The Vietnam War According To Sam

Leave It To Beaver Theme Song 1957-1963

See earlier post about this Classic TV sitcom

Al Capone in 25 Words or Less

Thanks to Prohibition, former Brooklyn bar bouncer, Alphonse Capone, became the biggest bootlegger, pimp, murderer, gangster and racketeer that Chicago or America would ever produce.

Diversity in a Nutshell

In the 1990s, "diversity" became a liberal catch-all term that meant willingly embracing all the wonderful differences and similarities between the world's human races, including everyone's right to enjoy and celebrate their own ethnicity, customs, holidays, religion and cultural heritage. Nobody in their right mind would argue with social concepts as uplifting and enlightening as these. But, there was — and still is — a dark side to this two-headed coin.

To many people in this misguided world, the notion of diversity also means accepting — against your will and better judgment and in the name of social responsibility — a great deal of aberrant antisocial, sexual and criminal behavior, misdeeds and misconduct which, before the word "diversity" became the liberal catch-all, were unacceptable activities rightfully attributed to remorseless misfits, sociopaths and criminals who couldn't care less about any body else or what was right and wrong.

There's a big difference between being "a liberal" and being "a libertine" but hardly anyone seems to know the difference anymore. And we wonder why there are a lot more social issues facing us today than there used to be. All those extra worries and troubles once had answers and solutions. But, from seemingly out of nowhere, those answers and solutions became, unimaginably, the biggest chinks in our human armor.

And that's our own fault. Whenever right becomes wrong, there aren't any more solutions. Just more problems.

The 1980's Pop Music Tsunami

For me, Ronald Reagan, Reaganomics, peacetime prosperity (yep, even during a recession, you can still have a taste of the good life in America) weren't the only things worth remembering about the 1980's decade. That's right, I'm one of those people who thought Ronald Reagan was one of our best presidents. Get over it.

If it wasn't for the creative, memorable tsunami of original music that hit the American shores in the 1980s, I'd say Reagan was the best thing about the Eighties. But he had great company. Call them "New Wave" bands or "Romantics" or whatever you want to call them (let the experts label them), the rock bands, composers and singers of the 1980s took America's Pop Music Culture somewhere it had never been before and would likely never go again. From 1980 to 1990, pop musicians from all over the place showed people like me that the "wave of the future" didn't necessarily mean "bad news".

Just when I thought there were no new frontiers for "rock" musicians to explore with the electric guitar, keyboards or vocals, along came the (mostly) young musical talent of the 1980s and artists from the 1970s who showed us that they still had a lot to offer. Even hard rock went in new directions and hip-hop eclipsed soul and rhythm & blues with a new sound of its own. And jazz, that American original invention that almost defies vocal accompaniment, saw a whole new wave of new talent come ashore. For me, the 1980's pop music scene introduced a new music genre that almost defied labeling. The Eighties provided me with new "head music", new "driving music" and some new "dance music" that had all the earmarks of a generation that was celebrating not only life but the simple joy of making music.

Below is a list of memorable and very cool songs that really made me feel good about being (relatively) young and alive back then (I was 29 in 1980). Some of these songs are "New Wave" and some aren't. But they're all 1980's "Pop Music" and that's good enough for a guy like me who couldn't carry a tune of my own to save my life. I'll never stop loving the sounds these artists produced or the way they made me feel. I was more into their music than the way they looked or behaved in their personal lives. That meant very little to me. People who make courageous, awesome, insane, beautiful, cool and original music like they did certainly deserve a little retro credit. My hat is still off to them and this "Mix" is my tribute to the 1980s. Headphones are highly recommended.

