ONE-TRICK DONKEY
HOW JOHN WAYNE SAVED THE MARINES
To celebrate the birthday of a truly great American, let me tell you how John Wayne saved the Marine Corps. In the aftermath of World War II, the psychological letdown after years of war and bloodshed, the huge demobilization of servicemen, the desire to slash military spending, and the antipathy towards the military by left-wingers in the Democrat Party all combined in a call by a number of Senators and Congressmen to abolish the Marine Corps.
In this, they were supported by the Doolittle Board, created by the Truman Administration, which called for the Marine Corps to be “disbanded” as a separate military force, and “unified” with the Army (yes, the board was headed by an Army general, Jimmy Doolittle).
A group of enterprising Marines - you can always depend on Marines to be enterprising - with Hollywood connections thought a movie made around the most famous photograph of World War II, Joe Rosenthal’s of the Marines raising the flag on Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima, could help sway public opinion against their disbandment.
They approached legendary director Allan Dwan, who agreed to commission a script. The movie was to be called “The Sands of Iwo Jima,” and everybody agreed there was only one man who could play the lead role of Sergeant Stryker: John Wayne.
To their great surprise, Wayne turned it down. He didn’t like the script, and he wasn’t enamored of the character of Stryker. The Marines came to the rescue again. The Marine Corps Commandant, General Clifton B. Cates, got on an airplane and flew from Washington to California to personally request Wayne make the picture. When General Cates explained the stakes involved - the very existence of the Marine Corps - Wayne immediately changed his mind, promising the general he would do everything in his power to have the movie be a success.
The Sands of Iwo Jima was released in 1949 and quickly became a runaway blockbuster, with millions of moviegoers packing every theatre showing it. Wayne was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar, establishing him as Hollywood’s Number One box-office star. The Doolittle Board folded its tent, and no politician on Capitol Hill ever again said a word about disbanding the Marines.
So let’s all say “Semper Fi” to the memory of John Wayne.
FLASHBACK FRIDAY – TRANS-SAHARA EXPEDITION
January 2003. Our campsite at dawn in the center of the Sahara called the Téneré in Niger. We found hand stone axes here 8,000 years old when the Sahara was green. Crossing the world’s greatest desert is a true expedition, one of the most astounding adventures to be had on earth, geographically, culturally, and historically. Unfortunately, it is too dangerous with lawless and ideological banditry today. I can hardly wait to do it once more when it is safe again. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #70 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
HALF-FULL REPORT 02/10/23
The Three Twitter Perps
Here we see the Three Twitter Perps being sworn in at Wednesday’s (2/08) House Oversight Committee hearing regarding their colluding with the FBI to block anything that could help Trump and hurt Biden before the 2020 election.
E.g., Twitter Files Reveal ‘Laptop from Hell’ Censorship Was Orchestrated by Security State (12/19/22).
Of course, all they did was give a Three Monkeys Saw Nothing-Heard Nothing-Said Nothing performance. As the NY Post put it:
Ex-Twitter Executives Now Say They Forget Key Details Of Censoring Post’s Hunter Biden Laptop Scoop
Jump right on in for another great HFR!
THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS
The School of Athens by Raphael (1483-1520) is one of the greatest artistic masterpieces of the Renaissance. Here you see the two principal figures, Plato on the left and Aristotle on the right. It is a classic example of the picture worth a thousand words. Plato is pointing to the heavens and his imaginary world of Forms that didn’t actually exist, while Aristotle has his outstretched hand towards the earth – cautioning Plato to pay attention to Reality. For only in the real world can Plato’s ideals of Truth, Justice, and Virtue actually exist, expressed in concrete human action.
Raphael’s masterpiece was commissioned by Pope Julius II for a room in the Apostolic Palace of the Vatican – just as Julius commissioned Michelangelo to paint the ceiling of the Apostolic Palace’s Sistine Chapel at the same time! Raphael from 1509-1511, Michelangelo from 1508-1512.
