American pie

 

"American Pie" is a song by American singer and songwriter Don McLean. Recorded and released in 1971 on the album of the same name, the single was the number-one US hit for four weeks in 1972 starting January 15 after just eight weeks on the US Billboard charts (where it entered at number 69).

The repeated phrase "the day the music died" refers to a plane crash in 1959 that killed early rock and roll stars Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens, ending the era of early rock and roll; this became the popular nickname for that crash. The theme of the song goes beyond mourning McLean's childhood music heroes, reflecting the deep cultural changes and profound disillusion and loss of innocence of his generation – the early rock and roll generation – that took place between the 1959 plane crash and either late 1969 or late 1970. The meaning of the other lyrics, which cryptically allude to many of the jarring events and social changes experienced during that period, has been debated for decades. McLean repeatedly declined to explain the symbolism behind the many characters and events mentioned; he eventually released his songwriting notes to accompany the original manuscript when it was sold in 2015, explaining many of these, and further elaborated on the lyrical meaning in a 2022 interview/documentary celebrating the song's 50th anniversary, in which he stated the song was driven by impressionism and debunked some of the more widely speculated symbols.

 It’s a great song, and worth listening to again:

 (3) Don McLean - American Pie (Lyrics) - YouTube

 In 2010, the RAGBRAI passed through Clear Lake, Iowa. Naturally, Sharon and I went  to the ballroom where Buddy Holly last performed – and we also went to the cornfield where he died. As a result, we have a stronger personal connection to the song, since we have been to “the scene of the crime”.

 I recently discovered that we also have a local connection to “the day the music died”.

Our son and his family live about 6 miles east of us. Yesterday, we all went to a very nice park not far from where he lives. It is named the Ebonee Moody Park, in honor of a 14-year-old girl who was killed by a drunk driver in 2004, just across the street from where the park is now located.

Ebonee was a talented musician, and she played the piano, the saxophone, and several other instruments.

The man responsible for Ebonee’s death last August is 60-year-old Mike Ellsworth Baker.  He hit her while driving drunk and speeding.  Ten months later Baker is agreeing to felony charges of manslaughter, driving under the influence, reckless driving, and endangerment, along with a traffic violation of driving an unsafe vehicle.

 "It has been stated that he was drunk and driving, and we realize that there are so many loopholes in the justice system, and this way by a plea bargain, we know that he will do time in prison,” Moody said.

 Baker’s prison time is expected to last about ten and a half years, if not more, and be followed with about seven years of probation that will require him to take the anti-alcohol drug Antabuse.

 Also, Baker’s driver license will be suspended for five years.

 "You can't do the crime and just expect to get away.  You do the crime, you have to do the time,” Moody said.

 For the Moody family, their lives will be changed forever.  But now, Leonard Moody hopes his situation can at least be one more lesson for anyone who drinks and drives.

 https://www.kold.com/story/3499251/drunk-driver-pleads-guilty-to-manslaughter-of-14-year-old/

 Buddy Holly died in 1959 in Iowa in 1959 – but the music also died in Tucson in 2004 – and that is a lesson that Mike Baker (and the rest of us) learned more than a decade ago.

the rich are different

 In 1925, Fitzgerald wrote a short story titled “The Rich Boy.” In 1926, it was published in Red Book magazine and included what became a very popular collection of Fitzgerald's early short stories, titled All the Sad Young Men.

The third paragraph of the story says:

"Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are because we had to discover the compensations and refuges of life for ourselves. Even when they enter deep into our world or sink below us, they still think that they are better than we are. They are different."

F. Scott Fitzgerald was born into a middle class family in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1896. Although initially successful as a writer, the Great Depression made it difficult for his books to be sold. Even a move to Los Angeles did not improve his finances, leading to years of alcoholism. Eventually he recovered, but passed away in 1940 due to a heart attack, at the age of 44.

