OBAMA = REAGAN . . . . . . . . . PUH-LEEZE

The Left-Wing Mainstream Media has over-reached itself this time:

The Obama Political Machine is obviously in a panic mode - they've seen the poll numbers, they know everything they're doing to the economy and on the international scene is blowing up in their faces, the election last November was a rout that makes Custer's Last Stand look like a Sunday School picnic. State of the Union is report card time and their man gets up there and flubs that - he's got nothing to say and the whole world gets to watch him waffle it.

The fact of the matter is the U.S.S. Obama is leaking like a sieve, but not quite yet dead in the water. In a desperate attempt to save any hope for the future, the Democrats come up with THIS brilliant propaganda theme:


"OBAMA LOVES REAGAN"

The managing editor at TIME Magazine, Richard Stengel, attempts to explain their latest cover; an image of Reagan with his arm around Obama:

"The cover is Why Obama Loves Reagan. It's a Photoshopped image of the two men together. They never actually met, but I'd like to think they'd have a good time if they were sitting down at the White House together and it's basically how Obama from even the 1980s started looking at Reagan as a transformational politician - not in terms of substance, but in terms of style with someone he would model himself after, and that has happened over the last 20 years.


GIVE ME A FREAKING BREAK! DEPARTMENT

Obama HATED Reagan - he even wrote about it in his book Dreams From My Father:

"When classmates in college asked me just what it was that a community organizer did, I couldn't answer them directly. Instead, I'd pronounce on the need for change. Change in the White House, where Reagan and his minions were carrying on their dirty deeds . . ."

Further on, Obama criticizes Reagan for "verbal legerdemain"; accusing Reagan of duplicity in the gap between his optimistic words and the actions of his administration.


This attempt by the Left to repackage Obama as the new Reagan strains the imagination; one of Obama's stated reasons for wanting power was to do away with what Reagan had accomplished. Obama has nothing in common with Ronald Reagan. If Reagan were alive today watching all this, he'd puke at what's being done to his legacy and to the great work he did as President.

Everybody knows that liberals all hate Reagan, they all despise Reagan, to a man. A singular, constant objective of the Left always has been to revise Reagan history; during Reagan's time in office they berated his economic policy - trickle-down; "a rising tide lifts all boats" - their catch phrase for it was 'Voodoo Economics'. Never mind that his policies actually worked, and led to a twenty-eight year economic boom, unparalleled in the history of the entire world.

Reagan fought the Communists when the rest of the world had resigned itself to turning their collective back to the Red Threat, drop trousers, bend over and grab the ankles. He alerted on the arm shipments into the Western Hemisphere from Communist sources, and in Grenada and Nicaragua he did something about it. What did the Democrats do to admire and support this Cold Warrior? They attempted to destroy him for domestic political gain - Iran-Contra - and a lot of good, decent mens' careers were ruined in the process.

They mock Reagan, suggest he was suffering from Alzheimer's while in the office. Just recently a young wet-behind-the-ears whippersnapper informed me that Ronald Reagan was nothing more than a drooling, Disney automaton during his last two years in the Whitehouse - the fact that this kid was in diapers during that time frame illustrates the effectiveness of the Left's ongoing campaign against Ronald Reagan.

Here's Ronald Reagan's Farewell Address to the Nation, some ten months after leaving office:




Sounds lucid enough to me . . . and listen to the glorious things the Ron Bomb is saying: he's celebrating patriotism, love of country, American Exceptionalism, and deploring the fact that a portion of this has been lost amongst the younger generation.

Obama, on the other hand, has made a career out of badmouthing his country, and shaking hands with such well-known America haters as hate-spewing preacherman Jeremiah Wright and the terrorist Bill Ayers:

"GOD D*MN AMERI-K-K-K-A ! ! !"

"I DON'T REGRET SETTING BOMBS. I FEEL WE DIDN'T DO ENOUGH."


So now that Obama's lost his mojo, what's a closet Communist gonna do to save his political bacon? Who you gonna call? The ghost of Ronald Reagan.

Richard Stengel continues: "A lot of parallels. Reagan obviously lost both houses in that midterm election. His popularity went down to 35%. But the economy in Reagan's case came back that next year, came back at 7% GDP growth. If Obama gets half of that, he's lucky. But the other difference is, I mean there are a lot of similarities but one difference is you always knew where Ronald Reagan stood. I mean for 25 years he was talking about government is the problem, not the solution. And Obama doesn't quite have that same clear through line that Reagan has. And he's trying to get that. You can't say the opposite of that, that government is the solution, not the problem. And in the story, he talks about how there needed to be a correction to the Reagan correction. And that's what he's trying to do."

These people hate Reagan, they despise Reagan, they're against everything that Ronald Reagan stood for, and now they're trying to make Obama the next Reagan. Yet Stengel himself admits that Obama wants to reverse Reagan. The body always rises to the surface; the truth always comes out.


CONTRAST AND COMPARE:

Ronald Reagan's message was that America is a shining city on a hill, whose best days are still ahead of her.


