(By M. Alex Johnson, Staff Writer, NBC News)
Deriding President Barack Obama as the weakest president "in my adult lifetime," former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld called on the White House on Tuesday to fish or cut bait in Syria.
Rumsfeld said there could be no middle ground in Syria: "You either ought to change the regime, or you ought to do nothing," he said during a question-and-answer session after a lecture at the Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum in Grand Rapids, Mich.
In his customarily colorful way, Rumsfeld, 81, picked away at Obama for declaring last week that any U.S. response to Syria's alleged use of chemical weapons against its own people wouldn't target President Bashar Assad.
"Why would you go in and fire a shot across the bow?" asked Rumsfeld, who served as Ford's defense secretary during the 1970s and again as head of President George W. Bush's Pentagon during the planning for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2000s.
"All it does is make a splash, and ... what you've probably achieved is the embarrassment of the United States for being feckless and ineffective," he said.
Rumsfeld also accused Obama of cutting Secretary of State John Kerry off at the knees after Kerry made a "compelling and persuasive" case for strong military action in Syria last week — only for Obama to later say any U.S. response in Syria would be a "limited, narrow act."
"The president is not, in my view, providing the kind of leadership that I think almost any president in my adult lifetime would be providing," he said.
"You have to have a vision, Rumsfeld said. "You have to know what you're going to do, and you have to provide the kind of leadership the commander in chief would provide."
Despite all of his statements, when asked what guidance he would give on the Syrian situation, however, Rumsfeld did admit, "I'm glad I don't have to give advice to be honest with you."
(from a doormat tag from High Cotton, Inc., Bluffton, SC)
"Important things you should know about your new doormat
Warning: Do not use mat as a projectile. Sudden acceleration to dangerous speeds may cause injury. When using mat, follow directions: Put your right foot in, put your right foot out, put your right foot in and shake it all about. This mat is not designed to sustain gross weight exceeding 12,000 lbs. If mat begins to smoke, immediately seek shelter and cover head. Caution: If coffee spills on mat, assume that it is very hot. This mat is not intended to be used as a placemat. Small food particles trapped in fibers may attract rodents and other vermin. Do not glue mat to porous surfaces, such as pregnant women, pets and heavy machinery. When not in use, mat should be kept out of reach of children diagnosed with CFED (Compulsive Fiber Eating Disorder). Do not taunt mat. Failure to comply relieves the maker of this doormat, Simply Precious Home Decor, and its parent company, High Cotton, Inc., of any and all liability."
(Paraphrasing Roman satirist and poet Juvenal )… The population has become complacent and easily satisfied with the mundane — everything, now restrains itself and anxiously hopes for just THREE things:
BREAD and CIRCUSES and . . . OHO
Music begins at 8:00 (on the patio)
or, in the case of less-than-desirable weather, at 9:00 (in the restaurant)
It makes me think of all the beautiful music I've heard
And brings to mind a kind of paradise
It just may be some kind of wonderland magically
Still don't know how this fortune came to me
All the things I see
When I hear the sound of your voice
When I hear the sound of your voice
If feels to me like warmth from sitting in front of a fire
Light of my life you always show the way
Gleam in your eye a spark igniting the fire inside
Burning so bright the way I feel for you
It's like a dream come true
When I hear the sound of your voice
When I hear the sound of your voice
All of my being depends upon you
That's for sure
You're my refuge in a stormy sea
The sun above that shines on me
I thought that love such as this could be found
Only in movies
Just like searching for a pot of gold
Follow the rainbow and do what you're told
Just when you think it's all been said and it's been done before
Should I explain how you're affecting me
It's not control it's more an influence over my soul
Covering all like colors brilliantly
Canvas brush palette three
When I hear the sound of your voice
When I hear the sound of your voice
Yeah. I said the Pope. Don't know why, but I dreamed the other night that I was elected Pope (and I don't recall that I was even running). Well, actually I do know why I dreamed I was elected Pope.
I recently read "In God's Name: An Investigation Into the Murder of Pope John Paul I" by David Yallop and am in the midst of "Illustrissimi: The Letters of Pope John Paul I" by Albino Luciani.
Not that by any stretch of the imagination do these things qualify me for the office of Pope. Obviously tuna salad with extra onion and two boiler-makers do indeed qualify me to DREAM that I have attained the office of Pope.
The first action that I took in my new position, if I recall the dream correctly, was RUN. I'm not sure why I ran nor why I was being chased. But run I did. And all the while I was pondering the great changes that I will make as the new Pope. I almost made sense that I was being chased in light of the radical nature of those changes.
Not sure if I would have been a good Pope. . . or a BAD one. . .