HIs best known novel is "The Great Gatsby", and it has been made into a movie twice, the most recent starring Robert Redford.

There is no shortage of books about the wealthier members of our society, but two of them are especially relevant - and they have an unusual connection.

The first book is "Vanderbilt :The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty", which was written by Anderson Cooper. His mother was Gloria Vanderbilt, and she was the last Vanderbilt to live in "the Breakers" in Rhode Island. His book details the successes, and failures, of the greater Vanderbilt clan. 

I've been in the Biltmore estate in North Carolina, which was built by George Washington Vanderbilt in the closing years of the 19th century. At the time the 250 room home was built, he was in his 20's, and unmarried. Even today, it is still the largest single family home in America. Although it is no longer used as a residence, it is open for tours.

The other book is about the family of a man who was one of the richest men in America  - but few people have ever heard of him. His name is W.A. Clark, and his story can be found in "Empty Mansions", by Bill Dedman and Paul Clark Newell Jr.

Both Cornelius Vanderbilt and W.A. Clark owned railroads, but the "unusual connection" is to a ship.

One of the Vanderbilt family members was on the Titanic - and he went down with the shop.

W.A. Clark and his family had tickets  for the 2nd voyage of the Titanic. For obvious reasons, they never got to use them.

W.A.  Clark was married twice. After the death of his first wife, he married a much younger woman, who gave birth to two daughters. The oldest daughter (Andre) died of meningitis when she was 16, and her younger sister (Hugette) inherited a vast fortune.

(Because Andre loved girl scouts, her father established the first (and only) girl scout camp in the country in her honor)

https://www.vintagegirlscout.com/girl-scout-camp-andree-clark

Hugette was married briefly, but spent most of her life as a single woman.

Although she owned mansions in Santa Barbara and Connecticut (in addition to three apartments on 5th Avenue in New York), she spent the last twenty years of her life in a hospital room in New York City - even though she was in good health.

She lived in the Santa Barbara home only a short time, and she never lived in (or furnished) the Connecticut home. For most of her life, the apartments on 5th Avenue also were not used very much.

She was an avid collector of art and dolls, as well as jewelry. She also owned 6 very rare Stradivarius violins.

Throughout her life, she was very generous, and gave vast sums of money to a lengthy list of friends, some of whom she never met.  

She lived to be 106 years old, but was still very sharp mentally right until the end

W.A. Clark made most of his money from copper, but he also was a successful banker and a railroad owner. In addition, he was largely responsible for the establishment of Las Vegas, which is located in Clark county. 

"Empty Mansions" is a book worth reading - and it reaffirms the fact that the rich ARE different,

the "Rock" for president?

 

This morning, Washington Post columnist Gabriel Hays endorsed Dwayne Johnson for president – and that is not as crazy as is seems.

You can read his entire article at the link below, but the short version is that “the Rock” would be an excellent candidate for president, even if he does not run in 2024 because he wants to spend more time with his kids.

https://www.foxnews.com/media/washington-post-columnist-endorses-rock-president-pathway-trump-biden-doom-loop

If you think that a movie actor can’t be elected president, consider the fact that Ronald Reagan was elected by the largest electoral vote gap since George Washington, and carried every single state except one.

 If you think that a professional wrestler can’t be elected to office, I have another name for you

Jesse Ventura

Twenty-five years ago Friday, the former professional wrestler Jesse “The Body” Ventura shocked America by winning the Minnesota governor’s race as a third-party candidate. In the lead-up to the 2016 presidential race, Ventura was “ecstatic” as Donald Trump — another brash outsider celebrity candidate — mounted a run.

 

 

 And now? Ventura compares Trump to Charles Manson and looks back “shamefully” on how his upset victory in 1998 served as a catalyst for Trump’s win.

“Oh, he watched my playbook, don't kid yourself,” Ventura said in a telephone interview.

