Category: In Memory

William Safire has died

The writing world has last another great one.

The New York Times gives the grim news:

William Safire, a speechwriter for President Richard M. Nixon and a Pulitzer Prize-winning political columnist for The New York Times who also wrote novels, books on politics and a Malaprop’s treasury of articles on language, died at a hospice in Rockville, Md. on Sunday. He was 79.

The cause was pancreatic cancer, said Martin Tolchin, a friend of the family.

There may be many sides in a genteel debate, but in the Safire world of politics and journalism it was simpler: there was his own unambiguous wit and wisdom on one hand and, on the other, the blubber of fools he called “nattering nabobs of negativism” and “hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.”

He was a college dropout and proud of it, a public relations go-getter who set up the famous Nixon-Khrushchev “kitchen debate” in Moscow, and a White House wordsmith in the tumultuous era of war in Vietnam, Nixon’s visit to China and the gathering storm of the Watergate scandal that drove the president from office.

Then, from 1973 to 2005, Mr. Safire wrote his twice weekly “Essay” for the Op-Ed Page of The Times, a forceful conservative voice in the liberal chorus. Unlike most Washington columnists who offer judgments with Olympian detachment, Mr. Safire was a pugnacious contrarian who did much of his own reporting, called people liars in print and laced his opinions with outrageous wordplay.

Critics initially dismissed him as an apologist for the disgraced Nixon coterie. But he won the 1978 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, and for 32 years tenaciously attacked and defended foreign and domestic policies, and the foibles, of seven administrations. Along the way, he incurred enmity and admiration, and made a lot of powerful people squirm.

Mr. Safire also wrote four novels, including “Full Disclosure,” (Doubleday, 1977), a best-seller about succession issues after a president is blinded in an assassination attempt, and nonfiction that included “The New Language of Politics,” (Random House, 1968), and “Before the Fall,” (Doubleday, 1975,) a memoir of his White House years.

And from 1979 until earlier this month, he wrote “On Language,” a New York Times Magazine column that explored written and oral trends, plumbed the origins and meanings of words and phrases, and drew a devoted following, including a stable of correspondents he called his Lexicographic Irregulars.

The columns, many collected in books, made him an unofficial arbiter of usage, and one of the most widely read writers on language. It also tapped into the lighter side of the dour-looking Mr. Safire: a Pickwickian quibbler who gleefully pounced on gaffes, inexactitudes, neologisms, misnomers, solecisms and perversely peccant puns, like “The President’s populism and the First Lady’s momulism.”

There were columns on blogosphere blargon, tarnation-heck euphamisms, dastardly subjunctives and even Barack and Michelle Obama’s fist bumps. And there were Safire “rules for writers”: Remember to never split an infinitive. Take the bull by the hand and avoid mixing metaphors. Proofread carefully to see if you words out. Avoid cliches like the plague. And don’t overuse exclamation marks!!

Hack writers are in abundance; I consider myself to be among them. Damned good writers are a rarity, those who could think for themselves, those who could engage, make one think, laugh and learn —- all within the same sentence, are indeed a rarity. William Safire was in that club of Conservative writers, that included William F. Buckley, Irving Kristol, and many other greats that I cannot think of, off the top of my rather pointed head.

May the man rest in peace.

Enough is Enough!

I guess that you can consider this my “It’s on, Motherfucker!” Posting. I have sat back on the god-damned sidelines long enough. I have watched as Charles Foster Johnson has continued to slime a fellow Georgia Brother, A fellow Conservative, and a fellow brother in Jesus Christ. I am referring to none other Robert Stacy McCain.

I guess you could say; that I have just fucking flat out had it “Up to here!” with the fucking bullshit accusations against us on the right, that are against the fucking bullshit communist foreign policies of the Obama Administration, as being racist. I guess you could say that I am just fucking flat tired of the fucking collectivist bullshit tripe, that flows out of the mouth of those who want blame every last god damned fucking person under the planet, that has Conservative leanings; for the actions of a few idiots who want to try and discredit this movement of humanity against this administration.

