CNN: Gingrich and the Communist

This caught my eye last night in the news:

CNN announced a few schedule changes today, including the timeslot for its revamped version of "Crossfire.".....The revamped show will be hosted by S.E. Cupp, Stephanie Cutter, Newt Gingrich and Van Jones.

"Situation Room" already lost an hour of its timeslot back in February, when it was cut from three to two hours to make room for "The Lead with Jake Tapper," and there were rumors earlier this summer that new CNN president Jeff Zucker was slowly but surely trying to phase Blitzer out -- which CNN strongly denied.....(by Sarah Morrison for The Wrap)"

Yes, GINGRICH on CNN.  Conservative S.E. Cupp, too.  and liberal Stephanie Cutter and...drum roll.......VAN JONES.   Yes, Van Jones, the communist.  Here's info from a 2009 article:

Van Jones is President Barack Obama's newly appointed "Green Jobs Czar."
Jones' official title is Special Advisor on Green Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation for the White House Council on Environmental Quality.
The 41-year-old Yale Law School graduate and civil rights lawyer is also the founder of California's Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, "a non-profit agency for justice, opportunities and peace."
Sounds idyllic, but Jones' past isn't so pastoral.
The Ella Baker Center was connected to STORM (Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement), a "multi-racial activist collective with Marxist influences" with which Jones was involved.
In 1992, Van Jones founded another STORM project, Bay Area PoliceWatch, a "hotline and lawyer-referral service for victims and survivors of police abuse." This is fitting, perhaps, since Jones was himself arrested and detained briefly during a protest after the Rodney King verdict that same year.
Jones told the East Bay Express in 2005:

I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th [1992], and then the verdicts came down on April 29th. By August, I was a communist. (...)  I met all these young radical people of color – I mean really radical: communists and anarchists. And it was, like, 'This is what I need to be a part of.' I spent the next ten years of my life working with a lot of those people I met in jail, trying to be a revolutionary.

Like a character out of The Big Chill, Van Jones seems to have evolved from radical activist to Establishment insider. Perhaps only a left-wing administration incapable of recognizing irony would put a self-described communist in charge of creating jobs.
Luckily for Van Jones, and Obama's many other "Czars" with dubious credentials and troubling backgrounds, his new job was not dependent upon making it through Congressional hearings. (by Kathy Shaidle of examiner.com)

Van Jones..the guy Valerie Jarrett gushed over as someone they'd watched for years as he grew and developed into someone they wanted in the White House...until the country reminded them "ssshh...he's a Communist" and oops...Jonesie was GONE. (don't worry;  he's been really active  since).   But, CNN doesn't mind if he's a Communist.   And, of course, to this day, he blames Republicans for getting him out, though liberal Bob Beckel was one of those who led the charge. 

Of course, MSNBC has Lawrence O'Donnell, self ascribed Socialist.....so......I guess the extreme nut jobs are fine for the Left. 

Z  ...I can't resist adding that I have always thought Mr. Van Jones is ONE good looking man!

Chris Matthews angry at Obama again???

In this video, Chris comes unglued over Obama's lack of leadership;  he says this is what translates to points for Mitch McConnell and Republicans running in 2014.   He says nothing can stop that landslide from happening because the scandals ARE real.  
I say the media will stop the landslide because most Americans won't even hear what Matthews is saying.  Have you heard his diatribe made on May 15th?   of course not.... because...

.....THIS is how powerful the media is.   This is the 21st century version of the American journalist's old saying "STOP THE PRESSES!" when they wanted a story killed.  The press sees the scandals are real, they hear the nasty but undeniable truth from a pro-Obama guy like Matthews who actually does tell the truth from time to time, and it's KILL THE STORY! 

Do you think that order to stifle a story comes from the White House?  You bet it does...it's "stop the story, kill it...."  accompanied by something like "....or you won't get Valerie Jarrett's next interview........."   or "...Axelrod won't give you interviews anymore.."  or "....we'll give half your air time to Sharpton"............


