TBC home page says 100 degrees.  My outdoor digital radio controlled fncy gadget says it's 104.9 in the "Dale" at noon.

Anyone else?

Cover your ears...  Ted is, if nothing else, very outspoken.  And I couldn't agree with him more.

http://biggeekdaddy.com/mis...

Take a few minutes out of your day and watch this video.  You'll be glad that you did.

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

'1984' + 60

by Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
June 21, 2009

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NINETEEN EIGHTY-FOUR OPENS with one of the most famous first lines in modern English literature -- the vaguely unnerving "It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen." The line it ends with is even more famous, and considerably more sinister: "He loved Big Brother." 

George Orwell's brilliant, bitter novel turns 60 this month, but after all these years it has lost none of its nightmarish chill. Its hero is the decidedly unheroic Winston Smith, a weak and wistful man who lives in the totalitarian police state of Oceania, which is ruled by the Party -- personified in Big Brother, whose intimidating image is everywhere -- and in which the Thought Police ruthlessly suppress any hint of dissent. The Party enforces its will through constant surveillance, relentless propaganda, and the annihilation of anyone who rebels against its authority, even if only in private thoughts or conversation. Winston engages in such thought-crimes, first by secretly recording his hatred of Big Brother in a diary, then through a love-affair with a young woman called Julia. Eventually he is arrested, interrogated, tortured, broken.

Nineteen Eighty-Four was Orwell's warning of what unchecked state power can become -- a warning informed by the horrors of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, with their contempt for human life and conscience, their cult of personality, their unremitting cruelty and deceit. "I do not believe that the kind of society I describe necessarily will arrive, but I believe . . . that something resembling it could arrive," Orwell wrote shortly after the book was published. "I believe also that totalitarian ideas have taken root in the minds of intellectuals everywhere, and I have tried to draw these ideas out to their logical consequences."

Orwell himself was a committed socialist, and he insisted that Nineteen Eighty-Four should not be taken as an attack on socialism or parties of the left. And, in truth, though the ruling ideology in the book is named Ingsoc ("English Socialism" in Oceania's fictional language of Newspeak), the Party's aims have nothing to do with collectivizing wealth, or creating a workers' paradise, or any other socialist prescription.

"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake," Winston is told by O'Brien, the Party official who interrogates him. "We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power. Not wealth or luxury or long life or happiness: only power, pure power. . . . We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means, it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?"

Whether or not poor Winston understood, the totalitarians (and would-be totalitarians) of 1949 certainly did. Stalin's Pravda blasted Nineteen Eighty-Four for its supposed "contempt for the people," while the American Communist journal Masses and Mainstream, in a review titled "Maggot-of-the-Month," trashed it as a "diatribe against the human race" and "cynical rot." But in most of the free world it was acclaimed as an instant classic. "No other work of this generation," declared The New York Times in its review, "has made us desire freedom more earnestly or loathe tyranny with such fullness."

Even now, it is hard to think of any novel that can match Nineteen Eighty-Four in its insight into the totalitarian mindset. Orwell captured so much of it: The insatiable lust for power. The lies incessantly broadcast as truth. The assault on free thought as both sickness and crime. The corruption of language. The brazen rewriting of history. The use of technology to make privacy impossible. The repression of sexuality. Above all, the zealous crushing of individual identity and liberty. "If you want a picture of the future," O'Brien tells Winston during his interrogation and torture, imagine a boot stamping on a human face -- for ever."

From "Big Brother" to "Thought Police" to "unperson" to "doublethink," it is no coincidence that so many of the terms Orwell coined for Nineteen Eighty-Four -- to say nothing of the word "Orwellian" itself -- have become part of our lexicon for life without freedom. Tragically, Orwell died at 46, just seven months after Nineteen Eighty-Four appeared, but 60 years later his great work survives, its power undiminished, its warning more urgent than ever.

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)

I got this from my niece in TN this afternoon.  The singers name is Richie McDonald.  I'd like to have heard it with the band at the Crystal Palace.

He co-wrote this with my nephew Ron Harbin.  Listen for it if you're a country fan, you may be hearing a lot more of it.

http://vids.myspace.com/ind...