 Ventura toppled the political establishment as the Reform Party gubernatorial candidate by throwing out everything in the conventional politician’s playbook. As The Washington Post’s Marc Fisher wrote in a 1998 story on Ventura’s victory, “With support heavily concentrated among young men, Ventura roamed the state demonstrating his straight talk and regular-guy habits. He ate big burgers, talked of big tax breaks and quoted the big, deceased thinkers — Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead and the Doors’ Jim Morrison.”

 A Minneapolis Star Tribune poll found that he had energized new voters — 10 percent said that they wouldn’t have voted if Ventura hadn’t been one of the candidates. Ventura, who won nearly 50 percent of voters under 30 in a three-candidate race, said his campaign aides had tried to talk him out of his plan to visit every college campus in the state.

 “My people said to me, ‘Oh, you're wasting your time. They don't vote,’” he recalled. “I went, ‘Baloney. They've never had a chance to vote for Jesse the Body. They'll vote.’ And I went to every college campus, and they were hanging from the rooftops.”

 Compared to his major-party rivals, Ventura ran his campaign on a shoestring budget. Republican candidate Norm Coleman outspent him 5-1, and Democrat Skip Humphrey outspent him 3-1, according to the New York Times, which called his victory “an earth-rattling political upset that shellshocked politicians and prognosticators everywhere.” The paper described him as “a colorful mixture of affable, often amusing, bravado and plain-spoken drive.”

 That could describe Trump in 2016, and the two men did have similar styles. Both delivered a “tell-it-like-it-is” message in booming voices and attracted previously disaffected voters. Both knocked off a pair of well-known establishment politicians. Humphrey was the son of the late vice president Hubert Humphrey; Coleman was the mayor of St. Paul (and a future U.S. senator). Trump defeated the early GOP front-runner, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — the son and brother of presidents — before beating Democrat Hillary Clinton in the general election. (A Trump campaign spokesman did not respond to a request for comment.

 Both Trump and Ventura got a boost from the name recognition that came with their celebrity. Many Americans knew Trump from his years hosting “The Apprentice” and his hotels, casinos and other real estate holdings. Ventura was a famous pro wrestler who had his own action figure doll, as well as a radio show. They even had pro wrestling in common: Trump sponsored two early WrestleManias and headlined another and was inducted into the WWE Hall of Fame in 2013.

 In fact, the two men appeared together at WrestleMania XX, held at New York’s Madison Square Garden in 2004, about 14 months after Ventura’s single term as governor. (He didn’t seek reelection.) Ventura, dressed in black and sporting a thick beard, left the ring to do a quick interview with Trump, who was sitting in the front row. Ventura, who often speculated about running for president, put Trump on the spot. “If I were to get back into politics, could I expect your moral and financial support?” he asked.

 “One hundred percent,” Trump replied firmly.

 “You know what? I think that we may need a wrestler in the White House in 2008!” Ventura yelled, to enthusiastic cheers.

 Ventura, a self-described social liberal and fiscal conservative, governed as more of a centrist than Trump. But Ventura’s contempt for the media — as evidenced by issuing “Official Jackal” Capitol press badges to the Capitol press corps — was a precursor to Trump’s “fake news” taunts

Trump considered a 2000 presidential run with Ventura’s Reform Party. He eventually ran as a Republican, but only after engineering a “hostile takeover” of the GOP, as Ventura (and others) said.

 Back when Ventura first became governor, the two men were friends, Ventura said. “He came up and visited me,” Ventura recalled. “I don't know what was going on in his mind; at the time we were embracing him because we were a third party. We were looking for anything to give us a foothold. And we thought, ‘Wow, if we can get Trump to run, he's a name. He's got money.’”

 In Trump’s book “The America We Deserve,” published in 2000 as he mulled a presidential run, Trump sounded like he had been taking notes from Ventura’s victory two years earlier.

 https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2023/11/03/jesse-ventura-donald-trump/

If Trump doesn’t go to prison before then, the likely presidential candidates in 2024 will be Donald Trump and Joe Biden.

