The REAL Person of the Year

As usual, those Liberal Clowns at Time Magazine got it wrong. As expected, they pandered to the masses, the ignorant sheeple of America, in a bleak & meager attempt to draw readership to their increasingly irrelevant rag and declared that His Holiness The Dear Leader, The Obamessiah Himself, B-Hussein Obama (Blessed Be His Name) was Time's Person of the Year.

What a crock.

Then again, they also declared Hitler to be Person of the Year in 1938 and that worked out well. In 1931 it was Pierre Laval, who ended up surrendering France to Hitler and headed the Vichy government. He signed the orders to send  Jews in France to the concentration camps. In 1939 they declared Uncle Joe Stalin to be Person of the Year. Later they repeated that "honor" in 1942 to suck up to the Russians as allies against Hitler.

They've also graced their Person of the Year covers with great guys like Chinese dictator Deng Xiao Ping a couple times, Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton twice, Soviet Dictator Nikita Khrushchev, Soviet dictator Yuri Andropov, Soviet dictator-turned-Good Guy Mikhail Gorbachev, Russian dictator in disguise Vladimir Putin, The Occupy Protesters, and now for the second time, Obama.

I call BS on all of it.

Of all the people who left us this year, of all the losses endured by the Conservative movement in America this year, of all the leaders to have left us too soon, I say the toughest loss this year was Andrew Breitbart.

Andrew was a true patriot who took huge risks to expose the crooked and evil regime for what it was, and to show America what Liberalism, Progressive Socialism, and Democrat Corruption were doing to this country. I learned so much from his efforts. His exposing of ACORN and exposing the Anthony Weiner scandal inspired me to keep fighting against those who are trying to destroy this country.

Andrew had balls the size of cantaloupes. He took on The Left head on, fearlessly and tirelessly. He was truly an inspiration. I would have loved to have met him.

I was stunned and completely taken aback by his death. It was so unexpected and out of the blue. He was only a couple months older than me. Sadly, my first thought was that the Left had taken him out.

His leadership is missed, but his light still burns brightly in the hearts of millions of good Conservatives across America. Keep calm; Andrew expects us all to carry on.

I say give those Aussie DJ's their jobs back.

Before you nay-sayers and detractors of mine out there look down your noses at me & say this is old news, allow me to remind you that I am not a reporter. This blog is not a Breaking News Blog. I have a real, live Day Job and don't spend all day scouring the newsfeeds and trending topics looking for stuff to blog about or reTweet. Instead, I bust my ass all day at my paying job so that I can support Welfare Leeches and hopefully have enough left over to cover my bills, and when I do get a chance to write it's generally a relatively well-thought-over and crafted opinion instead of a knee-jerk reaction. Of course, to my detriment this often means my blog articles aren't always timely in the news world.

Anyways....

While I feel bad for the family of Jacintha Saldanha, the suicidal nurse at the center of the KateGate™  phone prank scandal, I can't blame the two Aussie DJ's who placed the call for her death. No way, no how.

And the nurse who gave out the details wasn't even the one who killed herself.

Mel Grieg & Michael Christian already feel like crap over this. They've lost their show, and thusly lost their jobs when their advertisers all tucked tail and pulled their adverts from the show, and then their radio station took the show off the air, all trying to perform spin control and make themselves look good to a bleeding heart public overly enamored by Royal Watching and looking for someone to blame for the woman's suicide. England is up in arms and the Aussies are backpedaling like they're scared Mother England is going to send an armada to strip them of their independence and put them back under British rule as a colony again.

Look, people... I've heard the phone call several times. She answered the phone and said barely three words before forwarding the call to Kate's ward. The next person on the line is the one who gave up the info on Kate's condition. If anyone is really to blame for info getting out it would be that woman, or if you really wish to be technical I would lay the culpability at the feet of the hospital's chief administrator.

Why?

