I actually watched public television last night.  The first show celebrated the 50th anniversary of Johnny Mathis.  Unlike many singers who have lost their voices, he's still got it.  He couldn't hit all the notes, but he hit most of them.

I was privileged many years ago to see Mr. Mathis perform live.  There was the orchestra, him, and The Voice.

How many people just sing these days?  From what I hear, screaming is the new singing, even in the country and western genre.

Bring on the Harry Connicks and Michael Bubles.*  Bring on the people who can actually sing and don't need to resort to gimmicks.

After the Mathis show, there was one showcasing Sammy Davis, Jr., in a performance from 1985.  For my money, Mr. Davis had the best voice of the singers in the Rat Pack.  Dean Martin was so mellow as to put me to sleep, and I thought that Frank Sinatra was always off the beat.

During the performance, Mr. Davis put on his tap shoes and danced.  When was the last time you saw someone tap?  Personally speaking, I haven't seen a tap dance since Gregory Hines.  Is it even taught anymore.

Singing is becoming a lost art, as is tap.  Is actual talent in danger, too?
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*  I've been unhappy with Barry Manilow since his ridiculous refusal to appear on The View with Elizabeth Hassleback.  How rude to go to someone's house and then tell them not to be there.

Hillary Clinton has proposed a $70 billion stimulus package to head off a recession caused in no small part by the sub-prime mess.  Nothing like closing the barn door after the horse gets out.  As usual, The Powers That Be are a day late and several dollars short.

Where were they during the refinancing frenzy?  Aren't they supposed to be watching out for us.  Didn't it ever once occur to them that low interest rates and easy money was going to come back and bite us?  Didn't they learn anything from the dot.com collapse.

There was a whole lotta fraud, greed, and stupidity going on for several years, and they were loving every minute of it.  Everything was up:  home sales, home prices, new construction, and on and on it goes.  Debt was up, too, but hey, let the good times roll.  It's a fundamental law of physics that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. 

Blood, Sweat and Tears said it best:  what goes up, must come down.   Welcome to the equal and opposite reaction.

Senator Clinton:  When your husband was President of the United States, he embarrassed this nation with the Lewinsky affair.  If you're elected, what steps will you take to see that this doesn't happen again?

Senator McCain:  For decades now, you and other members of Congress have exempted yourself from the Social Security system, all the while you have been bleeding it dry.  Why should you be exempt?

Senator Obama:  You have spent very nearly your entire tenure as a United States Senator running for President.  Do you really want to be a US Senator, or is it only a fall back just in case you don't get the job you really want?

Most of the people running for President, on both sides of the aisle, are now, or have been, members of one of the most freely-functioning criminal organizations in the world, i.e., the United States Congress.

Under the guise of looking out for us, they have been robbing us blind for decades now.  They have taken away our money at gunpoint or under threat of fine and/or imprisonment.  

Regarding Social Security, they have taken it away with the promise of "investing" it for us when, in fact, they have spent it on themselves, or their pet projects.  If my IRA was handled the way Congress handles Social Security, the very same people who are stealing my money would be racing to the cameras to announce what they were going to do to stop such criminal behavior.  There would be hearings and pontifications up the wazoo.  Meanwhile, they have exempted themselves from the system they are milking dry.  Our money is long gone, while theirs is safe and sound.  Fix it?  You can't be serious!

What about the border fence?  Sorry, can't be bothered with that right now.  Don't want illegal immigration?  Then get help with your bigotry because illegal immigration is here to stay.  Gonna make them all legal and then let more in.  Get over it!

They just gave themselves a raise.  Shouldn't that privilege belong to We the People?  Government of the people, by the people, for the people.  Where?  I can't see it.

Is there anything more revolting than watching one of these overpaid, underwhelming yahoos on the campaign trail take to the stage and announce what they're going to do for us, all the while shedding a tear or two just for effect. 

They love this country, it has given them so many opportunities.  Then why are they in the process of destroying it?  They're not in it for us.  They're in it for them.  They haven't cared a whit about us while they were/are in Congress.

Change?  My Aunt Fannie.  It's going to be business as usual, whoever gets in.  Picking our pockets and telling us to love it.

What on earth made supposedly rational conservatives start rhapsodizing over the collapse of Clinton's campaign after Obama won Iowa? She loses the first content and it's over?  Give me a break.

I actually read that there was talk she would fold her tent.  Please!  She'd be as apt to fold as she would be to appear at the democrat convention demanding to be the nominee, wearing a bomb-laden vest with a dead-man's trigger in her hand.  She's been working up to this her whole life.  She's stayed in a pathetically dysfunctional marriage just for this opportunity.  And she's going to fold after one contest?