As conservatives who do think Americans would be better served hearing what everyone says, even someone who criticizes Obama, CAN we fix this situation?  Can we EVER have an honest media again?

Z

Super Beta Prostate.......thank you

I don't know about you, but I am really stunned and saddened by commercials these days which include amazing and sometimes downright disgusting personal products.  We have anything for your "period"..your erections....we talk about constipation in ways that never would have been done even 10 years ago;  they're gross and common and take away any semblance of loveliness and decency we used to enjoy.

BUT, I want to thank a product called Super Beta Prostate.  (this might be the dumbest post I've ever done, but I really do feel strongly about this!!)   I thank this product for a very elegant black man near the end of the commercial who says that this product "took away the urgency to 'need to use the bathroom'".   Every single time I hear him, I want to pinch him on the cheeks and kiss his forehead for the obvious early childhood good stuff he got...something in him doesn't allow him to say 'pee' or 'urinate' on television. Hallelujah. 

Do you have a pet peeve commercial?  Is there one you particularly like?  Do you see my point about the guy who just simply says he 'needs to use the bathroom'? :-)

tell us!
z

"TV or NOT TV"

I've been thinking for a long time that I wish we had the kind of news coverage we used to have......
"News at six, film at eleven".   For those of you who are too young to remember (First, let me give you my condolences because that means you didn't know America when she was a better country), it took until eleven o'clock for the news to get a film up to illustrate whatever news stories they covered at the dinner hour.

Maybe they had news at noon, too, I don't remember.  And maybe five and six pm, but then it was OFF until later at night.  People walked, read, did homework, spent time with each other and watched entertaining television that wasn't reality shows, raunchy sitcoms, etc.

Since then, all the many news programs must have advertising money so they have news on all day and they cash in from advertisers.  My opinion is that this is choking us.   I don't know about you, but as much as I hate to hear a little girl's been abducted in Mississippi, or a 21 year old woman disappeared coming out of a New York bar and hasn't been seen since, I don't want to know about it.  I have enough on my mind.  You do, too.  I think it wears at us...erodes us............puts us on edge. As if life in America today wasn't bad enough.

For those of you who'll say "Just turn off your TV,"  that's not the point of my post.  The point is I think there's too much news and that all networks seem to squeeze every minute that they can out of every story and I think that's unhealthy for a society.

DO YOU?  
While we're on it, is there a wonderful old entertaining TV show you'd like to see back on the air?   Funny, I wrote this post a few days ago (and even posted it and got a few comments but then saved it again), then decided to post it Wednesday morning and had received this today...which I figured kind of illustrates entertaining TV!....enjoy...but I would still like to know if you agree about the TV NEWS situation... do you feel like "Enough already!"?

 I love that! 


Z

The Right is VIOLENT! MURDEROUS! ...oh, wait.......

Do NOT miss the Jon Stewart video below where he is SKEWERING of ABCs Brian Ross for his LIE.   Brooke has it at her wonderful blog and I swiped it because Mustang sent me this article and they complimented each other, BUT VIACOM HAS BLOCKED IT SINCE I PUBLISHED IT LAST NIGHT so you'll have to click on her link here and see it, it's SO well worth it.  Can't let their hero look bad!  BY THE WAY...VIACOM HASN'T BLOCKED MANY, MANY JON STEWART VIDEOS ON YOUTUBE...WHY DO YOU SUPPOSE THIS ONE SKEWERING BRIAN ROSS GOT AXED?  ODD?

But please read this first.....we all need to know what's going on....

Media assumptions that violence is right wing are routine — and routinely wrong.

On Friday morning, Brian Ross of ABC News speculated on live TV that James Holmes, the accused killer in Aurora, Colo., was a member of the Tea Party.  A few hours later, Ross posted a short apology online; Holmes had no Tea Party connection.

Ross’ unfounded speculation wasn’t unusual (although the speed of his apology was).  This was merely the latest case of media commentators jumping to the conclusion that violent atrocities should be attributed to members of the political right.  Let’s look back at how often the media has falsely invoked Tea Partiers and other “right-wing nut jobs” in the past few years.

