Thursday, April 24, 2008

Once more with feeling

Nothing new but a re-stating of an old idea.

I heard two people arguing back and forth about Obama and Clinton this a.m. on NPR and one thing they both said stood out: Either one of them represents a major change from the Bush 43 administration. So with that in mind I repeat some earlier advice and ideas for Sen. McCain:

1 - Lay low until the convention.
2 - Raise tons of money and horde it for the fall campaign.
3 - At the convention make the best speech of your life which will include:
a) a promise to not run again - to only serve one term no matter what and
b) announce that your choice for Veep is a woman, Hispanic or African-American. If you can find someone who gets two out of those three then all the better.
4 - Don't feel it is being disloyal to distance yourself from Bush. Make your case on Iraq and stick with it. At the end of the day, sticking with your own idea, opinion - even if not one shared by everybody, is better than doing a John Kerry ( I voted for the war but I was really against it so then I voted against it because I really was ...) I think people still respect strong opinions if you stick by your guns rather than flip-flopping all over the place.

If McCain had a Karl Rove-type person I'd send this to him/her but since I don't know that contact this will have to do.

I can almost guarantee if he manages to do #3, he wins in November.

If not, then it's going to be a close race or maybe not even close at all.

My thoughts on the GOP side of things.

Thursday, April 3, 2008

4ths

Shakespeare through one of his characters, declared “Beware the Ides of March!” which portended the demise of Julius Caesar on March 15.

I guess it was while listening to U2 sing “Early morning, April 4, a shot rings out through the Memphis sky …” (not withstanding that Martin Luther King was actually shot at 6 p.m.) that I started thinking about the 4th day of the month. The Kent State shootings just two years later were also on May 4.

At any rate, the 4ths of each month are as a whole, pretty bad days. Lets hope today is not one of them.

In January 1999 Jesse Ventura was sworn on as Governor of Minnesota.

In February 2003 Yugoslavia disappeared as a country – replaced by Serbia and Montenegro. I’m not even close to understanding what is happening there now.

On Feb. 4, 1969 Yassir Arafat became head of the PLO.

Not all bad things happened on the 4th. On March 4 1789, our Constitution went into effect

June 4 1989 was the 2nd day of the Tianenmen square massacre where thousands of Chinese students were killed.

July 4 for all its notoriety has been a bad day for former Presidents. In 1826 both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson died. In 1831 James Monroe died. In 1939 Lou Gehrig made his farewell appearance at Yankee Stadium (ironically his jersey number was 4.)

On August 4, 1892 Lizzie Borden killed her parents. In 1914 Germany invaded Belgium which brought Britain into WWI. Thirty years later in 1944 Anne Frank and her family were found by the Nazis in Amsterdam.

In 1957 on Sept. 4 nine black students attempted to enter Little Rock's Central High School but were blocked by the National Guard.

The Russians launched Sputnik on October 4 in 1957. Years later in 1970 Janis Joplin was found dead of a drug overdose on another October 4.

Russian troops attacked Budapest and crushed the Hungarian revolt on November 4 1956.

On Nov. 4 1979 The American embassy in Tehran, Iran, was seized by militants and 90 Americans taken hostage.

In Nov. 1995 Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, was assassinated by another Israeli.

And unless you count Frank Zappa’s death on Dec. 4 in 1993, the 4ths of December have been pretty quiet.