RomeoMike369's Blog

I just found out that I am not a "Baby Boomer" after all.  I just finished watching a lecture on KLCS called "The Silent Generation."  It was about those who were born too young to fight in WWII, and born before the end of WWII.  Since I was born in early 1945, this makes me a member of the Silent Generation, rather than a Baby Boomer.

 

What is amazing is description that is given of what the personality of a member of the Silent Generation is like.  It's no wonder that I like the love ballads of the 50's.

Even if you didn’t vote for President Bush, you have to admit that immediately after 9-11, he had the backing of the American people and the world behind him.  Why he allowed Bin Laden family members spirited out of the country immediately after 9-11, is still a question that needs to be answered.  Anyone who held a foreign passport, especially from an Arab Muslim country in the Middle East, should never have been allowed to leave without being first interrogated by either the FBI, CIA or both.  The invasion of Afghanistan was justified, however one wonders why more troops weren’t put on the ground to go after Al-Qaida and Osama Bin Laden.  A three-pronged attack on Tora Bora from different sides my have yielded better results.

 

 

Then Bush started talking about invading Iraq, and I couldn’t believe he was serious.  After all, most of the hijackers came from Saudi Arabia or Yemen, and one would think that these countries would be high on the list of those to attack.  So, I decided to investigate as much as possible into why Bush wanted to invade Iraq.  What I found was that the idea of invading Iraq preceded 9-11, and was discussed with his security staff as soon as he took office in 2001. Now I understood why more troops weren’t put on the ground in Afghanistan in 2002, because they were being held in reserve for the future invasion of Iraq.

 

 

It appears now that 9-11 was all the excuse the administration needed for the invasion of Iraq as long as they could make it stick.  By manipulating intelligence data to suit the mission and deliberately selecting that which supported their goals, the administration was able to go to the United Nations with half truths and innuendo that was compelling enough to support their claims that:

 

 

A.                 Iraq was trying to get radioactive material from Africa.  This was proven false by Joseph Wilson, whom the Bush Administration tried to discredit and violated the laws of this country by outing his wife who was a CIA agent.

 

 

B.                 There were Weapons Of Mass Destruction (WMD) on the ground in Iraq.  (Even though the inspectors such as Scott Ritter disagreed and said the inspections were working).

 

 

C.                 When no WMD’s were found, the reason was changed to: that Saddam had ties to Al-Qaida.  This was later proven false as well.

 

 

D.                 When ties to Al-Qaida was admitted by Bush himself to be false, the reason for the invasion was the removal of Saddam Hussein, and regime change in Iraq.  Bush stated that Saddam had tried to kill his father, and that it was personal to him to take out Saddam Hussein.

 

 

Because of poor planning and not thinking this through to its inevitable conclusion, all of the above lies couldn’t stop the Iraqi people from fighting back against the invaders.  Not all Iraqis, especially the deposed Sunnis, welcomed us with open arms.  The removal of the one stabilizing force in Iraq (Saddam and his army) resulted in the breakdown of civility between the Sunnis and the Shiites.

It’s nice to see the toy drives for underprivileged children taking place each year at Christmastime.  However, this seems to be the only approach we take as citizens to improve their lives.  It appears to be nothing more than a band-aid placed on a severely festering wound of our society.  If we really do care about our children and families, I would like to make a few recommendations to those with money and power, and those in Washington DC that would improve our children’s lives much more than simply placing a toy in their hands:

 

 

