Jim Wickre

Judy "blue eyes" in Medford Tonight

2012-01-26T15:45:00.000-08:00

Yes, I know there is a Republican debate on too !! Judy Collins will will perform at the Ginger Rodgers Craterian Theater. Review tomorrow !

Review:

Before going to the concert last night I was talking with a co worker and she asked what concert I was going to and I said Judy Collins. Her reply was "who is that" ? I said a 60's folk singer and she said "I was born much later than that." I then said haven't you heard of the song "Both Side Now" and she said "no". I then said how about "Send in the Clowns" and she said "didn't Judy Garland sing that" ?.... and I gave up.

My wife and I arrived at the Craterian and waited a while in the lobby. They were selling Judy Collins latest CD album "Bohemian" (see cover above) and I bought it. It was personally autographed by her on the cover. We then ran into some fellow "ducks" and talked with them for a while about the Ducks and what else..... politics. We then went in and got our seats and listened to a 30 minute opening act which was "just OK." The guy was very good on the guitar but I was not a fan of his music.

After a short brake Judy came out and gave a wonderful concert. She is 72 and looks great ! Her voice still can hit the high notes, and once warmed up, she is still a great singer. If you want a "perfect" rendition of her music listen to the CD because even as good as she is she isn't as perfect as she was at 25 or 45. On her first song, "Chelsae Morning," she had to start over because she just wasn't getting it right but she soared thereafter. Judy likes to talk alot between songs, talking about her family and the history of folk music and what it was like in Greenwich Village in New York in the 60's. She talked about meeting the singers of that era including a guy named Bob Dylan. She likes to drop a lot of names. She mentions how much she likes the Britt Festival in Jacksonville and wants to be invited back. Through the years we have seen her twice at Britt. Some people complain that she should talk less between songs but I love it. Sometimes her thoughts are somewhat "scattered" but it makes it all the more endearing. At a point or two I thought I was watching a Smothers Brothers show where they would start singing and then stop in mid song and start talking some more. The two high points for me were when she sang the Joan Baez song "Diamonds and Rust" about Baez relationship with Bob Dylan and when Judy sang "In The Twilight" a new song about her mothers final days. It was very very good and is found on her new album "Bohemian" released in the last year.She also sang "Both Sides Now." She sang from her new album, "Campo De Encino"and "Veteran's Day." I particularity enjoyed the combination of the songs "Leaving on a Jet plane" and Country Roads" and an Arlo Guthrey hit "City of New Orleans." She ended by singing the Judy Garland hit "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." She kept her political talk to a minimum but did make a snide remark about Sara Palin.
She received numerous standing ovations from a full crowd (first floor as far as I could see) who were very appreciative. She left me wanting more. I have listened to her new album today and it is one of her best ! I had previewed it on Amazon.com before the concert but that did not do it justice.

I noted from her concert schedule, on her website, that tonight she gives a concert in Bremerton, Washington and on Saturday in Durant, Oklahoma, and on Sunday in Austin, Texas. That is a lot of travel and singing for someone who is 72 and I couldn't help thinking during the concert we are witnessing something special that won't go on forever.

The Republicans’ Electoral College Newt-Mare

2012-01-26T10:36:00.000-08:00

Regular readers of this blog may feel I am obsessed with New Gingrich but his being nominated by the Republican party is one of the biggest hopes Obama has of getting a second term and that scares me !

Click on the title for a link to Larry Sabato's state by state analysis of a electoral win by Obama if Newt his our nominee. I love his color coded maps of the states. In the past I have found Sabato one of the best. He is the head of the University of Virgina's Center for Politics and is a very frequent guest on Fox News with is political analysis.

It takes 270 electoral votes to win the Presidency

If Newt Gingrich it the Republican nominee Sabato predicts Obama would win between 303 to 357 electoral votes in a landslide.

If a generic Republican (and Mitt Romney is about as generic as it gets) were the nominee of the Republican party the Republican would have 206 projected electoral votes with 85 a tossup. Obama would be short of election at 246. The tossups Romney would have to pick up to win are Ohio, Virgina, Florida and New Hampshire which would give him 270 and the Presidency. He also has a chance in Nevada, Colorado, Iowa and I believe in Pennsylvania and/or Wisconsin for cush.

Sabato's maps are much better at explaining this visually so click on the title for a look.

"RE-ELECT OBAMA: VOTE NEWT!" by Ann Coulter

2012-01-25T15:10:00.000-08:00

Even Ann Coulter sees that nominating Newt would be a disaster

Romney is the most electable candidate not only because it will be nearly impossible for the media to demonize this self-made Mormon square, devoted to his wife and church, but precisely because he is the most conservative candidate.

Conservatism is an electable quality. Hotheaded arrogance is neither conservative nor attractive to voters.

Click on the title for a link to her entire column

The good news today is the latest polls from Florida show that Newt's surge has ended and is starting to go back down.

"William Jefferson Gingrich"

2012-01-25T12:00:00.000-08:00

Conservative leaders are staring to speak out against Newt Gingrich:

Today it is R. EMMETT TYRRELL, Jr. founder and editor in chief of the American Spectator Magazine who writes:

Newt Gingrich is conservatism’s Bill Clinton, but without the charm. He has acquired wit but he has all the charm of barbed wire.

Newt and Bill are 1960s generation narcissists, and they share the same problems: waywardness and deviancy.....

Now he has found his key for hustling conservative electorate.....

Contending with Newt for the Republican nomination are Ron Paul, Rick Santorum, and Mitt Romney. All three are truer conservatives than Newt. I like them all. But John Bolton, former ambassador the United Nations, and John Lehman, President Reagan’s secretary of the navy, are for Mitt, and they are solid conservatives. Governor Christie and the economic pundit Larry Kudlow laud Mitt on taxes, on spending, and on attacking crony capitalism. Mr. Kudlow calls Mr. Romney “Reaganesque.” Ann Coulter seems to loathe Newt. That is good enough for me.

Back in 1992 I appeared with Chris Matthews on some gasbag’s television show. Was it Donohue? At any rate, I said candidate Clinton had more skeletons in his closet than a body snatcher. It was a prescient line then, and I always got a laugh. I can apply the same line today to Newt, though he has skeletons both inside and outside his closet.

Conservatives should not be surprised by the scandals that lie ahead, if they stick with him.....

By now we know. Character matters. Paul, Santorum, and Romney have it. Newt has Clinton’s character.

To read the rest click on the title for a link.

Newt’s doomed crusade !

2012-01-25T10:48:00.000-08:00

S.E. Cupp, conservative columnist, speaks for me when she says "shame on us" for the Conservative Movement's apparent infatuation with Newt Gingrich. In a column subtitled, "The quixotic Gingrich campaign for the White House could sink the conservative movement." she writes in part:

In no measure does Gingrich fit what conservatives want in their candidate.

Tea Party voters want a small-government, anti-establishment Washington outsider. Gingrich fails on all three counts.

Establishment Republicans want an electable candidate. Gingrich fails here, as well.

Social conservatives want a candidate who reflects their family values. Um . . .

So if Gingrich fails to satisfy any of these impulses, I’m left to assume that conservatives are simply out for a good time. They want to be entertained by a Gingrich-Obama slugfest in the general election debates, and they are willing to sacrifice everything — their credibility, their values and the White House — to sit in the Coliseum and watch a Christian get devoured by lions.

Shame on us. The future of conservatism and the future of the country are bigger than debate-night hijinks. If we conservatives are willing to forgive Gingrich his transgressions, I’m not sure what separates us from liberals.

To read the rest of her column click on the title for a link.

As a long time movement conservative I am embarrassed with this infatuation with Newt Gingrich and I can only hope it is temporary. If I make another charge for the Conservative cause you can bet it will NOT be with Newt leading it. We are better than that ! This man is a charlatan.

I would like to write on another subject but this man threatens the Conservative cause I have loved from age 16 and threatens to reelect Obama who has so damaged the country I have loved even longer. This battle is for the sole of the Conservative movement. I stand with the editors of National Review Magazine. See editorial below.

National Review "No" on Newt part II

2012-01-24T10:22:00.000-08:00

National Review, the premier Conservative magazine, again today editorialized against the nomination of Newt Gingrich by the Republican party. Some quotes from the editorial:

.....neither Gingrich nor Romney can make the case that he is a purebred conservative or a world-beating political talent, both are now essentially relying on a negative argument: The other guy is unreliable and unelectable. There is enough truth in both indictments to explain the continued appeal of other candidates’ joining the race.

Among the present candidates, we continue to prefer Romney and Rick Santorum over Gingrich and Ron Paul
.......
Our opposition to Gingrich, by contrast, is not based on any philosophical disagreement. Among Gingrich, Romney, and Santorum, we find only minor ideological differences. None has been a consistent small-government conservative in office; all are running on conservative, and similar, platforms this year.

Thus it seems to us that the key question is which candidate can best make that platform a reality by first beating Obama and then governing successfully
.......
There is much more to general elections than debates, and there is much more to the presidency than giving speeches. On an intellectual level Gingrich knows this, but he has little experience either in contesting elections with large numbers of voters of varying views or in running large organizations. Romney has executive experience, unlike Gingrich or Santorum, and in past elections voters have seemed to value that experience.....Only Gingrich has never been elected to office from anything larger than a congressional district; only Gingrich has never had to reach beyond the Republican base vote to win an election......

Amid all the tumult of the last 18 years there has been this constant: Gingrich has never been popular. Polls have never shown more than 43 percent of the public viewing him favorably at any point in his career. Gingrich backers say that he is inspiring. What he mostly seems to inspire is opposition.

It should go without saying that Gingrich also offers more material than the other candidates for Democrats to drive his numbers in the wrong direction. Any Republican nominee will draw criticism for being too biased toward the rich. Not every Republican nominee will be attacked for cruelty in his personal life.

None of these candidates can be guaranteed to beat Obama (or run a successful White House), and under the right circumstances any of them could. For Republicans to choose Gingrich, though, would be a gamble, with everything from the Supreme Court to Obamacare to our nation’s alliances riding on the outcome.

To read the rest click on the title for a link

"cruelty in his personal life" "mostly seems to inspire is opposition" "would be a gamble" "has never been popular" Yes, it is all true !

Newt Gingrich:" I supported Rockefeller over Goldwater"

2012-01-23T21:52:00.000-08:00

However in tonight's Florida debate he told a different story when he said : "I went to a Goldwater organizing session in 1964" in order to prove his "conservative" credentials.As someone who actually worked for Goldwater in 1964 I find this just one more example of why conservatives can not trust Newt Gingrich.

Liberal Washington Influence Peddler

2012-01-23T21:15:00.001-08:00

According to the National Journal:

Freddie Mac paid the Gingrich Group up to $300,000 for the year, to "provide consulting and related services as requested by Freddie Mac's Director, Public Policy in exchange for which Freddie Mac will pay Consultant $25,000 per each full calendar month during which Consultant provides services," according to the 15-page contract.

I have read the contract and it is mostly "boiler plate" terms that are included in contracts of this type but gives little or no information as to what he did for the $25,000 per month. The agreement was signed on behalf of Freddy Mac by their chief lobbyist.

He gets $25,000.00 per month and the contract does not specify his duties ! I would like work like that !

There is nothing in the contract about Newt being a "historian" as claimed by Newt. He was being paid for his influence and anyone who knows how Washington works will understand that fact.

Newt during the debate tonight in Florida was asked what he had done for the Conservative cause and he started out by stating he went to a Goldwater speech. However as someone who actually worked for Goldwater in 1964 I found it interesting that Newt neglected to tell the American people he worked for Liberal Republican, Nelson Rockefeller, in his 1968 Presidential campaign, as a regional director as a grad student at Tulane University. Somehow that was skipped by "the historian."

Two Quitters

2012-01-23T13:58:00.000-08:00

The voters of Alaska elected Sarah Palin to a four year term as Governor and she let the voters down by resigning half way through her term. She made a four year commitment she failed to honor. The voters of Newt Gingrich's congressional district in Georgia elected him to a two year term as their Congressmen. ONE DAY after he was elected Newt failed to honor his commitment and resigned from the United States House in disgrace. I will not support quitters or those who endorse quitters. Have they no honor. Unfortunately, we have become a "me first" society that even sometimes applies to some Conservatives.

We will always have the Rose Bowl 2012

2012-01-22T21:39:00.000-08:00

This afternoon during the NFC Championship game, Oregon Duck fans learned via Twitter that Head Oregon Coach Chip Kelly is leaving for the NFL and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Florida. All across the Internet vie twitter, email, blog post and sports stories the news was spread much like the drums of old. The reactions of Duck fans was various from a sense of betrayal, sadness and resignation. At the least, it was a bad time being less then two weeks before "letter of intent day" for the new football recruits.How many will we lose? There was also wild speculation on who the Ducks will hire as our new coach. It seems the football season never ends.

However, inspite of it all, we will always remember what it was like to go to the Rose Bowl....... and WIN! Thanks for the memories Coach Kelly and best of luck at Tampa Bay. You will always be the coach who led us to that win in the Rose Bowl and you will always be a DUCK ! I will always remember you jumping in air when Oregon recovered a Wisconsin fumble near the Oregon sidelines.

Let's Go Ducks !

Middle of the night update:

Hey Chip, Was that a bad dream or what ! Or was it ?

Latest news is Chip changed his mind and is staying...... I don't know about you but I had a real night of resless dreams.

"The Obamas, feeling misunderstood, burrowed into “self-imposed exile"

2012-01-22T10:03:00.000-08:00

Who would think I would ever be quoting Liberal New York Time columnist Marueen Dowd, but her column today is very true:

The portrait of the first couple in Jodi Kantor’s new book, “The Obamas,” bristles with aggrievement and the rational president’s disdain for the irrational nature of politics, the press and Republicans. Despite what his rivals say, the president and the first lady do believe in American exceptionalism — their own, and they feel overassaulted and underappreciated.

We disappointed them.

As Michelle said to Oprah in an interview she did with the president last May: “I always told the voters, the question isn’t whether Barack Obama is ready to be president. The question is whether we’re ready. And that continues to be the question we have to ask ourselves.”

They still believed, as their friend Valerie Jarrett once said, that Obama was “just too talented to do what ordinary people do.”

To read the rest click on the title for a link

Her column explains why Barack made the following comment about the American People in 2008:

"And it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,"

On to Florida !

2012-01-21T16:09:00.000-08:00

The results from South Carolina can help the Romney campaign if they take the following lessons from it.

1. Release the damn tax returns NOW!
2. Explain why Bain Capital did not load corporations with leveraged debt so they could take profits out of the business then cast them off. ( A formal report needs to be done and released to the press.... hire someone respected to do the report)
3. Show PASSION !!!!!
4. Promise to pick a Conservative as VP.
5. Get some conservative surrogates (NOT Sununu or Palenty)
6. Better debate prep.
7. BE BOLD AND ACT BOLD
8. Show that Newt is no Conservative.

Romney needs to show that he can take Newt out so we believe he can beat Obama

Final Moments of 2012 Rose Bowl

2012-01-21T10:44:00.000-08:00

Memories to last a lifetime !

The Myth of 'Newt The Great Debater'

2012-01-20T16:54:00.000-08:00

By Conservative John Ziegler in the American Thinker:

For example, let's take the most recent debate. Newt somehow got rave reviews for calling his ex-wife a liar (after saying that morning that he wouldn't say anything negative about her) and angrily lambasting the media for asking a legitimate question. CNN's panel universally praised Newt's answer as the highlight of the debate (this, despite the fact that he guaranteed that everyone in the country would know he has an ex-wife who hates him because the clip of him fuming was assured to get tons of airtime).

Does anyone really believe that if a similar circumstance occurred against Obama that Newt would be let off the hook like that?

******************

Conservatives should be warned about what they are getting themselves in for if Newt is the nominee. Debate nights might be fun, but the hangover will last for at least four years.

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/2012/01/the_myth_of_newt_the_great_debater.html#ixzz1k3A6XPSU

America Hates Newt !

2012-01-20T16:27:00.000-08:00

Don't belive me.... click on the title for a link.

Conservatives... Newt will Break your heart !

2012-01-20T10:43:00.000-08:00

Newt Gindrich has no chance of beating President Obama and even if he did he would be a failure as President which would damage the Conservative cause I have spent my life loving. He is a slick talker with a lot of contradictory ideas and no follow through or discipline to implement them. I love it when he attacks the liberal media but that does not make a Presidency. He will lead us on one more charge but will abandon us and break our hearts and spirit as he did with his first two wives.

Early in this campaign I flirted with the idea that Newt was the man. However, as the campaign as progressed I have come to the conclusion this is the same old Newt who won reelection to the House of Representatives from Georgia in 1998 and ONE DAY after the voters had elected him to a new term he announced he was resigning from the House when it was clear his own Republicans would not reelect him Speaker of the House and he said "I'm willing to lead but I'm not willing to preside over people who are cannibals. My only fear would be that if I tried to stay, it would just overshadow whoever my successor is." Well, you can't resign from the Presidency when the going gets tough..... oh wait Nixon did ! That turned out well for us didn't it? Newt is a disaster waiting to happen.