1. Cars — Gary Numan (released in 1979 but hit U.S. Top 40 in 1980)

2. Call Me — Blondie (1980)

3. Rapture — Blondie (1981)

4. Once In A Lifetime — Talking Heads (1981)

5. Down Under — Men At Work (1981, ignore the 1982 on the video)

6. Super Freak — Rick James (1981)

7. Rock the Casbah — The Clash (1982)

8. Let It Whip — Dazz Band (1982)

9. I Melt With You — Modern English (1982)

10. New Religion — Duran Duran (1982)

11. She Blinded Me With Science — Thomas Dolby (1982)

12. I Ran (So Far Away) — A Flock of Seagulls (1982)

13. Electric Avenue — Eddy Grant (1983)

14. One Thing Leads To Another — The Fixx (1983)

15. Let's Dance — David Bowie (1983)

16. Hang On To Your Love — Sade (1984)

17. West End Girls — Pet Shop Boys (1984)

18. Take On Me — A-Ha (1985)

19. Everybody Wants To Rule The World — Tears For Fears (1985)

20. Material Girl — Madonna (1985)

21. Venus — Bananarama (1986)

22. I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For — U2 (1987)

23. Just Like Heaven — The Cure (1987)

24. Kissing A Fool — George Michael (1988)

25. Love Shack — The B52s (1989)

P.S. I suggest you ignore the comments posted by You Tube viewers, who tend to misuse the video comment section at YouTube as an adult-oriented chat room and a space for hateful rhetoric that has no place in an enlightened culture. In far too many cases, they also disparage the music by attacking the personal lives of the artists. A lot of YouTube comments aren't fit for public viewing anyway. But YouTube allows anything and everything. Free speech and all that rot.

As far as I'm concerned, music is music and none of these artists single-handedly ran our world culture into the ground. By the same token, when I like a song that doesn't necessarily mean that I like anything else about the artist. Sometimes I even dislike them. But that isn't the point of this post.

My music posts at Blogger are about the music and the musical talent of the artists and nothing more. Except for Petula Clark, who was my older woman schoolboy celebrity crush in the 1960s — she and Julie Andrews, but that's another story — and whose voice and compositions I really liked. So, if you have a problem with any of the artists I showcased here, that's your problem, not mine.

Oil Wars: The Barons Strike Back

On October 17, 1973 OPEC (Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries) cut off oil supplies to the United States and The Netherlands because these two nations helped Israel defend itself from yet another military attack by Egypt. They helped Israel attack Syria in response to the Egyptian attack on Israel, which is about as appropriate as shooting the neighbor's cat because their dog bit you.

Then, while spoiled American consumers continued to commute hundreds of miles to and from work every week and who still went shopping at the drop of a hat for things they didn't really need, American gas stations began running completely out of gasoline. Not only that, OPEC's hateful, stubborn "hissy fit" against the West jacked up the price of OPEC oil being exported to Europe by 70%.

Everyone tried to blame the "Arab Oil Embargo" of 1973 on President Richard Nixon, whom everybody in the entire world hated for being a Republican and for simply being "an American president" during the Vietnam War. In fact, everybody in the world was so damn mad at the Israelis and the Americans and the Dutch they completely forgot that Egypt started the whole thing because Egyptian Arabs hate Israeli Jews more than any people in the entire world, except for Americans, who led the allied nations in saving the world from domination by Germany twice during the 20th Century. Wow. That's a funny thing to be hated for.

OPEC finally lifted the oil embargo against The U.S. on March 18, 1974, after getting the "Big Picture" that America will always defend Israel, probably forever, and that American oil speculators on Wall Street make a killing on oil stocks and oil futures every time tempers flare and bombs start dropping in the Holy Land.

What a world.

The Great Society in 25 Words

President Lyndon Johnson's political pipe dream about ending poverty and racial injustice that was squashed by the big-business of Vietnam, Johnson's poor health and Richard Nixon.

JFK Inaugural Address 1961

50th Anniversary
President Kennedy Inaugural Address
January 20, 1961

A 1950's "So Long"

The Roy Rogers Show 1951-1957

The Gulf Wars Through The Peep Sights

The first "Gulf War" took place in 1990. Formally known as the "Persian Gulf War", this was the big retirement party U.S. President George Bush the First threw for General Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr., as a reward for a lifetime of distinguished service to his country in the U.S. Army. This great-big desert blowout took up two whole countries in the Middle East, Iraq and Kuwait. Everyone was present at this military shindig except Commander-in-Chief George the First.

Back in 1990, George the First was so impressed by "Stormin' Norman" that he let the general plan and execute his own retirement party and then made the U.S. taxpayers pick up the tab. From Operation Desert Shield (the plan made in Saudi Arabia) through Operation Desert Storm (the actual party in Kuwait and Iraq) "Stormin' Norman" tore through Persia like Sherman cut through Georgia on his way to the sea.

