Monday, June 29, 2009

Racists, Lies, and Connecticut Justice

So have you been paying attention to the media frenzy surrounding the death of Michael Jackson? If so, have you noticed the appearance - one within hours - of two of our nation's most prolific racists? I'm speaking of Jesse Jackson - whom I absolutely REFUSE to call "reverend" - and Al Sharpton. Both of these racists have used the tragic death of Jackson as an excuse to get their faces on television, and Sharpton even had the balls to do it within hours of Jackson's death by holding an impromptu "memorial" - spelled "press conference" - in front of the Apollo Theater in Harlem, New York.

So why do I call them racists? Well, let me ask you a question: if a high-profile white man took an active role in defending and promoting people of the caucasian race, what would you call him? Be honest, now - you'd call him a "racist," as would the mainstream media and the rest of the nation. Well, most of it, anyway, but not me.

So just what makes them any different??

Oh, I see...they're black, so it's impossible for them to be a racist, right? Funny, I don't recall seeing either one of them speaking out about the tragic death of Farrah Fawcett-Majors from cancer, do you? So why would they speak out for Michael Jackson and not her?

Do you really need me to tell you, or do you already know the answer?

Both of these men disgust me.

Now, on to the "lies" portion of this segment, and I'll bet you can guess who I'm gonna talk about, huh? That's right, I'm gonna talk about "The Great Pretender," Barack Hussein Obama!

Remember during his campaign when he said flat-out and in plain English that NO ONE who made less than $200,000.00 a year would EVER have to pay ANY kind of additional taxes? And then he went on to name the taxes that they would NEVER have to pay...remember that?

So did you catch two of his spokesmen telling us today that a new tax to pay for NObama's health care plan "is on the table?" Hang on to your wallets, people, because NObama has proven himself not only to be a liar, but a typical "tax and spend" Democrat. But you knew that when you elected him, right? Right?

NO? So just WTF were you thinking, anyway? Is THIS the kind of "change" you were expecting? No? Well, all I can say is, you're about to get what you asked for, and the sad part about it is that the people who DIDN'T vote for him are gonna get it, too. And there's no justice in that.

But there is justice in New Haven, Connecticut, where a group of 19 caucasian and 1 Latino firefighter took their case of racial discrimination to the highest court in the land, the US Supreme Court, and won. Seems that five years ago - FIVE YEARS AGO - the city of New Haven held promotion testing for their fire department, and because no blacks scored high enough to qualify for promotion they simply chucked out all of the tests, invalidating them and promoting no one. And the reason they gave? They were afraid of being sued by a "civil rights" group for not promoting any blacks. So they decided not to promote ANY of the whites and the one Latino who DID score high enough to get promoted.

And promptly got sued by the 19 whites and the Latino!

Along the way the case was heard by an Appelate Court judge, who sided with the city. And that appelate court judge was non other than Judge Sotomayor, NObama's nomination for the Supreme Court. Kinda tells you what kind of justice she's gonna be, don't it? But when the Supreme Court overturned HER ruling and the ruling of the city and found in favor of the "New Haven 20," as they've come to be called, they sent a clear message out to the entire nation, that message being that "equal opportunity" goes both ways. They also said that the basis of NOT hiring someone because they're white is just as bad as NOT hiring someone because they're black.

But then, we knew that all along, didn't we? Still, I'm glad that the US Supreme Court has finally put it into an opinion that will always be on the books. It was a long time coming!

And I have a feeling that it won't be the last.

IHC

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Farrah who?

Farrah Fawcett-Majors, that's who. You know, "Jill" from "Charlie's Angels," and the girl in that famous poster from the 1980's, the one with the hair and the nipple shot that spawned so many adolescent male fantasies...

The woman who died the same day Michael Jackson did. NOW you remember, right?

If this applies to you, then I feel sorry for you. The world lost a genuine talent, a genuinely nice person, and a valiant, brave woman when Farrah Fawcett-Majors died.