Romney and Santorum regardless of whether you agree with them or not, are men of character who will not lead the Republican Party off a cliff. Let Rick Santorum be the non Romney candidate. That way regardless of who gets the nomination we can't lose.

Obama's Choices Are Revealing !

2012-01-19T14:07:00.003-08:00

Fred Barnes outlines how President Obama's decision on the Keystone oil pipeline tells a lot about him:

Here are a dozen of the choices represented by the president’s decision to turn down a permit for the pipeline.

1) The Middle East over Canada.
2) Unfriendly countries over a close ally.
3) Troubled ties with Canada over good relations.
4) A vulnerable oil supply over a secure one.
5) Higher oil prices over lower prices.
6) Spill-prone tankers over a safer pipeline.
7) China (who will likely get the oil) over the U.S.
8) Unavailable green fuel over a plentiful fossil fuel.
9) Ideology over prudence.
10) The political left over the center and right.
11) Partisanship over bipartisanship.
12) Liberal, anti-pipeline public unions over private unions seeking jobs.

Few of Obama’s decisions have been quite so revealing. There’s little doubt anymore about how Obama is running for reelection this year—it’s from the left.

Is Callista a "Chevrolet" ?

2012-01-18T20:39:00.000-08:00

Newt Gingrich said at the time of his second divorce, according to Marianne Gingrich, his second wife:

“I can’t handle a Jaguar right now. All I want is a Chevrolet.”

At the time he was "dating" Callista and asked her to marry him before he told Marianne he wanted a divorce. She now says he wanted an "Open Marriage" where he would stay married to Marianne and "date" Callista.

Doesn't look like a Chevy to me.

Forgiveness is one thing...... trust is another. As much as I agree with Newt on the issues I can't trust him and don't want him anywhere close to the Oval Office. He was and is undisciplined.

Sending Oil to China and Losing 100,000 Jobs

2012-01-18T15:32:00.000-08:00

President Obama’s decision to reject the Keystone pipeline to send oil from Canada to Texas was met with disappointment by our friends north of the border.

According to Jake Tapper of ABC News:

(Canadian) "Prime Minister Harper expressed his profound disappointment with the news. He indicated to President Obama that he hoped that this project would continue given the significant contribution it would make to jobs and economic growth both in Canada and the United States of America.” Pointedly, the statement also says that Harper “reiterated to the president that Canada will continue to work to diversify its energy exports.”

“Diversify”? What does that mean?

It means Canada will explore selling more of its oil to Asia. As Canada’s Natural Resources Minister Joe Oliver told the CBC: “Our focus is, as you know, on diversifying our markets. We currently have one customer for our energy exports. That customer has said that it doesn’t want to expand at the moment. So it certainly intensifies the broad strategic objective of the government to diversify to Asia.”

In other words Communist China !

***********

Jake Tapper continues"

A we covered earlier today, the project would directly create an estimated 13,000 jobs with the Teamsters Union assessing more than 100,000 others support jobs would be created along the pipeline’s path.

In the middle of a deep period of recession and unemployment when we are dependant on energy from some of the woulds worst tyrants our President, in order to keep his environmental wackos happy, destroys jobs and energy Independence. Thanks a lot, Mr President !

Mitt Romney's statement on the decision by President Obama:

“President Obama’s decision to reject the Keystone XL crude oil pipeline is as shocking as it is revealing. It shows a President who once again has put politics ahead of sound policy. If Americans want to understand why unemployment in the United States has been stuck above 8 percent for the longest stretch since the Great Depression, decisions like this one are the place to begin. By declaring that the Keystone pipeline is not in the ‘national interest,’ the President demonstrates a lack of seriousness about bringing down unemployment, restoring economic growth, and achieving energy independence. He seems to have confused the national interest with his own interest in pleasing the environmentalists in his political base.”

"Obama's One-Man Rule"

2012-01-18T11:58:00.000-08:00

Michael Barone:

So Obama’s scorn for the truth in this regard is only a minor matter. His scorn for the Constitution is something else.

That scorn has been expressed most recently in his “recess” appointments of members of the National Labor Relations Board and the chairmanship of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The quotation marks are appropriate because when he made the appointments the Senate was not in recess as the Constitution requires.

Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution says that presidential appointments must be confirmed by the Senate unless Congress provides otherwise. But anticipating that the government may need officials when the Senate is unavailable, the section further provides that “the President shall have power to fill up all vacancies that may happen during the recess of the Senate, by granting commissions which shall expire at the end of the next session.”

What constitutes a recess? Article I, Section 5 reads, “Neither house, during the session of Congress, shall, without the consent of the other, adjourn for more than three days.”

The House did not consent to the adjournment of the Senate this year, so there is no recess, and hence no constitutional authority to make recess appointments

********

The Framers thought it more important to limit power than for government to act quickly. Barack Obama disagrees.

Republican presidential candidates have been praising the Founding Fathers. Obama has been defying them. Interesting contrast.

.

To read the rest click on the title for a link.

"Overall, Bain Capital’s record was extraordinary"

2012-01-13T14:53:00.000-08:00

Steven Rattner, who served as counselor to the treasury secretary and lead auto adviser in the Obama administration writes in Politico:

Having spent nearly three decades on Wall Street, when it comes to Bain Capital, I feel equipped — some might say too equipped — to parse fact from fiction. (Full disclosure: In the post-Romney era, I worked with Bain Capital on several projects.)

Most important, Bain Capital is not now, nor has it ever been, some kind of Gordon Gekko-like, fire-breathing corporate raider that slashed and burned companies, immolating jobs wherever they appear in its path.

Wall Street has its share of the “vulture capitalists” that Texas Gov. Rick Perry enjoyed mocking in South Carolina earlier this week. But Romney was almost the furthest thing from Larry the Liquidator.
Instead, with modest exceptions (keep reading to learn more about these), Bain Capital was a thoroughly respectable — nay, eminent — investment manager that successfully discharged its responsibility of earning high returns for its investors by deploying capital in companies privately rather than by buying shares in the public market. (Hence the name, private equity.)
**********
Overall, Bain Capital’s record was extraordinary, among the best in the business
*********
What we know for certain is that Bain Capital more than fulfilled its responsibility to a gaggle of investors, who were mostly foundations, endowments, pension funds and the like.
*********
During the Romney years, Bain made 77 significant investments — and a number of smaller ones. It made billions for worthy investors and, yes, doubtless created some incalculable number of net new jobs for the U.S. economy

War is Hell

2012-01-13T11:13:00.000-08:00

Rep. Allen West (R-Fla.), a former Army lieutenant colonel, sent THE WEEKLY STANDARD an email commenting on the Marines' video as follows:

“I have sat back and assessed the incident with the video of our Marines urinating on Taliban corpses. I do not recall any self-righteous indignation when our Delta snipers Shugart and Gordon had their bodies dragged through Mogadishu. Neither do I recall media outrage and condemnation of our Blackwater security contractors being killed, their bodies burned, and hung from a bridge in Fallujah.

“All these over-emotional pundits and armchair quarterbacks need to chill. Does anyone remember the two Soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division who were beheaded and gutted in Iraq?

“The Marines were wrong. Give them a maximum punishment under field grade level Article 15 (non-judicial punishment), place a General Officer level letter of reprimand in their personnel file, and have them in full dress uniform stand before their Battalion, each personally apologize to God, Country, and Corps videotaped and conclude by singing the full US Marine Corps Hymn without a teleprompter.

“As for everyone else, unless you have been shot at by the Taliban, shut your mouth, war is hell.”

During World War II, some U.S. Marines, in the Pacific island campaign, would dig out the gold teeth of dead Japanese soldiers. The actions of the Marines then and now should be condemned and show a lack of command discipline. However, these things happen in war and have happened throughout out the history of war. Our native Americana's would take the scalps of other Indian tribes after combat. I wish it were not so but when you ask young men to be warriors they sometimes act as warriors who can not just turn it off like a light switch. I condemn the Marines and their officers for not having better discipline because they hurt the great majority of Marines that have served with honor and sacrifice.

John Bolton Endorses Mitt Romney

2012-01-11T19:26:00.000-08:00

Tonight on Fox News former United States Ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton, endorsed Mitt Romney. There is no one I respect more on foreign policy than Ambassador John Bolton. He is a hard core conservative and this is an important endorsement that brings real credibility to the Romney campaign. Bolton would be a great Secretary of State in a Romney administration.

Newt Gingrich & Michael Moore

2012-01-11T07:34:00.000-08:00

Both left wing film makers!

"It's On to South Carolina for 'Kamikaze Newt'" according to the National Journal.

From the National Journal:

Newt Gingrich’s presidential campaign may be going down in flames, but he’s determined to burn GOP presidential front-runner Mitt Romney as badly as he can before the crash. He could singe his future standing within his own party while he’s at it.

*************

A political action committee backing Gingrich plans to flood South Carolina airwaves with ads claiming that Romney, as head of the Bain Capital private equity firm, looted companies and laid off employees.

Sheldon Adelson, a billionaire Las Vegas casino owner, gave $5 million to the pro-Gingrich PAC to help air the ads. The committee, Winning Our Future, run by former Gingrich aides, will also release on Wednesday a 28-minute video, "When Mitt Romney Came to Town," attacking the former Massachusetts governor’s record at Bain. A trailer of the video intones: “A story of greed, playing the system for a quick buck, a group of corporate raiders led by Mitt Romney--more ruthless than Wall Street.”

John Feehery a former aid to Newt writes:

“It was Churchill who said that revenge was best served cold. Becoming a kamikaze pilot in a fit of pique is hardly the best way to get revenge or to restore your political reputation.”

Romney Wins New Hampshire

2012-01-10T18:04:00.000-08:00

Tonight Mitt Romney gave the best speech of his life. Thanks Newt ! His victory speech is as follows"

Mitt Romney: Thank you, New Hampshire! Tonight, we made history!

This state has always been a special place for our family. Ann and I made a home here and we’ve filled it with great memories of our children and grandchildren. And this Granite State moment is one we will always remember.

Tonight, we celebrate. Tomorrow, we go back to work.

We remember when Barack Obama came to New Hampshire four years ago.

He promised to bring people together.

He promised to change the broken system in Washington.

He promised to improve our nation.

Those were the days of lofty promises made by a hopeful candidate. Today, we are faced with the disappointing record of a failed President. The last three years have held a lot of change, but they haven’t offered much hope.

The middle class has been crushed. Nearly 24 million of our fellow Americans are still out of work, struggling to find work, or have just stopped looking. The median income has dropped 10% in four years. Soldiers returning from the front lines are waiting in unemployment lines. Our debt is too high and our opportunities too few.

And this President wakes up every morning, looks out across America and is proud to announce, “It could be worse.”

It could be worse? Is that what it means to be an American? It could be worse?

Of course not.

What defines us as Americans is our unwavering conviction that we know it must be better.

That conviction guides our campaign. It has rallied millions of Americans in every corner of this country to our cause.

Over the last six months, I’ve listened to anxious voices in town meetings and visited with students and soldiers. In break rooms and living rooms, I’ve heard stories of families getting by on less, of carefully planned retirements now replaced by jobs at minimum wage. But even now, amidst the worst economy since the Great Depression, I’ve rarely heard a refrain of hopelessness.

Americans know that our future is brighter and better than these troubled times. We still believe in the hope, the promise, and the dream of America. We still believe in that shining city on a hill.

We know that the future of this country is better than 8 or 9% unemployment.

It is better than $15 trillion in debt.

It is better than the misguided policies and broken promises of the last three years – and the failed leadership of one man.

The President has run out of ideas. Now, he’s running out of excuses. And tonight, we are asking the good people of South Carolina to join the citizens of New Hampshire and make 2012 the year he runs out of time.

President Obama wants to put free enterprise on trial. In the last few days, we have seen some desperate Republicans join forces with him. This is such a mistake for our Party and for our nation. This country already has a leader who divides us with the bitter politics of envy. We must offer an alternative vision. I stand ready to lead us down a different path, where we are lifted up by our desire to succeed, not dragged down by a resentment of success. In these difficult times, we cannot abandon the core values that define us as unique — We are One Nation, Under God.

Make no mistake, in this campaign, I will offer the American ideals of economic freedom a clear and unapologetic defense.

Our campaign is about more than replacing a President; it is about saving the soul of America. This election is a choice between two very different destinies.

President Obama wants to “fundamentally transform” America. We want to restore America to the founding principles that made this country great.

He wants to turn America into a European-style entitlement society. We want to ensure that we remain a free and prosperous land of opportunity.

This President takes his inspiration from the capitals of Europe; we look to the cities and small towns of America.

This President puts his faith in government. We put our faith in the American people.

He is making the federal government bigger, burdensome, and bloated. I will make it simpler, smaller, and smarter.

He raised the national debt. I will cut, cap, and balance the budget.

He enacted job-killing regulations; I’ll eliminate them.

He lost our AAA credit rating; I’ll restore it.

He passed Obamacare; I’ll repeal it.

When it comes to the economy, my highest priority as President will be worrying about your job, not saving my own.

Internationally, President Obama has adopted an appeasement strategy. He believes America’s role as leader in the world is a thing of the past. I believe a strong America must – and will – lead the future.

He doesn’t see the need for overwhelming American military superiority. I will insist on a military so powerful no one would think of challenging it.

He chastises friends like Israel; I’ll stand with our friends.

He apologizes for America; I will never apologize for the greatest nation in the history of the Earth.

Our plans protect freedom and opportunity, and our blueprint is the Constitution of the United States.

The path I lay out is not one paved with ever increasing government checks and cradle-to-grave assurances that government will always be the solution. If this election is a bidding war for who can promise more benefits, then I’m not your President. You have that President today.

But if you want to make this election about restoring American greatness, then I hope you will join us.

If you believe the disappointments of the last few years are a detour, not our destiny, then I am asking for your vote.

I’m asking each of you to remember how special it is to be an American.

I want you to remember what it was like to be hopeful and excited about the future, not to dread each new headline.

I want you to remember when you spent more time dreaming about where to send your kids to college than wondering how to make it to the next paycheck.

I want you to remember when you weren’t afraid to look at your retirement savings or the price at the pump.

I want you to remember when our White House reflected the best of who we are, not the worst of what Europe has become.

That America is still out there. We still believe in that America.

We still believe in the America that is a land of opportunity and a beacon of freedom. We believe in the America that challenges each of us to be better and bigger than ourselves.

This election, let’s fight for the America we love. We believe in America.

Thank you. God bless you. And God bless the United States of America

As for Newt, he has DISQUALIFIED him shelf for the Republican nomination by his attacks on the Free Enterprise System. He has proved, once again, he is an undisciplined person without core values. He has a vindictive personality and this is his last hurrah.Ditto Perry. They both make me sick! Who would have thought that the so called Conservatives would attack Romney from the left. Have they no shame!

Mitt Romney the Real Conservative

2012-01-09T11:51:00.000-08:00

Jay Nordlinger of National Review Online:

Over and over, Romney defends and explains capitalism. And he’s supposed to be the RINO and squish in the race? That’s what I read in the conservative blogosphere, every day. What do you have to do to be a “real conservative”? Speak bad English and belch?

In the Saturday debate, Santorum knocked Romney for being just a “manager,” just a “CEO,” not fit to be president and commander-in-chief. This was odd for a couple of reasons: First, Romney did have a term as governor of Massachusetts (meaning he has executive political experience, unlike Santorum). And second: Since when do conservative Republicans denigrate private-sector experience?

About 800 times, Newt Gingrich told us to read a particular newspaper, to see what a capitalist meanie Romney was. What was the newspaper? The New York Times, of course. There’s a great slogan for our conservative visionary: “Read the New York Times!”

Now Romney has said, “I like being able to fire people who provide services to me. You know, if someone doesn’t give me the good service I need, I want to say, ‘You know, I’m going to get someone else to provide that service to me.’” Simple, elementary competition. Capitalism 101. And conservatives go, “Eek, a mouse!”

I could go on: the $10 million bet, the pink slips, conservatives wetting their pants, over and over. They have no appetite to defend capitalism, to persuade people, to encourage them not to fall for the old socialist and populist crap. I fled the Democratic party many years ago. And one of the reasons was, I couldn’t stand the class resentment, the envy, the hostility to wealth, the cries of “Richie Rich!” And I hear them from conservatives, at least when Romney is running.

Go ahead, have your “bloodbath” in South Carolina. Make Romney the little guy in the top hat, from the Monopoly game. Have your Santorum, your Perry, your Newt. They may carry something like four states in the fall, but at least they’ve never sullied their hands with — eek! — business.

Perhaps after the election, while Obama is deepening the country’s poverty, Romney and others like him can find a party friendly to capitalism. We conservative Republicans turn out to be cradle-to-gravers, like everyone else.

Click on the title for the compete article.

"The Winter of our Ducks' Content"

2012-01-06T13:28:00.001-08:00

(The Three Musketeers)

As usual Bob Welch of the Eugene Register-Guard writes it best:

And the Bard is right: UO’s 45-38 victory over the Badgers on Monday night promises to warm Duck fans with the balmy pleasantry of Pasadena through the dark, wintry months ahead.

Perhaps even beyond for those of us old enough to remember when pain wasn’t a last-second loss in a national championship game but a 14-game losing streak (1974-75) or shutting out Oregon State and still not winning (0-0 in 1983).