I had some anti-LGF ads up here, that I ran for free. I removed them; because I had some questions that I really felt had not been answered good enough for my liking. Well, they were answered and it seems that Charles Foster Johnson is in full on smear mode. Well, I’ve fucking had just about god damn enough of it. 😡

Hold on to your hats, this might get a bit ugly.

It just so happens that we Conservatives were basically Anti-Slavery, and Anti-Racist for many years. Hell, Abraham Lincoln fought the civil war over the issue. However, the side that is not told about it is this; The Confederation Army did NOT go to war with the union over this; it was over CENTRALIZED Government! The Confederates knew that if the Union instituted a centralized Government, that freedoms would be lost and they decided to go to war.  What is also not told, is that fact that Lincoln’s army basically committed what would be known today as acts of terrorism. That is what this song here is all about. Abraham Lincoln knew god-damned well, that he could not win the war against the south by fighting a war, by the rule book. So, he fought it dirty and won. Some people say this is a fallacy, but I call bullshit; I have read the writings of the confederates and believe me, it was a nasty war, fought by fucking cowards who could not win any other way.

….and then there’s the issue of the Negros……

After the war was fought and won; Slavery was abolished. A good thing, I might add. Holding people against their will and using them for labor and profit, is not only stupid, it is ungodly as hell. For this one thing; I will give Abe Lincoln credit for. But everything he did to the South was just fucking rotten and I still consider the fucking bastard a god damned traitor. The truth is; Lincoln was forced into the position, because of political issues, NOT because he wanted to:

“I will say, then, that I AM NOT NOR HAVE EVER BEEN in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races—that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with White people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the White and black races which will ever FORBID the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together, there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the White race.”

— 4th Lincoln-Douglas debate, September 18th, 1858; COLLECTED WORKS Vol. 3, pp. 145-146

Yes, that is a real quote, here’s another:

“What I would most desire would be the separation of the white and black races.”

— Spoken at Springfield, Illinois on July 17th, 1858; from ABRAHAM LINCOLN: COMPLETE WORKS, 1894, Vol. 1, page 273

“See our present condition—the country engaged in war! Our White men cutting one another’s throats! And then consider what we know to be the truth. But for your race among us there could not be war, although many men engaged on either side do not care for you one way or another.

“Why should the people of your race be colonized, and where? Why should they leave this country? This is, perhaps, the first question for proper consideration. You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss, but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think your race suffer very greatly, many of them by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence. In a word, we suffer on each side. If this be admitted, it affords a reason at least why we should be separated. It is better for both, therefore, to be separated.”

— Spoken at the White House to a group of black community leaders, August 14th, 1862, from COLLECTED WORKS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN, Vol 5, page 371

So, Abraham Lincoln; putting his personal feelings aside, pushed for and got; the outlawing of slavery in the south. Not long after that, the group known as a the “Radical Republicans” fought for and got a commission in the south to restore the South’s economy. Later, this was stopped by the Democrats of the day and as a result, many blacks and poor whites in the south ended up being sharecroppers. Still, the Slaves were freed.

But they still were not satisfied.

After slavery, some white men in the south were not too keen on the idea of black men roaming freely around in their towns; decided that the two races should be separated. Because they felt that the Negro man was not exactly known his civility. Now honestly — I do not agree with this; and I believe that it was a flawed mentality. However, I believe that it was the personal right of those, who chose to do this, to do it.  Senator Barry Goldwater agreed with me; and refused to sign that unconstitutional so called “Civil Rights Act” of 1964.

The Negros fought and won against the Southern racist Democrats; however, they did trample on Constitutional rights to do so. But the fact is; they won. None of them are in chains, and they can now roam free as they wish, they cannot be arrested for eating in a “White” restaurant anymore. Those days are over and yet, some of them act like it is still 1945.

…and now, Today.

