Archive for May, 2010

“Our own Country’s Honor, all call upon us for a vigorous and manly exertion, and if we now shamefully fail, we shall become infamous to the whole world. Let us therefore rely upon the goodness of the Cause, and the aid of the supreme Being, in whose hands Victory is, to animate and encourage us to great and noble Actions – The Eyes of all our Countrymen are now upon us, and we shall have their blessings, and praises, if happily we are the instruments of saving them from the Tyranny mediated against them. Let us therefore animate and encourage each other, and shew the whole world, that a Freeman contending for Liberty on his own ground is superior to any slavish mercenary on earth.” –George Washington, General Orders, 1776

I don’t remember the first time I ever heard Taps bugled, but I don’t think I’ve ever heard without having tears in my eyes. Usually, I think of my granddad and the very few times he spoke of his service in the U.S. Navy in the South Pacific during WWII. On a couple of occasions, I recall him being asleep on the couch in his living room and waking up from a violent nightmare, near-screaming. He wouldn’t talk about those episodes, but I learned from my grandma that his nightmares came from an occasion that his PT boat had sunk a Japanese boat and he refused to make the gunner kill the survivors floating in the water, instead taking that unimaginable responsibility upon himself. That was my first inkling that war is hell.

We owe so much to the brave men and women who have traveled through hell for us, whether it be the forest and fields of Pennsylvania in the Revolutionary War, the battlefields of Virginia during the Civil War, the Black Forest of Germany during WWI, the south Pacific or the European Theatre during WWII, Korea, Vietnam, Iraq or Afghanistan. The march through hell, to protect our freedom deserves much more than just the last Monday of May as a memorial.

My aunt’s husband, a true patriot, emailed me the video below. As you listen to this beautiful variation of Taps, (it is known as Il Silenzio) played by a 13 year-old girl, think about the words (there are actually a couple versions – both below).

Day is done, gone the sun,

From the hills, from the lake,

From the sky.

All is well, safely rest,

God is nigh.

Go to sleep, peaceful sleep,

May the soldier or sailor,

God keep.

On the land or the deep,

Safe in sleep.

Love, good night, Must thou go,

When the day, And the night

Need thee so?

All is well. Speedeth all

To their rest.

Fades the light; And afar

Goeth day, And the stars

Shineth bright,

Fare thee well; Day has gone,

Night is on.

Thanks and praise, For our days,

‘Neath the sun, Neath the stars,

‘Neath the sky,

As we go, This we know,

God is nigh.

***

Fading light dims the sight,

And a star gems the sky, gleaming bright.

From afar drawing nigh — Falls the night.

Day is done, gone the sun,

From the lake, from the hills, from the sky;

All is well, safely rest, God is nigh.

Then good night, peaceful night,

Till the light of the dawn shineth bright;

God is near, do not fear — Friend, good night.

For more about the history of Taps, go here and here. This Wikipedia link has additional lyrics and an mp3 of the simple, but beautiful version the U.S. Army plays.

God Bless the brave men and women who have sacrificed so much, in too many cases, the ultimate sacrifice, so that we may live free.

God is smiling down on me. I had a couple meetings scheduled in Chicago this week. Now, I’ve been to Chicago many times, but either during the winter months or for too brief a time to play around.

But this time, because of meeting schedules, I had time to catch a game at Wrigley field. To make it even better, it was a day game and it was the Dodgers! There is a saying among Mormons that when things are falling into place it means “you must be paying your tithing.” When I bought aisle 104 (in Wrigley “sections” are actually called “aisles” on the lower level) behind home plate and on the visitor side, that saying crossed my mind.

Obviously, I’m a bit of a nostalgia nerd, especially when it comes to baseball. As I blogged a long time ago about the reason I have the Brooklyn Bridge as the image on my blog, I am a huge Dodger fan, and particularly keen on Dodger history, which had some of it’s best years in Brooklyn. As such, going to a game at Wrigley Field has been a life-long dream.

I went to my first major league game at Candlestick Park just before I turned five years old when my dad was in dental school in San Francisco, and when we came back to Arizona and settled in Show Low that summer, I could only dream about big league baseball games as I listened to Vin Scully call Dodger games on KTAR. Those dreams included seeing games at Dodger Stadium (which was fulfilled the first time in 1981), Yankee Stadium (fulfilled in 2004), Fenway (fulfilled in 2006) and finally Wrigley Field. So it’s been a long time coming.