(from wikipedia.com)
"Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound! ("Look! Up in the sky!" "It's a bird!" "It's a plane!" "It's Superman!")... Yes, it's Superman ... strange visitor from another planet, who came to Earth with powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men! Superman ... who can change the course of mighty rivers, bend steel in his bare hands, and who, disguised as Clark Kent, mild-mannered reporter for a great metropolitan newspaper, fights a never-ending battle for truth, justice, and the American way! And now, another exciting episode, in the Adventures of Superman!"
Unfortunately for we who live in 2013 American, 'truth, justice and the American way' is now an oxymoron.
". . .Beginning with the unforgettable "Green Green Grass of Home", Curly Putman has written or co-written an endless stream of smashes, including the million air-play, "My Elusive Dreams", "D-I-V-O-R-C-E", "Blood Red And Going Down", "It Don't Feel Like Sinnin' To Me, "It's A Cheatin' Situation" and "He Stopped Loving Her Today", just to name the #1's.
Curly wasn't born and raised with "great future staring him in the face," like the TV Waltons. Curly was the son of a sawmill man, reared on a mountain that bore that family name. About six or eight families lived on Putman Mountain, mostly descendants of a one-armed Methodist preacher named Jesse Putman, who first brought the holy writ to the mountain. . .
. . . After his discharge (from the service), Curly started picking with a band in Hunstville, AL, and there during one of his gigs, he met his future wife, Bernice. Soon, they started going together and were married in 1956. Thus began a long odyssey of discouragement and frustration remarkably echoed in Curly's "My Elusive Dreams: (You Followed Me To Texas/You Followed Me To Utah/We Didn't Find It There So We Moved On). The places were changed, but the pain was the same. "We moved to Chicago, but I didn't like it there too well, so I moved back to Alabama, working in the sawmill with my dad and going to trade school in Decatur, tried to learn piano tuning…anything to stick to music in some way. "We were barely getting by, so we moved to Huntsville and I went to work for the Thom Mcan Shoe Co. Eventually, Curly had a couple of songs recorded by Marion Worth and Charlie Walker, so he jumped at the chance to sell shoes in Nashville. After a short time in Nashville, however, he was transferred to Memphis. "I was so discouraged about having to leave Nashville," Curly recalls, "that I quit Thom Mcan in Memphis and went back to Huntsville and took a job in a record shop owned by a local radio personality. At night I played steel in a local band.
In the fall of 1963 Curly's luck took an abrupt change for the better. While visiting Nashville, during the annual DJ convention, he ran into Tree Publishing company executive Buddy Killen, whom he had known slightly in earlier days. Buddy casually mentioned that Tree might have a song plugging job open after the first of the year. "I came to talk to Buddy and Jack Stapp (the owner of Tree) and started working for them in January of 1964
"I guess I learned as much about writing by plugging songs for Tree as anything else I've ever done," says Curly. Yet month after month was passing and nothing was happening save a few small, inconsequential records. Was the elusive dream about to become undone altogether?
Then, one day about a year later, a bit of sheer magic struck. "One Sunday afternoon, I came up to Tree's office. No one was around. I just started fooling around and suddenly it fell in place. The surprise ending about dreaming made the song. I guess I worked on it for about two hours. I felt like I really had something, because it touched me very deeply. But, I didn't know how commercial it was because it was such a down-home song." The down-home song was "Green Green Grass of Home.
"I played the song for bunches of people over five or six months before it was ever cut, first Johnny Darrell," said curly. Then things began to happen. Porter Wagoner covered the Darrell record and had a top five country hit. Then, Jerry Lee Lewis had a chart record on the song. Tom Jones heard Jerry Lee's cut and was so impressed that he recorded it. His record became a top five pop smash in the united stated and number one almost everywhere else. The Tom Jones record sold between ten and twelve million copies throughout the world. Since then, over four hundred other artists have recorded the song in most of the world's major languages.
Since "Green Green Grass of Home," Curly's songs have been recorded by multitudes, including Charlie Rich, Tammy Wynette, dean martin, Wayne Newton, George Jones, Charley Pride, Conway Twitty, Dolly Parton, Bobbie Gentry, Glen Campbell, Nancy Sinatra, Roger Miller, T.G. Sheppard, The Kendalls, Andy Williams, Jim Nabors, Issac Hayes and Millie Jackson, Johnny Duncan, Bobby Vinton, John Conlee, Roy Clark, Elvis Presley, George Jones and almost every other country artist of consequence. And still, he continues to write, patiently and well, unable to fill the melancholy hole in his heart that refuses to ever let him rest satisfied and content to rejoice in a job well done. . ."