While the Apostolic Palace is the official residence of the Pope, the part of it containing these masterpieces can be open to the public. It is one thing to see a photo of them, and quite another to contemplate them in person. Only then can you be appropriately overwhelmed by the superhuman genius it took to create them. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #257 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
SKYE’S LINKS 02/09/23
Groupthink Means that No One is Thinking
China's Power Flex in the American Sky
From the Chinese spy balloon through the jabs and on to the media, from the loss of faith in institutions and the increasingly violent tribalism of the left, the world is suffering from Groupthink.
Universities and community colleges everywhere decided their noble mission is to teach people how to think. However, except in rare cases, they define thinking as logical induction. It is a form of pattern recognition logic that meshes well with computer databases.
The numbers are in, and the demographic most jabbed have master's degrees. This is the group most heavily indoctrinated in the university thought paradigm.
Least likely? People that work directly with the physical world and understand deductive thinking. Scott Adams laments that he, the brilliant pattern decoder, was fooled by the vaxx propaganda. Yet the project managers and superintendents running multimillion-dollar job sites, the electricians, auto mechanics, and others tied to the physical world avoided it.
Labor productivity is collapsing due to ESG mandates, and we have a coal shortage.
This means that the cement shortage will get worse.
Come over to Skye's Links and see how the Fourth Turning is progressing.
BIDEN’S STATE OF THE UNION VOWS 2 MORE YEARS OF MISERY
The Biden State of the Union last night (2/07) is the latest phase of the long leftist war on America.
Biden has clawed his way to the highest office in the land by selling out everything he ever claimed to have believed. And now he’s so far gone that he may not even know what he believes.
His pathetic rant, breathy, rushed, angry, was the belligerent tirade of a puppet who takes pride in being seen over the podium even if there’s a hand up his nether regions.
“Covid had shut down our businesses, closed our schools, and robbed us of so much,” Biden bemoaned. Covid didn’t do that. Democrats did. And, given a chance, they’ll do it again.
This is the criminally treasonous legacy of the Democrats and their corrupt figurehead.
SHE KILLED IT
So it was a revelation to me when she gave the first watchable response to the State of the Union address that I have ever seen. I have no idea how many people watched it, but I am pretty sure that clips from the speech will run for days in the media and on Twitter.
There’s no other way to put it: she killed it. Watch the video to see for yourself, but here are the highlights first.
AGIOS LAZAROS
We’re all familiar with the miracle of Jesus raising Lazarus from the dead four days after his entombment in John 11:1-44. But what happened to Lazarus afterwards – what did he do with the rest of his (second) life?
He left Judea to live on the island of Cyprus. There he met Paul the Apostle and his evangelizing partner Barnabas who was a Cypriot. They appointed him the first Bishop of Kition (present day Lanarca), where he lived for another 30 years, then upon his second death was buried for the last time.
A church was built over his marble sarcophagus which has undergone many resurrections itself over the last two millennia. But here it stands today after all those ravages of time, Agios Lazaros, the Church of St. Lazarus, over his still-preserved sarcophagus. On every Lazarus Saturday (eight says before Easter), an icon of St. Lazarus is taken in procession through the streets of Lanarca. (Glimpses of Our Breathtaking World #165 photo ©Jack Wheeler)
COMER IS BUILDING A KILLER CASE AGAINST JOE BIDEN
House Oversight Chair James Comer
When they hear James Comer speak with his lilting south-central Kentucky accent and courteous style, it would be an easy mistake for Democrats and targets of his newly fanged House Oversight Committee to underestimate the former Monroe County cattle farmer.
But Comer is a killer — and corruption is his prey.
Everything has changed in Washington since the Republicans won back the House, and Comer, as Chairman of the Oversight Committee, is champing at the bit to hold the Biden administration accountable. That includes getting to the bottom of the Biden family corruption as revealed in Hunter Biden’s abandoned laptop, and elsewhere, using the awesome power of Congress.
“This is not about Hunter Biden,” Comer said last week in a broad-ranging interview with The Post. “It’s about Joe Biden.” He aims to “prove Joe benefited financially and prove he made decisions against the best interests of the United States.”