Unfortunately, fate laughed at her and chose to take Michael "Wacko Jacko" Jackson on the same day - within hours, actually - thereby ensuring that her untimely passing would be totally and completely eclipsed by the media feeding frenzy that would undoubtedly ensue once "The Gloved One" keeled over and died. And that's exactly what happened. On that fateful day, at nine o'clock in the morning if you checked out the main page of CNN.com, the lead story was Farrah's death. A mere four hours later, if you looked at the page again you'd see Jackson's death as the lead story, and Farrah's death dropped all the way down to the FOURTH news item on the page - not the second one, mind you, but the FOURTH. To their credit, someone at CNN.com got a case of the guilts later on that day, because at nine PM her story was in the #2 slot. Too little, too late, in my humble opinion.

In case you may have figured it out, I'm not a Michael Jackson fan. I'll be the first to say that he was the single most-talented person to ever come out of the 20th century; I mean, face it - he could sing, he could dance, he could even act - and it all came to him NATURALLY. The man was born with more talent than should be legal, and he was a fantastic performer. I personally think that "Thriller" is the best video ever made, period, and will always hold that spot. I mean, after the dancing zombies scene, what can you do that can top that? The whole video was absolutely great, and I loved it.

Believe it or not, at that point in time I actually liked Michael Jackson. After all, I grew up to his voice when he was with the Jackson 5, and followed him through his career when he grew up and went solo. He was simply a fantastic performer, a natural talent.

But then he got weird. Not "eccentric," not "strange." WEIRD. Mind-numbing, "what the HELL was he thinking?", "can you BELIEVE this shit?" WEIRD. For example: how many of you out there under the age of 25 knew that at one time, Michael Jackson was BLACK? Yep, sure was - just do a web search of "The Jackson Five" and check out the picture- that little kid in the center with the afro is Michael Jackson when he was ten years old or so.

And it seemed the older he got, the weirder he became. I mean, c'mon, he turned his mansion into a theme park and called it "Neverland," obviously named after the ficticious place in the novel and movie "Peter Pan." He at one time changed his will so that all of his wealth would be left to his pet chimp, Bubbles. And then, out of the clear blue nowhere, he up and married - of all people - LISA-MARIE PRESLEY! I'm sure Elvis was spinning in his grave at that one. Of course the marriage didn't last - it was a sham to begin with - but to "further disprove" the nasty rumors about his sexual preferences floating around Hollywood and the rest of the world, he up and gets married again and has three kids. Oh, and His Weirdness named the first one PRINCE. I mean, after all, Michael Jackson was "the king," right? So why not name your first-born male child PRINCE?

I can think of about a thousand reasons NOT to.

The weirder Jackson got, the less I liked him. I mean, really....eccentricity is one thing, but the crap that Jackson did was just WAAAAAAAY over the line. After a while he became the self-styled poster boy for excessive and bad plastic surgery in his attempts to NOT look like what he was - a black guy. The more he tried, the worse he looked, and the sadder he became in my eyes.

Am I sorry he died at 50 years of age? Certainly, but not for his sake - I'm sorry for his kid's sake. Now they're without a parent - they really don't know their birth mother - so what's going to happen to them? As for Michael Jackson, he was the architect of his own fate just as Elvis Presly, John Belushi, and Chris Farley were the architects of their own fates. But in this case there were kids left behind in the lurch, and that just ain't fair.

It also ain't fair that hardly any attention is getting paid to Farrah Fawcett-Majors. It just ain't fair.

RIP, Farrah. We'll miss you, and we certainly won't forget you.

IHC

Monday, June 15, 2009

Three words that can't be used in the same sentence

And those words would be, "free elections" and "Iran."

Anyone who has been following the news of the "free elections" in Iran knows what I'm talking about. In the days just prior to the election, the news media was full of stories about how the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, was facing a really serious challenge from his opponent, Mir Hossein Moussavi. The media was even going so far as to say that the election would be a toss-up at best, and that Ahmadinejad stood a really good chance of losing.

Of course, that was before the election.

Since then, there have been reports of ballots being "lost" or just "disappearing," indicating that the "free election" in Iran was anything but. And then, the reporters that reported the missing ballots either got locked up by Ahmadinejad's secret police or went into hiding to avoid being arrested and locked up. This was quickly followed by the little tyrant claiming victory in the elections, saying that he got 60% of the vote. He's saying this, of course, as his secret police are out hunting down reporters who are reporting the truth about the election.