It can be said with the most confidence; that the age of “Jim Crow” and that of the mentality of the Klansman is officially dead. Oh, sure; there are those who are of the depraved, unenlightened mindset that still believe that the Negro man is not of the same elevated mindset of the white race. But those people have been long marginalized and largely discredited. America has elected a  half Negro President; I refuse to call him “African-American”, either your American or African, make up your god damned mind! I say half Negro, because many forget, President Obama is half a White man too.

Yet today, you have the people of the very same party, that fought to keep the Negro race in chains; the very same party that fought to keep the negro race segregated; accusing the very people who agree with the political ideology, that freed the slaves in the first place — of being racist! —- and this after an Black President has been elected! President Obama is a a Democrat, he is a socialist! Therefore he is prone to critique by those of us, who disagree with the ideology of the Democratic Party!

What really ticks me off, is the collectivist mindset among these Socialist Democrats, who seek to blame the entire Conservative movement; for the actions of a few protesters. This is just absolutely asinine and smacks of that collectivist mindset, that the Socialist Liberal Democrats are known for; herding the cattle onto the plantation.

So, in solidarity of my Southern Brother Robert Stacy McCain, I present this song. May the spirit of the Southern Conservative never die and may we always be known as those who stood and fought against those who would try and destroy our Country.

Update: Video was removed, I guess Charles Foster Johnson’s trolls are lurking about. No matter; I still feel the same way and I will NOT submit or surrender to socialist assholes who want to smear those of us, who fight for freedom and against Islamic Jihad.  (Fixed typo…. d’oh!)

and I still say to Johnson, Bring it on prick, because I can dish it out, as much as I can take it. 😡

Irving Kristol Dead at age 89

I got the alert via New York Times and I checked over at the Weekly Standard and sure enough Irving Kristol has passed.

Via The New York Times:

Irving Kristol, the political commentator who, as much as anyone, defined modern conservatism and helped revitalize the Republican Party in the late 1960s and early ’70s, setting the stage for the Reagan presidency and years of conservative dominance, died Friday in Arlington, Va. He was 89 and lived in Washington.

His son, William Kristol, the commentator and editor of the conservative magazine The Weekly Standard, said the cause of death was complications of lung cancer.

Mr. Kristol exerted an influence across generations, from William F. Buckley to the columnist David Brooks, through a variety of positions he held over a long career: executive vice president of Basic Books, contributor to The Wall Street Journal, professor of social thought at New York University, senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.

He was commonly known as the godfather of neoconservatism, even by those who were not entirely sure what the term meant. In probably his most widely quoted comment — his equivalent of Andy Warhol’s 15 minutes of fame — Mr. Kristol defined a neoconservative as a liberal who had been “mugged by reality.”

[….]

By now Mr. Kristol was battling on several fronts. He published columns and essays attacking liberalism and the counterculture from his perches at The Wall Street Journal and The Public Interest, and in 1978 he and William E. Simon, President Nixon’s secretary of the treasury, formed the Institute for Educational Affairs to funnel corporate and foundation money to conservative causes. In 1985 he started The National Interest, a journal devoted to foreign affairs.

But Mr. Kristol wasn’t railing just against the left. He criticized America’s commercial class for upholding greed and selfishness as positive values. He saw “moral anarchy” within the business community, and he urged it to take responsibility for itself and the larger society. He encouraged businessmen to give money to political candidates and help get conservative ideas across to the public. Republicans, he said, had for half a century been “the stupid party,” with not much more on their minds than balanced budgets and opposition to the welfare state. He instructed them to support economic growth by cutting taxes and not to oppose New Deal institutions.

Above all, Mr. Kristol preached a faith in ordinary people. . “It is the self-imposed assignment of neoconservatives,” he wrote, “to explain to the American people why they are right, and to the intellectuals why they are wrong.”

Mr. Kristol saw religion and a belief in the afterlife as the foundation for the middle-class values he championed. He argued that religion provided a necessary constraint to antisocial, anarchical impulses. Without it, he said, “the world falls apart.” Yet Mr. Kristol’s own religious views were so ambiguous that some friends questioned whether he believed in God. In 1996, he told an interviewer: “I’ve always been a believer.” But, he added, “don’t ask me in what.”

