Focused on Richard Riley

We're off!

Item:

Beware the Georgetown Cuddler!

With two attacks in the last month, DC police fear a return of the scourge of the neighborhood.  In eleven separate incidents over the last two years, a white male of 25-30 years old has broken into the homes of female university students as they slept, climbed into their bed...and cuddled.  Yes, that says "cuddled".  The understandably freaked out victims have all reported that when confronted, The Cuddler immediately flees.  Presumable to hook up with the Johns Hopkins Spooner.

We don't make this stuff up.  OK, we did make up the Spooner part.

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Item:

Here's some food for thought.  President Obama spoke to our nation's schoolchildren this week.  By all accounts, the overwhelming majority of United Statesians are just fine with the contents of his address.  (If you wish to see it, click here.  If you wish to read it, click here.)  Prior to the talk though, passions ran high both for and against Obama's planned speech.  FfF is proud to welcome two friends of the blog, who will serve as guest commentators to weigh in on both sides of the issue: Patrick Philips and Joel Williams.  Patrick will represent the side in favor of the speech and Joel will represent those opposed.  After a coin toss, it was determined Patrick would lead off.

President Obama’s plan to address the nation’s school children immediately spawned a furor from those who were convinced that the speech would be hardcore propaganda about the health care debate. Clearly, these are parents who don’t want their own propaganda challenged in their own home.

Let's face it: there's no other reason parents would object so strenuously. Expecting a mere difference of opinion on views of health care wouldn't warrant such hostility.

On Facebook, parents angrily debated whether a president should have to obtain prior written approval from parents before addressing children. As if any president could possibly obtain a permission slip from every single parent in the nation. Some parents won't even bother showing up at their schools' open houses.

But these parents were just sure they knew what he was going to talk about: he was secretly going to ram his agenda down the throats of their little darlings.

Secretly, despite the fact that his address will air in classrooms around the country. Secretly, despite the fact that every local station is already trying to make arrangements with schools to shoot footage of local students watching the address and interview a few of them about what they thought. Secretly, despite the fact that the address will also be streamed live on the internet, so even parents who are busy working can still log on and see it. And secretly, despite the fact that it's been the norm for years now that the White House would make transcripts of major addresses available before they are delivered.

Doesn't exactly sound like a recipe for some covert conspiracy, does it?

Such opposition begs two important questions: first, have these objecting parents dropped the ball? Have they done such a poor job of training their kids to think for themselves that anything their kids hear becomes the ultimate truth, no matter what it is? The notion that one single speech could totally "brainwash" their children is ludicrous. Yet that seems to be what the fear centers on.

The second question is even more damning: if, say, a 5th grader, who's about 11 years old, hears one speech and is that easily influenced, do parents truly believe that in the seven years it will take before that child can place a vote that matches his "new" world view, they won't be able to snap him back onto the, pardon the pun, "right" track?

If we are truly a nation that values everyone's right to free speech, and if we really value the American way of truth, justice and democracy, we wouldn't be trying to suppress opposing views. We wouldn't be trying to control what everyone hears.

We'd be trying to teach our kids right and wrong by looking at all sides. How else can they learn how to judge for themselves?

Patrick K. Philips

Charleston, SC
__________

Isn't it bad enough that the Liberal Agenda has so permeated our society that my child can have an abortion without my permission but her school cannot dispense an aspirin without my written consent?  Why should she also be compelled to listen to the single greatest proponent of a lifestyle my wife, myself and my God are opposed to?

My child is at school to receive an education, not to be brainwashed by neuveau Nazis of the liberal intelligencia.  Sure Oblahma's speech was innocuous enough, but only through the courage of Fox News and the Republican base, who forced him to change it.

I am responsible for setting the moral tone in my child's home.  I do not need my work undone by the school system.  My daughter is already faced with the onslaught of a morally bankrupt society.  The last thing we as parents need is for her to hear someone of the stature of a President tell her that we should be paying for insurance for illegal aliens, letting terrorists run amok for fear of "offending" them and that the murder of unborn innocents is just fine because, "after all, the President said so."

There are parents who voted for Barack Hussein Obama.  And their children are more than welcome to listen to his snake oil sales pitch.  My child, however will NEVER be compelled to accept as right what the Demon-crats try to pass as of as "moral". 

Joel Williams
Happy, TX
__________


Patrick Philips is television producer, writer, Mac lover, and Christian, though not necessarily in that order. He lives with his dog in Charleston, South Carolina.  His blog, Patrick's Place can be found here.


Joel Williams is a Texas Panhandle farmer, poet and youth minister.  He lives with his wife and daughter.

~~~
Fare thee well, Army Archerd, we'll see you on the Other Side. Save us some scoop.