I couldn’t have asked for a better day for baseball. Sunny, light breeze and about 70 degrees at first pitch, which was at 1:20 – making the experience even more fulfilling since it was a day game. (Wrigley Field was the last of the major league parks to add lights, holding out until 1988). I settled in, bought a hot dog from a vendor walking the aisle, applied the Gulden’s mustard and had the second best ballpark hot dog of my life. (The best was the hot dog I ate at Fenway – I can’t even tell you what made it better).

I took in the imagery, the history and, in part because I was wearing my Brooklyn Dodgers hat, envisioned the Brooklyn Dodgers playing ON THIS VERY FIELD!

Like I said, I’m a nostalgia nerd. (I think I’ve coined a phrase).

I suppose the only thing that could have made the day better was a Dodger win. However, it was a great game, a pitchers duel that the Cubs won 1-0 with back-to-back triples in the bottom of the eighth.

So I’ve hit the big four of the parks I’ve long wanted to see. The only thing left is to visit the monument for Ebbets Field, which was torn down ten years before I was born.

Play Ball!

Television icon Art Linkletter has died at the age of 97. Linkletter was a pioneer in performance broadcasting, first on radio and then on televsion. One of my favorite bits was “Kids Say the Darndest Things.”

When you think about it, Linkletter was the trailblazer for what has become reality TV today. In the long-running “House Party” he would coax too much information out of people about someone else, who unbeknownst to them, would be sitting nearby. It was the classic “awwkwaaard” moment that made it funny and real.

He was married more for more than 74 years to Lois Foerster and they had five children, three of which have passed away, two of them tragically. He was also a Republican and served as a conservative voice for seniors for many years.

Here is just a taste of some of his humor.

ABC’s Lost had one of the most anticipated series finales in TV history.

Lost was simply… epic.  Its draw was the examination of human interaction under a multitude of situations, both extreme and mundane.

Lost was in its third season before I watched the pilot and got completely hooked.  And after six seasons, I am still numb to the idea that it’s actually over.

I’m torn about the way it ended.  I loved it, I hated it, I laughed, I cried.

But when the camera zoomed in on Jack’s eye and the signature Lost logo popped onto the screen I felt… fulfilled.

It’s hard to describe.  It was less dramatic than I think I was expecting, but it was surprisingly satisfying.

Here’s what I think… The writers didn’t really know how to end it, so they pulled the pure emotion card – figuring out how to bring everyone together, and by doing so, even those of us who wanted a complete tie up at the end forgave the unanswered questions because everyone got back together.

It was thrilling to watch each character begin to remember what they had been through and to recognize who they were.

So, had they in fact died at the beginning after all, and the island was purgatory?  I don’t think so – I interpreted it as the sideways reality being purgatory (or in my faith’s parlance, the spirit world), where the work gets completed.

However you view the ending, and whether you think it was great or terrible or just ok, ultimately there wasn’t a perfect ending or a right ending, because we each viewed the series through our own prism of understanding, ideology, faith, bias and personal application.

What surprises me the most is that I don’t even remember all the questions they didn’t answer. That tells me that even though those questions seemed to be of burning priority, they just weren’t that important.

Kind of like how life unfolds…

This report from CBS News is worth posting in its entirety. It defines irony.

Press Freedom, Sure. But No Questions.

Posted by Chip Reid

There was some rich irony at the White House today — President Obama signed the Press Freedom Act, and then promptly refused to take any questions.

The new law expands the State Department’s annual human rights reports to include a description of press freedoms in each country. It seemed a good opportunity to showcase press freedom in this country.

Recall that last Friday the president refused to take any questions after delivering his angry statement on the oil spill in the Rose Garden. And he has not held a prime-time White House news conference in many months, despite much pleading from pundits and members of the media.

So after he signed the bill, and as the press “wranglers” began aggressively herding us out of the room, I asked if he still has confidence in BP. He ignored the question so I tried this: “In the interest of press freedom, would you take a couple questions on BP?”

That did elicit a smile, and he told me I was free to ask questions. Someone else shouted, “Will you answer them?”