“That gets too complicated,” he said. “The word ‘God’ confuses everything.”

In 2002, Mr. Kristol received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, often considered the nation’s highest civilian honor. It was another satisfying moment for a man who appears to have delighted in his life or, as Andrew Sullivan put it, “to have emerged from the womb content.”

He once said that his career had been “one instance of good luck after another.” Some called him a cheerful conservative. He did not dispute it. He had had much, he said, “to be cheerful about.”

I will not lie. I did not agree with Mr. Kristol’s Politics or his version of Conservatism. In fact, I have been known to make a crack at people on other blogs; when they were spewing stupidity, especially the George W. Bush Cheerleaders, I would always say, “Where did you learn that line? From Bill or Irving Kristol?” or something usually to that effect. Some of Irving Kristol’s ideology was very controversial;  like the desire for a full scale invasion of Iran; of which I found to be horrifically stupid. Thankfully, Bush’s people agreed. Much of his ideology can be summed up as Wilsonian; the man believed that war was the answer, always. I disagreed then and I still do.

However, it is not to say that Kristol was a total loss; He did work to take the Conservative movement away from the Anti-Semites within the Republican Party. He also exposed and expelled the blatant racists that had taken root since the days of Abraham Lincoln. Between Kristol and Buckley; Conservatism become a bit more intellectual and not the knuckle-dragging simpleton nonsense that it has become now; Sarah Palin being a perfect example.

May God Bless the man, I am sure will be missed. May he rest in peace.

Cross-Posted at Alexandria

The Left's plans to desecrate 9/11

This is unbelievable.

This comes via The American Spectator:

The Obama White House is behind a cynical, coldly calculated political effort to erase the meaning of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks from the American psyche and convert Sept. 11 into a day of leftist celebration and statist idolatry.

This effort to reshape the American psyche has nothing to do with healing the nation and everything to do with easing the nation along in the ongoing radical transformation of America that President Obama promised during last year’s election campaign. The president signed into law a measure in April that designated Sept. 11 as a National Day of Service, but it’s not likely many lawmakers thought this meant that day was going to be turned into a celebration of ethanol, carbon emission controls, and radical community organizing.

The plan is to turn a “day of fear” that helps Republicans into a day of activism called the National Day of Service that helps the left. In other words, nihilistic liberals are planning to drain 9/11 of all meaning.

A coalition including the unsavory left-wing pressure group Color of Change and about 60 far-left, environmentalist, labor, and corporate shakedown groups participated in the call. Groups on the call included: ACORN, AFL-CIO, Apollo Alliance, Community Action Partnership, Deep South Center for Environmental Justice, 80 Million Strong for Young American Jobs, Friends of the Earth, Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, Mobilize.org, National Black Police Association, National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, National Council of Negro Women, National Wildlife Federation, RainbowPUSH Coalition, Urban League, and Young Democrats of America.

Of course, the annual commemoration of the 2001 terrorist attacks belongs to the entire nation, but President Obama and the activist left don’t see it that way. They view the nationwide remembrance of the murder of 3,000 Americans by Islamic totalitarians as an obstacle to winning over the hearts and minds of the American people.

Unreal, just farking unreal. The left will stop at nothing to mar the Memory of those who were killed at the hands of terrorists. Maybe it is because the left sympathizes with terrorists.

Be sure an sign up for the 2,996 project. I have. My memorial will post on September 11’th. I finished it a few weeks ago, the post is set to drop on September 11’th at 7:00a.m. EST. It will be a barn burner, I assure you on that. We must, as Conservatives; be the one’s to keep the real meaning of September 11’th alive. Do not allow the Liberals to steal this one from America.