Even Michelle Malkin fell for the hype.  I read her column this morning, wherein she declared that Hillary had lost New Hampshire.  The column has since been revised, but someone of Ms. Malkin's stature should never have made such a rookie mistake.

There's a lot of life left in Clinton and a lot of life left in this campaign.  I, for one, will be greatly surprised if Obama is the last one standing.

Envisioning a future run for President even as a state legislator from Illinois, Barack Hussein Obama took pains to vote "present" on a number of important issues in order not to have to do a lot of explaining when the time came.

As President of the United States (God forbid!) he would not have that luxury. 

One of the things he did vote against, however, was a law that would require medical care for aborted "fetuses" who survive.  He also voted against the Born Alive Victims Protection Act.  Remember, in the dimocrat party it is so very important to establish your abortion-at-any-time-for-any-reason bona fides if you want to move up in the ranks.

Another word for "aborted fetuses who survive" is BABIES!  My gosh, have we descended so far into the abyss that we no longer recognize this simple fact?

No one with such a shocking disregard for the most innocent and vulnerable among us has any right to claim that he should be President of the United States. 

The minimum requirement for the job should be a conscience.

The weather report issued on Saturday for yesterday said "100% chance of rain, with snow showers in the evening."

Well, it was dry as a bone all day yesterday.  No rain, no snow showers, just blue, sunny skies and colder temperatures.

With billions of dollars worth of satellites in the atmosphere and Doppler radar and everything else "they" have to predict the weather, "they" couldn't tell me on Saturday what the weather was going to be on Sunday.

Yet, the experts confidently predict - based on nothing more than computer-simulated probabilities - that the globe is going to burn up if all carbon-based life forms on earth don't stop breathing, and real soon, too.

The more fanatical global warmists have even opined that us "deniers" should be put on trial for our beliefs.

It's as though the world has taken a collective leave of its senses.

Must be global warming.

Quick!  Somebody call Al Gore.  Global warming is devastating parts of California.  There's ten feet of the stuff at higher elevations.  This morning on the news, I saw a lodge that looked like it was digging its way out of an avalanche.

A million people lost power, and 400,000 are still in the dark.  Businesses are shut down.  Roads are closed.  There have been accidents a plenty.

Do you suppose if we all got together and chanted "We do believe, we do believe", that the great god of the International Church of Global Warming would show pity on us and send a little warmth our way.

A funny thing happened on the way to the coronation, Hillary Clinton came in third.  Her campaign is no longer a cakewalk to inevitability.  She's going to actually have to give people a reason to vote for her, which she hasn't done yet.

There's a joke going around the internet about Brett Favre's wife playing instead of him.  She's been married to him.  She's ridden on the team plane.  She's watched games.  You get the gist.

What if Bill Clinton had never been President.  What would Hillary be running on then?  She wouldn't even be running because nobody would ever have heard of her.  Which is exactly her problem.  She has no identity outside of him.  No experience outside of him.  No political accomplishments outside of him.  In many ways she's the better of the two, but she's also the lesser of the two.  

New Hampshire has been referred to as her "firewall."  I think her chances are better there than in South Carolina.  What if she loses both of them?  

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Barack Obama did the best among voters 17-24.  Knowing that people of that age do not turn out in droves to vote, he should be more than a little worried that that's his best demographic.

Suppose he were to get the nomination, what does he have to offer.  He's a man of almost no consequence, politically speaking.  His state record is undistinguished, except for his penchant for voting "present" when he should have been taking a stand one way or the other.  Further, he has spent almost his entire career as a US senator running for President.  

When it comes right down to it, are people - in these dangerous times - actually going to vote for a man whose only real accomplishment is self-promotion.

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Mike Huckabee did well in a state with a lot of evangelical Christians.  Good luck in New York, Massachusetts, California, etc.

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Mitt Romney came in second and is behind in New Hampshire.

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Edwards came in second and is running out of money.  Giuliani came in fifth and is running out of money.  Richardson barely hung on.  Biden and Dodd threw in the towel.  Kucinich wasn't even a blip on the screen.   McCain came in fourth but thinks that New Hampshire will turn things around for him.

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No, there was no good news from Iowa.



   

The Good:  Hillary Clinton came in third.

The Bad:  Mike Huckabee came in first.

The Ugly:  Huckabee vs. Obama in November?

Sheriff's Daily Log

Dec. 17 - A call reporting an out-of-control juvenile was received from the elementary school.