* September 2009: The discovery of hanged census-taker Bill Sparkman in rural Kentucky fueled media speculation that anti-government Tea Partiers had killed him.  In fact, he’d killed himself and staged his corpse to look like a homicide so his family could collect on life insurance.

* February 2010: Joe Stack flew his small plane into an IRS building in Austin, Texas.  The media immediately suggested that the anti-tax rhetoric of the Tea Party led to the attack.  In fact, Stack’s suicide note quoted the Communist Manifesto.

* That same month, a professor at the University of Alabama, Amy Bishop, shot and killed three colleagues at a faculty meeting.  The gun-loving Tea Party came under immediate suspicion.  But Bishop was a lifelong Democrat and Obama donor.

* March 2010: John Patrick Bedell shot two Pentagon security officers at close range.  The media went wild with speculation that a right-wing extremist had reached the end of his rope.  Bedell turned out to be a registered Democrat and 9/11 Truther.

* May 2010: New York authorities disarmed a massive car bomb in Times Square.  Mayor Bloomberg immediately speculated that the bomber was someone upset about the president’s new health-care law.  The media trumpeted the idea that crazed conservatives had (again, they implied) turned to violence.  In fact, the perp was Faisal Shahzad, an Islamic extremist.

* August 2010: Amidst the debate over the Ground Zero Mosque, Michael Enright stabbed a Muslim cab driver in the neck.  It was immediately dubbed an “anti-Muslim stabbing,” with “rising Islamophobia” on the political right to blame.  In fact, Enright, a left-leaning art student, had worked with a firm that produced a pro-mosque statement.

* September 2010: James Lee, 43, took three hostages at the Discovery Channel’s headquarters in Maryland.  The media speculation was unstoppable: Lee was surely a “climate-change denier” who’d resorted to violence.  Oops: He was an environmentalist who viewed humans as parasites on the Earth.

* January 2011: Jared Lee Loughner went on a rampage in Tucson, Ariz.  Again, the media knew just who to blame: the Tea Party and its extremist rhetoric.  In fact, Loughner was mostly apolitical — a conspiracy theorist who, to date, has been judged too mentally incompetent to stand trial.

The media’s habitual blaming of the political right is endemic and incurable.  Media figures sincerely believe the right wing is violent, so naturally assume that violent people must be right wing.  This won’t be the last time they make that mistake.*** (see below)  (Z: by the way, the majority of that's only in one year, don't forget)

Gabriel Malor is a lawyer and blogger in Washington, DC.Twitter: @gabrielmalor\

Z:  *** particularly before the upcoming election.   Liberal Americans don't seek the truth;  they swallow the media's lies.

Mike Rowe and Rita........check it out!

Check out our pal and fellow blogger Rita's excellent blog HERE....She's got two videos show Mike Rowe of Discovery Channel's 'Dirty Jobs' talking about JOBS IN AMERICA....I couldn't agree more with him and truly believe you'll want to at least listen to the top video she's highlighted. 
He is SO RIGHT...and you'll be so troubled by some of his facts...I nominate him JOBS CZAR :-) At least HE wouldn't be sending American jobs overseas like the one we have is!
z

Obama uses demonstratable LIES in his TV ad...and keeps them running

Here is an Obama campaign ad saying that Romney, through Bain Capital, was responsible for sending many jobs overseas.  They cite the Washington Post as a reference.  Oops.