Update: AllahPundit isn’t buying it. Big Surprise there! 🙄 This is the same guy who’s got it bad for Megan McCain. Shocka! 😛

Update #2: Pamela Geller is NOT happy about this at all. 😮

Others: Michelle Malkin, Right Wing Nut House, Dr. Melissa Clouthier, Cold Fury, Gateway Pundit and Weasel Zippers

Conservative Icon Journalist Robert Novak has died

A truly sad day in Conservatism. Conservative Icon and award winning Journalist Robert Novak has died.

I really do not think that my mere words could ever measure up to those who have already paid tribute to him.

Tim Carney Pays tribute:

Bob Novak hired me away from HUMAN EVENTS in late 2001. “Poaching,” HE Editor-in-Chief Tom Winter called it. I was not the first early-20s reporter Novak would pluck from HE’s newsroom. Nor would I be the last.

Work for us Novak reporters, in addition to writing the Evans-Novak Political Report, consisted of doing “the opposite of research,” as I put it. Rather than trying to find an answer to a question Novak had — he had another staffer for that — we would try to dig up scoops, leads, and unreported nuggets to feed him.

That Novak would hire a leg-man to go around Washington sniffing out news reflected the virtue at the heart of his work: His columns, while they resided on the op-ed pages, were built upon previously unreported facts that revealed and explained the machinations of government, the men and women in power, and the politics behind it all. His job demanded he get a constant flow of new information, but curiosity and a thirst for knowledge were natural traits for him.

Bob Novak was, above all, a reporter.

I suggest that you read all of that tribute; as I feel that it is excellent.

CNN did a nice tribute as well:

Kenneth Tomlinson writes:

How many reporters, when George W. Bush named Paul O’Neill as his Treasury secretary, knew that he had been a pal of young government staffer Dick Cheney and that it was O’Neill who was the reason Gerald Ford’s vision as he opened his presidential campaign was “essentially that of a Washington bureaucrat.”? Of course Novak wrote the column. But did Bush (and Rove) ever come to see that Novak was right?

In recent years, some of Novak’s most significant work was done in association with Tom Phillips, who had begun publishing the bi-weekly Evans-Novak Political Report in1971 at Phillips Publishing and then had moved the newsletter to Eagle Publishing after he founded Eagle in 1993. Under the umbrella of the Phillips Foundation, Phillips and Novak developed the nation’s largest journalistic grant program for young writers — offering five-figure stipends to finance research and development of significant conservative books and articles that otherwise would not have been produced.

Not a Saturday night passes that I do not miss “Capital Gang.” Spring is not the same without the ACC tournament. I cannot pick up the Saturday New York Post or the Monday Washington Post without a sense of regret that the column is not there.

There was one thing about Novak that I admired greatly; and that is that he was skeptical of the Washington D.C. crowd. Something that I found myself to be quite a bit. He also was highly critical of the Bush Administration and much of its action that lead up to the Iraq War and afterwards. Novak did not carry water for the Republican Party; something that I highly admired about him.

You can read the roundup of opinions and memorials here at Memeorandum. Of course, there are some opportunistic liberals who are taking pot shots at the man at his passing. I find this to be totally offensive, and I told one so on a liberal rag blog that no one reads. I will not link to it; that would be sacrilegious. On the other hand, one of the bigger Liberal Blogs out there; which is ran by some marbled-mouthed ex-Republican, who knowingly married a gay man;  had surprisingly nice things to say about Mr. Novak.  Shocking indeed.

My deepest condolences to the Novak Family and most of all his many Children.

May Bob Rest in peace, as he has earned it.

Eunice Kennedy Shriver has passed

Some very sad news to report….

Via the New York Times:

11shriver4-500
Eunice Kennedy Shriver

A sister of President John F. Kennedy and Senators Robert F. Kennedy and Edward M. Kennedy and the mother-in-law of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger of California, Mrs. Shriver never held elective office. Yet she was no stranger to Capitol Hill, and some view her work on behalf of the developmentally challenged, including the founding of the Special Olympics, as the most lasting of the Kennedy family’s contributions.