Dec. 18 - Rocks were reported on Highway 140 at Briceburg.

Dec. 19 - A barbecue was reported in the roadway on Highway 41.

Dec. 20 - A call reporting a neighbor dispute was taken from Wilbur's Way.

Dec. 21 - Skateboarders were reported at the high school.

Dec. 22 - A man called to report shooting at a bear the previous evening.

Dec. 23 - A call reporting suspicious circumstances was taken from Stout Lane.

I know a man whose first wife was/is nuts.  The actual clinical diagnosis is chronically depressed, paranoid psychotic, but nuts is nuts.

Once upon a time, deciding that she had had enough of being a wife and mother, she simply packed up her bags and left.  The biggest casualty of her Kramer vs. Kramer act was her 14-year old daughter, whom she never even said good-bye to.  That scar never healed and affected everything that child ever did, right up to her untimely death at a young age.

Somewhere along the line, dingbat, as she was so affectionately known, learned that telling people that she had walked out on her husband and children was not getting her any sympathy.  In fact, it was making her look downright bad.  New plan:  she began telling people that her husband had left her for a younger woman, even though that younger woman had not come onto the scene for almost two years after her desertion.  Details. 

What about the children?  Well, her husband and his new wife were blocking her from seeing them, which sounded so much better than saying she simply couldn't be bothered.  This would have been so much more believable if she had just once filed a petition for custody.  Bottom line:  her children were of no interest to her except to use when it suited her purpose.

Eventually, dingbat saw the handwriting on the wall with regard to alimony and began looking for husband number two, eventually finding a man who was as big a loser as she.  Each thought the other had money, and so they were married.  When they discovered that neither of them had any money, this match made somewhere south of heaven was dissolved posthaste..

In order to save face after her second divorce, after nine months of less than wedded bliss, dingbat hit upon a rather novel lie:  her ex-husband had bribed this man to marry her.  Mercy, what a no-good SOB.  Of course, there was no truth to this.  But, in her addled mind, this made sense.  It never once occurred to her how ridiculous this made her look, i.e., she was so pathetic that a man had to be paid to marry her.

Which brings us to Hillary Clinton. 

Desperate to show that she has actually done something in her life that has not been a failure, i.e., healthcare "reform", she is now claiming that some of the trips she took as First Lady were dangerous.  This is what happens when she departs from the script:

"If a place was too dangerous, too poor or too small, send the First Lady."

In her mind, this probably makes sense to Hillary.  To the rest of us, it looks like Bill didn't like her much.

"Our next president will be sworn in on January 20, 2009.  Waiting on that president's desk in the oval office will be problems that are incredibly difficult, that present challenges to our leadership in the world, to our moral authority, to our economy, to the kind of society we are and want to be.  These are some of the problems we know about."

Hillary Clinton on the "myriad of problems" facing the next president on "day one."

"My gut instinct tells me that Clinton is helped by this, especially with her husband by her side."

John Zogby on the assassination of Benazir Bhutto.

Hillary Clinton claims to be the most experienced candidate.  She is taking credit for the good things of her husband's administration.  How much was she actually involved?  We don't know.  The two most secretive people in the nation have made sure that all documents that might shed some light on the subject are off limits to the very people she is trying to woo, i.e., voters.  Just take our word for it, they say with a wink and a nudge.

Furthermore, she has gotten Bill to take the blame for the one thing she was actually in charge of, her failed attempt to socialize health care.  The fact that this terminal adolescent would take responsibility for anything is a testament to his desire to get back into the White House on intern patrol. 

Pakistan went nuclear during the Bill Clinton administration.  Was it Hillary who allowed this to happen, or was it Bill?  As Pakistan descends into chaos, will these nukes fall into the hands of the fanatics bent on our destruction and world domination?  If so, will she take responsibility for the mushroom cloud in the mideast or worse yet, closer to home?

Here's what I predict:  like the child she is, Hillary will take credit for only the good things.  She will blame the bad things on other people. If the fanatics get their hands on a nuke and - God forbid - actually use it, somehow Bush will be to blame.

He was born in an obscure village.  He worked in a carpenter shop until He was thirty.  He then became an itinerant preacher.  He never held an office.  He never had a family or owned a house.  He didn't go to college.  He had no credentials but Himself.

Twenty centuries have come and gone and today, He is the central figure of the human race.  All the armies that ever marched and all the navies that ever sailed and all the parliaments that ever sat and all the kings who ever reigned have not affected the life of man on this earth as much as that

One Solitary Life.