He said he’s not holding a press conference today as we were escorted out the door.

Chip Reid is CBS News’ chief White House correspondent. You can read more of his posts in Hotsheet here.

Every, and I mean every single politician and candidate for political office needs to see this two-and-a-half minute clip of New Jersey’s Republican Governor answering a question by a reporter.

It is incredibly refreshing to see such honesty – and to think that it’s in a state like New Jersey!

I receive news alerts from the New York Times. This morning, I received this news alert related to job numbers:

U.S. Economy Adds 290,000 Jobs in April; Jobless Rate Rises to 9.9%

Three minutes later, wunderkind Senate Policy Committee staffer Chris Jacobs sent out an email:

169,000 Jobs Short…

While it’s welcome news that the economy created jobs last month, it’s worth putting it in context.  Not only do the jobs figures reflect a temporary bump in hiring of short-term government bureaucrats for this decade’s census, but they also fall far short of the number of jobs Democrats themselves promised during the health care debate.  In her opening statement at the White House summit, Speaker Pelosi noted that passage of the health care bill “will create 4 million jobs – 400,000 jobs almost immediately.”  But today’s jobs figures for April show that the private sector created only 231,000 jobs during the month – meaning that this month’s employment figures miss Democrats’ own mark for job creation by nearly half.  And job growth within the health care sector actually declined from March to April by 16,000 workers, according to the BLS survey.

Of course, it’s hard to argue that any legislation imposing over half a trillion dollars in tax increases will create jobs in the first place.  In other words, the Speaker – having taken her own advice that “we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it” – may well find that passing a $2.6 trillion government takeover of health care will kill jobs, rather than create them.

The Gray Lady must have felt squeamish – or they got a call from Capitol Hill – because 11 minutes later another news alert came across the transom:

Four-Month Rise Strengthens U.S. Job Outlook

It’s kinda cool that one smart Senate staffer can who offers instant response to news can rattle the cage of the self-proclaimed “most important” newspaper in the world.

This is just downright inappropriate and disgusting, even for Harry Reid:

“You can find the Republicans are having difficulty determining how they’re going to continue making love to Wall Street.”

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), quoted by ABC News, explaining why the financial regulation reform bill is stalled.

And Harry Reid is a shameless hypocrite. In a story about Washington’s Sen. Patti Murray, the Seattle Post Intelligencer, we find this nugget:

Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., another member of the Senate’s Democratic leadership, has received $1.58 million from the securities and investment industry during the current campaign cycle. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has taken $902,000, even more than he has received from the gaming industry. (emphasis added)

To put that in perspective, there is this tidbit from the Wall Street Journal:

According to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics, Democrats have received nearly two-thirds of the $34.7 million donated by the entire securities and investment industry since Jan. 1, 2009. Democrats took in 57% of Wall Street’s donations in the 2008 campaign and 52% during the 2006 midterm elections.

The last time Wall Street contributed more money to Republicans than Democrats was during the 2004 presidential election cycle when the GOP collected 52% of their donations, according to the center.

Reid needs to look in the mirror and recognize that if what Republicans are doing equates to making love to Wall Street, than what he is doing is just a cheap trick.

What must be the world’s longest (and largest) spending spree is coming to an end.  Politicos everywhere were abuzz this afternoon following Representative David Obey’s (D-WI) surprise announcement of his plans to retire at the end of this Congress. Elected in 1969 (he’s been in Congress longer than I’ve been alive, and it feels really nice to say that), Obey won all but two of his 21 elections with more than 60% of the vote (1969, in his first election, and in 1994, the year of the Republican Revolution and, importantly, when the political environment was very similar to today’s).

While the 71 year-old Chairman of the powerful House Appropriations Committee asserted during his announcement that being “bone tired” was one of the primary motivations in making his decision (Hey, who can blame him? All those taxpayer dollars don’t spend themselves!), it no doubt deals a huge blow to House Democrats as they already face an uphill battle to November.

Will Obey’s move inspire other Dems to follow suit? How ugly will the fight for the Approps gavel get? Today’s events leave many a question mark, but it can safely be said that Republican Sean Duffy, who was already waging a fierce battle against Mr. Obey, is having a pretty great Wednesday.