 I was in Tehachapi today for another reason.  A longtime family friend had passed away last week and today, at a ranch in Cummings Valley, we celebrated his life.

On the way up Mark and I talked about the experience of growing up in Tehachapi.  He talked about some of the horse rides he'd been on with the friend who'd passed away.   He was a hard living, hard working guy and one of the most courtly gentlemen I've ever known.  Right behind his Dad that is.

Tehachapi may not be unique in it's small town-ness but it was an experience I'm very grateful to have given my kids.  When I first moved to Tehachapi I found it very cliquey  ((sp?)and the people standoffish.  Of course, My kids dad, my kids and I moved into the Boise Cascade Golden Hills equestrian center in the middle of a push to develop Golden Hills.  The locals didn't take too kindly to city folk.

My second hitch in Tehachapi went a lot smoother since I had married one of the local fair haired boys.  The kids ran free for the most part.  Riding horses, bicycles and later motorcycles all over the hills.  They formed groups as kids do in all cities with cowboys, jocks, and motocrossers.  There were still the "upper class" but most of the people were pretty good neighbors.  Like anyplace there were problems bot overall, it was a great place to raise kids.

I can't speak for these days, I left in 1985 and never regretted it.   When we got out of the truck at the ranch one of the first things Mark said was "I miss the climate here".  It was windy with clouds scudding across the sky and chilly in the shade.  I said I was nuts for forgetting that you need a sweater at hand all the time in that town and Mark said he was surprised to see me walk out of the house without one.

Unpredictable weather, 4 seasons all in one day, wind, wind and more wind.  But, no fog, no smog, and you could see every ripple on the mountains.  I had forgotten how fresh the air is up there.

I looked around, we drove around looking at the crazy building going on up there and I tried so hard to work up some emotional bond with the area.  Nope, nada, zip.  No tender feelings, no desire to move back.

It's all changed.  All except the weather and even it's not as severe as it used to be.  It's busy, crowded, trafficky.

For those who visit the area and want to live there, I say "Go for it."  I say "call a Realtor and start packing."    When you find it's a bit inconvenient shopping wise I'll leave you with this though.  When I first moved there the town closed at 5 pm.  All but the 2-3 bars and the bowling alley coffee shop.  Oh yeah, I think Kelcy's was open til 9.  On Sunday the only thing open was the liquor store.

The Beekay Theater ran 3rd rate films, there were 3 family owned grocery stores, all downtown.  Everyone shopped with a Wards and later a Sears Catalog.  Koutroulas Dept Store and Yeagers were the only clothiers, one pharmacy, one doctor, one dentist, one dime store.

The museum mentioned on the other blog was the library two blocks from my apartment.  The apple sheds were real apple and pear sheds.  Pear orchards were everywhere and the high school boys stayed in the bunkhouse ready to smudge on freezing nights.

I could go on for hours but I've rambled enough for now.

Not many people get to go to an old friends memorial for a birthday trip but that's what I did.  How strange to come home and find a blog about the very place I had just come from.  Mark and I pulled up old memories of our own of that mountain town and it's people.

Godspeed Rickie, One final bull ride, one last bronc.  And one less light in our lives.

And some fans celebrated by rioting.

How many people do you know who have been hit by a meteor and lived to tell about it.  If this isn't a scam, it's pretty remarkable.

http://www.foxnews.com/stor...

Apparently you can delay but can't cheat Mother Nature.   Woman missed the Air France tragedy only to be killed in an auto accident days later.

http://www.timesonline.co.u...

What a card.  What on earth would we do without him for comic rellief?

http://www.foxnews.com/poli...

The racist brand by Jeff Jacoby

ONE DAY after President Obama nominated federal judge Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich labeled her a racist.

"Imagine a judicial nominee said 'my experience as a white man makes me better than a Latina woman' new racism is no better than old racism," he wrote on Twitter, referring to Sotomayor's now infamous statement that a Latina woman is likely to make a better judge than a white man. "White man racist nominee would be forced to withdraw. Latina woman racist should also withdraw."

