Happy Birthday, Dad...

April 17, 1893.

From the gut...

Most often when we say "gut feeling", we simply mean something like "from deep within, a belief with no evidence of fact". So, it's a guess, but one with strong conviction.

For some time I have been wanting to say the unthinkable... that Barack Obama faces a landslide defeat in November. No one wants to say anything that will evoke a sympathy vote. No one wants Obama opponents to feel overconfident and stay home on election day. But, I speak to a small audience, so I will say it. Obama is toast.

I have watched a lot of presidential elections - 2012, in fact, will be my 21st. I was around for one other, but too young to have had an interest in politics - I was born the day Herbert Hoover was elected!

At times the outcome was evident long in advance. One time experts were fooled even on election day (1948).

In retrospect some election outcomes became apparent in increments along the way. Brick by brick a wall was built that totally blocked one candidate. That is happening in 2012.

Today we hear that Cecil Roberts, president of The United Mine Workers, hints that his Union may not support Barack Obama because of the Administration's "war on coal". The United Mine Workers president not supporting the Democrat candidate??? Does anyone remember John L. Lewis? Lay a brick.

Obama's chief political adviser, David Axelrod stumbled through an interview with a incoherent statement that seemed to confuse his talking point about voter choices, giving the Republican candidate material for an anti-Obama TV commercial. Lay a brick.

Another adviser spouts an equally incoherent statement that seemed to decry American moms. What is the saying about things quintessentially American: Apple Pie and MOTHERHOOD! Lay a brick.

Despite Democrat assertions to the contrary, former Vice-President Dick Chaney is a well-respected public servant. He has declared Obama's presidency to be an unmitigated disaster. A great many will help lay that brick. 

Scandals from GSA to Solyndra to Fast and Furious to signature legislation that may be declared unconstitutional to Secret Service agents exposing themselves to compromise to soaring gasoline prices and food prices... our imaginary mason must indeed be a fast and furious bricklayer.

Yes, last minute surprises happen. Does anyone recall Thomas Eagleton? A Senator from Missouri, Eagleton was chosen as Democrat George McGovern's running mate in 1972. Nearing the election, it was revealed that Eagleton had sought medical treatment for what, fairly or unfairly, was perceived to be a mental disorder. End of McGovern's candidacy.

And, yes, there could be an October surprise this year. But it will have to be an irresistible force to overcome the immoveable wall blocking Obama's reelection.

April 11. Another sad memory.

It was 61 years ago when President Harry S. Truman relieved General Douglas MacArthur of Command of all U.S. Forces in Korea. One of those brushed-off presidential actions which, in my opinion, unleashed an immeasurable dose of death and suffering to a countless number of souls, along with an uncountable amount of treasure.

To recap, at an historic February, 1944 meeting at Yalta, the Soviet Union was awarded administrative control of all of the Korean Peninsula north of the 38th parallel. The Soviets had done nothing to wrest control of Korea from the Japanese and had no business on the peninsula. But at the Yalta meeting, President Roosevelt, senile and ill, sat nodding and drooling as Joseph Stalin demanded control of half of Korea and was granted his wish. He subsequently did nothing but install a puppet Communist Korean dictator and walk away.

In June of 1950 American forces in Korea were purely administrative, there to help the Koreans establish an independent government. I had friends among them, and they could hardly have been considered a fighting force. Out of the blue, the North Koreans crossed that 38th parallel and began driving American forces southward toward the sea.

General MacArthur, perhaps the most brilliant military mind in American history, readied a force and swept across Korea's middle, trapping North Korean forces to their south.With the Korean Army now largely prisoners, American forces then turned north driving their way to the Chinese border. As they neared the Yalu River, which formed that border, Chinese aircraft began attacking American forces in Korea.

The Chinese were weak at that time, their armies poorly trained and poorly armed. Their air force consisted largely of donated Soviet planes. MacArthur wanted to attack the Chinese air bases from which the attacks were launched and end that mischief decisively. President Truman feared that action would provoke a restart of recently concluded World War II and fired MacArthur.

Soon, Chinese ground troops swept across the border by the tens of thousands. Some of my friends there at the time had thought the war was over. Then, one morning their arose a terrible racket as Chinese troops pushed southward. One of my friends, a Marine infantryman, said many among the swarms of Chinese were armed with primitive weaponry. Many thousands were killed, but if you have ever tried to fight off a swarm of thousands of angry hornets, you can understand how they eventually overran the Americans.

American forces were able to take a firm stand at the old 38th parallel border - where it had all begun - and halted the Chinese-Korean advance, but the Americans were ordered to hold at that line. In 1952, General Dwight Eisenhower was elected president. Even before inauguration, he traveled to Korea and brokered a cease-fire, which brings us forward to April 11, 2012, the 61st anniversary of Mr. Truman's change of command in Korea. The cease fire is holding - sort of - but the war never ended.