************

It’s Charlie Brown going to kick the football and, for once, Lucy not pulling it away at the last second.

With the exception of the 2002 Fiesta Bowl, that has happened in the four recent marquee bowl games the Ducks have played in: the 1995 Rose Bowl, the 2010 Rose Bowl and last year’s BCS Championship.

The hoopla. The hype. The game. The loss. The cold winters that followed each.

***********

Not now. Lucy’s reign is over.

************

What mattered was simply knowing that for one day, in a place that is to college football what Augusta is to golf, Oregon won the day.

Enabled some of us old-timers to check another item on our bucket list.

And staved off another winter of discontent.

To read the rest of his wonderful column click on the title for a link

OREGON DUCKS WIN ROSE BOWL 45 TO 38

2012-01-04T12:41:00.000-08:00

At the end of a slug fest of a game, I looked around and after giving my two adult children hugs, told them to look around the Rose Bowl stadium as it would never be as good as this again (in being a sports fan of a team). It has been 95 loooong years since the Ducks last won a Rose Bowl. They did it in my lifetime. A day to remember and it was made very special because it was with my kids. Go Ducks..... you won the day!

With apologies to William Shakespeare:

From this day to the ending of the world,
But we in it shall be remembered-
We few, we happy few, we band of Oregon Ducks;
For to-day those that were at the Rose Bowl with me
Shall be my brother and sister; be they ne'er so vile,
This day shall gentle their condition;
And gentlemen and ladies from Oregon now-a-bed
Shall think themselves accurs'd they were not there,
And hold their being a Duck cheap whiles any speaks
That stood with us at the Rose Bowl on January 2, 2012.

On to the Rose Bowl !

2011-12-29T10:50:00.001-08:00

Christmas is over and it's on to the Rose Bowl. Let's Go Ducks ! Win the Day and the game !

In other years when the Ducks have gone to the Rose Bowl I have been swept up in the hype. NOT THIS YEAR ! It's time for the Oregon Ducks to win the damn game ! LET'S GO DUCKS !

Rose Bowl January 2nd, Iowa Caucuses January 3rd...... Life is good !

Mitt Romney: "I believe in America!"

2011-12-29T10:47:00.000-08:00

You, sir, are no Teddy Roosevelt

2011-12-20T13:58:00.000-08:00

It upset me a few weeks ago when Barack Obama compared himself with one of my heroes. Today my candidate for President, Mitt Romney offers a rebuttal.

Mitt Romney:

Just a couple of weeks ago in Kansas, President Obama lectured us about Teddy Roosevelt’s philosophy of government. But he failed to mention the important difference between Teddy Roosevelt and Barack Obama. Roosevelt believed that government should level the playing field to create equal opportunities. President Obama believes that government should create equal outcomes.

In an entitlement society, everyone receives the same or similar rewards, regardless of education, effort, and willingness to take risk. That which is earned by some is redistributed to the others. And the only people who truly enjoy any real rewards are those who do the redistributing—the government.

Can you imagine Obama charging up San Juan Hill on a horse with bullets flying all around him. Me neither. Bully for Mitt Romney !

Christmas Bubble Lights

2011-12-20T09:27:00.001-08:00

A repost from the last few years at Christmas.

I love Christmas lights and I particularly love Bubble Christmas Lights. When I was a little kid in the early 1950's one of my favorite things to do at Christmas was watch the bubble lights on our Christmas tree ... "bubble". Gradually as the 1950's led to the 1960's the bubble lights would burn out one by one. By the late 1960's we had a metallic tree with a color wheel shining on it. What where we thinking? Sometime in the 1980's I had a yearning for a return to the bubble lights of my youth. I searched and searched and they were very difficult to find. I finally found a string at a "Christmas Store" and we have been stringing it on our fireplace mantel for the last 20 or so years.. This year I put them on our tree and it really takes me back to my youth and they look great. We even went down to the store and bought more. They are now very easy to find. Some of them would not 'bubble" so I went "on line" and found out if you let them warm up and then unscrew them and shake them upside down they will start to bubble and it worked. Now I have 15 or so bubble lights on our tree and they are all bubbling. Merry Christmas

Home for the Holidays

2011-12-20T09:02:00.000-08:00

One of the best part of the Christmas Holidays is having our adult children come home. Since they both live in the Eastern time zone we don't get to see them that often during the year. Last Saturday night we picked up our son at the Jackson County "International" Airport. He came in from Lexington Kentucky where he is working on his PhD in History. Tomorrow night we will go back to the airport to pick up our daughter who is coming in from Washington D.C.. I love this time of year and the trips to the airport !

Movie & TV Cowboys

2011-12-19T13:12:00.001-08:00

If you grew up like me admiring the cowboy heroes of old movies and TV shows then click on the title for a real treat.

Be sure to watch till the end because he gives special honor to Audie Murphy.

McCain: Kim in 'warm corner of hell'

2011-12-19T12:58:00.000-08:00

Senator John McCain speeks for me on the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong II

"I can only express satisfaction that the Dear Leader is joining the likes of Qaddafi, Bin Laden, Hitler and Stalin in a warm corner of hell,”

Writer Christopher Hitchens Dies

2011-12-15T21:07:00.000-08:00

RIP you fought the good fight.

I have decided to take whatever my disease can throw at me, and to stay combative even while taking the measure of my inevitable decline. I repeat, this is no more than what a healthy person has to do in slower motion. It is our common fate.

Click on the title for a link to one of Christopher Hitchens writings on a young U.S. Army officer who died in Iraq. The officer never met Hitchens but was influenced by his writings. If you read anything about Hitchens read this article.

Time for Conservatives to Rally to Mitt Romney!

2011-12-15T14:57:00.000-08:00

I don't know about you but this Conservative is getting tired of these Republican intramural squabbles. For this political junkie it has been fun but now the squabbles are beginning to be so petty they are distracting us from the real contest to save America by beating Barack Obama. Rally to Mitt and demand he pick a Conservative VP for the future.

The Republican Presidential candidates need to all campaign against Obama and not each other!

National Review: No on Newt!

2011-12-14T18:54:00.001-08:00

National Review magazine has been my political compass for all of my adult life and I consider it the flagship of the conservative intelligentsia in this country. Founded by William F Buckley it led the Draft Goldwater movement in 1964. Today,it's editors came out against nominating Newt Gingrich as the Republican Presidential Nominee. The editors write in part:

....the White House seems winnable next year, and with it a majority in both houses of Congress, so that much of this conservative consensus could actually become law. A conservative majority on the Supreme Court, a halt to the march of regulation, free-market health-care policies: All of them seem within our grasp. But none of them is assured, and the costs of failure — either a failure to win the election, or a failure to govern competently and purposefully afterward — are as large as the opportunity.

We fear that to nominate former Speaker Newt Gingrich, the frontrunner in the polls, would be to blow this opportunity. We say that mindful of his opponents’ imperfections — and of his own virtues, which have been on display during his amazing comeback. Very few people with a personal history like his — two divorces, two marriages to former mistresses — have ever tried running for president. Gingrich himself has never run for a statewide office, let alone a national one, and has not run for anything since 1998. That year he was kicked out by his colleagues, the most conservative ones especially, who had lost confidence in him. During his time as Speaker, he was one of the most unpopular figures in public life. Just a few months ago his campaign seemed dead after a series of gaffes and resignations. That Gingrich now tops the polls is a tribute to his perseverance, and to Republicans’ admiration for his intellectual fecundity.....

Gingrich’s colleagues were, however, right to bring his tenure to an end. His character flaws — his impulsiveness, his grandiosity, his weakness for half-baked (and not especially conservative) ideas — made him a poor Speaker of the House. Again and again he combined incendiary rhetoric with irresolute action, bringing Republicans all the political costs of a hardline position without actually taking one. Again and again he put his own interests above those of the causes he championed in public.

He says, and his defenders say, that time, reflection, and religious conversion have conquered his dark side. If he is the nominee, a campaign that should be about whether the country will continue on the path to social democracy would inevitably become to a large extent a referendum on Gingrich instead. And there is reason to doubt that he has changed. Each week we see the same traits that weakened Republicans from 1995 through 1998:

"I’d vote for Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform; Paul Ryan’s Medicare reform is radical right-wing social engineering; I apologize for saying that, and no one should quote what I said because I was wrong; actually, what I said was right all along but nobody understood me. I helped defeat Communism; anyone who made money in the ’80s and ’90s owes me; I’m like Reagan and Thatcher. Local community boards should decide what to do with illegal immigrants. Freddie Mac paid me all that money to tell them how stupid they were."

Enough. Gingrich has always said he wants to transform the country. He appears unable to transform, or even govern, himself. He should be an adviser to the Republican party, but not again its head.....

As Republican primary voters consider their choices, they should ask themselves several questions: Which candidate is most likely to make the race turn on the large questions before the country, and not his personal idiosyncrasies? Which candidate is most likely to defeat Obama? Who could, if elected, form an effective partnership with Republican leaders and governors to achieve the conservative agenda? We will render further judgments in the weeks to come as the candidates continue to make their cases and are, just perhaps, joined by new candidates. At the moment we think it important to urge Republicans to have the good sense to reject a hasty marriage to Gingrich, which would risk dissolving in acrimony

In the end if Newt gets the nomination he will have my undivided support. Even with all of his faults, he is vastly superior to Barack Obama. I believe the Republican Party, my party, should nominate Mitt Romney. He is not as conservative as I am but he gives us the best chance to beat Obama and be able to serve as a competent President. America can NOT take four more years of President Obama. We need competence.

To read the entire National Review editorial click on the title for a link.

Wickre Duck Bowl History

2011-12-14T09:33:00.000-08:00

I was middle aged before I went to my first Oregon Duck Bowl. I was too young to go the 1958 Rose Bowl or the 1963 Sun Bowl. To be more precise, my parents were not football fans and thus as a kid we did not go to either of those bowls. I did watch them on TV. All through my college years and young adult years I "swore" that I would go to any bowl to which the Ducks were invited. In those years based upon Pac-8 or Pac 10 rules Oregon was mostly limited to going to the Rose Bowl and Oregon had terrible teams in those years and thus received no invitations. That all changed in 1989.

1989 Independence Bowl Oregon 27 Tulsa 24 Won
That all chanced in 1989 when Oregon Athletic Director, Bill Byrne, agreed to buy 14,000 tickets to the Independence Bowl in Shreveport Louisiana in return for a bowl invitation. My 6 year old son and I flew to Dallas Texas and I drove a rental car from there to the game. With a windchill temperate of below zero we watched the Ducks, led by QB Bill Musgrave, come from behind to win the game. During the game I kept worrying that my wife would "kill me" if our son got frost bite. He didn't and that game became a bonding experience we will never forget.

1990 Freedom Bowl Colorado State 32 Oregon 31 Lost
The next year the entire family drove down to the Freedom Bowl in Anaheim, California. We went to Disneyland and had a great time at the Disneyland Hotel. The Washington Huskies were in the Rose Bowl that year and the fans we ran into treated the Freedom Bowl as a Junior Varsity (JV) game. This is one of the reasons I learned to hate the Huskies.The loss was very disappointing but at both the Independence Bowl and the Freedom Bowl you could see the thirst of Oregon fans to go "bowling" after such a drought.

1992 Independence Bowl Wake Forest 39 Oregon 35 Lost
Fortunately we had a tailgate party at home and watched this turkey on TV. Oregon led big time at half time and managed to lose the game in the second half.This game reinforced this Duck fans fatalism that no Duck lead is ever enough.

1995 Rose Bowl(1994 Season)Penn State 38 Oregon 20 Lost
Again the entire family drove down I-5 to this game and stayed at a hotel near LAX as part of an UofO Alumni "ground package" trip. It was over priced but we did get a bus ride to the game. We had a great time driving down I-5 to the game and passing other Duck fans in their "Ducked out" cars and vans. We met Ducks at every stop on the way down and back. We loved the Pep Rally at Century City, the day before the game, and it was fun just being at the Rose Bowl. It was a disappointing loss but it was the first time Oregon had been to a "big time" bowl and the entire state of Oregon was excited about the event. When we got home a friend gave my wife a tee shirt that said "I survived the Rose Bowl." Unlike our kids my wife is not a big football fan and dislikes crowds.

1996 Cotton Bowl Colorado 38 Oregon 6 Lost
We stayed home and watched this game on TV. This is where we learned to hate then Colorado coach Rick Neuheisel when Colorado went for a fake punt late in the game when Colorado lead Oregon by a big margin.

1997 Las Vegas Bowl Oregon 41 Air Force 13 Won
The entire family drove to Las Vegas for this game. On the way through the Mojave Desert a radio station was giving away Berry Manilow tickets to a concert at the MGM Grand as part of a promotion. The radio station broadcaster said that if you were near a specific exit to stop and show the DJ in the radio station van some Christmas item and they would give you two tickets to the concert. We were near the exit in the middle of "nowhere" and saw the van on top of the overpass and stopped and showed the DJ our cassette tape of Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" and got the two Barry Manilow tickets. We loved the game and my wife and daughter went to the concert. We stayed at the team hotel, the MGM Grand, and enjoyed touring the Vegas Strip.

1998 Aloha Bowl Colorado 51 Oregon 43 Lost
We had a Hawaiian Luau in our family room and watched the game on TV

1999 Sun Bowl Oregon 24 Minnesota 20 Won
We welcomed in the Millennium by watching this game on TV on the morning of New Years Eve day.

2000 Holiday Bowl Oregon 35 Texas 30 Won
What a fine game this was. Watched it on TV. Wish I had gone ! I love the play where our QB Joey Harrington catces a pass and runs it in for a touchdown.

2002 Fiesta Bowl(2001 Season) Oregon 38 Colorado 16 Won
Our son and I and some friends drove all the way to Tempe, Arizona in our van to watch this game. Had a great time and enjoyed New Years Eve on Mill Street in Tempe near the stadium. It was good to finally win a big time BCS bowl and to beat Colorado.One of my favorite Oregon games of all time.

2002 Seattle Bowl Wake Forest 38 Oregon 17 Lost
Our son and I and the same friends drove to Seattle for this game and it was one of the few time I was ashamed to be a Duck. It was obvious the team did not want to be at this "lower tier" bowl and put in little effort and it showed. To top it off it rained very hard as we drove back to Portland after the game to my sisters home.The rain felt like the tears of Oregon fans. We stopped at a fast food restaurant on I-5 after the game 45 or so miles from Seattle. It was full of Oregon fans and it was so quiet!It was like we were at a funeral.

2003 Sun Bowl Minnesota 31 Oregon 30 Lost
Watched on TV New Year Eve Day.

2005 Holiday Bowl Oklahoma 17 Oregon 14 Lost
The entire family had plans to spend Christmas at Disneyland and so we extended our stay in Southern California to go to this game. Stayed at the team hotel in San Diego and had a great time. It was on the waterfront and we went to the Duck pep rally, the parade and a tour of the navy aircraft carrier Midway which is now a museum. The Ducks almost pulled out a win at the end but no luck. It was fun for the entire family to again go on a bowl trip together since our kids were now adults and living away from home.It was strange when my kids bought me a beer in the
Gas Light district of San Diego.

2006 Las Vegas Bowl Brigham Young 38 Oregon 8 Lost
Watched this on TV and was very disappointed in the Ducks. Looked like they didn't care. I cared and it hurt.

2007 Sun Bowl Oregon 56 South Florida 21 Won Watched on TV.
This win helped heal the pain of the loss of Dennis Dixon to an injury in the Arizona game and the loss of the "Civil War" to the Beavers on our own field.
Watched on TV. Little did we know this would be Coach Mike Bellott's last game.

2010 Rose Bowl (2009 season) Oregon 17 Ohio State 26 Lost
The four of us took another "Road Trip" to this game and had a good time. We went to Disneyland and marched up "Main Street" with the Oregon Marching Band" and spent time in Old Pasadena. We cruised the Sunset Strip" and Hollywood Blvd.We attended a wet/cold pep rally at the Santa Monica Pier. The weather on game day was perfect but the loss was a bitter pill.

2011 NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP (2010 season) Oregon 19, Auburn 22 Lost
My son and I drive to Sacramento and took a flight to Phoenix for the game. Our daughter took a flight from Washington DC and met us there. We enjoyed the Pep rally in Scottsdale with 30,000 Duck fans. It was a lot of fun. Our daughter did not have a ticket to the game and was going to watch it at a nearby bar. However when we dropped her off to get a seat in the bar Stub Hub had a booth set up nearby and she was able to buy a last minute ticket. She has never told us how much she paid ! We all three then got together and celebrated her getting a ticket. We enjoyed the game but were disappointed when Auburn won it off a last second field goal.

2012 Rose Bowl (2011 Season)
Can you say "road trip"!Our son and I are driving down I-5 for the game and will meet our daughter in L.A. who will fly in from Washington D.C. This time we have tickets for all three of us. we are looking forward to the Oregon Duck pep rally at the Santa Monica Pier. Hopefully this time in sunshine. In my lifetime the Ducks have been to three Rose Bowls and lost all three. It's time they win the fourth... it's on my 'bucket list."