It was a wretched thing to say, and Gingrich wasn't the only conservative Republican to say it. Rush Limbaugh called Sotomayor a "reverse racist" on his radio program; Fox News Channel's Glenn Beck announced that "she sure sounds like a racist." There were similar comments from controversialist Ann Coulter and former GOP congressman Tom Tancredo, and the Washington Examiner headlined an editorial "The racist jurisprudence of Sonia Sotomayor."

Sotomayor's views on race and ethnicity are certainly deplorable. She is apparently an unapologetic chauvinist who believes not only that a judge's perspective is hard-wired to gender, race, and ethnicity -- judging is affected by the "inherent physiological or cultural differences" of color, she says -- but that the "Latina" perspective is especially to be celebrated. Those views are odious to anyone who believes that justice, to be just, must be colorblind. Unfortunately, that is not what contemporary liberals believe. Sotomayor deserves to be questioned closely about her embrace of such benighted identity politics. She did not deserve to be smeared as a racist.

The comments of Gingrich, et al., quickly triggered a backlash. "What the hell is going on here?" demanded Chris Matthews on MSNBC after playing a clip of Limbaugh calling Sotomayor "an angry woman . . . a bigot . . . a racist." In The New York Times, columnist Charles Blow denounced the "fringe Republican race-baiting," and called the "racist" charge "shameful and defeatist." Senator Diane Feinstein of California lamented that "to call someone a racist . . . is just terrible" and only adds a "visceral and terrible heat" to public discourse. David Axelrod, a senior Obama adviser, condemned the accusation as "particularly offensive. . . . It certainly doesn't represent the appropriate language, attitude, orientation."

To his credit, Gingrich retracted his slur after a few days. "The word 'racist' should not have been applied to Judge Sotomayor as a person, even if her words themselves are unacceptable," he wrote on June 3. He now agreed, he said, with those who "have been critical of my word choice."

The demonizing of Sotomayor as a racist was outrageous, and liberals and Democrats were right to decry it. And if they now agree that such political hate speech should have no place in public life, perhaps they will insist on apologies from those in their own ranks who have been guilty of comparable slanders.

Starting with Senator Ted Kennedy.

It was on July 1, 1987, just 45 minutes after Ronald Reagan nominated Judge Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, that Kennedy uncorked a poisonous assault on one of the nation's most distinguished legal thinkers. "Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids," Kennedy charged. Bork's thinking was "neanderthal" and "ominous," he said; confirming him would empower censors and slam the doors of the federal courts "on the fingers of millions of citizens."

They were despicable libels, as even admirers of Kennedy acknowledge. "The Bork of Kennedy's speech was a wild-eyed fascist and Bork the nominee was not," writes Kennedy biographer Adam Clymer, a veteran Washington correspondent. Ethan Bronner, who covered the story for the Boston Globe, later described Kennedy as having "shamelessly twisted Bork's world view" -- not in the heat of debate, but with malice aforethought.

The same malice would be visited subsequently on other conservative judges nominated by Republican presidents. In 1991, Clarence Thomas was slimed as a traitor to his race for having married a white woman, and accused of being a mouthpiece for white supremacists. "If you gave Clarence Thomas a little flour on his face," declared Carl Rowan, "you'd think you had David Duke talking." Judge Charles Pickering, a longtime voice of racial reconciliation, was defamed by Senator John Kerry as a "forceful advocate for a cross-burner" and by Senator Charles Schumer for his "glaring racial insensitivity."

In some left-wing precincts, accusations of racism are flung about with astonishing recklessness. The recent "Tea Party" protests by fiscal conservatives around the country, seethed actress/activist Janeane Garofalo, were "about hating a black man in the White House ... racism straight up." The Fox News Channel, says Keith Olbermann, is "as dangerous as the Ku Klux Klan." Gingrich himself has been a victim. When, as a Georgia congressman, he led House Republicans to victory in the 1994 elections, New York magazine's Jacob Weisberg blasted his policies as "a proxy for race-baiting," and added: "George Wallace was big in rural Georgia, too."

Few weapons of character-assassination are as abhorrent as the "racist" label falsely applied. Those who grow angry when conservatives apply it to liberals should be equally scandalized when liberals do it to conservatives. And, it should go without saying, vice versa.

(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)