The Washington Post gives the Obama people FOUR PINOCCHIOS for LYING...yes, not ME, but the Liberal Washington Post. When the Romney folks saw what Obama was doing, they tried to get the truth known.  HERE is the article about that....read that carefully, you'll be amazed at what Obama tried to pull....until The Washington Post's OWN "Fact Checker" did their homework and came up with the truth.
Here's some of that.............
A better source for Romney’s behavior as an investor might be someone who actually worked on Wall Street, such as former Obama auto czar Steven Rattner. “Bain Capital is not now, nor has it ever been, some kind of Gordon Gekko-like, fire-breathing corporate raider that slashed and burned companies, immolating jobs wherever they appear in its path,” Rattner wrote in Politico this year.    Yup, Steve Rattner, OBAMA's auto czar.
Regarding the outsourcing claims, we have frowned on these before. The Obama campaign rests its case on three examples of Bain-controlled companies sending jobs overseas. But only one of the examples — involving Holson Burns Group — took place when Romney was actively managing Bain Capital.
 Regarding the other claims, concerning Canadian electronics maker SMTC Manufacturing and customer service firm Modus Media, the Obama campaign tries to take advantage of a gray area in which Romney had stepped down from Bain — to manage the Salt Lake City Olympics — but had not sold his shares in the firm. We had previously given the Obama campaign Three Pinocchios for such tactics.
The Modus Media case is also not an example of shipping jobs overseas. The company closed one plant in California and transferred the jobs to North Carolina, Washington and Utah. At the same time, it opened an unrelated plant in Mexico. The Obama campaign once trumpeted the fact that we had dinged a conservative Super PAC for making the same leap in logic.

The claim that Romney outsourced jobs as governor is equally overblown.

You see, that Romney was a 'corporate raider' is false.    So, Obama has an ad using the Washington Post as a source that Romney sent jobs overseas, but the Washington Post's own Fact Checker ends its exposure of the lie with:

The Pinocchio Test

The Obama campaign fails to make its case. On just about every level, this ad is misleading, unfair and untrue, from the use of “corporate raider” to its examples of alleged outsourcing.  Simply repeating the same debunked claims won’t make them any more correct. 

Think most Americans will only see the ad and not the truth?    You can bet on it.  And then they vote.

(thanks to Elbro for the footwork on this story)
 z

Archie had it RIGHT after all :-) THE most fun video I've seen in a long while...

Scotty (whose blog you ought to visit!) had this video up and I had to borrow it ......  SO much fun to watch (except having to see Obama)........  give it a look, it's short and it is fun!  ARCHIE was a prophet! :-)
z

Cialis.......rub-a-dub-dub...?

Do you ever wonder what's behind the CIALIS ad on television?  I've always wanted to ask you, or ask anybody!  I mean, there's this ad here in the image to the left, and there was another one which had a couple sitting in separate bathtubs on the edge of a lake....that couple on the lake were holding hands, unlike this one.  Maybe this couple had a tiff? :-)
I was thinking that maybe the guy wouldn't need Cialis if they left the separate bathtubs and went into the house?  Just a thought............ :-)  
What's the thinking, what's so sexy, about people sitting in separate porcelain basins..........?  And do YOU have a couple of bathtubs on the edge of YOUR lake?  Do you HAVE a lake? !  Can you imagine who sold this idea to the Cialis bigwigs?   Seriously!?

z

Who IS this stranger?

I didn't write this but received it in an email the other day:

A few years after I was born, my Dad met a stranger who was new to our
small Texas town.  From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer and soon invited him to live with our family.  The stranger was quickly accepted and was around from then on.

As I grew up, I never questioned his place in my family..  In my young
mind, he had a special niche.  My parents were complementary instructors: Mom taught me good from evil, and Dad taught me to obey.  But the stranger...he was our storyteller.  He would keep us spellbound for hours on end with Adventures, mysteries and comedies.

 If I wanted to know anything about politics, history or science, he always knew the answers about the past, understood the present and even seemed able to predict the future!  He took my family to the first major
league ball game.  He made me laugh, and he made me cry.  The stranger never stopped talking, but Dad didn't seem to mind.

Sometimes, Mom would get up quietly while the rest of us were shushing each other to listen to what he had to say, and she would go to the kitchen for peace and quiet. (I wonder now if she ever prayed for the
stranger to leave.)

 Dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions, but the stranger never felt obligated to honor them.  Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our home... Not from us, our friends or any visitors.
 Our longtime visitor, however, got away with four-letter words that burned my ears and made my dad squirm and my mother blush.  My Dad didn't permit the liberal use of alcohol..  But the stranger encouraged
us to try it on a regular Basis.  He made cigarettes look cool, cigars manly and pipes distinguished. He talked freely (much too freely!) about sex.  His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, and
generally embarrassing.

I now know that my early concepts about relationships were influenced  strongly by the stranger.  Time after time, he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was seldom rebuked... And NEVER asked to leave.

More than fifty years have passed since the stranger moved in with our family.  He has blended right in and is not nearly as fascinating as he was at first.  Still, if you could walk into my parents' den today, you would still find him sitting over in his corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures.

His name?.... .. .We just call him 'TV.' He has a wife now....We call her Computer.'

Z:  Do you think the television's done more harm than good?  It's an intriguing hypothesis, don't you think?    I have my opinions...what are yours?

z

Couric and Lauer.........what a boost for Obama!!??

HERE is an article about Katie Couric leaving CBS and talking to NBC's Matt Lauer about doing a talk show host together starting in September 2012.  A glitch in their proceedings is that Lauer's TODAY SHOW contract is up only at the end of 2012 and she needs to get her show up by September. 
Lauer's pretty capable, but imagine that the experts in this field feel that  "....NBC can be counted on to make perhaps the biggest offer in television news history to keep him at “Today.”   Really? MATT LAUER is worth that much?  WHY?

 











What caught my attention is what a boon this could be for the Left.   Neither Couric nor Lauer have ever shied away from displaying their liberal politics in sly or overt ways so I'm guessing this could be, for the Democrats, a fantastic couple of months of free advertising/campaigning just in time for the 2012 November election.    

Check this out from the above link:
In 2006, Mr. Moonves looked to do the same thing for his news division, which was still battered by attacks on its former anchor, Dan Rather.  (odd that he's now considered 'battered', huh?  After the lying he did against Bush, remember? Don't look now, but I think Bush was battered, not Rather?)

Here's even a better paragraph you must read:
“I think she was really resurrected by the interview with Palin. It was a game changer in the campaign,” said Ms. Muller, who is on the committee that gave Ms. Couric a Walter Cronkite award for her impact on the 2008 election. “I think it really, really showed us what she is capable of. I play it for my journalism classes when I teach interviewing techniques.”    A journalism prof shows Couric's interview of Palin, who most think did so badly in that interview....imagine the 'lesson' that gives the sycophantic students!  I loved that one...oh, but there IS NO BIAS IN JOURNALISM THESE DAYS, right? :-)  (yes, a lot of sarcasm there!)

Here's my bigger point:  I wonder if the DNC would pay NBC enough to get Lauer out of his contract?  


ya think? 
z

15 minutes of Network Television................

I've been lazy this morning and lolling around drinking tea and watching TV because we have had a lovely rainy few days here in West Los Angeles, a welcome change to "it never rains in sunny California"........I love it, it's dark, cozy, the kind of day when you want to stay inside.  I wish I could, I have to leave around noon, so I took advantage of the morning.  I looked at a book I'm reading but decided I was even too lazy to read and so I watched network television, something I almost never do.   Here's what I found:

The very early LA morning news, around 6:30 am, always (always) has women delivering the news in very low cut cocktail dresses with long, dangly earrings and stiletto heels. I do watch that from time to time, and it never fails to make me curious who'd ever dress like that so early in the morning.

CBS was talking about the political races getting tighter and tighter (which they are, folks, we need to be a little less optimistic and keep hammering friends/family to vote), Republican leads of a week or two ago are dwindling.   Here's one reason why they're dwindling:
During the short segment, CBS only discussed perceived gaffes, carefully edited, of Sharron Angle, Christine O'Donnell and Republican Buck from Colorado, whose highly important lead is shrinking by the second.  That was it...short snippets from Republican candidates to show why the gaffes they've made have their races  tightening, as if they were Dem campaign ads.  No mention of any gaffes by the Dems.....It was announced as "this is why the races are tightening" and that was that.  What it was, of course, was a great opportunity to show gaffes.......that's all.   Does the DNC pay for this kind of advertising by network TV?