Then, as expected, the loser starts complaining about the election being rigged, and about those mysterious missing ballots. What does Ahmadinejad do? He makes a public statement that he "cannot guarantee the safety" of his opponent, thereby absolving himself of the bad thing that is about to befall Moussavi. What he's done, in reality, is give the green light to his minions to go ahead and assassinate Moussavi - after all, if his opponent is dead then there's no one left to lose the election to, right? And that sure will discourage anyone else from running against him, won't it?

In the mean time, the Iranian students and a hell of a lot of the everyday Iranian populace has taken to the streets, protesting the obviously rigged election. And when I say "a hell of a lot," I'm talking in the tens of thousands, boys and girls. This thing isn't just going to go away, ya know.

So now the latest thing is that the Supreme Leader of Iran, the Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has ordered an investigation into the conduct of the election. Surprise, surprise....wonder what they'll find?

The one thing that Ahmadinejad forgot in this election was the power of the Iranian students. It was this body of people that were Moussavi's strongest supporters, and no one in Iran - or the rest of the world, for that matter - predicted the massive student turnout to cast their vote. You would think that Ahmadinejad would be the last person to forget this - after all, in 1979 when the Iranian students overran the US Embassy and took our people hostage (Thanks a lot, Jimmy Carter), Ahmadinejad was one of those students. He played an integral part in the planning of the operation, and was there at the embassy for nearly the entire time. He more than anyone else should have rememberd just how dedicated, powerful, and volatile a body of students can be. The Chinese can sure tell you, as can the Koreans - both of those nations have been rocked by massive student demonstrations. Rememer Tienamin Square in 1989?

But Ahmadinejad has forgotten history, therefore he is doomed to be the victim when it repeats itself. I have a feeling that the students in Iran are going to do the same thing to him that he and the students of 1979 did to the Shah - they're going to run him out of town on a rail, and he'll most certainly deserve it.

This may very well be the beginning of the end for Ahmadinejad, and I hope for the sake of Iran and the rest of the region that it is.

Time will tell.

IHC

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

"Easy Rider 2: The Ride Back" Say WHAT???

So I was scooting around the Internet today, perusing some of the posts on a biker forum I frequent, when someone posted a story from H-D Magazine telling us the news that someone has decided to make a sequel to "Easy Rider," and that it's going to be called "Easy Rider 2: The Ride Back."

I have only one question: WHY???

I'm one of the very few bikers I know of that will readily admit that "Easy Rider" was one of the WORST biker movies EVER made. Most of the bikers I know get all enamored and glassy-eyed whenever someone mentions Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper and "Easy Rider," and they'll run you slam over to get to the tube to watch it. They live by it, breathe it, know all of the lines by heart, and just drool all over themselves while watching Billy and Wyatt scoot down the highway on their customized Harley-Davidsons, "two young men in search of America," as the hype from the trailer went.

Bullshit. Pure, unadulterated bullshit of the highest order.

I mean, c'mon...have you ever watched the movie? For those of you who haven't, here's a brief synopsis so you can see what you've been missing.

Wyatt (Peter Fonda) and Billy (Dennis Hopper) are two DRUG DEALERS who open the movie by making a big score outside of an airport. They sell a buttload of drugs to some cat in a black limo, then hide the cash inside a plastic tube which they seal with a cork and then thread down into the peanut gas tank on Wyatt's chopper, "Captain America." (Good idea, there, Wyatt, stuffing all that crap down inside your peanut gas tank which only holds 2.5 gallons to begin with...and sealing it with a CORK, now that's a really good idea!) Then they get on their bikes and ride to Louisiana, having all kinds of weird, far-out adventures along the way. One of these adventures includes tripping on acid in a New Orleans CEMETARY, for cryin' out loud! Along the way they pick up some nerdy guy played by Jack Nicholson, and he gets to ride bitch on Captain America behind Wyatt because the bike has a sissy bar that he can lean back against.

The movie ends with all three of the main characters getting killed.