But instead of burning another Atlanta, Schwarzkopf just blew out his own party candles (Kuwait's burning oil fields). After the candles were out, no one at the party felt like going after Iraq's phony president and military dictator, Saddam Hussein, the one who lit up Kuwait in the first place. Once the candles were out and the press started to leave, what was the point of partying 'till dawn?

That mission (the military operation to find, try and execute Saddam Hussein) would set the stage for yet another retirement party in 2001. The second "Gulf War" was the big, early-retirement party U.S. President George Bush the Second threw for himself, in case he got impeached early in the game. As Commander in Chief of the U.S. Armed Forces, George the Second missed out on his own retirement party in the Persian Gulf, after lighting his own party candles at New York's World Trade Center on September 11th 2001. Poor Big Bad George II had to watch the whole thing on TV, just like poor Big Bad George I.

Some of us are really sick and tired of military retirement parties and we think these parties are more than just warfare concealed. We think they're crimes against humanity and against nature. And we think there ought to be a law against them.

Russian Food Fights

In the second decade of the 20th Century hungry Bolsheviks wrestled control of Mother Russia away from Czarist rule and created The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), a communist state where every citizen followed the golden Socialist rule "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."

In the last decade of the 20th Century hungry Communists wrestled control of The USSR away from fat-cat Soviet bureaucrats and created The Russian Federation, a new Mother Russia based on the free-enterprise system.

Twice during the 20th Century Russian citizens proved to the world that any national movement worth its salt is invariably spearheaded by hungry people with no pots to piss in.

Keeping Up With the Joneses in the U.K.

"Keeping Up Appearances" was a 1990's British sitcom starring Patricia Routledge as Hyacinth Bucket (which she insisted on pronouncing "Bouquet"), a lunatic housewife from hell and social climber who commandeered her husband, family, neighbors and friends into unwilling participation in her ultimate quest for middle-class snobbery.

Set in Southwest London, this weekly half-hour comedy might have been a laugh a minute for English viewers but her frenetic search for a trivial and meaningless social pedestal made America's Lucy Ricardo of 1950's fame look like a Girl Scout in comparison.

At least "Keeping Up Appearances" held more entertainment value for many Americans than the British sitcom "Are You Being Served?". In that farcical sitcom, store clerks and management of a London clothing store served absolutely no one because they were too busy putting on preposterously stupid theatrical shows and skits. Now that's more like "I Love Lucy".

Red Fever

In the early 1950s the American people, finally free of their fear of Nazis and Japs, focused their fear, paranoia and finger-pointing on Communism, the world's first application of socialist values on a starving and war-weary population. The Soviet Union became the new enemy of most Americans after the second world war, but we kept a watchful eye on Communist China, too, figuring it was next in line for attacking our American principles and freedom. And, like every social movement throughout history, the American Anti-Communist front needed a leader in the war against the Communist threat and no one fit that bill more than the junior Republican Senator from Wisconsin, Joseph McCarthy, a World War II veteran and hero himself.

The timing was perfect. From 1950 to 1953 the U.S. military was waging a "police action" in Korea, with World War II hero and U.S. Army icon General Douglas MacArthur in command. In command of General MacArthur was U.S. President Harry S. Truman, a feisty liberal Democrat whose unabashed patriotism blinded him to the global Communist threat from the USSR that both General MacArthur and Senator McCarthy had so astutely identified. Before them, visionary U.S. Army General George Patton offered to eradicate the Soviet Red threat at the source but, in true politically-correct form, a shell-shocked General Dwight D. Eisenhower (who would later betray his own country as President in 1952 and turn it over to aliens called Greys) and Illuminati control freak President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (who'd already, in true Freemason-New World Order form, betrayed America to the Illuminati-controlled Cabal in 1935) fired the one man who would have prevented The Cold War by "nipping it in the bud". Instead, The Cold War, that infamous cloak-and-dagger spy game and deadly game of military chess played between The Soviets and The Americans, became the only game in town for the next forty-six years.