“When the full judgment of the Kennedy legacy is made — including J.F.K.’s Peace Corps and Alliance for Progress, Robert Kennedy’s passion for civil rights and Ted Kennedy’s efforts on health care, workplace reform and refugees — the changes wrought by Eunice Shriver may well be seen as the most consequential,” U.S. News and World Report said in its cover story of Nov. 15, 1993.

Edward Kennedy said in an interview in October 2007: “You talk about an agent of change — she is it. If the test is what you’re doing that’s been helpful for humanity, you’d be hard pressed to find another member of the family who’s done more.”

[….]

<p>Eunice Kennedy Shriver</p>
Eunice Kennedy Shriver

Among the awards Mrs. Shriver received for her work on behalf of people with intellectual disabilities are the Legion of Honor, the Prix de la Couronne Française, the Albert Lasker Public Service Award, the National Recreation and Park Association National Voluntary

Service Award and the Order of the Smile of Polish Children. She was also made a dame of the Papal Order of St. Gregory. On Nov. 16, 2007, she was honored with a personal tribute at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library in Boston, with many Kennedy family members present.

In 1984 President Ronald Reagan awarded Mrs. Shriver the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor.

In an interview with CBS News in 2004, Mrs. Shriver’s son Robert said: “My mom never ran for office, and she changed the world. Period. End of story.”

Sister Toldja reports the following:

She was a kind-hearted person who supported her Democrat-dominated family for decades, and even though she was a Democrat herself, she and her husband both were pro-life, and during the first presidential campaign of then-Governor Bill Clinton, she – along with several other prominent pro-life Democrats, signed a letter than was published in the NYT protesting the Democratic party’s pro-choice platform.

Let me simple add something. As much as I despise the current state of the Democratic Party’s far left socialism; As a nephew of the developmentally disabled (AKA Mentally retarded)  aunt, I can appreciate what this woman has done.

May her legacy be carried on for as long as this world may exist.

May she rest in peace.

The Two Sides of Tammi

First there is the funny. This, I feel is the quote of the year; or at least the month!

Finally back at the office we’re finishing up one of the reports in my office. Now, I’m right on the street side. Every damned semi that drive by sounds like it’s coming THROUGH my window. One time, it was particularly loud and my guy jumps.

Him – Damn….that’s annoying as hell.

Me – yeah…figures. Only I would be given an office with a vibrator.

It was at that point I announced it was time for everyone to go home. I had completely lost my ability to think or speak clearly….

via Tammi’s World: Tidbits.

Then there is the completely serious and quite sad, of Tammi.  It is the story of how Tammi lost her Dad. I read this originally in 2005, when Tammi first posted it. I nearly lost it then and I still get misty-eyed when I read it. Tammi’s a tough lady; she’s been through royal hell. She has my respect.

It just shows you how someone, who has been through hell and back, can have a good sense of humor. I God Bless her for that. 🙂

Director John Hughes dead at 59

As you all know, I am a child of the late early 1970’s and grew up in the 1980’s. So, this one is kind of personal.

John Hughes, who captured the zeitgeist of 1980s teen life as writer-director of “The Breakfast Club” and “Sixteen Candles” and produced and scripted family hits such as “Home Alone,” died Thursday of a heart attack in Manhattan while taking a walk. He was 59.

After an impressive string of hits — “Home Alone” is one of the top-grossing live-action comedies of all time — Hughes, who never won a major show business award, stopped directing in 1991 and virtually retired from filmmaking a few years later, working on his farm in northern Illinois.

The filmmaker, whom critic Roger Ebert once called “the philosopher of adolescence,” was a major influence on filmmakers including Wes Anderson, Kevin Smith and Judd Apatow, who told the L.A. Times last year, “Basically, my stuff is just John Hughes films with four-letter words.”

“I feel like a part of my childhood has died. Nobody made me laugh harder or more often than John Hughes,” said Apatow in a statement.