The 12 Days of "Bowl Season"

2011-12-10T08:50:00.000-08:00

Tired of Christmas shopping in the freezing cold..... putting Christmas lights up in the freezing cold..... raking leaves in the freeing cold......

Click on the title for a link to "Fish Duck" for a great rendition of "The 12 Days of Christmas."

It will bring a smile to your face :) Be sure to sing it out loud for your spouse so she will enjoy it too. :)

Just remember as "Fish" says: ".....the real holiday begins January 2nd."

The Three Musketeers Return !

2011-12-08T14:26:00.000-08:00

This time they meet at the Rose Bowl ! "One for all and all for fun ..... and a Duck win"

Is Newt Like Churchill?

2011-12-08T11:33:00.000-08:00

There is an interesting article today at the National Review online website comparing Winston Churchill with Newt Gingrich. I support Mitt Romney for the Republican nomination but could support Newt if he were to get the nomination. I don't view either as Conservative as I am, nor one being more conservative then the other. In fact, it could be argued that both are "Rockefeller Republicans." The difference is in their style and temperament. Mitt is the "conservative" safe choice. He is a thoughtful organized manager who would appeal to the majority of "moderate" Americans. Newt, on the other hand is exciting and dramatic. He with his oratory and ideas could inspire the country. The issue is whether he could manage the job of President. He didn't do a very good job when he was the Speaker of the House. Most of his Republican colleagues, from his time as Speaker, are not supporting him for President and don't in fact like him. He did a great job getting a Republican majority in the House but was a failure once in the majority. Yet, I have for some time, seen in Newt a Churchillian quality and parallel that is also seen by the author of this article.

In his National Review article Steven Hayward writes:

But before becoming prime minister, Winston Churchill was often dismissed in similar terms by members of his own party, who complained that “his planning is all wishing and guessing,” that he was “a genius without judgment,” and that he had been “on every side of every question.” His many non-fiction books were even characterized as “autobiographies disguised as history of the universe.”

***********

Two questions must be asked in order to judge whether Newt might have Churchillian qualities (both good and bad) once in office, or whether Romney’s predictable managerial qualities are more suited to the present moment.

The first question is whether we require someone utterly unconventional to match up to the circumstances of the moment.

***********

the second question. While Churchill never shed his weaknesses and defects, he did bring with him to office important lessons of his earlier failures in World War I, along with his serious study of history during his wilderness years. Though Newt wrote a book called “Lessons Learned the Hard Way,”

************

The next couple of months may well prove out the unplanned logic of our long campaign process. The debates, Newt’s strong suit so far, are about to give way to real voting, and to the week-by-week ground game that requires focus and consistency. Newt has a chance to prove conservative skeptics wrong about his constancy — the chance to win over skeptics in the face of so much evidence against him. The course of John Colville’s evolving assessment of Churchill in the 1940s is suggestive. Colville wrote in his diary the night Churchill became prime minister on May 10, 1940: “He may, of course, be the man of drive and energy the country believes him to be and he may be able to speed up our creaking military and industrial machinery; but it is a terrible risk, it involves the danger of rash and spectacular exploits, and I cannot help fearing that this country may be maneuvered into the most dangerous position it has ever been in.”

If you like history, Winston Churchill and politics click on the title for the complete article...... it is very good.

Will Newt Gindrich be called by to power from his "Wilderness years" ?

December 7th , 1941

2011-12-07T07:12:00.001-08:00

" We are resolved that these dead did not die in vain"

DUCKS TO ROSE BOWL !

2011-12-03T13:25:00.000-08:00

The Oregon Ducks win the first ever Pac 12 Championship game. The game was at Autzen Stadium, in Eugene, Oregon. They are again, for the third year in a row, Pac 10/ 12 Champions. On to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California. LET'S GO DUCKS !!!!!!!!

UPDATE: Oregon will face the Wisconsin Badgers in the Rose Bowl. Go Ducks beat the Badgers!

WIN THE DAY !

2011-12-02T09:20:00.000-08:00

Game Day ! Let's Go Ducks !

Called to Duty

2011-12-01T10:50:00.000-08:00

Time for a little perspective on what is important. The Eugene Register Guard newspaper invited local World War II veterans to come have their portraits taken to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The response was overwhelming. (See the photos and read and hear their stories in print and at registerguard.com in a special four-day package starting this Sunday, Dec. 4.)

This is a video of those picture taking sessions. Click on the title for a link to a better view of the video. Soon they will all be gone. This is a wonderful act and tribute. Thank you Register Guard !

Experience Autzen - Civil War 2011

2011-11-30T14:12:00.000-08:00

You will want to watch this. It brought tears to my eyes. This is why I travel three hours to Eugene and three hours back to Medford each game day !

Click on the title for a better view of the video.

The Ducks have done it again !

2011-11-30T09:58:00.000-08:00

No, I am not talking about their performance on the field. I'm talking about how they have sucked me into me being obsessed about them..... again ! Every year I tell myself to just sit back and enjoy the football season. It was easier after they lost their first game to LSU. I didn't have to worry about another trip to the National Championship. I even stayed home and watched a home game on TV. I went on the trip to Stanford half way expecting the Ducks to lose and told myself that would be "OK" as the trip was so much fun and I was going to see our daughter. Well, they beat Stanford and now are playing in the first ever Pac 12 championship and a right to go to the Rose Bowl ! Ever since I watched the Ducks, on TV, play in the 1958 Rose Bowl it has been a dream objective of this Duck fan. The family has made two trip there once in 1995 and then in 2010 (1994 & 2009 seasons). However, unless the Ducks beat a desperate UCLA team on Friday it will not happen. All I can think about is the game. Where is the perspective.... where is the "enjoy the journey". They sucked me in again ! The world and country may be going to Hell, but this week, all I care about is the Ducks. I can't even get excited about the Republican Presidential nomination race.

Go Ducks....win the Day.... beat the Bruins!

Pac 12 Championship & "Slick Rick" Neuheisel

2011-11-27T17:45:00.000-08:00

As a result of the Oregon Ducks beating the Oregon State Beavers in the Civil War game on Saturday 49 to 21 the Oregon Ducks are the 2011 Champions of the Northern Division of the Pac 12 in football and will host the first ever Pac 12 Football Championship in Eugene Oregon on Friday December 2, 2011, at 5 pm PST. The game will be broadcast live to the entire nation on the FOX network. The winner will go to the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California.

UCLA is the winner of the Pac 12 South having backed into the Championship with a terrible 50 to 0 loss to U$C Saturday night when both Arizona State and Utah also lost.

There are many news stories out of Los Angeles that the UCLA coach, Rick Neuheisel will be fired after the Championship game for failing to win enough games at UCLA.

Oregon Duck fans have given Neuheisel the name "Slick Rick" for any number of reasons the following are just two examples:

Oregon fans learned to hate Rick Neuheisel when he went for a fake punt in the Cotton Bowl when his Colorado team lead Oregon with a big lead late in that game.He then went to coach for the hated Washington Huskies and led his players back out on to Oregon's midfield "O" after he had defeated Oregon for a little celebration and picture taking. No love lost there!

Thus Oregon fans have two goals in the Friday night game; one, to make the Rose Bowl and two, to watch "Slick Rick" shown the door by UCLA.

As the first Pac 12 Championship game I am excited to be living history by attending the game Friday night. My grandchildren, 50 years from now, will be able to say grandpa was at the first Pac 12 Championship game and it was in Eugene, Oregon at the home of the Ducks, Autzen Stadium.

Go Ducks.... Win the Day! Beat the Bruins.

CIVIL WAR WEEK 2011 (Part Six)

2011-11-24T10:34:00.001-08:00

It's Thanksgiving Day and I can't wait for the "Civil War" game to start between Oregon and Oregon State on Saturday.

This game has been weighing heavily on my mind for at least three weeks. I believe the Oregon Ducks have across the board superior talent. On the other hand, the Oregon State Beavers have often beaten Oregon Duck teams due to more desire. Most of Oregon's players are from out of state and sometimes we have lost to the Beavers because of complacency and failure to realize how much the Beavers want the game. That could be the case on Saturday. Oregon State teams often come out like rabid dogs and play their hearts out.I respect them for that!I have been told that this Oregon Duck team has more of a "blue collar" ethic, than past teams, and they will need it on Saturday. In past years we have spoiled Oregon States bid to the Rose Bowl by beating them and they will be out for revenge. This year there will be no Bowl Game for them..... this is their bowl game. If we lose we will probably go to the Alamo Bowl in San Antonio, Texas. If we win we will host the first ever Pac 12 Championship Game the following Friday. The Beavers would feel on top of the world if they could deny us that chance. The winner of that game goes to the Rose Bowl. It would be their greatest game in history and they would remind us of that fact for the next 100 years ! We have only one mission and that is to beat the Beavers. The Vegas gamblers have Oregon favored but I don't believe it. Oregon players can NOT be overconfident!!!!!

We need to jump on them early and put a figurative stake in their heart early.

Thomas Hobbes once wrote that "the life of man,(is) solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short." Hobbes never won a "Civil War" game.... but he was dead on if you lose.

As former Oregon State football coach Dee Andros, once said about the "Civil War" "it's for the right to live in the State of Oregon."

Time goes so slowly waiting for the game.

Go Ducks! Win the Day!

An English Thanksgiving, 1942

2011-11-23T14:14:00.000-08:00

Click on the title for an interesting story about Thanksgiving in England in the dark days of World War II. Early in the war Japan was still advancing across the Pacific and Germany held most of Europe. America was still gearing up for war and American soldiers were just beginning to arrive in England and introduced the American holiday of Thanksgiving to the English people who had been standing alone against the Nazi juggernaut.

In those dark days, Americans took special pleasure in displaying their homegrown holiday to the Mother Country. The English were dubious at first but slowly realized they were being invited to share in something very special.

Helping to win them over was an extraordinary act of generosity very much in keeping with the spirit of the holiday. Merchant ships had carried tons of frozen turkey across the submarine-infested Atlantic for the big day. Then the Yanks announced they would donate all of it to the thousands of British war wounded in hospitals. Instead they would dine on roast pork and eat plum pudding for desert, alas without the standard rum sauce.

To read the rest click on the title.

Happy Thanksgiving America !

Movies and the Holidays

2011-11-23T10:02:00.000-08:00

It's almost Thanksgiving so let's take a break from the "Civil War" and Politics and write about movies released during the Holidays.

One of the best parts of the Holidays, along with collage football bowl games, is taking the family to the movies at a local theater. Hollywood likes to release good movies for the Thanksgiving-Christmas-New Year Holiday period because people have more time for going to the movies and in most parts of the country outside activities are limited because of the weather. After spending lots of time inside with relatives at home it is liberating to get out of the house and go to a movie.This year we are particularly lucky because so many good movies are being released. The following is the release date and names of some movies I would like to see.

November 11, 2011

"J Edgar"

Directed by Clint Eastwood with Leonardo DiCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI. Hoover was one of my hero's growing up. Some conservatives have given the movie bad reviews for liberal revisionism of history .... the screen writer is a noted liberal but Eastwood toned him down a bit.

November 18, 2011

"The Descendants"

George Clooney as a father living in Hawaii trying to reconnect with his daughters. I have watched the previews and it looks good. Clooney for all his politic is a good actor and this looks like a good drama/comedy for an adult family to watch.

November 23, 2011

"My Week with Marilyn"

Yes, Marilyn Monroe during the time she spent in London filming "The Prince and the Showgirl" in 1957 as told by a Brit who served as her escort.

December 8, 2011

"New Years Eve"

Intertwined story lines on New Year's Eve like the movie "Valentines Day" from last year.

"Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy"

Based upon John Le Carre's 1979 miniseries about Cold War espionage.Gary Oldman and Colin Firth. Saw the previews and it looks good if you like spy vs spy.

December 16, 2011

"Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows"

Robert Downey Jr returns in a second movie about Sherlock Holmes. I like Holmes and I like Downey.

"The Iron Lady"

Meryl Streep as British Prime Minster Margaret Thatcher. Wild horses can't keep me from seeing this movie. I love the "Iron Lady" who along with Ronald Reagan won the Cold War. She was and is one of my hero's.

December 23, 2011

"We Bought a Zoo"

Matt Damon and Scarlett Johansson in a movie about a family who moves to the countryside and buys a zoo. Directed by Cameron Crowe of "Elizabethtown" and "Almost Famous" fame. I will see almost anything directed by Cameron Crowe. He is on of my favorite of the current directors.

December 25, 2011 (Christmas Day)

"War Horse"

World War I drama directed by Steven Spielberg about a boy and his horse. This is a MUST see for me. Some say the battle scenes equal those of "Saving Private Ryan."

What with college football and basketball I may not be able to see all of these movies at the theater this Holiday season but those I don't get to see will make my Netflix Queue.

Republican Debate

2011-11-23T09:24:00.001-08:00

50 years ago a nerdish kid in Junior High School (Middle School) was awarded the DAR Medal for "Excellence in History." 50 years later, last night, his adult children attended the Republican Debate held at the DAR Hall (Constitution Hall) in Washington DC. The nerd was me. I was not a very good student in Junior High but I did have a passion for history that continues to this day. Our children are together this Thanksgiving Holiday Week in Washington DC and were able to attend last nights Republican Debate. Their mother and I watched the debate on CNN intently trying to spot "the kids" but the camera shots of where they were sitting were just too distant and the picture too small. After the debate they called us with a "blow by blow" description of their adventure.

One proud Dad !

As to the debate I felt all the candidates looked good or better than their prior debate performances.There were no big winners or losers. Cain and Perry did OK but were out of their depth. Backmann and Santorum had their moments but in the end it was Romney and Gingrich who looked like they could lead this country as President.

I continue to support Mitt Romney as the best candidate to beat Obama and to lead a divided country in troubled times.

Civil War Week 2011 ( Part five)

2011-11-22T09:51:00.000-08:00

Some interesting facts about the Civil War Game from Wikipedia:

1.The Civil War is the colloquial name for the annual college football game in Oregon between the Oregon State Beavers and the Oregon Ducks. First played in 1894, it is the seventh-oldest college football rivalry game in the United States.

2.The game was first played in 1894 and has been contested 114 times as of 2010.

3.The game was not contested in 1900, 1901, 1911, 1943, and 1944 and two games were played in 1896 and 1945.

4.The first reference to the "Civil War" name was in 1929 and came into common use in 1937. Prior to that, it was called the "Oregon Classic" or the "State Championship Game."

5.The University of Oregon holds a series lead of 57-46-10.

6. In an effort to mitigate rioting, the 1912 and 1913 games were played at a neutral site in Albany following riots after the 1910 game.

Some of my Most Memorable games:

1972: After a 30-3 UO victory at Corvallis, Ducks fans stormed the OSU field to take down goal posts; after taking down the south goalposts, Beavers fans attempted to defend the north goalposts, resulting in a large brawl. ( I was there after having returning to Oregon after two years in the army.

1992: Oregon won the game in a wind and rain swept game in Corvallis 7-0. (I took my two young children to the game. We were seated in the end zone under the Beaver scoreboard on open air bleachers. The wind would come up under the bleachers and blow our yellow ponchos up into our face. It was cold and wet ! At halftime the Ducks were ahead by 7 points and we took a vote to stay or leave and I lost and we headed back to our car. While walking back a Beaver STOLE the duck hat off of my then 8 year old son and disappeared into the rain. I learned then if I hadn't learned it before to hate the Beavers. We listened to the rest of the game on the radio as we drive back to Medford.)

1994: Oregon needed a win in front of a hostile Parker Stadium crowd to secure a bid to the 1995 Rose Bowl, but they trailed 13–10 in the fourth quarter. Duck quarterback Danny O'Neil took the Ducks on a 70-yard drive that culminated in a 19-yard pass to Dino Philyaw to give them the 17–13 win and their first Rose Bowl in 37 years.(I was watching at home on TV with my family and came close to a heart attack from the tension.... several times I had to go outside to "cool off." After the game I opend my bottle of Len Casanova Wine, personal autographed by the Oregon Coach who had last taken the Ducks to the Rose Bowl in 1958, and we all had a drink. )

2001: Oregon came into the game needing only a victory over their arch-rival for the team's first outright Pacific-10 Conference championship since 1994 and a trip to the Fiesta Bowl; the Beavers needed a win to secure a winning season. After OSU initially took a 6-3 lead into halftime, Oregon rallied behind a Keenan Howry punt return for a touchdown to give the Ducks a lead they would not relinquish, amidst a driving rainstorm. Final score: Ducks 17, Beavers 14.( I was there and after Howry made his touchdown the heavens opened up and it just poured very hard and everyone was ecstatic and were energised by the rain and I looked above into the pouring rain and celebrated with everyone else giving little care to the fact we were all getting soaked)

There are more games and more memories..... some good ... some bad..... and some sad.

Let's Go Ducks Beat the Beavers !!!!

CIVIL WAR WEEK 2011 (Part Four)

2011-11-21T10:34:00.000-08:00

What would Civil War week be without this golden oldie photo.

Go Ducks Beat the Beavers!