~~~
Item:

Trouble's a-brewin' in South Texas, (with a capital T and that rhymes with B and it stands for Border)!  Seems Kelt Cooper is entering his first school year as Superintendent of the San Felipe del Rio Independent School District.  Having come from the Nogales, AZ school district, Cooper is familiar with the distinct challenges of running a school system in a border town.

One of those challenges is children coming across the border from Mexico to go to school.  In his previous position, he had once discovered 32 students listed as living at the same address, which turned out to be a vacant lot.  He knew he had similar problems in Del Rio.  So he asked border authorities to count the number of school-aged children coming into the country on school days, for a week.  Authorities advised the superintendant that an average of 540 children were crossing the border daily.

Now let's put this in perspective.  The population of Del Rio, Texas is 33,867.  According to 2000 Census data, there were 10,778 households, 42% of which had at least one child under the age of 18 living within them.  So that would leave  4,527 households with minors in them.  With an average family size of 3.56 people -- and assuming none of the children are too young to go to school -- that would be 16,116 children.  The Del Rio Chamber of Commerce estimates the total school-aged population to be 10,450, so let's split the difference and call it 13,283.  540 students would represent a full 4% of the total school attendance in a district whose median household income is $27,387.  So this is a legitimate financial problem for the district.

But things get a little tricky here.  A 1982 Texas Supreme Court ruling makes it illegal to discriminate against a student based on immigration status.  However, Texas state law decrees that in order to attend any public school, the student must reside within the district's limits.  This effectively, if enforced, prevents the child from benefiting from his mother coming across the border, having said offspring and returning to the homeland.  The kid may be a citizen, but if he does not live here, he cannot go to school here.

Cooper though, realizing this is a residency issue and not an immigration one, is trying to do the right thing for all parties involved.  He has sent out letters advising that the students who do not live within the district's area will be unregistered from classes until they can prove residency.  But instead of just kicking the kids out and washing his hands of them, the superintendent is working with state agencies and the school board to calculate an appropriate tuition scale, so the option may be offered to these students to remain in school and get their education.  Or, as he put it, "We are saying if we have room, you can pay tuition.  We don't want this to be a burden on the taxpayers but we don't want to turn kids away."

This is exactly the kind of forward-thinking, compassionate, pragmatic approach that is sorely lacking in almost everyone in authority who approaches the immigration issue.  Washington would do well to take a look to the Southwest to see how, with a little ingenuity, workable solutions can be realized.

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Quote of the Week:

“I've seen the rats lie down on Broadway; I watched the mighty skyline fall."
--Billy Joel, in Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway), 1976

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Internet Video of the Week:

Here.

Now, the video has not been updated since June of 2006 but if you have absolutely no life whatsoever and want to see the all of the pictures, as of 31 July of this year, click here.  You sick bastard.  You clicked, didn't you?  Well, having no life is a prerequisite of reading this blog, so we guess we should not be surprised.  You should probably click on this too, though.  No, really.  Go back and click.  You'll thank us.

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Ridiculous Story That Actually Appeared in a Publication, of the Week:

Here.

We just want to see this dude.  I mean, he had a wife and three girlfriends, got at least one of them to lend him money and had her pay for the room.  Wow.  He's clearly not rich, but something drew them to him.

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Idiot of the Week:

Easily goes to Joe Wilson, (R) SC.  This is clearly not a good year for Palmetto pols.  Not only did dude make an ass of himself by insulting the President of the United States in front of a joint session of Congress, while on national television.  He then took the cowardly way out by giving a bogus apology.  In a statement released by his office, Wilson said, "This evening I let my emotions get the best of me", following that up the next day with, "it was spontaneous".  Really?  How is that possible, Joe, since members of Congress are each provided advance copies of Presidential addresses?  We realize we may need to explain this to you, since you're from South Carolina, where apparently everyone but the politicians have some damned sense, so let's do just that.  It means you had your "emotional reaction" when you read the speech, not when the President made the remark.  Your entire display was a calculated, premeditated action.  If not, then how would a photographer have known to be trained on you at this exact moment?  Had you manned up and said, "you know, I just can't stand the guy constantly misleading the American people and something bold had to be done", then we would have respected, if not agreed with, you.  But no.  You didn't do that.  You took the cowardly way out.

