Blog Archives

Fair and Balanced?

1/1/2017

There's no doubt in my mind that the Liberal media has contributed to the downfall of our nation but the good news is they can be a big part in turning things around.

Instead of shaking pom poms over everything liberal I ask that they be just as scrupulous and ask hard questions like they do to conservative politicians and their ideas. If they would do their homework and provide insight into the true costs of various Liberal ideas and not just the benefits they would provide a tremendous service to our country. Like with Obama Care and how it is tanking our budget and running up the deficit. Sure millions more people have medical insurance (which is what the media focuses on), but can the Federal Government sustain an increased subsidizing of the insurance to keep the program alive? The numbers clearly reflect no, and more and more Democrats are admitting this and want to revisit Obama Care.

I love analytics and research but even someone who doesn't could've quickly calculated in Excel that the amount of money Obama was putting into the Stimulus Bill, would cost the government close to $40,000 just to create each job. Anyhow, don't take my word for it, you can quickly Google "How successful was the Stimulus Plan" and get the bad news.

All I’m asking for is more balanced coverage of economics and politics by the mainstream media. I'm asking that they go back to their roots and what they learned in college about journalism. They could truly be a major influence towards making our country number one again.

New Year's Resolution for 2017

1/1/2017

I couldn't tell you for sure how I did in accomplishing last year's resolutions as I can't remember them; I didn't write them down so I wouldn't be held accountable. I do know I vowed to lose weight, which I did, but I also gained it back so I don't think it counts. Anyhow, we could make this year simple and easy to keep up with and it is this: "Love more, judge less." I promise you we will all have a better year if we'd do this.

Debbie Reynolds

1/1/2017

Just as Debbie Reynolds along with friends and family were working on Carrie's funeral, Debbie had a massive stroke and passed away at the age of 84. Her son said she wanted to be with Carrie who she had lived next to for years and had an extremely close relationship with (one that wasn't always that way). My mom and dad loved Reynolds and my sister has a picture of her along with my parents in Las Vegas.

She was born in El Paso, Texas and her father was a ditch digger while her mother did peoples' laundry. She said she grew up dirt poor but her dad always made sure there was food on the table even if he had to go out and shoot a jackrabbit. This is a quote from her that I love: "One of the advantages of having been poor is that you learn to appreciate good fortune and the value of a dollar, and poverty holds no fear for you because you know you've gone through it and you can do it again. We were always a happy family and a religious one. And I'm trying to inculcate in my children the same sense of values, the same tone that my mother gave to me." She also said that she only went to one dance when she was in high school because she wasn't all that cute, was tomboyish, and didn't have nice clothes to wear. If those fellow classmates only knew.

As everyone knows, there was a huge scandal when her husband (Eddie Fisher), cheated on her with Elizabeth Taylor. She and Elizabeth had been friends before this happened. The press did their best to try and get Debbie down in the gutter regarding the matter but as usual, she was too classy. In a lot of ways, her character reminds me of Dolly Parton's.

But what a lot of people don't know is around 15 years after the scandal, Debbie and Elizabeth happened to be on the same cruise ship together and Debbie sent a nice note to Elizabeth's room to which she responded back and the two decided to have dinner together that evening. They became friends again.

Before putting together an entertainment show in Vegas, Reynolds was in 86 different movies and television shows. Her classic movies include: Singin in the Rain, The Rat Race, How the West Was Won, The Unskinkable Molly Brown, The Singing Nun, etc. Debbie also had a passion for documentaries which she produced nine during her lifetime.

She didn't realize she could dance until she took the role in Singin in the Rain and she said her feet would bleed because of all the practicing she was doing. There were many things she learned about herself over the years and once again like Dolly Parton, could do just about anything (i.e. act, dance, direct, produce, sing, write, run a business, etc.).

The bottom line is we lost another good one; someone that through humility always remained very close to her fans. By the way, I'll never forget the time that she played Grace's mom on the comedy "Will and Grace" and she walked into the room singing: "Good morning, good morning..." Classic.

Carrie Fisher

1/1/2017

I was so sorry to hear about Carrie Fisher passing away. What red-blooded (straight), male didn't have a crush on her somewhere along the way, especially as Princess Leia. Some things you might not know:

Carrie's parents were the "It" couple in Hollywood of Eddie Fisher and Debbie Reynolds, before Eddie had an affair with Elizabeth Taylor and the marriage ended.