Rachael Ray...She had on some couple which hosts a TV show called "Strictest Parents" (or something like that?)...they talked about how kids put vodka into their eye so they can get higher faster, how kids are choking each other and themselves for a thrill, and how kids can find 'how to make flame throwers' on the internet (all had videos as kind of a 'how to').   During the segment, the mother of this parental couple was smiling the whole time.  "Here's how they kill themselves" ..big smile.  Her advice was to sit your kids down and list these things and have them sign that they won't ever do them.  (Yes, I'm serious.)

There's a new show called "Whatever" with 2 women who interviewed a really quite charming guy who identified himself as gay ....  they were talking about electronics and he said he just learned to text last week (which is better than me, by the way), and one of the hostesses said "Jennifer's been having SEX by Text message for FIVE YEARS!?"    He, of course, had the good taste and sense to ask "Jennifer" if she didn't mind having been outed just then in front of millions of people and she said no, it was fine, it was 'liberating'.   Yes, I'm serious again. The guy came back with "I just can't text that fast"...which was so clever and amusing I had to hand it to him.  um.........anyway:

CNN had a man from Uganda talking about how some new Ugandan newspaper has published the faces, names, etc., of 100 homosexuals so they can be outed and chastised in society. It's a dreadful story.  Here's what got to me:  The CNN reporter talked about how homophobic Ugandans have been and then said that "US Missionaries have encouraged the legislature of Uganda to push for laws making homosexuality punishable by imprisonment or even death."   REALLY?    Uganda's population is 1/3 Muslim so this slant of CNN's was not only questionable, but probably utterly ridiculous.   Of course, we know how accepting Islam is to the gay lifestyle :-)   Do you personally know one Christian who's want to kill any homosexual?


BUT, ABC redeemed the morning for me and my channel surfing finally paid off BIG TIME: There was Leon Russell on their CONCERT SERIES.........with Elton John, but who cares about Sir Elton?  (well, okay, he's good, but LEON WAS ON!)  My LEON was there...looking a little worse for age wear than I'd have hoped, and singing new stuff which doesn't meet his earlier standards but I was one happy girl to see him, believe me!   Leon, YOU ROCK!

For the rest of the shows I had seen?......What a way to ruin an otherwise lovely rainy, cozy morning.

geeeeeeZ

Wanted: Young Black liberals to stump Obama......?? Ya THINK?! :-)

Is this HOLLYWOOD or WASHINGTON?  Please see the CASTING CALL notice for an Upcoming October 14th Campaign speech...oops, I mean Town Hall meeting, which Obama's holding.    Yes, it is an actual casting call......MTV and BET (Black Entertainment Television) are sponsoring this request "To ensure that the audience represents diverse interests and political views "  Is that adorable?   Right...I'm very sure that MTV and BET watchers will afford the casting directors a substantially wide assortment of political views to challenge Mr. Obama.  :-)   Pretty funny, isn't it?
I wish Bush had used casting calls to fill his venues, I'd like to have seen the never-ending, disdainful clamor from the media.  I believe some of his people had kept hecklers out and that got quite the negative press, didn't it? This is a whole new level of Hollywood-type behavior and obfuscation and you will NEVER hear about it in our leftwing media.

geeeeeeeeeeeeeeeZ!!!!!
z

Australia and Oprah......who foots the bill?