Political professionals have rated Trump as one of the worst presidents in our nation’s history – and he would be worse in a second term

https://www.usnews.com/news/special-reports/the-worst-presidents/slideshows/the-10-worst-presidents?slide=10

Joe Biden is actually doing a better job than he is given credit for, which is why I will vote for him in 2024. Even though his poll numbers are not strong, that was also true for George W. Bush and Barack Obama near the end of their first terms – and they both got re-elected.

Dwayne Johnson is getting acquainted with Capitol Hill, and while he's not  running for president -- or any other office, yet -- he IS taking meetings with U.S. senators to talk football and the military.

The Rock was in D.C. Wednesday for a sit-down with several top lawmakers, reportedly chopping it up about boosting recruitment in the Armed Forces, and the XFL ... which he owns.

 https://www.tmz.com/2023/11/15/dwayne-the-rock-johnson-visits-capitol-hill-meeting-senators-xfl-football-military-recruitment-potential-presidential-bid/

Would I vote for Dwayne Johnson for president in 2028?

Absolutely!

what do the experts say about immigration ?

 As a country, we have been involved in discussions about immigration for close to 200 years, and we still do not have full agreement today.

Although I have written several articles about this topic over the years, there are two quick points that I would like to make:

1) The Biden administration is doing a better job than it is given credit for. 

Heather Cox Richardson provided details in her letter of November 6:

"On Friday, President Biden hosted the first leaders’ summit for the Americas Partnership for Economic Prosperity (APEP). Biden announced the creation of APEP in June 2022 to establish a forum positioned to improve the economies of countries in the western hemisphere, with the idea that stronger economies will be able to address economic inequality, bolster supply chains, and “restore faith in democracy by delivering for working people across the region.” 

APEP is also designed to strengthen the Los Angeles Declaration for Migration and Protection that established a responsibility-sharing approach to addressing this era’s historic migration flows. Rather than working solely on getting Congress to pass legislation to fix the border—as Biden has urged since the beginning of his term—the administration has focused on the prosperity and security of the countries from which migrants come, so that they feel less pressure to leave. 

The administration has worked hard to develop that strategy. Vice President Kamala Harris took the lead in “diplomatic efforts to address root causes of migration from El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras,” and in July 2021 she released a report on strategies to slow migration from the region. In June 2022, at the 9th Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles, the administration helped to bring to reality a long-standing realization among many countries that migration must be addressed on a regional level rather than with patchwork attempts by individual nations. That’s when the U.S. got 21 governments to sign on to “a comprehensive response to irregular migration and forced displacement in the Western Hemisphere,” known as the Los Angeles Declaration on Migration and Protection. 

The Biden administration has emphasized that it wants to work with the region, not dictate to it, and the leaders of APEP are working with the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) to fund improvements to infrastructure and train skilled workers and entrepreneurs. The IDB is an international financial institution, owned by 48 member states and headquartered in Washington, D.C., that provides development financing for Latin American and Caribbean countries. " 

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/november-6-2023

El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras are some of the most dangerous countries in the world.

Honduras has the 4th highest murder rate in the world

Guatemala is 13th highest, and El Salvador is 15th highest.

Due to the prevalence of drug cartels, Mexico is 11th highest.

https://wisevoter.com/country-rankings/murder-rate-by-country/

The reason that we have experienced a surge in immigration recently is that people crossing our border are literally fleeing for their lives.

https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2021/11/09/whats-happening-at-the-u-s-mexico-border-in-7-charts/#:~:text=Migrant%20encounters%20increased%20across%20demographic,increased%20from%2052%2C230%20to%20451%2C087.

2) The best source about immigration comes from a person who is a refugee herself. Her name is Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and she has written 4 books about immigration. I read "Infidel" a few years ago, and I finished reading "Prey" this week.