She was only married once for about a year to Paul Simon. It was a tough year for a variety of reasons but mostly because Carrie was bi-polar and had terrible bouts of depression. She medicated herself with drugs and alcohol in a horrible attempt to deal with it.

She did have a partner (Bryan Lourd), between 1991-1994 and they had a daughter named Billie. Dan Ackroyd proposed to her on the set of the Blue's Brothers movie but they never got married.

Although she was an actress in 41 movies (i.e. Star Wars, When Harry Met Sally, The Blue's Brothers, Shampoo, etc.), and many cameo appearances on TV shows, she was more comfortably as a writer having successfully written bestselling books, a play, a screenplay that turned into a movie, and she worked on many Hollywood scripts (i.e. Lethal Weapon, Sister Act, Coyote Ugly, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, three of the Star War's movies, etc.). I think she was a much better writer than most people knew.

Carrie said she lived with terrible demons and I'm amazed that she accomplished all she did with everything she had to deal with; it was because of this that she became a tremendous role model on how to turn your life around. I'll miss her!

Wham!

1/1/2017

His name is Georgios Kyriacos Panayiotou, thus the reason this famous singer went by the name of George Michael. Before he came out as gay he was an international heart throb with young girls everywhere. He started off with the duo Wham! then went out on his own. He's led a life filled with controversy and a lot of people don't like him, but I thought he was due a little recognition.

Michael has sold more than 80 million records worldwide. He had seven number one singles in the UK and eight number one hits on the Billboard Hot 100 in the US. In 2008, Billboard magazine ranked Michael the 40th most successful artist of all time. Some of his greatest hits include: Faith, Freedom, Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go, Father Figure, Don't Let The Sun Go Down on Me (with Elton John), etc. His song: Do They Know It's Christmas? became the U.K.'s greatest single until Elton John's song Candle In The Wind about Princess Diana came along. He's won several American Music Awards and Grammy's and has numerous awards in the U.K.

He has been involved in so many charities that I can't list them all but some include help for famine victims in Ethiopia, funds for terminally ill children, education scholarships, and AIDS.

Whether you like him or not he has had an amazing career through all the ups and downs in his personal life. He recently passed away in London on Christmas day, with a lot of music left in him especially soul music.

New Family DNA Testing

1/1/2017

There are times when a crime scene investigator finds DNA on a victim but there aren't any matches in their database. Some states have allowed the use of "Family DNA" testing in an effort to find the killer. What this does is allow the search engine of the DNA database to provide any hits that are close to the DNA they turned in which basically means if someone is a relative of the killer and has his or her DNA in the database for a crime they might have committed, that the name would pop up. This way the detective has a name of someone he can talk to in order to narrow down the search. Already this process has caught a serial killer in California who had 11 victims (The Grim Reaper), and a man was just caught in Ohio who had raped and killed a six year old girl and tried to abduct a 10 year old.

The ACLU is fighting the use of this technique for a few reasons, one is that they don't think it's fair to African Americans because the DNA database has more of them in it than other races. I think this is crazy. It is what it is. If they didn't commit the crimes they wouldn't be in the database. Could you imagine this rational negatively affecting the police catching the killer of a six year old girl who was raped and murdered? It's disgusting!

A Conservative Response to Immigration

1/1/2017

I heard a Liberal attack Donald Trump's stance on immigration. This person said that Trump and anyone who thinks like him is morally bankrupt that we have an obligation to allow people into our country and to allow anyone who has crossed illegally to stay in our country because that's what America stands for. I wish I were there because this is what I would've said to him:

Wouldn't the moral thing to do would be to invite the homeless into your home and feed them? Maybe you'd like to but you don't have the resources to do it because of the limited amount of space in your home and/or maybe you don't have enough money to feed everyone.

If you had insight into the homeless that you're thinking about bringing into your home, wouldn’t you want to screen out felons because you might be putting your family at risk?

Wouldn't it make more sense to only invite the number of homeless into your home that you could afford to help this way you could sustain helping people for years to come?

What about the rights of Americans to pursue prosperity for themselves and their families yet their wages are being held back because of cheap foreign labor? Should the rights of the U.S. citizens for the pursuit of their happiness be trumped by illegal immigrants?

Is it okay to have laws and then everyone can pick and choose which ones they'll follow? The fact is, we wouldn't have to pass any new laws regarding immigration if we'd enforce those already on the books.