Barack Obama apologized to France and Europe ("America Has Shown Arrogance" speech Strasbourg, France, April 3, 2009.); apologized to the Muslim World ("We Have Not Been Perfect" interview with Al Arabiya, January 27, 2009); apologized for the War on Terror ("We Went off Course" speech at the National Archives, Washington, D.C., May 21, 2009); apologized for Guantanamo ("A Rallying Cry for Our Enemies" speech at the National Archives, Washington, D.C., May 21, 2009)


Reagan's message was that Government is not the solution to our problems, that Government IS the problem.


Obama insists that Government's mission is to "spread the wealth around". In cavalier style he signs off on the greatest government expenditure in the history of the Republic - GREATER than the total sum combined government spending in the entire history of the Republic - and shrugging it off, he dismisses the citizenry; "You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, . . . they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion . . . to explain their frustrations."


THERE IS NO COMPARISON

Obama loves Ronald Reagan? Sorry, I ain't buying it . . .


. . . . . . . . . . . . . SEAN LINNANE SENDS


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GOOD MORNIN' BLUES

Huddie Lead Belly Ledbetter was born in 1888 or 1889 on a plantation near Mooringsport, Louisiana, but the family moved to Leigh, Texas, when he was five. By 1903, Lead Belly was already a singer and guitarist of some note. He performed for nearby Shreveport, Louisiana audiences. Lead Belly began to develop his own style of music after exposure to a variety of musical influences of the saloons, brothels, and dance halls in the notorious St. Paul's Bottoms red-light district.


Prison years


Lead Belly's volatile temper sometimes led him into trouble with the law. In 1915 he was convicted "of carrying a pistol" and sentenced to do time on the Harrison County chain gang, from which he escaped. In January 1918 he was imprisoned a second time, this time after killing one of his relatives, Will Stafford, in a fight over a woman. In 1918 he was incarcerated in Sugar Land, Texas, where he probably learned the song "Midnight Special". In 1925 he was pardoned and released after writing a song appealing to Governor Pat Morris Neff for his freedom, appealing to his strong religious beliefs.

In 1930, Lead Belly was back in prison for attempted homicide after he knifed a white man in a fight. It was there, three years later, that he was "discovered" by musicologists John Lomax and son Alan Lomax during a visit to the Angola Prison Farm. They recorded hundreds of his songs on portable aluminum disc recording equipment for the Library of Congress.

Lead Belly was released again on August 1, 1934, after the Lomaxes took a petition to Louisiana Governor Oscar K. Allen at Lead Belly's urgent request. The petition was on the other side of a recording of his signature song, "Goodnight Irene."


Moniker

There are several, somewhat conflicting stories about Lead Belly's famous nickname. Some say his fellow inmates dubbed him "Lead Belly" as a play on his last name and reference to his physical toughness; others say he earned the name after being shot in the stomach with shotgun buckshot. Another theory has it that the name refers to his ability to drink homemade liquor (moonshine).

Whatever its origin, he adopted the nickname as a pseudonym while performing, and it stuck. Regarding his toughness, it is also recounted that during his second prison term, another inmate stabbed him in the neck (leaving him with a fearsome scar that he subsequently covered with a bandanna), and he took the knife away and in turn almost killed his attacker with it.




Fame, but not Fortune

By the time Lead Belly was released from prison, the United States was deep in the Great Depression and jobs were very scarce. In September 1934, Lead Belly met with John A. Lomax and for three months he assisted the 67-year-old John Lomax in his folk song collecting in the South.

In December, Lead Belly participated in a "smoker" (group sing) at an MLA meeting in Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania, where he was written up in the press as a convict who had sung his way out of prison. On New Year's Day, 1935, the pair arrived in New York City, where John Lomax was scheduled to meet with his publisher, Macmillan, about a new collection of folk songs. The newspapers were eager to write about the "singing convict" and Time magazine made one of its first filmed March of Time newsreels about him. Lead Belly attained fame (though not fortune).

Life magazine ran a three-page article titled, "Lead Belly - Bad Nigger Makes Good Minstrel," in the April 19, 1937 issue. It included a full-page, color (rare in those days) picture of him sitting on grain sacks playing his guitar and singing. Lead Belly continued to struggle financially. Like many performers, what income he made during his lifetime would come from touring, not from record sales.




In 1939, Lead Belly was back in jail for assault, after stabbing a man in a fight in Manhattan. Alan Lomax, then 24, took him under his wing and helped raise money for his legal expenses, dropping out of graduate school to do so.

After his release (in 1940-41), Lead Belly appeared as a regular on Alan Lomax and Nicholas Ray's groundbreaking CBS radio show Back Where I Come From, broadcast nationwide. He also appeared in night clubs with Josh White, becoming a fixture in New York City's surging folk music scene and befriending the likes of Sonny Terry, Brownie McGhee, Woody Guthrie, and a young Pete Seeger, all fellow performers on Back Where I Come From.

During the first half of the decade he recorded for RCA, the Library of Congress, and for Moe Asch (future founder of Folkways Records), and in 1944 headed to California, where he recorded strong sessions for Capitol Records. In 1949 Lead Belly had a regular radio broadcast on station WNYC in New York on Sunday nights on Henrietta Yurchenko's show. Later in the year he began his first European tour with a trip to France. Lead Belly was the first American country blues musician to see success in Europe.