Oprah's bringing a whole studio audience to Australia.......She'll be shooting a show or two there, I guess. If and when you'd heard about this trip, didn't you think SHE was paying? Maybe I'm reading it wrong, but it looks like Australia's getting the tab because their Tourism Minister thinks that'll bring more tourists to their country. Well, at least they'll have about 300 tourists all coming together with her, right? In a plane flown by John Travolta. (WHAT?)
Oprah is apparently worth $1.5 BILLION dollars, wouldn't you have thought she's footing the bill when she comes out on the stage and raises her arms and says "You're all going to AUSTRALIA!"? (What a woman! What a trip! What generosity on her part!) That's chump change for her.....I sure thought she was paying. What do you think of all of this? HERE is what most Aussie's think. Can't say's I blame 'em, Mate!

z

The Jetsons are coming....?

Remember THE JETSONS? For those of you who don't, it was a space age cartoon some of us watched as kids, a show where a family lived in a kind of space needle home and putted around the sky in an air-car with their dog* to the store and the hair salon, etc. We all thought it was NUTS, "this could never happen!" They flew around from time to time, but they could do everything from home. They even had a robot maid. Obviously, we don't FLY around literally, like they did, but we might as well be flying, in a sense, as we stay in our cars and go from place to place.

So, living and flying around in insulated sorts of 'bubbles', never really making contact with other people in their own insulated bubbles....is that a good thing?

A fellow who attends my church is in a wheel chair but has fair use of his arms, thankfully. I see him on the streets more frequently than I'd have expected because I just don't see many people I know tooling around town. I'll turn into a restaurant parking lot and see Sam scooting across the driveway and I'll stop and put my window down and we'll chat. I'll see him while driving down the street and honk and wave and Sam throws me a huge smile and waves back. I love seeing Sam because I like him and because it feels good to see a friend when I least expect it, and I got to thinking how kind of 'cozy' that is, how very 'Mayberry-esque', to use another television show analogy!

I got to thinking that it's our CARS which prevent us from seeing more friends around town, even in a city as big as the one I'm usually driving around in; Santa Monica, California.
Everyone's in cars and, yes, occasionally you'll see someone you know and you'll both wave but that's really rare when everyone's got his eyes on the road.
A few years ago, I parked and put money in a meter and had a doctor's appointment which took a much longer time than I'd expected. I worried that my time on the meter was over and I'd get a $50 ticket. When I got outside, I saw my car had plenty of money in the meter and I was really surprised and ........ curious! The next Sunday, at church, a friend said "Hey, Z, lucky you didn't get a ticket the other day in front of the St John's Medical Building, huh?" Yes, this friend walks everywhere and did that for me......my Meter Angel! That's hard to do when you drive by.

When we're not in our cars, we relate with people.......we help, we talk and feel a sense of community that's so rare anymore. And the internet is an enigma in that some of us spend waaaaay too much time on it and relate less with our family and friends on the phone, for example. Or we stay home more than we might because we're enjoying blogging, etc. We don't go to the stores as much because we buy on-line, right? How many people go to the library anymore just to look something up? But, in the place of our REAL FRIENDS in 'real life', we have a whole circle of amazing people on the blogs who share our values, which is evidenced as we read their blogs or their comments at ours, and I wonder about that........that's a good thing, but is it the best thing?
Should we shut the computer more often and get outside in order to avoid becoming THE JETSONS? Is it better to get out, walk to the store, shop instead of buy on-line, eat out instead of bringing in take-out? Is Mayberry better than the Jetsons? What do you think? Can we turn back the tide?
Quiz: What was the name of the Jetsons' dog? :-) I know, it's easy but I like little TV quizzes, humor me!
Z

Kevin Eubanks is leaving THE TONIGHT SHOW

After 18 years, Kevin Eubanks, the Black band leader and guitarist with Jay Leno's show's band, is leaving... I say he's Black, though you all know it, of course, because, upon hearing of his leaving, someone asked ..

"So would he like to see another African-American musician take his place? Kevin's response was......

"I want to see a really great band leader replace me. But I wouldn't be mad," he said, with a laugh."

Good for him. I always did like him, now I like him even better :-) He wants the BEST, no matter WHO it is, no matter what color. Good luck, Kevin, you've been terrific, you'll be missed by those who stay up late enough to watch, and I wish you all the best.

Z