And no, Joe, Glenn, Rush, et al, saying, "they did it to Bush" is not an acceptable rationale.  Barack Obama is the President of the United States and as such deserves the respect commensurate with the office.  If people disrespected GW Bush, GHW Bush, Harry Truman or Franklin Pierce, they were just as wrong.  Doing the same thing does not necessarily make it right.  (take the pun as intentional or not)

~~~
Vintage Album Review of the Week:

The Hooters

Nervous Night
1985

-And We Danced (3:50)*
-Day by Day (3:27)*
-All You Zombies (6:02)*
-Don't Take My Car Out Tonight (3:56)
-Nervous Night (4:01)**
-Hanging on a Heartbeat (4:23)
-Where Do the Children Go (5:31)*
-South Ferry Road (3:44)
-She Comes in Colors (4:16)
-Blood From a Stone (3:59)

* - singles
** - not included on the original LP

Many a record label has destroyed the career of one of their own bands.  What Columbia Records did to The Hooters is one such tale.

Toiling in relative obscurity, Philly bar band The Hooters caught a break when one of their buddies made it big.  They rode his coattails into a record deal, wore the clothes the label bought for them, adopted the image the A&R guys picked out for them and went along with it all, thinking, "yeah, but once we get a hit, we can do what we want.  Then we can be who we want to be."  They quickly learned that it doesn't quite work that way.  It is a common tale in the recording industry.

In 1984, producer Rob Chertoff, who had attended the University of Pennsylvania, recruited a couple of his buddies from a local bar band to serve as session players for an album he was producing.  While in the studio, one of the guys in the band sat down with the artist whose album they were working on and wrote a song.  The album they were working on was Cyndi Lauper's debut, She's So Unusual, the song, Time After Time.  And Chertoff's buddies were Rob Hyman and Eric Bazilian of The Hooters.

When Lauper exploded into stardom and Time After Time became a #1 single, Chertoff parlayed that into a record deal for his buddies and they hit the studio to record their major label debut.  Columbia scored them the opening slot for the Philadelphia portion of Live Aid and The Hooters were on their way.

Then the suits took over.

All You Zombies was released as the first single.  By far the heaviest song on the album, it's biblical themes and  foreboding tone was definitely different than anything else on the radio at the time and it really made no sense to make it the first single, other than the fact that it was on a previously-released indie label album and they were hoping that the Philly fan base, recognizing the song, would rally around it and spring the band mainstream, a la WMMR's playing an unauthorized copy of Captain Jack, in 1973, launching the career of a certain Piano Man.  Even if this was the case, the disparity of the song from the rest of the album made it an extremely poor choice for a debut single and the charts reflected it, as the song peaked at #58.

Columbia got it right with the second single, And We Danced, the melodica-intro'd, guitar-fueled romp that soared to #21 on the Billboard chart, opens the LP and sets the tone for the best of its material.  Again, the label blew it with the next single though, releasing Day by Day which, although it actually charted higher than it's predecessor (#18), was one of the weaker tunes on the album, so laden with synthesizers that it started sounding dated about five minutes after it was recorded.

Then it just went off the rails, as the label decided it was time to release a "message song".  Enter Where Do the Children Go, with a guest appearance by Patty Smyth, who was apparently taking a break from shooting down the walls of heartache.  Bang-bang went Nervous Night's chances and with it any sense of continuity for the audience to grab onto.  Children was a good enough song, but releasing it at this juncture completely confused the listening audience.  Were the Hooters a Bad Company wannabe band, Philly's version of the Stray Cats or a sappy Message Band?

By the time the follow up album was released two years later, no one knew.  Or cared.  And that's a shame, because there is some excellent music on Nervous Night.  Don't Take My Car Out Tonight and South Ferry Road pulse fast and free and the reggae'd-up reworking of the previously locally-released Hanging on a Heartbeat would have served much better as the requisite "ballad" single.

This album is clearly from the mid-1980's in sound and production but this is not a bad thing.  Outside of Day by Day and, to a lesser extent She Comes in Colors, (the latter of which was the only song on the album the band did not write), the material sounds retro without being stale.  For a fun, carefree trip back to the mid 80's, one could do much, much worse than this hidden gem of a collection.

Music: 4 (of 5)
Lyrics: 3 (of 5)
Authorship: 3 (of 4)
Production: 3 (of 3)
Packaging: 2 (of 2)
First Blush: 2 (of 2)
Aging: 2 (of 3)
Videos: 1 (of 1)
Total: 20
Stars: 4.0 (of 5)

~~~
Parting shots:

We're still waiting for a WMD to be found.  Just one...Incidentally, in the 24 hours following his staged outburst, Joe Wilson raised over $200,000 in donations from his supporters...There is nothing new or original we have to add to the September 11th rememberences, so we just remind you -- We have 2996 reasons to NEVER. FORGET.  Eternal rest grant unto them o Lord, and let perpetual light shine upon them; may their souls and all the souls of the faithful departed, through the mercy of God, rest in peace.  Amen.

And with that, we bid you adieu.

Until next time,

Keep the Faith

PS: By way of Housekeeping, we are aware the Definition of 
Terms link is broken.  It will be fixed shortly.  We have also 
removed the Countdown feature, until some technical issues 
can be resolved.