Bruce Berman, who was VP of production at Universal and president of production at Warners when Hughes made several films with those studios, told Daily Variety, “He was one of the most challenging relationships an exec could have, but one of the most fun, most talented and gifted.” Berman said that although Hughes was one of the fastest writers in the biz — “He could write a draft over a weekend — he didn’t like to be rewritten.”

Born in Michigan, Hughes used his high school town of suburban Northbrook, Ill., as a location for many of his films. He got his start as an advertising copywriter in Chicago and started selling jokes to performers such as Rodney Dangerfield and Joan Rivers. Hired by National Lampoon magazine after submitting his short story “Vacation ’58,” he wrote his first screenplay, “Class Reunion,” while on staff at the magazine, and it became his first produced script in 1982. His next, “National Lampoon’s Vacation,” based on his short story, became his first big hit and spawned several sequels.

Hughes’ first film as a director was 1984’s “Sixteen Candles,” starring Anthony Michael Hall, John Cusack and Molly Ringwald. The teen romance introduced several of the actors who would make up Hughes’ “stock company” of thesps, several of whom became known as the Brat Pack.

In 1985, “The Breakfast Club” became the era’s iconic and influential high school film. It starred Ringwald, Emilio Estevez, Ally Sheedy, Hall and Judd Nelson as teens who must learn to get along when thrown together during Saturday detention.

Hughes wrote and exec produced Ringwald starrer “Pretty in Pink,” which felt of a piece with his directing projects, then directed “Weird Science,” starring Hall, and “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off,” starring Matthew Broderick. He also wrote “Some Kind of Wonderful” and “She’s Having a Baby,” heartfelt adolescent stories that both bore his stamp.

He branched out with 1987’s more grown-up “Planes, Trains and Automobiles,” starring Steve Martin and John Candy, then directed just two more films, “Uncle Buck” and “Curly Sue,” his eighth and final film as helmer.

via Director John Hughes dies at 59 – Entertainment News, Film News, Media – Variety.

His films were the basically the soundtrack of my life. At some port or another; I have most likely seen them all. Not much when they first came out mind you. At that time, I was still totally wrapped up into the whole Pentecostal Christan thing. Something that I sometimes feel stole my childhood from me.  My parents are not to blame; I am. I was never forced to do anything at all. I wanted to be where I was and what I was involved in. Because I thought it was right. Looking back however, I tend to believe that what I went through was nothing more than glorified brain washing.

Hughes films captured the 1980’s, in all its splendor. The whole innocence of being a kid in that era. It was a magical time to grow up; a Republican was in the White House. The Republican Party was a force to be reckoned with, Liberals tried and failed to change the course of the Country.  Reagan brought optimism back to America and it trickled out of the White House and on the silver screen.  Hughes channeled that whole era into film, for people like me to relive, time and time again.

I hope the man knew God, May he rest in peace.

Update: A very good Blog posting from fan of Hughs.

An Interesting Movie

I post this because I believe that it is interesting. Alex Jones has always struck me as a kook. Someone amongst the “Tin Foil Hat” crowd. However, it is something interesting to watch.

Enjoy…

What do you think? Do you think that there is any truth to this?

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Sad News: Conservative Icon Paul Weyrich Dead at Age 66

Some very sad news to report. 🙁

Via the Foundry:

Paul M. Weyrich, chairman and CEO of the Free Congress Foundation and first president of The Heritage Foundation, died this morning around 1 a.m. He was 66 years old. Weyrich was a good friend to many of us at Heritage, a true leader and a man of unbending principle. He won Heritage’s prestigious Clare Boothe Luce Award in 2005.

I think, if you’re a Christian, This would be a good time to say a prayer for his family.

Of course, the left is keeping it classy, as always.  🙄

May they all rot in hell. 😡

I will not lie about it. I did not know the man, or anything about him. But from what I read he was quite the leader. Conservatism, is a bit dimmer today. 🙁

May he rest in peace.

Others: Michelle Malkin, The Corner, Townhall.com, The Other McCain, Outside The Beltway,  Hot Air, The Next Right