CIVIL WAR WEEK 2011 (Part three)

2011-11-21T09:51:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow, on Tuesday November 22 the Oregon Club of Southern Oregon will have their annual Civil War lunch at the Rogue Valley Country Club at 12 noon. For many years and for the last two years the lunch has been a joint lunch with the Oregon State Beavers. Not this year ! The Oregon Club of Southern Oregon asked the Beavers to join them for lunch; but, due to lack of enthusiasm for their team, the Beavers were unable to find enough fans who would attend !

Oregon Coach Chip Kelly will appear through the magic of video teleconferencing from Eugene.

Let's Go Duck..... win the day and beat the Beavers !

CIVIL WAR WEEK 2011 (Part two)

2011-11-20T13:37:00.000-08:00

Who will represent the Pac 12 in the Rose Bowl? The winner of the Pac 12 Championship Game on Friday December 2nd, 2011. The game will be played by the winners of the NORTH and SOUTH Divisions of the Pac 12. This will be the inaugural game of the Championship. The games this week will determine the teams.

NORTH DIVISION

1. If the Oregon Ducks beat the Oregon State Beavers they will represent the NORTH DIVISION and will host the game at Autzen Stadium.

2. If the Oregon Ducks lose to Oregon State then Stanford will represent the NORTH DIVISION and will host the game at Stanford. Stanford has completed their Pac 12 regular season games and will play Notre Dame this week.

SOUTH DIVISION

According to TED Miller of ESPN

1.If UCLA beats USC next weekend, UCLA is the champion.

2. If UCLA loses and ARIZONA STATE SUN DEVILS beats California, and Utah beats Colorado, the ARIZON STATE SUN DEVILS are the champs (the Bruins lose a three-way tiebreaker due to a 2-3 divisional record versus 3-2 for the Sun Devils and Utes; ASU eclipses Utah due to a head-to-head win).

3.If UCLA loses and Arizona State loses, and UTAH UTES wins, the UTAH UTES are the champs.

4. If all three lose, UCLA is the champion

REMAING PAC 12 GAMES:

Friday, November 25th

A. Colorado at Utah

12:30 PM

Salt Lake City, Utah

FSN
************
B. California at Arizona St.

7:15 PM

Tempe, Ariz.

ESPN

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Saturday, November 26th

A. Oregon St. at Oregon

12:30 PM

Eugene, Ore.

ABC
********

B. Louisiana-Lafayette at Arizona (el stinko game)

1:00 PM

Tucson, Ariz.

No one would put this on TV

*********

C. Washington St. at Washington

4:30 PM

Seattle, Wash.

Versus

**********

D. Notre Dame at Stanford

5:00 PM

ABC

**********

E. UCLA at USC

7:00 PM

Los Angeles, Calif.

FSN

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Friday, December 2nd

PAC 12 CHAMPIONSHIP GAME TBD at TBD

5:00 PM

FOX

CIVIL WAR WEEK 2011

2011-11-20T09:46:00.001-08:00

"No time to wallow in the mire"

Here in Oregon this is Civil War Week. The week of the game between the Univeristy of Oregon Ducks and the Oregon State University Beavers. The game will be on ABC TV next Saturday in Eugene at Oregon's Autzen Stadium. The game will be on ABC TV at 12:30 PST.

Someone said the "Civil War" game "is for the right to live in the State of Oregon" or at least the right to live in the State of Oregon with your head held high. This is one of college footballs oldest rivalries. The oldest west of the Mississippi. Here in Oregon, Ducks and Beavers can be found in most offices, families and neighborhoods. It's brother vs brother, neighbor vs neighbor and coworker vs coworker so it truly is a Civil War. These two teams and their fans do not like each other.

One of my favorite Civil War stories is from World War II. One of the Band of Brothers featured in the HBO mini series, Don Malarkey, is a University of Oregon alum. His studies were interrupted by World War II and he was in the paratroopers in England preparing for the D-Day landings. Eisenhower and Churchill came to view his unit before the beginning of the invasion and Ike asks Malarkey what he did before the war. He said he was a student at the University of Oregon in Eugene, and Ike asks him who won the last Oregon vs Oregon State Football game. Of course Ike played football for Army at West Point.

It is fun to walk around the tailgate parties before the game because you see Ducks and Beavers together. There is a scene in the movie Gettysburg where a confederate general tells a British Army officer who is there as an observer just before Pickett's charge that "All Virginia is here today". At each Oregon vs Oregon State Football game I like to think "all Oregon is here today."
Jon Wilner, of the San Jose Mercury news in California rates the rivalry football games in the Pac-10 and rates the "Civil War" game as the #1 rivalry game when he writes:

1. The Civil War.

These days, Oregon-Oregon State has the best combination of passion, significance and competitiveness.

The passion takes the form of hatred — much closer to the Arizona-ASU situation than a healthy dislike.

OSU looks with jealousy at its richer, more-famous, more hip neighbor and wonders what might have been if Phil Knight had gone to OSU. The Ducks hate OSU because they’ve been told to hate OSU for decades.

The games are usually high scoring, although not always close, and the home team has dominated this decade.....

Without question, Oregon and Oregon State have been the most successful natural rivals in the conference in recent years. And that makes the Civil War the league’s best rivalry.

I first learned to hate the Beavers in the late 1960's when the Beavers, regularly under coach Dee Andros,( The Great Pumpkin) beat the shi* out of Oregon Duck Teams and did it with such relish.

A number years ago Dee, long retired, not too long before his death, came to a joint Duck/Beaver "Civil War" lunch in Medford and gave a passionate speech about the "Civil War" game that made me want to strap on a helmet and start playing right there. When Dee Andros walked into the banquet room he was wearing a god awful bright orange blazer and a black and orange striped tie. A local young TV sports reporter, who had probably just moved to this area, walked up to him and asked him if he was an Oregon State fan ..... it brought a smile to my face.

(Dee Andros was a veteran of World War II where he served four years in the U.S. Marine Corps. He was awarded the Bronze Star and spent more than a month under heavy fire on Iwo Jima. He was present at the famed moment when Marines raised the American flag on Iwo Jima.)

In my lifetime I can remember twice when the Duck were denied a trip to the Rose Bowl because of a loss to the Beaver..... The first, was in 1964 when I was in high school and listened to the game on a transistor radio at a speech tournament I was competing in. The Beavers won and went to the Rose Bowl. The second, was in 2000 when I spent part of the game at a hospital with a dying relative.

This has been a bad season for the Beavers and they would dearly love to knock the Ducks out of the first ever Pac 12 championship game which will determine which team from the Pac 12 will go to the Rose Bowl. A win by them will make their season and Oregon fans will hear about it from our Beaver "friends" for the next 12 long months.
Oregon with all of our success should remember they hate out guts ! After they lost to Stanford the Beaver fans chanted "Beat the Ducks" as Stanford walked off the field at Oregon State. Win the game and Oregon will host the first ever Pac 12 Championship to determine who goes to the Rose bowl

Just remember Ducks, the Beavers will come at us like mad dogs !

Let's go Ducks Win the Day!

Go Ducks beat the Beavers.

LET'S GO DUCKS !!!

2011-11-18T20:39:00.000-08:00

On Saturday the Oregon Ducks will play the U$C Trojans at Autzen Stadium on ABC TV at 5 PM PST. Let's win the Day.

UPDATE:

Rather than celebrating tonight the Oregon team and fans should view the loss of #2 Oklahoma State to Iowa State as a cautionary tale about over confidence. Just win the Day!!!!!

No More New Music CD's After 2012 ????

2011-11-16T09:37:00.000-08:00

According to the website "The Digital Bits" most new music albums will no longer be issued on CD's after 2012 as the music companies are going to go almost exclusively to downloading from iTunes and Amazon etc.

It seems the online magazine Side-Line is among a number of publications reporting that all the major music industry labels are preparing to abandon the Compact Disc format by the end of 2012, in favor of download/streaming only releases via iTunes, Amazon and other digital music services

Click on the title for more information. I will miss the CD cover art and the ability to display your CD on shelves and to organize them on shelves. Fortunately I have most of the music I love already on CD's and organized on shelves above my home computer. Yes I also have my music on my iPad, Mp3 player, Microsoft Media player and Apple iTunes on my office and home computers. However, it's like a book library I like the feel and look of CDs. You can put your hands on them and a crash of your computer will not destroy your library of music. I will probly in many cases, after the stop making new music CD's, download them and burn them on CD's. However the cover art always looks better on a purchased CD than when printed off my printer.

Fort Apache on Blu Ray 2/21/12

2011-11-15T16:19:00.000-08:00

Good news ! The first of John Ford's Calvary Trilogy , "Fort Apache" staring John Wayne and Henry Fonda will be released on Blu Ray DVD on February 21, 2012. Can "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" be far behind for Blu Ray releases??? Something to look forward to after football ends with the Super Bowl !

ESPN Gameday & Oregon vs Stanford (UPDATED)

2011-11-14T12:40:00.000-08:00

I have been looking forward to a trip to Sanford University for the Stanford vs Oregon football game for some time. However,sometimes reality does not match your anticipation of an event. Not this time. We had a great trip to the San Francisco Bay Area this last weekend.

THE TRIP DOWN

On Veterans Day (Friday) my wife and I left Medford on a bus chartered by the Oregon Club of Southern Oregon with 42 other Duck fans for Stanford. We stopped at a gaming casino for an hour for lunch near Corning, California. We then worked our way through the heavy traffic in the Bay Area and arrived in Palo Alto, at Dinah's Garden Hotel. Our daughter met us there. She lives on the east coast and flew into SFO and got a rental car and was already at the hotel when we arrived.

My wife and daughter retired early and so I met some friends at the adjacent Trader Vic's for a late dinner.

ESPN GAMDAY

All the way from Medford I hauled a telescoping 13 foot painting pole to be used for a flag pole for use at ESPN Gameday. My daughter and I got up early about 5 AM to make the trip over to the Stanford Campus for the 6 AM national live broadcast of the ESPN Gameday show. Our daughter drove her rental car with myself and two other fans and we arrived just about 6 AM. We walked over to the show and I waved my Oregon Duck flag for the two hours of the live broadcast. Our son in Kentucky and my wife back at the hotel called us on our cell phones to let us know they saw the flag. I could also see it on the giant big screen they have at the show. My friend Bob brought us some hot chocolate and we had a GREAT time. The Stanford fans are a mellow bunch and their was a lot of good natured rivalry between the two groups of fans. Both schools bands were there and while it had rained the night before the weather was prefect for the live show. Lot's of Oregon fans were there with crazy signs ! Our daughter had a sign that said "The ducks don't need Luck!" (For non football fans the star QB for Stanford is Andrew Luck)

DINA'S GARDEN HOTEL

After the show we went back three or so miles to the hotel and got my wife and the three of us had breakfast at the hotel restaurant in a sea of green and yellow. A Stanford couple came into the restaurant and their eyes got very large looking at all the Duck fans.

Dinah's Garden Hotel is a very unique place and I would highly recommend it. It is not your cookie cutter hotel. The grounds are a very tropical with lush foliage and a meandering water pond between the buildings. There are Japanese bridges over the pond and lots of real ducks that populate the pond and walk right up to the slider from your room to your patio. One duck even wandered into our room. I kiddingly told the front desk crew it was a nice touch bringing in all of these live ducks for we Duck fans. After breakfast we went back to our room to rest up for the 5 PM game.

PRE GAME

The bus we came down in took us over to the Stanford campus about 2:30 pm . We got parked and my wife, our daughter and my friend Bob and I went on a tour of campus. We saw lots of Duck fans and were able go by the Hoover Tower of the Hoover Institute a conservative "think tank" on campus. The tower is named after President Herbert Hoover. Stanford has a beautiful large campus and must spend a fortune on landscape maintenance. All the building are in a early California style with red tile roofs.

We then walked by a lot of tailgate parties for both Oregon and Stanford fans. Stanford is known for their fancy wine and cheese tailgaters parked in a grove of trees.

THE GAME

The game was broadcast on ABC TV nationwide starting at 5 PM. Stanford the leader of the Pac 12 was favored and it was their time in the national spotlight. Their QB, Andrew Luck was the leading candidate for the Heisman Trophy. The Oregon Ducks won the game 53 to 30 !!!!!! Games like this are the reason you go to games. There were a lot of Oregon fans that made the trip south and a lot of Duck fans from the Bay Area. Going to an away game creates a lot of camaraderie for the visiting teams fans. I have been going to games for many years and this was one of the most exciting of my lifetime. Games like this is the reason you go year after year. I yelled and yelled as did most other fans to support the team as the "12th man." I got the most excited when Oregon's defence would sack the Stanford QB. Our daughter got as excited as I did and even my wife, who is not a fan of crowds, had a good time.After the game I called our son in Kentucky who watched the game on TV.
When the bus got us back to the hotel we had a drink and late dinner at Trader Vick's to celebrate the victory.

Early Sunday morning I got up to say good by to our daughter who was taking an early flight out of SFO back to the east coast for work on Monday. I walked her to her rental car and waived good by. With her living on the east coast we don't get to see her as often as we would like and it was special that she could join us for he weekend. Fortunately it is not too long till Christmas when she will make a trip home to Medford. The only down side of the weekend was our son in Kentucky couldn't join us. However, he too will be home for Christmas and he and I have plans to go to an Oregon Basketball game in the new Matt Court in Eugene.

BUS TRIP HOME

Sunday on the way back a bus load of happy fans stoped at the In-N-Out in Redding California. This is the northern most In-N-Out restaurant in California. There are none in Oregon. They make some of the best burgers in the world and Oregonians whenever the go to California plan at least one stop at an In-N-Out. We got to the restaurant and there was a line of Duck fans out the door. It was like Eugene after a game.We got in line and got our burgers and the line still ran all across the parking lot. We saw some people from Medford we know and then the Oregon band drove up in two buses and the line got bigger. On the way back to the bus a local reporter from a Redding TV station interviewed my wife and I on the game and the reason so many Duck fans had converged on this fast food restaurant. This morning I got an email from someone I know in Chico, California, who said he saw the interview on the local TV station.

U$C UP NEXT

Next Saturday we play the U$C Trojans at Autzen. Time to put Stanford behind us and move on to the Trojans. Win the Day! Let's Go Ducks.

Debate History

2011-11-10T09:54:00.000-08:00

Presidential debate History was made last night in the CNBC Republican debate from Michigan. As a political junkie I have watched virtually every Presidential Debate since they started on TV with the Nixon/Kennedy Debates in 1960. Last nights memory loss by Texas Governor Rick Perry was the most embarrassing moment in all of those debates both for the general election and the primary debates for the nomination in either party. I found it personally difficult to watch... as I felt for the guy. I have been there many times when the mind just will not spit out the information you know is in your brain. I have the excuse of calling it a "senior moment" or a "brain f...." with people I know.

I watched President Gerald Ford tell a national audience in the Ford/Carter debate in 1976 that Eastern Europe was not under the control of the Soviet Union.

In 1980, I watched the Reagan/Carter debate when Jimmy Carter was asked a question about a treaty to limit nuclear arms. Seemingly out of nowhere, Carter said, "I had a discussion with my daughter, Amy, the other day, before I came here, to ask her what the most important issue was. She said she thought nuclear weaponry –- and the control of nuclear arms."

Last night was much worse because Perry has had other bad debates and this just confirmed what many people believe about him..... ie he is not very bright or interested in policy and is not fast on his feet. He just lost his talking points. Even if you like Rick Perry and rationalize that this happens to all of us, now and then, there is the sick feeling, in the pit of your stomach, that this guy would be in over his head in a debate with President Obama. Perry may go on in the campaign but he lost the race last night.

The clip of Perry in last nights debate will be shown and used as an example of a debate "slip up" for generations to come.

My bet is the non Mitt Romney crowd will now coalesce around former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich. For me, my candidate, Mitt Romney did a very good job last night.

Update:

The following Michael Barone comments on the debate echos my thoughts when he writes:

Gingrich had an electrifying interchange with CNBC’s Maria Bartiromo when she asked him to give his solutions on health care in 30 seconds. As an infrequent CNBC viewer, I have to ask, Is Bartiromo always this obnoxious and ineffective at the same time?

She came across as a very unpleasant person.

John Ford Honored by Stamp

2011-11-07T09:35:00.001-08:00

In 2012 the United States Postal Service will issue a stamp honoring film director John Ford. When Orson Wells was ask to name the great film directors he said "John Ford, John Ford, and John Ford." As a kid growing up in the 1950's and 1960's no film maker shaped my view of life more than John Ford. Even without knowing who was directing the movies his movies left an impression of what was important in life. "How Green Was My Valley", the Calvary Trilogy (Fort Apache, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon and Rio Grande) "Drums along the Mohawk", "Young Mr Lincoln," "They Were Expendable", "My Darling Clementine", "The Quiet Man" and who could forget "Stagecoach." I watched many if not all of these movie at the Drive In Movies with my parents. Just last night I re watched "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance" on DVD and gained new insights as to the movie and Ford.

The stamp series will also honor Directors Frank Capra,Billy Wilder and John Houston.

Frank Capra with his "Mr Smith Goes to Washington" and 'It's a Wonderful Life" both with Jimmy Stewart were films that have stayed with me through the years. I never tire of watching them.

For more information click on the title for a link to directedbyjohnford.com the only site on the web dedicated to film director John Ford.