1. Give our children affordable health care.
2. Give our children a thorough and excellent education.  Our schools not only need to teach “the four R’s,” but ethics, logic, and deductive reasoning as well.  We teach them how to operate computers, but not how to operate their lives.  The liberal arts and humanities are being sacrificed in the name of science and technology.
3. Clean up our environment and stop polluting.  So many of the diseases that children get today are related to the pollution we are pumping into our air and water.  Our wells are polluted with MBTE, and Perchlorate.  Our air is polluted with diesel exhaust that causes heart disease, is a carcinogen, and is partly responsible for the increase in children’s asthma.
4. Convert our school buses from diesel to LPG.
5. Create a less violent society and world.  If the only way a poor child can get an education is by joining the military, only to be sacrificed on the field of battle, what does that say about our priorities as a nation?
6. Stop exploiting children as consumers, a labor source and sex pool.  The priest child abuse problem is just a tip of the iceberg.  Our society and media exploits young girls, and over sexualizes them into thinking they are nothing more than sex objects.  Child slavery and prostitution has increased worldwide as we move into the 21st century.  Child labor under deplorable conditions exists in sweatshops all over the world, just so we can purchase cheap imports, and increase corporate profit.
7. Give young boys and girls better role models.  Hollywood and the media set girls up to emulate such figures as the Britney and Jamie Lynn Spears, Paris Hilton, Nicole Richey, and Lindsay Lohan.  And we wonder why girls are having sex at 9 and getting pregnant at 11!  Don’t these girls come from “Christian” families, and if so what are their parents thinking?
8. Give children a light at the end of the tunnel.  Earning a minimum wage in a service-oriented society is not giving much hope to ours students.  The violence on our streets, schools, TV and film is depressing to say the least, and we wonder why teens are more prone to drugs and suicide.
9. Instead of giving out awards to overpaid actors, entertainers and ball players, many of whom set very poor role models for our children, we should be awarding teachers, nurses, and good parents who develop and nurture our children into becoming good citizens.

Finally, it is the mainstream media that sets the agenda.  As much as they say they are simply reflecting life, they actually set the materialistic trends that exist in our society today, creating competition among teenagers as to who is the best dressed.

When I watch American Idol, or listen to many of the icons of our pop culture, what I hear is screaming, not singing, SCREAMING! It’s as if all the competition centers around who can wail the loudest and longest. The “song” is hard to understand as the words are elongated and screamed at you as if the “singer” has reached some high, unreachable note that only they can deliver. Not only are the lyrics unintelligible, but the cords are nauseating, and discomforting to listen to.

This was not and is still not the case with Jo Stafford. Her voice was perfect! Her intonation was perfect! The emotion that was conveyed and felt by the listener was unforgettable. When I was a kid growing up in the 50’s, I remember hearing “You Belong To Me” for the first time and falling in love with the song. It has been my favorite ever since, and I consider it a perfectly written and executed work of art. She, and other singers of her era such as Como, Crosby, and Munroe, evoke a time when we seemed more human than we are today. As a matter of fact, the movies produced prior to the development of the computer seemed to possess a better story line, and better acting. Much of the films today rely exclusively on the special 3D animation effects that are produced on a computer (story line be damned).

Jo Stafford died at the age of 90 in Century City. She was the voice listened to and loved by servicemen fighting in World War Two and Korea. The respect I have for that generation of Americans is untarnishable. I sometimes feel that I never belonged to the Baby Boom generation, but to the bygone era of Big Bands, Crooners, and love ballads. Today’s music doesn’t inspire me, and it doesn’t move me emotionally the way the music of yesteryear does. I have neither listen to nor really liked much of the music produced since the end of the 1980’s. However, I have all my favorites saved on my iPod, and these songs transport me back to a time and place that no longer exists.

Gangs have existed in America since the Wild West, with the largest gangs located in Chicago and New York.  The Italian Mafia under Al Capone, Lucky Luciano, Sam Giancanna, Gambino, Colombo, Bonano, Gallo, Carlos Marcello, Santos Traffacante etc., and the Jewish mob under Meyer Lansky have been here since the 19th Century.  Perhaps one of the most corrosive gangs was Tammany Hall.

 

 

A large part of the distribution of methamphetamines was handled by the Hell’s Angels, while the distribution of Cocaine was handled predominately by Columbian, Cuban, and Jamaican gangs, especially in the South Eastern part of the U.S.  The Russian mob gained a foothold on the East Coast, starting in New Jersey, and the Asian gangs, such as the Tongs, and Yakusa, remained in predominately ethnic neighborhoods.  MS13 however, has spread from Central America and LA to other U.S. cities such as New Orleans.   This and other Latino gangs have been fighting an on-going turf war with African American gangs such as the Bloods and the Crypts.  This brown-on-black violence has caught many innocent bystanders in the crossfire.  Deporting illegal aliens who are members of these gangs will not solve the underlying problem.  Gangs give disenfranchised young people a feeling of empowerment that society fails to fulfill.  Belonging to a gang in many neighborhoods is tantamount to survival. 