At a time when Americans were afraid of Communists who were half a world away from them, they were clueless about the reality of Communists among themselves, fellow Americans who secretly and actively embraced Communism as a preferred political and social way of life and who couldn't care less that their political activism ran counter to the basic tenets of American freedom. When faced with being branded as traitors by Senator Joseph McCarthy, they rebelled and they hid, like cowards do when faced with the truth. McCarthy almost single-handedly rousted dozens of Communists from the ranks of the U.S. Army and the State Department who had been serving up our atomic and military and national secrets to the USSR like a bunch of Benedict Arnolds under the democratic administration of a stupid, embarrassed and incensed Harry Truman.

The early 1950s also saw the triumph of the federal government over Communism when the House Un-American Activities Committee took the battle to Hollywood. Dozens of actors, writers and directors were "blacklisted" which meant that they could no longer influence a still innocent America with Communist propaganda in the form of full-length feature films.

For his unflagging efforts to help America fight Communism, Senator Joe McCarthy's reward was being one of the few senators in U.S. history to be censured. The American liberal press eventually referred to Senator McCarthy's dedicated act of winnowing the Communist seed out of the U.S. government a "witch-hunt". The Pinko Press was, in fact, totally oblivious to the fact that the real witch hunt was the seeking of Senator Joseph McCarthy's head by the liberal media, spearheaded by traitorous Americans like broadcast journalism pioneer Edward R. Murrow and liberal syndicated columnist Drew Pearson. Senator Joseph McCarthy's political legacy as a freedom fighter was reduced by a rabid liberal press to a mere one-word slur. "McCarthyism" became an American synonym for "witch-hunt". Beaten, maligned and misunderstood, Senator Joseph McCarthy finally drank himself to death at age 49.

When FBI agent Robert Hanssen was caught and arrested for treason in 2001 for selling U.S. military secrets to the Russians and for causing the worst breach in national security in the history of the United States, that alone should have vindicated the trials and tribulations of freedom fighter Senator Joseph McCarthy, nearly sixty years before that. But it didn't. Fighting the Commies in Korea for three years after we defeated the Nazis didn't raise a big red flag, either, for Americans. A big Red warning that told us that, if there were Americans spying for the USSR among our own military and State Department in the 1950s, someone like Joe McCarthy was certainly on our side.

When the Rosenbergs were caught, arrested, convicted and hanged for spying for the Commies and for trying to parlay our atom bomb secrets into a Soviet doggie bag for Switzerland, few people thought McCarthy was right in going after more of the Commie bastards in our own ranks. Even when Nikita Kruschev tried to install Soviet rockets in Cuba that could hit the U.S. mainland with a nuclear payload within minutes and JFK made him dismantle them and ship them back to mother Russia, not even then had Senator Joseph McCarthy been doing his senatorial, patriotic duty, according to fickle Americans who quickly forget their duties as citizens when their bellies and their gas tanks are full.

Too bad we don't have a Joe McCarthy in government today. But we don't need a McCarthy figure to go after Commies nowadays. We need him to go after Hollywood like the HUAC did back in the Fifties. But not to roust Reds and put them on trial. No. We need a guy like Senator Joseph McCarthy to hunt down the morally bankrupt, vile, dirty-minded, unscrupulous purveyors of decadence and filth that make up today's Hollywood. Then the new Joe could put a bounty on Madison Avenue advertisers who bombard American citizens daily with subliminal advertising that promotes decadence and degradation. And the biggest culprit of all, American television, would be on the chopping block for invading the sanctity of the American home with visions of belly buttons and butt cracks and the snide, sarcastic and sexually suggestive humor that is undermining our American way of life.

And what would be the official "charge" that a new Senate would use to send the new anti-American offenders to the slammer for life or to the gallows in this day and age? How about being "a threat to the national security of the United States" for starters? That's right. Nothing less. After all, it seems to me that when an entire nation is so preoccupied with what's going on from the waist down, it forgets to look up and to look around and to look in the mirror for the real enemy that threatens America. The dark side of ourselves.

The Venona Project, a long-running secret collaboration of US and UK intelligence agencies involving decryption of messages sent by the Soviet Union, declassified certain files in 1995 proving that those Americans who were accused by Senator Joseph McCarthy of spying for the USSR had, indeed, been traitorous spies. Yet the maligned memory of Joe McCarthy lives on in the hearts and minds of most Americans while the real legacy remains hidden. The real legend of Joe McCarthy, like that of Richard Milhous Nixon, is, in fact, the story of a patriot who was turned into a scapegoat by a nation that could no longer bear to look at itself in the mirror.