DUCKS WIN !!!!!!!!!!!!!! WASHINGTON WEEK Part VII

2011-11-05T23:36:00.000-07:00

The Oregon Ducks beat the Washington Huskies 34 to 17 in Seattle tonight at the "Mistake by the Lake" to set up next weeks showdown between Oregon and Stanford at Stanford in the Bay Area. ESPN Gameday will be there!!! Go Ducks beat Stanford and win the Day!

It was fun to see the Husky fans desert their team in the fourth quarter as they headed for the exits. This is the 8th game in a row now that the Ducks have beat the Huskies. Life is good!!!

WASHINGTON WEEK Part VI

2011-11-05T09:06:00.001-07:00

GAME DAY! Oregon Ducks vs Washington Huskies at 7:30 pm PDT on Fox Sports Northwest/ Root TV.

Oregon expects every Duck will do his duty ! Win the Day .....Beat the Huskies...... Let's Go Ducks !

"High Tech Lynching"

2011-11-04T18:08:00.000-07:00

I am supporting Mitt Romney but it brings my blood to a boil watching what is happening to Herman Cain by Liberals,the Liberal Media and people hiding behind the press as "Anonymous Sources".Unless a person is willing to step forward I give absolutely no credit to what they whisper to a friendly member of the press.

The same people who protected Bill Clinton and called his accuser's who did step forward, with allegations of physical abuse,"trailer park trash" and "bimbos" are now going after a Black Conservative just as they did against Clarence Thomas. It will not work .... it will not stand !

Former Senator Fred Thompson wrote yesterday at National Review online:

To many people, not just Republicans, this is just another instance of dirty Washington politics indulging itself, obsessing over trivia while Rome burns. Cain, a very intelligent conservative, upsets the liberal paradigm of what African Americans are supposed to believe. Many Cain supporters involved in the tea-party movement have themselves been called racists in the recent past. Now, with the economy in the tank, the nation broke, the European Union on the verge of throwing the entire Western world into recession if not worse, and former Democratic senator and governor Jon Corzine’s company having “misplaced” $200 million of investors’ money, our burning national issue is whether Herman Cain made some improper remarks over a decade ago.

Click on the title for a link to the rest of Senator Thompson's column.

UPDATE:

Just got this email from someone who read my blog post above:

I saw your blog. I'm not sure if you saw the CNN interview, but they had the accuser's lawyer on the show the other day and they asked him several times if he thought what Herman Cain did amounted to sexual harassment. Each time the lawyer danced around the question saying "I believe my client has brought these accusations in good faith." Not even her own lawyer was willing to stand up and explicitly say that what he did amounted to sexual harassment. Then, they go through the trouble of getting a waiver on the confidentiality agreement, and upon the conclusion tell us they won't go into the details. Also the Politico weasels tell us that they decline to give the details out of "sensitivity" to the alleged victims. I can't think of a more bull-sh*t excuse than that. All of this seems to indicate that the accusations and details leveled at Herman Cain are so petty and benign that it would embarrass the weasel Politico reporters and accusers to detail.

That's a good point.... the liberals can do more damage by leaving it to our sweet imagination than giving us the real ambiguous details.

WASHINGTON WEEK Part V

2011-11-03T21:22:00.000-07:00

Last season the rivalry between the Oregon Ducks and the Washington Huskies became even more heated when the Washington Athletic Director insulted the Oregon Ducks while attending last years game at Autzen Stadium in Eugene. Here is my post from last year outlining the insult and it's repercussions:

Want to know why I hate the Huskies so much..... well their Athletic Director just gave us another reason that will last long after this season is over. He was interviewed on Husky Radio at the game at Autzen Stadium in Eugene and this is what he said:

Mahler to Woodward:
“What do you make of this place? When you come down here, you see the new baseball field, you see the brand new turf, you see the atmosphere. And don’t know if motivation is the word but obviously this is kind of where Washington wants to be, ranked #1 in the country and have all eyes on them.”

AD Woodward:
“Sure, it’s not really where we want to be Softy, because it’s an embarrassment what their academic institution is, and what’s happened to them as far as their state funding has gone. In my mind it’s a wonderful athletic facility but they’ve watched it at the expense of the university go really down.
“The athletic facility is impressive. The fans at Oregon should get down on their hands and knees at night to Phil Knight and pray to him because this is an incredible facility he’s built.“

He tried to clarify the statement today but it didn't work. The man is a clear example of an arrogant Husky JERK that we have known for way too long.

Oregon beat his team 53 to 16

UPDATE:

After a very weak "if I offended anyone" type apology yesterday the Washington AD Scott Woodward was ORDERED by the University of Washington President to PERSONALLY apologise to the Oregon AD and the Oregon President for his comments.

Last week a sports reporter for the Oregonian wrote that the rivalry between Oregon and Washington was for old timers like me. Well, thanks to Mr Woodward I think we can keep it going for another 50 years. The old grudge about the 1948 Rose Bowl was getting a little old anyway. I really HATE those guys!

Go Ducks .... win the Day beat the Huskies.

WASHINGTON WEEK part IV

2011-11-03T15:00:00.000-07:00

Click on the title for a great TV ad for Saturday's game between the Ducks of Oregon and the Huskies of Washington. These teams and their fans don't like each other !!!!

"The Perry Paradox"

2011-11-03T10:15:00.000-07:00

DANIEL HENNINGER of the Wall Street Journal makes a telling point about Rick Perry when he writes today:
.....

Texas' pro-business bias goes back about 175 years—and never died. "It's just that they believe in the whole Horatio Alger myth down here," said Mr. Booth. "It's hard to understand if you haven't lived here."

And so Perry's Paradox: Rick Perry is a success because he nominally presides over an American tiger state, a genuine free-market economy that doesn't much need—or want—his tender loving care. If the job before us is unwinding an unimaginably vast, smothering national government, is Lone Star Gov. Rick Perry the man for that job?

This much is obvious: Texas, not California, better be the American future.

To read the rest of this excellent column click on the title for a link.

WASHINGTON WEEK Part III

2011-11-02T11:09:00.000-07:00

Don't believe me, click on the title for a link to a video of Ted Miller of ESPN who answers the question of why Oregon-Washington is the Pac-12's most bitter rivalry.

"I really hate those guys"

"Why We Can't Escape the Eurocrisis"

2011-11-02T07:37:00.000-07:00

Gerald O'Driscoll Jr of the Wall Street Journal gives a good explanation of why what happens in Greece is important to Americans.

First to the EU. The underlying dilemma is that governments have promised their citizens more social programs than can be financed with the tax revenue generated by the private sector. High tax rates choke off the economic growth needed to finance the promises. Economic activity gets driven into the underground economy, where it often escapes taxation.
Nowhere is this truer than in Greece....

In Greece and elsewhere in the EU, the banks support the government by purchasing its bonds, and the government guarantees the banks. It is a Ponzi scheme not even Bernie Madoff could have concocted. The banks can no longer afford to fund budget deficits, yet they cannot afford to see governments default. Governments cannot make good on their guarantees of the banks......

.... U.S. banks and financial institutions are exposed to EU banks through funding operations, issuance of credit default swaps and unknown exposure in derivatives markets.

The sad fact is that there is not enough money in the EU to pay off the public debts incurred by the governments. Most countries have long since squeezed as much tax revenue from their citizens as they can........

Americans must not be smug about the suffering of Europeans—our financial system is thoroughly integrated with theirs.....

To read the rest click on the title for a link.

Mr. O'Driscoll, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, is a former vice president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas and later Citibank.

WASHINGTON WEEK Part II (The Pick)

2011-11-01T09:06:00.000-07:00

THE PICK

This is a story I never tire of telling.
On October 22, 1994, Oregon football changed. The 1994 season didn't start out that way. Oregon lost to Hawaii, Utah and Washington State. There were only 25,000 fans at Autzen for Utah. At that game I looked around the parking lot and wondered "where is everybody?." The Ducks had beaten U$C in LA but we thought it was a fluke. Then came the Washington game in Eugene on October 22, 1994. I didn't want to drive three hours from Medford to Eugene to watch another Washington "blow out" of the Ducks. I had been there too many times before. In those days with two teenage children at home my kids took turns going to the games with me as we had two season tickets. It was my daughter's turn and so we drove to Eugene. I always like to park on the campus side of the Willamette River and take the footbridge over to Autzen. On a nice day it's a wonderful walk over the river and through the woods to Autzen. I parked on Franklin Blvd. and walked by the New Oregon Motel. It was full of Husky fans. We had also stopped by the book-store on campus and it was full of Husky fans. We got to the game and took our seats in SECTION 13 and the game started. Washington was ranked the # 9 team in the nation. Oregon kept it close. Oregon was leading by four points when Washington scored to go ahead 20 - 17 with 7:44 minutes to play. The game seemed to unfold as it had so often. "nice try"..." a moral victory" ... "close but no cigar". NOT THIS TIME. Danny O'Neil Oregon's QB led the Ducks on a 98 yard drive to regain the lead. It will forever be known as "The Drive." The Ducks now led 24-17 with 2:40 to go in the game. Washington then started their own drive and advanced to the Duck 8 yard line with 1:09 to play. With each yard the Huskies made, every Duck fan knew that Washington would score and win the game as they had so many times before. " So close, but no cigar." Then there was a play that will live forever in every Duck heart. Washington had plenty of time to give the ball to heralded tail back Napolean Kaufman. Instead, QB Damon Huard threw the ball in the flat toward Dave Janoski. Kenny Wheaton the Oregon CB timed the throw perfectly and stepped in front of the Washington receiver and intercepted the ball and ran it all the way back for another Duck touchdown to win the game 31-20. I was standing watching the play with my daughter. We both began to jump up and down!!! We then hugged as we both jumped up and down!!!. It was redemption! My daughter and I will always have that moment in time. On my dying day I will remember it. The play became known as "THE PICK". It is shown on the big screen at every Oregon home game just as the team comes on the field. Jerry Allen, the radio broadcaster's call of the play, has become a favorite of Duck fans... "KENNY WHEATON'S GOING TO SCORE....KENNY WHEATON'S GOING TO SCORE" I have a framed print of the play hanging in my office. After the game the many Husky fans looked crushed. The three hour trip back to Medford was like floating on air. Oregon went on to win the Pac 10 Championship that year and the entire family went to the Rose Bowl. It was the Ducks first time since 1958.
It was the beginning of the Golden Age of Duck Football !

last week Kenny Wheaton was inducted into the Oregon Duck Hall of Fame. He was introduced at mid field at halftime of the Washington State game on Saturday. As he left the field on our side those of us in sections 12and 13 started chanting "Kenny.... Kenny.... Kenny" and he gave us a wave.

Barry Goldwater:"Grow Up Conservatives"

2011-10-31T12:57:00.000-07:00

51 years ago I watched the Republican Convention in Chicago on TV. A United States Senator, I had never heard of, took to the podium and told Conserves to "Grow up" and then withdrew a draft Goldwater move by some Conservative delegates who were unhappy with Richard Nixon. That was my first intoduction to Barry Goldwater.

Mitt Romney is no Richard Nixon but it is again time for Conservatives to "Grow Up." Ronald Reagan is NOT in the race and Mitt Romney will be a good candidate and President.

Jay Nordlinger from National Review makes some good points in his column today"

If you’re a conservative, perhaps you’ve had this same experience: In the past few weeks, several people have said to me, “Have you made your peace with Romney? Have you accepted him as the nominee? Are you resigned to him?” My answer is: I actually look forward to his nomination. And to his candidacy in the general. And to his presidency.
********
But I think Romney is sufficiently firm. I also think he would be much more conservative as president than he was in Massachusetts. Think how free Bill Clinton was, once he left the Arkansas electorate behind! He could unleash his inner McGovern, so to speak. (Both Bill and Hillary Clinton — or whatever she was calling herself in those days — were lieutenants in the McGovern campaign.)
********
In 2008, National Review endorsed Romney, and I thought that was a good endorsement.
*******
When you look at the Republican field today — when you watch one of the debates — do you see anyone besides Romney who can beat Obama and be president? Do you really? I find it difficult. And if the nominee is to be someone else, I hope I’m wrong.

WASHINGTON WEEK Part I

2011-10-30T10:20:00.000-07:00

This is a re post of a post I make every year when the Oregon Ducks play the Washington Huskies with a few minor changes.

To every Oregon Duck Fan "Washington Week" is the week the University of Oregon Ducks play the University of Washington Huskies in football. This year the game will be Saturday in Seattle at the "Mistake by the Lake." 7:30 PM (PT) on FSN/Root TV.

There has been bad blood between these two schools for years.. It started in 1948 when there was a tie between Cal and Oregon to go to the Rose Bowl. In those days ties were settled by a vote of the Pac 8 schools. (the Arizona schools were then not part of the conference.) Oregon expected the Northwest schools to stick together but Washington voted for Cal and as a consolation the Ducks led by QB Norm Van Brocklin went to the Cotton Bowl. Before Autzen stadium was built Oregon would play some of it's home games against Washington at Multnomah Stadium in Portland. In the 50's it was not unheard of for fistfights to erupt in the stands between Duck and Washington fans. In 1968 I drove to Seattle to watch Oregon beat Washington 3 to 0 on a Ken Woody field goal during a rain swept game. During the 1970's, 1980's and into the 1990's Washington dominated the Ducks and were the premier team in the Northwest. Husky fans would descend on Eugene and Autzen Stadium in their god awful purple and would almost outnumber the Duck yellow and green. They would fill up Eugene hotels like locusts and bring their large band. Husky fans became known for their arrogance. Once on a trip to Seattle I ask a Husky fan the outcome of a game and was treated like a fool to expect anything but a Husky win. My Dad, not a football fan, was treated the same way when he struck up a conversation with a Husky fan at a hotel before an Oregon/Washington game. I know it's only a game but I learned to hate the Huskies and their fans. At Husky home games they would blow their siren after each score as they beat the sh** out of hapless Duck teams. That all ended on October 22,1994, and I was there!!! (Has it been 17 years!) To be continued... Lets Go Ducks

Win the Day

The Divider vs. the Thinker

2011-10-28T09:58:00.000-07:00

"While Obama readies an ugly campaign, Paul Ryan gives a serious account of what ails America." by Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal.

A few quotes:

People are increasingly fearing the divisions within, even the potential coming apart of, our country. Rich/poor, black/white, young/old, red/blue:.......

*******
What was the glue? A love of country based on a shared knowledge of how and why it began; a broad feeling among our citizens that there was something providential in our beginnings;

*******

"To whom much is given much is expected"; a general understanding that we were something new in history, a nation founded on ideals and aspirations—liberty, equality—and not mere grunting tribal wants. We were from Europe but would not be European: No formal class structure here, no limits, from the time you touched ground all roads would lead forward. You would be treated not as your father was but as you deserved. That's from "The Killer Angels," a historical novel about the civil war fought to right a wrong the Founders didn't right. We did in time, and at great cost. What a country.

*******

But there is a broad fear out there that we are coming apart,.....

**********

Where is the president in all this? ......
he feels free to exploit divisions. It's all the rich versus the rest, and there are a lot more of the latter.

*********

Which gets us to Rep. Paul Ryan. Mr. Ryan receives much praise, but I don't think his role in the current moment has been fully recognized. He is doing something unique in national politics. He thinks. He studies. He reads. Then he comes forward to speak, calmly and at some length, about what he believes to be true. He defines a problem and offers solutions

To read the rest click on the title for a link.

I love the quote above from the historical novel "The Killer Angles" which was made into the movie "Gettysburg." In the movie Jeff Danial's, as Union Colonel Joshua Chamberlain a collage professor from Maine, turned solder, speaks the words to a group of Maine deserters just before the battle of Gettysburg. One of the most powerful moments in the movie and in movie history.

Here is the complete quote from the movie:

This is a different kind of army. If you look at history you'll see men fight for pay, or women, or some other kind of loot. They fight for land, or because a king makes them, or just because they like killing. But we're here for something new. This has not happened much, in the history of the world: We are an army out to set other men free. America should be free ground, all of it, from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow, no man born to royalty. Here we judge you by what you do, not by who your father was. Here you can be something. Here is the place to build a home. But it's not the land. There's always more land. It's the idea that we all have value, you and me. What we're fighting for, in the end... we're fighting for each other. Sorry. Didn't mean to preach.

Later that day he wins the Congressional Medal of Honor for holding the end of the left flank of the entire Union Army on the "Little Round Top" at Gettysburg. When his men run out of ammunition he orders a bayonet charge that breaks the Rebel attack.

Who will hold the line in 2012 ?

It's Not Too Late .... Your Country Calls in It's Time of Need !

2011-10-26T12:46:00.000-07:00

The Weekly Standard Blog just posted this letter from a "reader from Garland Texas"

Dear Congressman Ryan:

This is now my fourth letter to you. Please reconsider.

Other than Gov. Romney, no announced candidate for the Republican nomination can be taken seriously as a candidate. Not one can speak persuasively regarding the fiscal crisis our country is facing and the types of difficult solutions necessary to reform our entitlement programs and to right our economy.

Still, with all due respect to Gov. Romney’s expertise in the area of business, he has failed to demonstrate in his career that he is a conservative who genuinely believes in, and will fight for a return to, limited government and the diminution of the regulatory state.

