicans were hurt by the impeachment of Clinton, so the Democrats may hold off until they are sure that the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and the Washington Post has softened everyone up enough. John Conyers is “chompin’ at the bit”, as the President might say, to move forward with it, though he can’t move forward alone.

What happened? Well, the Republicans thought they had it made, and began acting like it. There is a reason that the Democrat and Republican parties are referred to as the Evil Party and the Stupid Party respectively.

One of the beauties of the blogoshpere is that fellow travelers are quick to help each other maintain high standards of truth and accuracy.

After I made a posting regarding a Democrat propaganda book targeting children, my friend Jim sent an article from the New Republic to me that reports on a series of Republican “children’s books” that denigrate Democrats. You can read the article here The books appear to be as repugnant as the one about which I originally reported.

Perhaps the article is a joke… well, probably not.

I made the assumption that this sort of thing would occur only with Democrats, since that’s what they do.

I also want to stipulate that, in both cases, I do not see rank and file party members as complicit in the actions of the leadership/activists.

I do not know why this whole thing has me so enraged. After all, I’m a big fan of Gran’pa Jack. Perhaps the difference is that Gran’pa Jack really does teach principles, rather than claim them.

So, What’s a citizen to do? Well, there is always the Libertarian Party…

Let me first start by saying that my wife and I do not watch television. It’s not the hardware – we do rent movies – it’s the content. I am a big fan of the new media, and am a regular listener to talk radio.

I first heard of “24” on the Rush Limbaugh Program. I remember “America’s Anchorman” spending a big chunk of broadcast time talking about the show. He told about visiting the set, and generally yucking it up with Kiefir (is “kiefir” a type of liquid yogurt, or marijuana pollen? I forget) Sutherland, the writers, and the directors. I made a mental note.

Within a few weeks, Hugh Hewitt, talkshow host, author, constitutional law professor, and blogger extraordinaire discovered the show. People called in to share in his excitement, and described themselves as being “hooked” on, and “addicted” to the show. A few days later, Hewitt sounded almost giddy when he reported that some blogger of prominence described him as the “Jack Bauer of talk radio.” At the time, I had no appreciation of the magnitude of the compliment – for those of you who don’t know, Jack Bauer is the hero/protagonist of 24.

So, when it became time to rent a movie, I said to my lovely wife, “Let’s try something different. Let’s check out this television show about which everyone is talking.” She said, “O.K.”, and our fate was sealed.

Our intent was to try an episode. After forty-five minutes (no commercials on DVD), the first episode ended. We looked at each other, and without saying anything, I punched up the next episode. We watched all for episodes on the disk – and would have continued on had we disk number two.

8:08 P.M. Nine days before the California primary

I rented disk two. My wife cried desperately, “Will there be any resolution at the end !?!”

“No, it never ends,” I said flatly. My hands trembled slightly as I placed the disk in the player. The haunting techno theme music began.

“O.K.,” she said with a hint of fear in her voice, “but I can’t watch just this from now on, we’ll have to watch a chick flick.”

“Of course,” I said, doing whatever was necessary to buy some time… Jack would approve.

9:28 P.M. Nine days before the California primary

Things seemed to be going well, then, after a mere two episodes, a wrenching twist in the plot: “I have to get ready for bed,” she said as she rose from the couch, then added, “I don’t think I can keep watching this. You know, the things you see affect you.”

I had to think fast. “You know, if you stop us now, you will never know how the season ends – I’m your only chance,” I said.

She gave me an odd look, “I’m not saying that we can never see it again - ”

“Nina, there isn’t time – “

“Did you just call me ‘Nina’ – “

“Look, I promise everything is going to be O.K. I have to go now, I’ll call you back when I know something.”

“Are you alright? When was the last time you meditated?”

Cue the theme music

Arrrrg. I am suffering from re-entry. My lovely wife and I just returned to the Old Pueblo after a ten day trip abroad. Well, technically not abroad, we were in New England.

The countries…sorry, the states over there are puny and overpopulated. At one point, we took a trip to Martha’s Vineyard and drove in three different states in less than four hours.

Martha’s Vineyard, you may recall, is where the Clintons posed for pictures while pretending to dance on the beach in swimsuits, passed out the pictures to media friendlies, then acted distressed that their privacy was invaded. Martha’s Vineyard includes Chappaquiddick Island where Ted Kennedy drove off a bridge and abandoned a girl to suffocate on his partially submerged car while he engaged in damage control. More recently, John Kennedy Jr. died tragically when his light plane crashed at sea in bad weather en route to Martha’s Vineyard.

No one would argue that New England is not rich in American History.

Martha’s Vineyard suffers from the same problems from which all particularly beautiful and desirable places suffer. Its towns are composed primarily of small buildings in an ultra-quaint New England style – imagine Mystic Seaport without the tall ships. It is an island with beaches facing both the mainland and the open ocean, providing all sorts of beach/surf combinations; combine this with a multitude of salt water lagoons, and you have a real scenic marine playground. All this adds up to heap big magnet for tourists and vacationers.

As in Tucson, the vineyard has a small group of residents who are actually natives! They have the “Native” bumper-stickers with outlines of the island, like the natives in many western states. They also have bumper-stickers that say, “Slow down, you’re not off-island anymore!” They are also being squeezed between draconian efforts to maintain quaintness, and market pressure to develop as land values climb higher and higher (sound familiar?).

The ocean acts as a bit of a natural moat – you can only get there by boat or plane. This does not keep the cars away – we drove onto a ferry, rode it for forty-five minutes, then drove onto the island – but it does make it more of a production, and more expensive, to go there. Though tourism is huge in the summer, I imagine that the inability to drive there conveniently keeps many people away, just as the inability to carry a sixty-four quart cooler conveniently keeps many people out of the Arizona backcountry.

Martha’s Vineyard even has a logo. It’s a profile of a black dog. It’s even called “Black Dog”. I don’t know what the original entity behind the Black Dog logo is, or was, but there is a store where you can buy all sorts of clothing – from sweats to socks – with the Black Dog logo. You have probably seen people around Tucson wearing a either a tee-shirt or sweatshirt with a large profile of a black dog on the front. It is the equivalent to OB-with-a-bird logo for the Ocean Beach neighborhood in San Diego, California. In Tucson, we usually see the OB logo on decals on the rear windows of cars from California, instead of on tee-shirts and sweatshirts.

I am glad that Tucson does not have a logo, at least none of which I am aware. At least, I haven’t seen any tee-shirts with Brown Coyotes on the front, or decals with the letters OP (Old Pueblo) and a turkey vulture. We have a cool nickname, “The Old Pueblo,” and that is enough. We may not have the ocean, but we have deserts and mountains. More importantly, we have yet to lose our frontier heritage. Unfortunately, New England has.