Imagine, if you will that MacArthur had been given a free hand. A decisive and brutal blow at Chinese air bases north of the Yalu River would have undoubtedly stemmed the Chinese desire to fight for the puppet government in North Korea. After all, the Americans had been fighting for the Chinese to drive Japanese occupiers from their land since the late 1930s. Would not many Chinese have held a favorable enough opinion of Americans to dilute their taste for war over a neighbor which had contributed nothing to the Chinese?

Now, North Korea is militarily much stronger, and today or tomorrow threatens to launch a missile which, presumably, could reach the American mainland. We may shoot it out of the sky... if our current president, like Harry Truman in 1951, doesn't tremble in fear of starting a larger conflict. But think how much more easily we could have attacked some small Chinese air fields six decades ago. Think, too, how North Korean citizens, like their countrymen south of the 38th parallel could have prospered for three generations, instead of having watched their children starve.

Only if they use a gun...

My home is four blocks off a parkway - four lane, divided, with a nice wide median. The terrain is rolling and a bit curved. While this is a residential area, not one residential driveway opens onto this parkway. Still, local traffic officials have determined that the maximum speed limit should be 35 MPH.

About a year ago there was an incident wherein a young man left his brain at home, crawled into his pickup truck and headed for some unrevealed destination requiring he drive north, the length of our neighborhood parkway. For some reason, he decided to ignore the legal speed limit and accelerated his truck to a very high speed, possibly over 75 mph.

An elderly neighborhood couple, southbound on the parkway, arrived at the intersection where they would turn left, across the northbound lanes, to reach their home. Just south of the intersection, the parkway reaches a rise in the ground. As our neighbors turned left into the northbound lanes, the young man in the pickup truck shot over that rise at a speed that made it impossible to stop. His truck hit the car broadside, killing both the man and his wife. Only local news media reported the "accident", and the driver of the truck was to be cited for speeding.

This was a clear case of reckless behavior causing the death of two law abiding citizens. But no nationally known rabble rousers showed up to lead a crowd of protesters. No one started a movement toward "pickup truck control". It was just an accident! Provided the driver's blood alcohol level is below 0.08%, death by reckless use of a motor vehicle is always just an accident.

However, death by a firearm is never just an accident or the act of a deranged person. Recent shootings in the workplace, on school campuses, or in a middle class gated community in Florida are always hate crimes or acts of blatant racism. They are widely covered by national news media, attract all sorts of people protesting for something or other and petitioning for more gun control.

What is it about guns that arouse such passions, while death by any other instrument does not?

Thoughts about music.

My son asked his mother something he described as an odd question: "What are your ten all-time favorite songs?" I don't know how my wife answered, but his question caused me to think. Fist, I did not find the question to be odd. This son is a college professor, a Cognitive Scientist, no less. Maybe he is thinking of some sort of study relating a person's choice of music to their personality traits - I have no idea. I did find his question - in my case - impossible to answer. During my 25 years in broadcasting, I played thousands of songs on the air. There is no way I could name my ten all-time favorites.

Songs evoke memories. Some songs which I did not actually like, evoke pleasant memories, so it is good to hear those songs. Some songs evoke both pleasant and unpleasant memories: pleasant because they recall some happy event. Unpleasant because of a later unhappy ending that followed event... such as, perhaps, the memory of a good friend who later died.

People seem to remember songs for other, different reasons. My wife, an excellent dancer, sometimes says of a song that she paid no attention to the lyric, she just loved the music. I happen to listen for lyrics. I have never been able to dance. Early in our 40+ year marriage she tried to teach me to dance. "Just listen to the beat", she suggested. "What's that?", I asked. She gave up. I was dead serious. I hear the music as a complete blend of all the instruments. I have asked her about a specific sound in a specific piece of music, and she immediately tells me the instrument that made the sound. How does she do that?

I love the skilled use of language and greatly appreciate skillfully written lyrics. Years ago, Reader's Digest magazine included a feature titled "Toward More Picturesque Speech". One quote I remember was, "The man sat heavily in the chair." What a beautifully simple way to perfectly describe something familiar to us all, yet otherwise hard to describe!

In some songs, the lyric is so skillfully written it carries a strong emotional impact. That's my kind of music, even if I don't particularly like the music! It is comforting to know others share that feeling. A fellow disk jockey friend and I once visited about the performance of other disk jockeys. He deplored an incident wherein a young deejay played a Righteous Brother's record on which the lyric pleaded, "...for once in my life let me hold onto the thing I've found...", and followed the song with some silly, flip comment. I agreed. The singer caused the listener to feel the pain of a man always disappointed in life. How could the deejay ignore that pain. Maybe he heard something in the music which we had not heard.