After all the years Gov. Romney has run for President, have we yet heard a convincing argument from him concerning the seriousness of our fiscal situation with regard to entitlements? Will the Democrats and their allies in the media even allow a serious discussion regarding entitlements when all they have to do is say one word: Romneycare?

Is there any sense that Gov. Romney will use the 2012 campaign to do anything other than achieve the Presidency? If the Republican Party selects a candidate who fudges the great economic issues during this campaign because he or she is afraid to lose, then we will deserve defeat.

The 2012 election campaign must become a time to persuade the public to do what needs to be done. We need a candidate who knows the case inside out and who is capable of making it in a convincing fashion, one able to withstand the demagogic attacks of the opposition.

Please reconsider. Do not allow this opportunity for our country to pass by.

Respectfully,

I like Romney but I like Ryan more !

Paul Ryan's speech today: "Saving The American Idea"

2011-10-26T08:00:00.000-07:00

“Saving the American Idea: Rejecting Fear, Envy and the Politics of Division”

House Budget Committee chair Paul Ryan is delivering the following remarks at a speech today at the Heritage Foundation:

We’re here today to explore the American Idea, and I can’t think of a better venue for this topic. The mission of the Heritage Foundation is to promote the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense.

These are the principles that define the American Idea. And this mission has never been timelier, because these principles are very much under threat from policies here in Washington.

The American Idea belongs to all of us – inherited from our nation’s Founders, preserved by the countless sacrifices of our veterans, and advanced by visionary leaders, past and present.

What makes America exceptional – what gives life to the American Idea – is our dedication to the self-evident truth that we are all created equal, giving us equal rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And that means opportunity.

The perfection of our union, especially our commitment to equality of opportunity, has been a story of constant striving to live up to our Founding principles. This is what Abraham Lincoln meant when he said, “In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve.”

This commitment to liberty and equality is something we take for granted during times of prosperity, when a growing economic pie gives all Americans the opportunity to pursue their dreams, to provide brighter futures for their kids, or maybe just to meet their families’ needs.

These are tough times. We know all too well that too many Americans are hurting today. And these hardships have reopened our longstanding national debate over what it means to be an exceptional nation. Have those periods of unprecedented prosperity in America’s past been the product of our Founding principles?

Or, as some would argue, have we made it this far only in spite of our outdated values? Are we still an exceptional nation? Should we even seek to be unique? Or should we become more like the rest of the world – more bureaucratic, less hopeful, and less free?

The American Idea is not tried in times of prosperity. Instead, it is tested when times are tough: when the pie is shrinking, when businesses are closing, and when workers are losing their jobs.

Those are the times when America’s commitment to equality of opportunity is called into question. That’s when the temptation to exploit fear and envy returns – when many in Washington use the politics of division to evade responsibility for their failures and to advance their own narrow political interests.

To my great disappointment, it appears that the politics of division are making a big comeback. Many Americans share my disappointment – especially those who were filled with great hope a few years ago, when then-Senator Obama announced his candidacy in Springfield, Illinois.

Do you remember what he said? He said that what’s stopped us from meeting our nation’s greatest challenges is, quote, “the failure of leadership, the smallness of our politics – the ease with which we’re distracted by the petty and trivial, our chronic avoidance of tough decisions, our preference for scoring cheap political points instead of rolling up our sleeves and building a working consensus to tackle big problems.”

I couldn’t agree more.

And yet, nearly three years into his presidency, look at where we are now:
•Petty and trivial? Just last week, the President told a crowd in North Carolina that Republicans are in favor of, quote, “dirtier air, dirtier water, and less people with health insurance.” Can you think of a pettier way to describe sincere disagreements between the two parties on regulation and health care?
•Chronic avoidance of tough decisions? The President still has not put forward a credible plan to tackle the threat of ever-rising spending and debt, and it’s been over 900 days since his party passed a budget in the Senate.
•A preference for scoring cheap political points instead of consensus-building? This is the same President who is currently campaigning against a do-nothing Congress, when in fact, the House of Representatives has passed over a dozen bills to help get the economy moving and deal with the debt, only to see the President’s party kill those bills in the do-nothing Senate.

Look, we put our cards on the table. Earlier this year, the House of Representatives advanced a far-reaching plan filled with common-sense reforms aimed at putting the budget on the path to balance and the economy on the path to prosperity.

But instead of working together where we agree, the President has opted for divisive rhetoric and the broken politics of the past. He is going from town to town, impugning the motives of Republicans, setting up straw men and scapegoats, and engaging in intellectually lazy arguments, as he tries to build support for punitive tax hikes on job creators.

The tax increases proposed by Senate Democrats and endorsed by the President – when combined with the new taxes in the health-care law, and the President’s other tax preferences – would push the top federal tax rate to roughly 50 percent in just 14 months, while doing nothing to promote job creation.

This tax increase on so-called “millionaires and billionaires” would actually constitute a huge tax hike on the nation’s most successful small businesses. According to the Tax Foundation, the surtax would hit roughly 35 percent of small-business income.

As P.J. O’Rourke put it, “The good news is that, according to the Obama administration, the rich will pay for everything. The bad news is that, according to the Obama administration, you’re rich.”

Actually, the news is even worse. As a practical matter, when you try to chase ever-higher spending with ever-higher tax increases, you eventually run into a brick wall of math.

The President has been talking a lot about math lately. He’s been saying that, quote, “If we’re not willing to ask those who’ve done extraordinarily well to help America close the deficit… the math says… we’ve got to put the entire burden on the middle class and the poor.”

This is really a stunning assertion from the President. When you look at the actual math, you quickly realize that the way out of this mess is to combine economic growth with reasonable, responsible spending restraint. Yet neither of these things factors into the President’s zero-sum logic.

According to the President’s logic, we should give up on trying to reform our tax code to grow the economy and get more revenue that way. Instead, these goals are taking a backseat to the President’s misguided understanding of fairness.

Remember that 2008 debate, when ABC’s Charlie Gibson pointed out that raising the capital gains tax rate actually tends to drive revenues down?

Obama replied: “Well, Charlie, what I’ve said is that I would look at raising the capital gains tax for purposes of fairness.” That’s the kind of logic we are unfortunately seeing today.

Also according to the President’s logic, spending restraint is incompatible with a strong, well-functioning safety net. The belief that recipients of government aid are better off the more we spend on them is remarkably persistent. No matter how many times this central tenet of liberalism gets debunked, like Brett Favre, it just keeps coming back.

The President has wrongly framed Republican efforts to get government spending under control as hard-hearted attacks on the poor. In reality, spending on programs for seniors and for lower-income families continues to grow every year under the House-passed budget – it just grows at a sustainable rate. We direct tax dollars where they’re needed most, and stop spending money we don’t have on boondoggles we don’t need.

The President’s political math is a muddled mix of false accusations and false choices. The actual math is apolitical, and it’s clear: By the time my kids are my age, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office projects that the size of government will be double what it is today.

Government health care programs alone will have grown to consume 45 percent of federal spending. The primary driver of this increase is runaway inflation in health care costs, which are rising at 2 to 3 times the rate of GDP.

It’s impossible to keep funding health care expenditures at this rate. Even President Obama has said, quote, “If you look at the numbers, Medicare in particular will run out of money, and we will not be able to sustain that program no matter how much taxes go up.”

So the real debate is about how best to control these unsustainable costs. And if I could sum up that disagreement in a couple of sentences, I would say this: Our plan is to empower patients. Their plan is to empower bureaucrats.

The Republican plan gives individuals the power to put market pressure on providers and make them compete.

The President’s plan is to give 15 unelected bureaucrats in Washington the power to cut Medicare in ways that, according to Medicare’s own chief actuary, would simply drive providers out of business. This would result in harsh disruptions and denied care for seniors.

Pain like this simply can’t be sustained. So when it comes to out-of-control spending on entitlements, the President’s math simply doesn’t add up.

And his math is no better on the tax side. Let’s say we took all the income from those the President calls “rich” – those making $250,000 or more. A 100 percent tax rate on their total annual income would only fund the government for six months. Just six months!

What about some of the other tax hikes the President likes to talk about? Under the President’s policies, deficits are set to rise by a whopping $9.5 trillion over the next 10 years.
•Letting the top two tax rates expire would equal roughly 8 percent of that planned deficit increase.
•Eliminating tax subsidies for oil and gas companies would only equal 0.5 percent of the President’s planned deficits.
•And what about corporate jet owners? That provision would reduce those deficits by just 0.03 percent.

Look, I’m all for closing tax loopholes – but you can’t close our nation’s deficits by chasing ever-higher spending with politically motivated tax hikes here and there. Instead, tax reform must broaden the base and lower rates.

This policy approach, which has attracted strong bipartisan support, would bolster our fiscal health by increasing competitiveness and encouraging more investment and job creation.

Lately, the President has been fond of taking Ronald Reagan quotes out of context, in an effort to persuade Republicans that Reagan would have agreed with the idea of using fear and envy to push a partisan agenda of permanently higher taxes.

Every time he does this, I can picture Reagan shaking his head: “There you go again.”

Obama quotes Reagan as saying that bus drivers shouldn’t pay a higher effective tax rate than millionaires. Well, that’s a no-brainer. Nobody disagrees with that.

But it is simply disingenuous to use this quote as evidence that Reagan would have supported the tax increases that Obama wants Congress to pass.

Reagan was attempting to build support for the landmark 1986 tax reform, a revenue-neutral law that reformed the tax code by lowering tax rates while broadening the tax base.

Reagan’s point – which President Obama clearly missed – was not that we should raise tax rates to chase out-of-control spending in Washington.

His point was that we should get rid of loopholes that are exploited by the few, so that we could lower everyone’s tax rates and help the economy grow.

The House-passed budget includes this kind of tax reform, which many agree would provide an immediate boost to the economy. Our budget proposed getting rid of scores of loopholes, lowering the hurdles for job creation and economic growth, and making our tax code fair, simple, and competitive.

In his address to Congress last month, the President said he agrees in principle with this kind of reform, especially when it comes to the uncompetitive way we tax our businesses.

This made Republicans think, well, we might have an opportunity here for the kind of genuine consensus-building that the President talked about as a candidate.

Yet he chose not to pursue this kind of tax reform. Instead, he sent us a partisan bill filled with the same stimulus proposals that failed two years ago, only this time he also asked for permanent tax hikes to go with them.

He’s also failed to work with us on another area where one would think we could find common ground: ending the lavish subsidies and government benefits that go to those who are already successful.

The House-passed budget was full of proposals to get rid of corporate welfare and crony capitalism.
•Why are tax dollars being wasted on bankrupt, politically-connected solar energy firms?
•Why is Washington wasting your money on entrenched agribusiness?
•Why have we extended an endless supply of taxpayer credit to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, instead of demanding that their government guarantee be wound down and their taxpayer subsidies ended?

Rather than raising taxes and making it more difficult for Americans to become wealthy, let’s lower the amount of government spending the wealthy now receive.

The President likes to use Warren Buffett and his secretary as an example of why we should raise taxes on the rich.

Well, Warren Buffett gets the same health and retirement benefits from the government as his secretary.

But our proposals to modestly income-adjust Social Security and Medicare benefits have been met with sheer demagoguery by leading members of the President’s party.

The politics of division have always struck me as odd: the eagerness to take more, combined with the refusal to subsidize less.

Instead of working with us on these common-sense reforms, the President is barnstorming swing states, pushing a divisive message that pits one group of Americans against another on the basis of class.

This just won’t work in America. Class is not a fixed designation in this country. We are an upwardly mobile society with a lot of movement between income groups.

The Treasury Department’s latest study on income mobility in America found that during the ten-year period starting in 1996, roughly half of the taxpayers who started in the bottom 20 percent had moved up to a higher income group by 2005.

Meanwhile, half of all taxpayers ended up in a different income group at the end of ten years. Many moved up, and some moved down, but economic growth resulted in rising incomes for most people over this period.

Another recent survey of over 500 successful entrepreneurs found that 93 percent came from middle-class or lower-class backgrounds. The majority were the first in their families to launch a business.

Their stories are the American story: Millions of immigrants fled from the closed societies of the Old World to the security of equal rights in this land of upward mobility.

Telling Americans they are stuck in their current station in life, that they are victims of circumstances beyond their control, and that government’s role is to help them cope with it – well, that’s not who we are. That’s not what we do.

Our Founding Fathers rejected this mentality. In societies marked by class structure, an elite class made up of rich and powerful patrons supplies the needs of a large client underclass that toils, but cannot own. The unfairness of closed societies is the kindling for class warfare, where the interests of “capital” and “labor” are perpetually in conflict. What one class wins, the other loses.

The legacy of this tradition can still be seen in Europe today: Top-heavy welfare states have replaced the traditional aristocracies, and masses of the long-term unemployed are locked into the new lower class.

The United States was destined to break out of this bleak history. Our future would not be staked on traditional class structures, but on civic solidarity. Gone would be the struggle of class against class.

Instead, Americans would work, compete, and co-operate in an open market, climb the ladder of opportunity, and keep the fruits of their efforts.

Self-government and the rule of law would secure our equal, God-given rights. Our political and economic systems – rooted in freedom and responsibility – would reward, and thus cultivate, traditional virtues.

Given that the President’s policies have moved us closer to the European model, I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that his class-based rhetoric has followed suit.

We shouldn’t be surprised... but we have every right to be disappointed. Instead of appealing to the hope and optimism that were hallmarks of his first campaign, he has launched his second campaign by preying on the emotions of fear, envy, and resentment.

This has the potential to be just as damaging as his misguided policies. Sowing social unrest and class resentment makes America weaker, not stronger. Pitting one group against another only distracts us from the true sources of inequity in this country – corporate welfare that enriches the powerful, and empty promises that betray the powerless.

Ironically, equality of outcome is a form of inequality – one that is based on political influence and bureaucratic favoritism.

That's the real class warfare that threatens us: A class of bureaucrats and connected crony capitalists trying to rise above the rest of us, call the shots, rig the rules, and preserve their place atop society. And their gains will come at the expense of working Americans, entrepreneurs, and that small businesswoman who has the gall to take on the corporate chieftain.

It’s disappointing that this President’s actions have exacerbated this form of class warfare in so many ways:
•While the EPA is busy punishing commercially competitive sources of energy, a class of bureaucrats at the Department of Energy has been acting like the world’s worst venture capital fund, spending recklessly on politically favored alternatives.
•While the unemployment rate remains stuck above 9 percent, a class of bureaucrats at the National Labor Relations Board is threatening hundreds of jobs by suing an American employer for politically motivated reasons.
•And while millions of Americans are left wondering whether their employers will drop their health insurance because of the new health care law, a class of bureaucrats at HHS has handed out over 1,400 waivers to those firms and unions with the political connections to lobby for them.

These actions starkly highlight the difference between the two parties that lies at the heart of the matter: Whether we are a nation that still believes in equality of opportunity, or whether we are moving away from that, and towards an insistence on equality of outcome.

If you believe in the former, you follow the American Idea that justice is done when we level the playing field at the starting line, and rewards are proportionate to merit and effort.

If you believe in the latter kind of equality, you think most differences in wealth and rewards are matters of luck or exploitation, and that few really deserve what they have.

That’s the moral basis of class warfare – a false morality that confuses fairness with redistribution, and promotes class envy instead of social mobility.

I’d like to introduce President Obama to the Ronald Reagan he isn’t so eager to quote – the man who said, “Since when do we in America believe that our society is made up of two diametrically opposed classes – one rich, one poor – both in a permanent state of conflict and neither able to get ahead except at the expense of the other? Since when do we in America accept this alien and discredited theory of social and class warfare? Since when do we in America endorse the politics of envy and division?”

President Reagan was absolutely right. Instead of policies that make it harder for Americans to rise, let’s lower the hurdles to upward mobility.

That’s what the American Idea is all about. You know, in the midst of all the joys and sorrows of our everyday lives, I think we sometimes forget why America was considered such an exceptional nation at its Founding, and why it remains so.

To me, the results of the Founders’ exceptional vision can be summed up in a single sentence: Throughout human history, the American Idea has done more to help the poor than any other economic system ever designed.

Americans, guided by our ideals, have sacrificed everything to combat tyranny and brutal dictators; we’ve expanded opportunity, opened markets, and inspired others to resist oppression; we’ve exported innovation and imagination; and we’ve welcomed immigrants seeking a fresh start.

Here in America – unlike most places on earth – all citizens have the right to rise.

Thank you.

I sure wish he were running for President !

What did Cliff Harris do ????

2011-10-23T09:45:00.000-07:00

My Oregon Ducks beat Colorado in a 45 to 2 blowout in Boulder yesterday. Bryan Bennett filling in for injured QB Darron Thomas did a great job. Someone said it was like going from Joe Montana to Steve Young.

However the question on many Duck fans mind is what did Oregon corner back, Cliff Harris, do to draw a 15 yard "unsportsmanship penalty" BEFORE the game from the refs.

The Oregonian has this report:

First, he received an undisclosed 15-yard penalty before kickoff that led Oregon coach Chip Kelly to elect to receive rather than kickoff after winning the coin toss.