"All in the Family" in 25 Words or Less

American television producer Norman Lear's unbridled 1970's attack on WASP America, using situation comedy, stereotypes, social issues and hatred to make money for corporate America.

Blessing the Buck

In 1935 President Franklin D. Roosevelt was instrumental in altering the back of the U.S. one-dollar bill to the way it looks today. The change added the creepy "All-Seeing Eye of God" atop a skinny Egyptian pyramid to the left side of the back of the American dollar bill (changed from the original right-side choice that would have placed the American eagle on the left side).

This almost unilateral act of altering forever the cultural, historical and traditional value of America's main currency denomination was, in effect, a secret, self-blessing of America with the will of God. "Annuit coeptis" is latin for "God has favored our undertakings". "Novus ordo seclorum" is Latin for "New Order of the Ages". FDR's secret tinkering with the American Buck was an unimaginable act of arrogance and unaccountable religious ambition by one, lone Freemason on America's behalf.

So, where did this creepy, demonic-looking eyeball pyramid come from? It came from the back of the Great Seal of the United States that was commissioned in 1782 (the eagle is the front of The Great Seal and the image on the right side of the back of the modern dollar bill. Naturally, I have no problem with the eagle — it's truly magnificent and pure American — just the pyramid and that hideous, goofy eyeball.

So, you might ask again, where in the hell did it come from before that? Egypt, Greece, Rome? For my money, it was a little gift from the Illuminati Inner Circle, the New World Order movers-and-shakers who seem to worship Lucifer, Satan, Moloch (the horned owl god), Jesus and Almighty God all at the same time. They're all over the federal government and just about anywhere else where power is sought and brokered.

But who cares where it came from? It sure as hell doesn't belong on the U.S. one-dollar bill or on anything else American. And any redneck hillbilly asshole from any redneck American town could have told you that.

Pearl Harbor Day in 25 Words or Less

Every December 7th Americans remind themselves that Japan used this day in 1941 to bomb Americans in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii for fun, profit and honor.

Millennium Madness

In 1999 most of the world suddenly went stupid and people began to delude themselves that they were in the last year of the current millennium. Not only that, they thought they were in the last year of the 20th Century. But nothing could have been further from the truth.

Time is measured on Earth with the decimal system. It takes ten years to make up a decade, not nine, and it takes one hundred years to make up a century, not 99 years. By the same token, 999 years do not a millennium make. A millennium is made up of 1000 years.

January 1, 1901 to December 31, 1910 was the first decade of the 20th Century. 1900 was the last year of the 19th Century, not the first year of the 20th Century, just the same way the year 2000 was the last year of the 20th Century and not the first year of the 21st Century.

It's all about multiples of ten. You have ten fingers. Count out a decade on them, then a century if you need to. If you need to count to 1000 on your fingers to understand how a millennium actually works then there's really no reason for you to read any further.

I would venture to guess that Hollywood played a major role in confusing people about the year 2000, making them throw out not only what they'd been taught in elementary school arithmetic and high school math, but their commonsense too. Movies about the new millennium were a dime a dozen in 1999 and in the year 2000, most of them dealing with the arrival or the departure of Satanic beings on planet Earth and a cape-and-sword battle for truth, the American way and the girl next door, because that's what sells tickets at the box office more than anything else. Romantic fantasy.

Another fantasy was the year 2000 being billed as the dreaded Y2K, a year that would fall flat on its face as soon as it arrived. When the year 2000 failed to bring with it the collapse of worldwide cyber technology, it confirmed the biggest computer hoax of all time and not the first year of some mysterious New World Order. But, thanks to Hollywood and its insatiable need to make tons of money off brainless people, the 21st Century and the new millennium came in on January 1, 2000.

For the couple dozen of us who knew better, however, the new millennium unceremoniously showed its face on January 1, 2001. And on January 1, 2011 the second decade of the 21st Century will just as quietly show its new face. But if you want any peace in your life, don't tell anyone.