Here's her bio:

Ayaan Hirsi Ali is a Somali-born Dutch-American activist and former politician. She is a critic of Islam and advocate for the rights and self-determination of Muslim women, opposing forced marriage, honour killing, child marriage, and female genital mutilation. Hirsi Ali has founded an organisation for the defense of women's rights, the AHA Foundation. She works for the Hoover Institution at Stanford University, the American Enterprise Institute, and was a senior fellow at the Future of Democracy Project at Harvard Kennedy School.^[She currently hosts The Ayaan Hirsi Ali Broadcast and is a columnist for UnHerd, a British online magazine.

In 2003, Hirsi Ali was elected a member of the House of Representatives, the lower house of the States General of the Netherlands, representing the centre-right People's Party for Freedom and Democracy (VVD). A political crisis related to the validity of her Dutch citizenship, namely the accusation that she had lied on her application for political asylum, led to her resignation from parliament, and indirectly to the fall of the second Balkenende cabinet in 2006.

Hirsi Ali is a former Muslim who became an atheist. In 2004, she collaborated on a short film with Theo van Gogh, titled Submission, which depicted the oppression of women under fundamentalist Islamic law, and was critical of the Muslim canon itself. The film led to death threats, and Van Gogh was murdered several days after the film's release by Mohammed Bouyeri, a Moroccan-Dutch Islamic terrorist. Hirsi Ali maintains that "Islam is part religion, and part a political-military doctrine, the part that is a political doctrine contains a world view, a system of laws and a moral code that is totally incompatible with our constitution, our laws, and our way of life." In her 2015 book Heretic, Hirsi Ali called for a reformation of Islam by countering Islamism and supporting reformist Muslims

Here is an excerpt from the film

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZMcyBruobU

In 2005, Hirsi Ali was named by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world. She has also received several awards, including a free speech award from the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten, the Swedish Liberal Party's Democracy Prize, and the Moral Courage Award for commitment to conflict resolution, ethics, and world citizenship. Christopher Hitchens regarded her as "the most important public tellectual probably ever to come out of Africa."Critics accuse Ali of being Islamophobic and question her scholarly credentials "to speak authoritatively about Islam and the Arab world". Her works have been accused of using neo-orientalist portrayals and of perpetuating a "civilizing mission" discourse. Hirsi Ali married Scottish-American historian Niall Ferguson in 2011, migrated to the United States and became a U.S. citizen in 2013.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ayaan_Hirsi_Ali

"Peril" is a deeply disturbing book, since much of it is devoted to the discussion of sexual violence in Europe caused by young men from Muslim-majority counties, which generally treat women as second class citizens. 

Hirsi Ali emigrated twice in her lifetime, first from Somalia, and next from the Netherlands.

She is not opposed to immigrants or refugees, since she has been both, but she feels that destination countries can do a better job of dealing with people crossing their borders. The last 17 pages of the book contain measures that European countries can do to reduce the problems caused by immigrants, but her lessons can also be applied to what we can do in America.

You may or not agree with her views, but they seem reasonable:

1. Repeal the existing  asylum framework. "Rather than focusing on where people come from and their motivations for leaving, I believe the main criteria for granting  residence should be how far they are likely to abide by the laws and adopt the values of the host society

2. Address the push factors. ":Western societies will have to invest resources to address the security and economic issues in the countries from their migrants are coming from.. 

(this is exactly what the Biden administration is doing)

3. ".. as well as the pull factors. There there must be meaningful limits on what outsiders can claim based on the feat of having crossed a nation's border".

4. Reinstate the rule of law. " Technology has a role to play, but ther is not substitute for humans with expertise.

5. Listen to the successful immigrants. 

6. Provide sex education to all children

There are politicians in our country who feel we are being invaded by hordes from the south of our border, but the truth is that Europe has problems far worse than ours, so listening to Ayaan Hirsi Ali would make sense for us as well.