Kelly said after the game that he didn’t know what the penalty had been for. Defensive coordinator Nick Aliotti knew, but declined to reveal the information.

“I choose not to comment on that,” he said.

The penalty resulted in Colorado kicking off from the 45-yard line rather than the customary 30.

However NO ONE seems to know what he did. Inquiring minds want to know !!

Later in the game Harris tried to field a punt inside the 10 yard line and went back into the end zone and was tackled for a safety giving Colorado their only points in the game. Coach Kelly pointed out punt returners are coached not to field punts inside the 10 yard line.

Harris has been in coach Kelly's "dog house" for some time after getting a ticket on I-5 for going 118 miles per hour in a 65 zone. It ended up he already owed thousands of dollars in fines in Oregon and California on other tickets. When the police officer smelled marijuana in the car and asked where was the Marijuana, Harris replied, "We smoked it all."

To be fair, Harris at times has been spectacular on the field, but just as often he has hurt his team. It didn't matter yesterday against Colorado but it could in future games !

Go Ducks .... win the day beat Washington State !!

UPDATE: It is being reported he was taunting the other team before the game. How?

UPDATE 2: Today, Monday Cliff Harris was stopped and cited by the Eugene Police Department for Driving While Suspended, no insurance and not using his seat belt. His Mustang convertible was impounded by the police department. The saga continues. How self destructive can he be?

Congratulations !!!!!!

2011-10-21T11:42:00.000-07:00

A shout out to someone who has just overcome a big obstacle. Have a few drinks and then "Get 'er done"

Oregon vs Colorado 1979

2011-10-21T10:43:00.000-07:00

On Saturday my Oregon Ducks will play the Colorado Buffalo's in Boulder. Thirty two years ago in 1979 my wife and I attended another game there between the Ducks and Buffalo's. We had been married just a few years and it was before kids. It was a late summer car trip to the Rocky Mountain states. My brother-in-law was a graduate student at Colorado in astrophysics. (or something like that). We visited him and slept on the floor of his studio apartment. Before I left I had gotten tickets from the Oregon Athletic Department for the game. On the Saturday of the game he took us by his graduate department and introduced us to some of his fellow grad student who were so condescending about the game. "Hope you can give us a good game" etc.

This was just about the middle of the "Dark Ages" of Duck Football so not much was expected of the Duck by anyone.

Colorado had just hired "hotshot" coach Chuck Fairbanks as their new coach. He had been the head coach for the New England Patriots and before that at Oklahoma. This was his first game for Colorado and much was expected. The Ducks came into the game as big underdogs. It was a nice day in Boulder and when we got to the game we sat with a small contingent of Oregon fans of 100 or so. In those days Colorado sold Coors beer at the stadium. For Oregon an unheralded JC Quarterback named Reggie Ogbourn" ran for over 108 yards in a 33 to 19 upset victory for the Ducks.

After a few beers the Oregon fans began singing "Rocky Mountain High" with a new word...."Rocky Mountain High.... OREGON...... Rocky Mountain High......OREGON." I remember walking out of the Colorado stadium feeling 10 feet high !! Go Ducks.... Win the day and beat the Buffalo's !

Gaddafi Dead !

2011-10-20T09:38:00.000-07:00

It is always a good day when a tyrant dies ! Remember Pan Am Flight 103 !

The Romney Train is pulling out of the station !

2011-10-18T20:14:00.000-07:00

Mitt Romney was the clear winner of tonight's debate ! If the Republican Party wants to beat Obama then Romney will be the nominee of the party.

Herman Cain will be clubbed to death over 9 9 9, regardless of it's merits, by the Democrats if he is the nominee as he was tonight by his fellow Republicans. He was weak on foreign policy questions particularly the answerer he gave earlier to the question about trading an American hostage for the prisoners at Guantanamo. I still like the guy.

I grew to really dislike Rick Perry tonight. He was more animated but he is an empty suit. He was a jerk to bring up the very old story about the company that did Romney's home landscape maintenance and which hired illegal aliens. It was a bad strategy to keep interrupting Romany. This is a minuscule issue and Perry made himself very small by bringing it up. Romney was great when he told Perry: "I know you have had a couple of bad debates."

Rick Santorum was booed by the audience for interrupting Romney and even Newt was prickly tonight.

Tonight my head AND heart belong to Romney. If you want to beat Obama then the only viable choice is Romney !

"Romney demonstrated who the is leader of the pack." Rich Galen from his Mullings column

"He (Perry) didn’t look tough, just rude." John Pitney Jr., Professor of Government Claremont McKenna College

Weekend

2011-10-17T09:15:00.001-07:00

Had a good weekend. Went to the South Medford vs. Grants Pass football game Friday night and watched South Medford run over the Cavemen from Grants Pass. Saturday morning woke up in time to watch ESPN Game Day live from the University of Oregon. Then, that afternoon took a charter bus from Medford to the Oregon vs Arizona State night game in Eugene. My friend Bob and I were the "Bus Captains" and had a good time keeping the other fans happy with food and games on the trip North. The game was on ESPN and started at 7:30 pm and so we didn't get back to Medford till 2:30 am Sunday morning. It was a roller coaster of a game but the Ducks won in the end. Had a record crowd at Autzen of over 60,000. Slept in on Sunday and talked to both kids on the phone. Watched the movie "Ghost Writer" which was a far leftist "we* dream" directed by fugitive from justice Roman Polanski. Technically it was Ok but our CIA was the villain. Had a happy ending in the same way Easy Rider had a happy ending. Ended the weekend by watching the TV show Pan Am.

New Romney Ad

2011-10-14T13:11:00.000-07:00

What is the White House worried about ?

9 9 9 is a "wonderful plan" so says Art Laffer

2011-10-14T09:36:00.001-07:00

Reagan economist and creator of the "Laffer Curve" says that Herman Cain's 9 9 9 tax plan is a "wonderful plan" He says it will "lower the tax rate and broaden the tax base” while provide people with the least incentive to cheat on their taxes"

"Mr. Cain’s plan is simple, transparent, neutral with respect to capital and labor, and savings and consumption, and also greatly decreases the hidden costs of tax compliance. There is no doubt that economic growth would surge upon implementation of 9-9-9.”
Laffer also said that “such a system provides the least avenues to avoid paying taxes, yet also maintains the strongest incentives for work effort, production, and investment.”

In addition Congressman Paul Ryan likes it too:

“We need more bold ideas like this because it is specific and credible,”

The budget chairman went on to say that ideas like Cain’s plan could help shape the debate over tax reform moving into 2013.

“It’s great to see such bold ideas,”

I admit that I was skeptical of 9 9 9 but I am becoming less so if Laffer and Ryan like it. Go Herman !

"Populust demagoguery"

2011-10-14T07:36:00.000-07:00

Charles Krauthammer on President Obama:

this kind of populist demagoguery is more than intellectually dishonest. It’s dangerous. Obama is opening a Pandora’s box. Popular resentment, easily stoked, is less easily controlled, especially when the basest of instincts are granted legitimacy by the nation’s leader.

To read more click on the title

Help Me Make it Through the Night !

2011-10-13T09:34:00.000-07:00

Christian Schneider from National Review:

In 2011, Republicans are sitting at the end of the bar, and it’s 2 a.m. Ryan and Christie have already gone home, and the GOP is looking for someone to keep it company. As Joan Jett’s “I Hate Myself for Loving You” plays, Mitt winks at them from the other end of the bar. Right now, he’s the best the GOP has; how the night turns out is yet to be seen.

To read more click on the title for a link.

p.s. my favorite Sinatra album cover. My folks owned the record album when I was a kid and it really fascinated me. I downloaded the album from Amazon about a year ago.

Morality, Not Theology

2011-10-12T10:40:00.000-07:00

Jonah Goldberg has an excellent column today on the Mormon Cult issue and Mitt Romney. A few quotes:

Robert Jeffress introduced Texas governor Rick Perry at the Values Voter Summit on Friday. He started a great big hullabaloo by asking, “Do we want a candidate who is a good, moral person, or one who is a born-again follower of the Lord Jesus Christ?”

Before we go on, let me just say, I’d probably go with curtain No. 1......

Is Mormonism a cult? Yes, no, maybe — who cares? From a Jewish perspective, you could say that Mormonism is simply one of the more recent additions to a very long line of cults. From an atheist (or agnostic my add)) perspective, it’s cults as far as the eye can see.

But from a moral perspective, contemporary Mormonism is squarely within the Judeo-Christian tradition, promoting decency, self-restraint, family values, etc.

Click on title for full column.

What did he know and when did he know it ?

2011-10-12T10:07:00.000-07:00

Is Eric Holder, the Attorney General of the United States, a crook ?

Click on the title for an interesting article from the Washington Times titled:

"Holder’s honesty before Congress disputed in earlier high-profile cases"

An investigation into the Justice Department’s “Fast and Furious” gunrunning probe, which allowed hundreds of weapons to be illegally “walked” into Mexico, is not the first time Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr.’s truthfulness has been challenged by members of Congress.....

Lying to Congress is a federal crime. Just ask Roger Clemons who has been indicted for it.

Romney Wins Again !

2011-10-12T09:26:00.000-07:00

In my opinion Mitt Romney won last nights debate in New Hampshire. He came across as a leader and I like the way he pays attention to the other speakers, in a kind way, when they are speaking. Herman Cain came in second and Newt Gingrich was third. I do have doubts as to the sales tax provision of 9 9 9 advanced by Herman Cain.Cain will make a good VP choice for Romney after he is divorced from his 9 9 9 gimmick. Rick Perry who "had" to do well was very subdued and did not make much of an impression. John Huntsman came across as a not very nice person who acted like he was too good for the other candidates. He often would not watch the other debaters and kept looking at the audience when other candidates were speaking. He gave the impression he wanted to be someplace else and he soon will be. Rick Santorum had a good point that family is important in a democracy but often reminded me of the kid in class who raised his hand all the time. Ron Paul was Ron Paul. I just can not warm up to Michelle Bachman.

In the end, it comes down to this. The United States and the world are are facing an economic meltdown and who do you want at the helm of the ship of state in such a storm. Someone who is politically pure or a smart, leader like Romney. Romney and his family will never embarrass the United States.

What with the Chris Christie endorsement and his debate performance it was a good day for Mitt.

Game Day on Thursday ?

2011-10-06T10:55:00.000-07:00

Yes it is Game Day ! My Oregon Duck are playing the Cal Bears on the ESPN Thursday night college football game. Game start 6 pm PDT. It's great for the TV money but it's hard on we Duck fans who live outside of Eugene. In about an hour I will take a Oregon Duck charter bus from Medford to the game and back and will arrive back here Medford early Friday morning. For those of us still working in America, Friday is a working day. I do like night games. Go Ducks !

Romney - Cain Ticket ! or Cain - Romney Ticket !

2011-10-05T15:52:00.000-07:00

Now that Sarah Palin, and the "Big Guy" Chris Christie have decided to not seek the Republican nomination that leaves Mitt Romney, Herman Cain and Rick Perry as the most likely candidates to win the nomination. I am supporting Romney but Herman Cain now has my heart. With Marco Rubio saying he would say "no" to a VP spot, how about a Romney - Cain ticket or a Cain - Romney ticket. I can't wait till the next debate next week Tuesday in New Hampshire.

Michael Medved on Herman Cain

2011-10-05T11:07:00.000-07:00

"The surging support for presidential contender Herman Cain stems in part from his warm, likable personality, his status as an outsider, his record of accomplishment in the world of business, and his bold, upbeat program for reform.

But it also reflects the stupid, petty, mutually destructive nastiness that’s recently afflicted the campaigns of Rick Perry and Mitt Romney, leaving the two frontrunners badly damaged and creating an obvious opening for the Hermanator—or perhaps for someone else."

To read the rest of Mr. Medved's column click on the title for a link.

Bob Dylan for Nobel Prize in Literature ?

2011-10-05T10:21:00.000-07:00

Click on title for story. He has my vote !

"There was no point arguing with Dave (Van Ronk), not intellectually anyway. I had a primitive way of looking at things and I liked country fair politics. My favorite politician was Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater, who reminded me of Tom Mix, and there wasn't any way to explain that to anybody. I wasn't that comfortable with all the psycho polemic babble."

Bob Dylan, Chronicles, page 283

Raising Cain

2011-10-01T16:51:00.001-07:00

The very different life lessons of the president and his challenger.

By FRED BARNES

What did Cain and Obama learn from their families and education? “One of the most important lessons Dad taught us was not to feel like victims,” Cain writes. “He never felt like a victim. He never talked like a victim. And both our parents taught us not to think that the government owed us something. They didn’t teach us to be mad at this country.”

Based on his career, Obama didn’t draw the same lessons. He concluded America is an unjust country. He became a community organizer, a civil rights lawyer, a state senator,
a U.S. senator, and president—all the while pursuing liberal efforts to aid perceived victims of the free-market economy through strong government intervention.

The more I know about Herman Cain the more I like him. To read more of Fred Barnes article about the two men and their upbringing click on the title for a link

Friday Night Lights

2011-09-30T21:33:00.001-07:00

#4 South Medford Panthers 28, #3 Roseburg Indians 20 at Roseburg. The Indians jumped to an early 14 to 0 lead in the 1st quarter before the Panthers came charging back to score 28 straight points. The Medford Mail Tribune picked the Indians to win the game but South Medford came through. A great win !

Enjoy "The Pick" this Bye Weekend

2011-09-30T16:06:00.000-07:00

This is a story I never tire of telling
On October 22, 1994, Oregon football changed. The 1994 season didn't start out that way. Oregon lost to Hawaii, Utah and Washington State. There were only 25,000 fans at Autzen for Utah. At that game I looked around the parking lot and wondered "where is everybody?." The Ducks had beaten U$C in LA but we thought it was a fluke. Then came the Washington game in Eugene on October 22, 1994. I didn't want to drive three hours from Medford to Eugene to watch another Washington "blow out" of the Ducks. I had been there too many times before. In those days with two teenage children at home my kids took turns going to the games with me as we had two season tickets. It was my daughter's turn and so we drove to Eugene. I always like to park on the campus side of the Willamette River and take the footbridge over to Autzen. On a nice day it's a wonderful walk over the river and through the woods to Autzen. I parked on Franklin Blvd. and walked by the New Oregon Motel. It was full of Husky fans. We had also stopped by the book-store on campus and it was full of Husky fans. We got to the game and took our seats in SECTION 13 and the game started. Washington was ranked the # 9 team in the nation. Oregon kept it close. Oregon was leading by four points when Washington scored to go ahead 20 - 17 with 7:44 minutes to play. The game seemed to unfold as it had so often. "nice try"..." a moral victory" ... "close but no cigar". NOT THIS TIME. Danny O'Neil Oregon's QB led the Ducks on a 98 yard drive to regain the lead. It will forever be known as "The Drive." The Ducks now led 24-17 with 2:40 to go in the game. Washington then started their own drive and advanced to the Duck 8 yard line with 1:09 to play. With each yard the Huskies made, every Duck fan knew that Washington would score and win the game as they had so many times before. " So close, but no cigar." Then there was a play that will live forever in every Duck heart. Washington had plenty of time to give the ball to heralded tail back Napolean Kaufman. Instead, QB Damon Huard threw the ball in the flat toward Dave Janoski. Kenny Wheaton the Oregon CB timed the throw perfectly and stepped in front of the Washington receiver and intercepted the ball and ran it all the way back for another Duck touchdown to win the game 31-20. I was standing watching the play with my daughter. We both began to jump up and down!!! We then hugged as we both jumped up and down!!!. It was redemption! My daughter and I will always have that moment in time. On my dying day I will remember it. The play became known as "THE PICK". It is shown on the big screen at every Oregon home game just as the team comes on the field. Jerry Allen, the radio broadcaster's call of the play, has become a favorite of Duck fans... "KENNY WHEATON'S GOING TO SCORE....KENNY WHEATON'S GOING TO SCORE" I have a framed print of the play hanging in my office. After the game the many Husky fans looked crushed. The three hour trip back to Medford was like floating on air. Oregon went on to win the Pac 10 Championship that year and the entire family went to the Rose Bowl. It was the Ducks first time since 1958.
It was the beginning of the Golden Age of Duck Football !

Today it was announced Kenny Wheaton will be inducted into the Oregon Duck Hall of Fame. What took them so long.

President Obama: American's "gotten a little soft"

2011-09-29T20:03:00.000-07:00

Jimmy Carter, when the American economy went South, blamed it on the American people and said we were in a malaise to cover for his own incompetence.He was shifiting the blame.

Now, another President is attempting to cover for his own incompetence by blaming it on the American people and the new malaise is "a little soft."

President Barack Obama:

"This is a great great country that had gotten a little soft and we didn’t have that same competitive edge that we needed over the last couple of decades,”

Jonah Goldberg has the best comment on Obama's attempt to shift the blame from himself to the American people:

Seriously, in 2008 we elected a community organizer, state senator, college instructor first term senator over a guy who spent five years in a Vietnamese prison. And now he’s lecturing us about how America’s gone “soft”? Really?

No, American just needs a real leader !

Cain vs unAble

2011-09-28T20:49:00.000-07:00

Bumper sticker of the week thanks to Dennis Miller.