The "three amigos" pass through some small town in Texas, I think it was, and manage to piss off just about everyone they run into; the locals come out to their camp site in the middle of the night and play a little "catch up" during which they beat Nicholson to death. Wyatt and Billy, being the two considerate souls that they are (drug dealers, remember) just up and leave, leaving the body lying there for the coyotes. Later on down the road our two heros run afoul of two rednecks in a pickup truck while riding down the highway; Billy flips one of them the bird, who promptly pulls out a shotgun and blasts the crap outta him, sending him and his bike into the ditch. Wyatt stops to help Billy, puts his famous coat over him, then jumps on his bike to go get help. Well, of course the two good ol' boys in the pickup turn around and come back - can't have any witnesses, ya know - and they blast Wyatt clean off of the bike with another blast from the shotgun.

End of movie. Literally. The last shot is one taken from a helicopter (you can see the grass blowing around from the rotor blast) which shows Wyatt lying on his back, arms straight out in the classic crucifixion pose, his bike a burning heap of junk off to the side.

So why in the world, you ask yourself, would anyone want to try and make a SEQUEL to this movie?

Money. Gotta be the reason - it's the reason for most stupid things done with movies, so that's just gotta be it. Other than that, I can't see one single, solitary, good reason for making a sequel to what I think is the stupidest, lamest, most laughable "biker" movie ever made, and they made a bunch of 'em in the late sixties. The movie comes out in September, so we'll just have to wait until then to see if it's gonna be a good movie or just another stinker.

Now if you wanna see a GOOD biker movie, then I suggest you go rent "Beyond the Law" with Charlie Sheen and Michael Madsen. This movie is based on the TRUE STORY of a DEA agent who infiltrated the Mongols, and it's one kick-ass good movie!

As a matter of fact, I've got that one sitting in my drawer, and it's been a while since I've watched it..........

IHC

Saturday, June 6, 2009

Do you know what today is?


If you don't know what today is, then you're one of the examples I've talked about before, those people who have little knowledge of history and the significant events that have taken place before. Shame on you...
Today is the 65th anniversary of the D-Day Invasion that took place on June 6, 1944, which is, in my humble opinion, one of the single most significant events that have ever taken place in world history. It was the largest amphibious landing to ever take place, and it marked the beginning of the end for Nazi Germany, the Third Reich, and its insane leader, Adolf Hitler. It is estimated that nearly 9,000 American soldiers became casualties on that day, with approximately 1,500 of them being killed. For many of them, the first picture in this post is the last thing on this earth they ever saw.
Think about it: put yourself in one of those landing crafts, approaching a beach that is heavily occupied and defended by well-trained, well-prepared, and well-armed soldiers...when the ramp drops it's like dropping the ramp on a shooting gallery, and you're the target. Every enemy gun within eyesight is going to be shooting at that one spot - the open ramp doorway - which means they're going to be shooting at YOU. With machine guns. LOTS of machine guns.
If you can get off the landing craft and onto the beach you're one of the lucky ones, and if you can get off the beach you're one of the really lucky ones.

If you want to get a really, really, REALLY accurate idea of just what it was like to be coming ashore from one of those landing crafts, then I highly suggest you watch the first 40 minutes of "Saving Private Ryan." And make sure that you either rent the DVD or watch the unedited, "not safe for TV" version that TNT or TCM shows. That shows ALL of the movie, with all of the blood, gore, horror, and heroics of that day.
I guarantee you that you'll have a much greater appreciation for what those members of "The Greatest Generation" went through, and you'll understand why they're called that.
If you have a WWII vet living in your area, go find him or her today and thank them for what they did. If there's a VA home in your town, go visit a WWII vet there and thank him for what he did.
All they did was save the world, you know.
To all of the World War II vets who may be reading this, and even if you're not - thank you. The world will forever be in your debt. You are, truly, "The Greatest Generation."
IHC

Thursday, June 4, 2009

General Patrick Cleburne - General or Prophet?

“Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late...It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern schoolteachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision..."
Maj. Gen Patrick R. Cleburne, CSA
January, 1864

Out of all the quotes I’ve ever read in my life, I think this one by Confederate General Patrick Cleburne is easily the most significant, the most memorable, and sadly, the most accurate in terms of how much of the predicted events actually came to pass. In this case, Gen. Cleburne was 100% on the mark – every single thing he predicted would happen if the South lost the war came true. And, IMHO, it is easily the single most tragic and despicable twisting of American historical events in the history of our great nation.

Let’s take a look at his quote, shall we?

“It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy….”

And indeed, it certainly has. About the most unbiased account of the war can be found in the Official Record, the publication by the United States Government which outlined the war and the events that took place therein. Even so, this is not a completely unbiased account; for example, the OR fails to mention Lincoln’s true motivation for issuing the Emancipation Proclamation. Aside from the OR, the vast majority of the books that have been written about the war have been written by Northern authors who have invariably told their tales of the war from the Yankee point of view; those points of view will almost unfailingly paint the South as the great villain, the nefarious, treacherous nation who fought a war for the sole purpose of preserving the institution of slavery. Those of us who are true students of American history know this to be not even a small fraction of the many real reasons that the South fought the war.

“…that our youth will be trained by Northern schoolteachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war…”

When my son was in high school, he had a rather spirited discussion with his history teacher during his senior year over how the teacher was presenting the history and causes of the war. Being raised by an ardent Southern patriot and SCV member, my son knew the real history of the war. During the discussion my son discovered that the teacher was not from Virginia, where his school was located, but was instead from a Northern state. Indeed, this has been the case over and over again throughout the South – I’ll bet that if you took a quick poll of how many history teachers in public schools throughout the South are actually from the North, you’d be surprised at what you’d find. And the next time you get the chance, ask your son or daughter to bring their history book home from school. When they do, open the book and look at the inside front cover and see where it was published. You’ll find that the majority of text books being published today come from a Northern publishing company, and just whose version of the war do you think they’re going to publish? Why, the victor’s, of course!

“…will be impressed by the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit objects for derision..."

The first thing the Federal government did after the war was to imprison the former Confederate President, Jefferson Davis, in a small cell at Fortress Monroe in Hampton, Virginia, where they kept him imprisoned for more than two years while they tried to gather enough evidence to use against him in his trial for treason. I guess the lawyers at the time had never heard of the Constitutional right to a speedy trial, huh? Not the first time that the Federal government violated the Constitution, by the way…in any event, after more than two years of trying to get its ducks in a row, the Federal government finally released Davis “on parole” and allowed him to return to his home in Mississippi with the admonishment that his parole could be revoked at any time and he could then be brought back to Washington, DC to be tried for treason once the Federals were ready. Davis died before that day came. The Federals never did get enough evidence to put Davis on trial. Maybe their experience with the reliability of Union army “witnesses” during the kangaroo court of former Confederate Capt Henry Wirz, the commander of Andersonville prison camp, made them think twice before they tried it again.

To this day, the stigma of “traitor” hangs over the memory of the Southern men who fought and died for their country, all because their country was the Confederacy, not the Union. I’ve participated in many online forums in which the war was discussed, and in every single one of them there are legions of Yankees who revel in the opportunity to call Confederates “traitors.” What these “good people” (and I use the term loosely) fail to realize is that the men who fought for the Confederacy were fighting for their land, their homes, their states, and their independence from a government which they felt was unreasonable and oppressive to them and their way of life, a government which was running roughshod over them at every turn.

Sound familiar? It should…we fought our very first war in 1776 for the same reasons, and I don’t hear anyone in this country calling George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Patrick Henry “traitors.” But I’ll bet you that they sure called them that in jolly old England!

And the really sad thing is, I just don’t see any of this getting better anytime soon. As with anything, the further away from it you get the less important it seems to be in the overall scheme of things. The Yankees and the carpetbaggers and the scallywags have been preaching their twisted, one-sided version of the war for so long that unfortunately it has become engrained in the consciousness of America as “the true story.” Well, it isn’t the true story, and as long as there’s breath in my body I’ll continue to enlighten those in the dark, whether it be self-imposed or not, and will continue to fight for the proper, honorable remembrance of those gallant men of the South, those patriots in gray and butternut who fought for their country and gave their lives for what they believed in.

IHC