I'd have way more than this to debate that particular Liberal about but I'll leave it at this. The bottom line is doing what's best for Americans first can lead to good things for those who want to immigrate here legally but the reverse isn't true. It's really this simple.

How About Some Laughs?

1/1/2017

Thought you could use a few good laughs!

·        If I had a dollar for every girl that found me unattractive, they'd eventually find me attractive.
·        I find it ironic that the colors red, white, and blue stand for freedom, until they're flashing behind you.
·        Today a man knocked on my door and asked for a small donation towards the local swimming pool, so I gave him a glass of water.
·        I'm great at multi-tasking -- I can waste time, be unproductive, and procrastinate all at once .
·        Take my advice — I'm not using it.
·        My wife and I were happy for twenty years; then we met.
·        Women spend more time wondering what men are thinking than men spend thinking.
·        Is it wrong that only one company makes the game Monopoly?
·        Sometimes I wake up grumpy; other times I let her sleep.

Bonnie and Cylde

1/1/2017

Bonnie and Clyde were killed in 1934 while in their vehicle via an ambush by police. Bonnie was 23 and Clyde was 25 years old. Some things you might not know about them:

Clyde grew up in Texas dirt poor with seven other siblings and they lived in a tent; this was during the Great Depression. Starting when he was a teenager he began a life of crime robbing stores and banks (he could crack safes), and stealing cars. He was arrested for armed robbery when he was 17 and was sent to prison. Another inmate repeatedly raped him and then one day he grabbed a pipe and killed the man. He didn't get charged for the murder as another cell mate said he did it because he already had a life sentence.

Clyde was never the same after this as he became extremely violent. Clyde wasn't sure how long he was going to be in prison and back then they had to do hard labor so one day he asked a buddy to use one of the work tools to cut off two of his toes so he could get out the hard work. He walked with a limp the rest of his life. The irony is that about a week after he had his toes cut off, he was unexpectedly released from prison. One of many bad decisions he made in his life.

Bonnie got married to another man before she met Clyde and she was only 15 years old at the time but she split from him when he got arrested for robbery and went to prison. The only two men she ever loved were criminals. Bonnie didn’t want to be a criminal she wanted to be a poet. A couple of her poems were found at a hideout in Joplin, Missouri and the Joplin Globe newspaper printed them. One poem was called: "The Trail's End" which was a prophetic account of how she and Clyde ended up dying.

Kind of like the Jesse James' Gang, Bonnie and Clyde had a following for all the things they were getting away with but when they started murdering people, including law enforcement, the public turned against them. Although 13 deaths were attributed to them, Bonnie was believed to have never committed murder although she did carry a gun and threatened people.

Before joining up with Clyde, Bonnie worked as a waitress at a diner. One of her regular customers who she happened to have a good relationship with was one of the deputies who ended up killing her. The deputies who shot Bonnie and Clyde were given $200 apiece and they were allowed to keep some memorabilia from the famous pair.

Because of their fame, their funerals brought in around 20,000 people. There were flowers everywhere and the greatest contributor of the flowers were from newspaper companies across the mid-west because Bonnie and Clyde helped them sell so many papers.

Abraham Lincoln

1/1/2017

Abraham Lincoln is one of my heroes and I've spent a lot of time over the years learning about his life. Here are some things that a lot of people don't know:

Mary Lincoln was a tough lady and ran over Abraham a lot of the times so when she said he couldn't take his dog Fido (real original), to the White House with them, he obeyed. His family kept the dog in Illinois.

Someone once said that Abraham had the heart of a woman because of his compassion towards many things including animals and children. Some say he even knew the names of every child living in Springfield, IL. The children loved him and he loved them. Kind of unusual considering he was an odd looking character who was a half a foot taller than everyone else in town.

Four months after the battle at Gettysburg, one of Lincoln's children got sick and was running a high fever. He went ahead and left and when he gave the Gettysburg Address it only lasted a little over three minutes. The crowd was silent when he finished and one of the reporters asked: "Is that all?" As soon as he finished speaking he sat down quickly and didn't look well. Come to find out he was extremely sick with Small Pox. His doctor was shocked that he pulled off the speech the way he did.

I could write a novel on Lincoln like many have, I just wanted to give you a few tidbits on some things you might not have heard before.

<<Previous

Author: John Mann

Archives