 

 

Unless we as a nation come to grips with this cycle of violence in our inner cities, all of us will be forced into one gang or another.  An example of the backlash to these gangs are the White Aryan gangs that see these conflicts as a dynamic struggle between races that has led to the formation of white enclaves similar to those that exist in the “barrios” of Los Angeles.  Recently an innocent family made the mistake of getting lost and driving into one of these areas controlled by a Latino gang.  They were shot at while in their car, and a bullet killed one of their small children.

 

 

If these gangs are not driven out of our cities, a break-down in what is left of the cohesive binder that unites us all of different ethnic groups will be undone.  Drugs and crime have increased, and our prison system has become overburdened, not to mention our courts.  This negative influence has spread to our schools, with the media fueling the flames of violence with their movies, “reality” TV, and U Tube.  The breakdown in family structure, which lies at the heart of any society, is self-evident in the confrontational discourse, materialism, and promiscuity being fostered by the media.  “Girls Gone Wild,’ videos of our future leaders on Spring break indicate that the future of this country is in serious trouble if we are ever to solve any of these problems.

 

 

Unfortunately, the present leadership in Washington has set such a poor example for anyone to follow, that it is understandable if young people today don’t seem to have any one to look up to as an ideal role model.  Certainly those sponsored by the media such as Lindsay Lohan, Brittany Spears, Paris Hilton, or Nicole Richey are not the role models for young adolescent girls to emulate.  Yet, Disney and others continue to pump out and exploit these over sexualized young maidens as the aspiration of all young girls.  This must be heaven for pedophiles that seem to be crawling out of the woodwork in large numbers if Dateline’s “To Catch A Predator” is any indication.

Why is it that Jesse Jackson shot himself in the foot and jeopardized the potential election of the first black man as president?  One can only guess that there are members of the black community that have a deep-seated fear of success.  They subconsciously self-defeat themselves before they give themselves a try at being successful.  Those that do succeed in sports, entertainment, science, etc., do so by creating a positive image of themselves as being already successful and a winner.  Jesse Jackson is of the mindset that black people are already doomed to failure, so why even try.  He would say that the playing field needs to be leveled in order for black people to compete on equal footing.  The outcome of all this is that instead of the playing field being leveled, it is lowered.  Standards should never be lowered in order to make things more “equal.”  Instead, the standards should be maintained, and those who are less fortunate financially, but have the intelligence and drive to succeed should be given every opportunity to do so, no matter what color.

 

 

Bill Cosby has eloquently spoken about the need for responsibility in the black community.  This is true, and is applicable to all who father children, no matter what color.  Our over sexualized materialistic society promotes promiscuity through the media, and endorses lifestyles that are not conducive to raising a healthy family.  If it appears that Barrack Obama is speaking to the choir when he discusses ways in which the black community can organize to help reduce the number of single parent households, and unwanted pregnancies etc., then they should listen, not threaten to castrate him for what he has to say.  He is eloquent and outspoken on many issues, and deserves our attention.

 

 

If these snafu’s made by members of the black community continue, one can only surmise that deep down inside, they are afraid of having one of their own as president.  They are so use to the mind set of thinking negatively about themselves that to develop a positive attitude would go against deep seated feelings of inferiority and self loathing.  They cannot continue to blame past grievances for all of their failures, but must own up to some of the responsibility for the strength or weaknesses in their character.

 

 

Barrack Obama is an excellent example of someone who does not live in the past.  He has thought enough about his own education and success to achieve what he set out to accomplish.  This can be done by anyone no matter what color.  He’s ability to communicate, and think clearly and logically about the major issues, indicates that he is more than ready to be president.  I would be proud to have him represent me in the White House, and I believe he would bring stature, style, and needed integrity back to the Office Of The President.