If you're the person in charge & responsible for the staff of a hospital that regularly caters to the royal family, would it not then behoove you to have standard operating procedures in place as to how to handle phone calls to royal patients? Procedures like, say, any call to those people is routed immediately to MY office first and if it passes muster then I will patch it through myself? Or, if you're too busy administrating or whatever else you do, then it routes immediately through the hospital's public affairs human. But no, some poor working stiff took the call & blew it.

John Lofthouse, Chief Executive at King Edward VII Hospital

SO.....it begs the question, why would this woman get so despondent over pushing a call off on someone else that she'd hang herself? There had to be an underlying mental condition here.Most of us screw up worse than that at least twice a month at work and none of us have laced up a noose.

It turns out she'd been prescribed antidepressants and had tried to kill herself twice last winter. She overdosed on pills on a family trip to India in late December and tried to kill herself again nine days later by jumping off a building in early January. Interestingly, she was given only a nine-month course of antidepressants to take and her family was warned she could try it again. That course of meds ran out in September....so she was recently off her meds and had a history of suicide attempts. Is it really that big a surprise that she killed herself over the perceived shame of a trivial phone call transfer?

No, instead, the touchy-feely bleeding heart media is looking to scapegoat the Australian DJ's. Good God, people, prank phone calls are part & parcel of damn near EVERY morning radio show. One of my local radio stations does their "Phone Scam" daily. MTV used to have a show called Crank Yankers that was predicated upon prank phone calls by comedians to victims. Personally I think prank calls are inane and unfunny, but that's just me.  By the way, if you wish to call the hospital yourself and see who they patch you through to, the number is +44 (0) 20 7486 4411. Just in case.

So now we have two careers ruined over misinformed public outcry, and now the over-reaction could lead to the DJ's being charged (by the Brits, I assume?) with "attempting to obtain medical information by deception" and further charges could be leveled by the Crown Prosecution Service against their employer 2Day FM if they are found to have broadcast the prank without the permission of the participants.

Bloody Hell. Hey, England, are you only getting your knickers in a twist because they did really bad impersonations of Queen Liz & Prince Chuck and tried to interview Its Royal Highness, Fetus the First?

What isn't being readily talked about by the Drive By Media is that the prank was recorded, not broadcast live, and that before it was broadcast they ran it up the flagpole with the station's legal staff beforehand. Personally, I would say that exonerates Grieg & Christian from culpability in this. They got it cleared before they aired it, so they should be off the hook. They were merely doing what morning DJ's with a campy comedy morning show are supposed to do....act goofy & childish when not playing crappy music.

FURTHERMORE.....

Why all this fuss over The Royal Pregnancy? It's bad enough all the hullabaloo in England over it but it's somewhat understandable, as eventually after its father, grandfather, and great grandmother die off it will sit astride a figurehead throne in fluffy luxury. I find it much more appallingly absurd that we here in America are so fascinated by a pretty if too thin girl with really bad morning sickness just because she lucked out & married the right guy in the Great Wedding Lottery of Life.

Within minutes of the announcement of Kate (I don't have to call her the Duchess of Cambridge; I'm a free American, not a subject) being royally knocked up and royally sick, those moronic asshats in the American morning TV show Lamestream Drive By Media immediately dispatched reporters to London to report.....nothing.

ABC's Good Morning America sent Lara Spencer and a team of eleven production people to stand around in front of Buckingham Palace holding up British newspapers in between airing in-studio segments from New York that rendered her trip to London pretty much useless. NBC's Today Show sent news anchor Natalie Morales to London, where she stood in front of the King Edward VII Hospital while the show prattled on speculating about HRH Royal Foetus' possible names and gender, what sort of pampered life it will lead, and the woes of succession in the event of (gasp!) Royal Twins.

And almost immediately there were a couple of TV specials about the Royal Pregnancy, ( "Secrets of the Royal Nursery" on Lifetime and TLC's "William & Kate: A Royal Baby Story") and neither really had any news to report so they just ran trite filler crap and speculations to cater to a vapid American audience who forget that we fought a war a couple hundred years ago to no longer be subjects of the throne and yet continue to fawn over these people. At least until your two-second attention span pisses out and then it's back to the Kardashians or some other pack of idiots.

Whatever takes the public's attention away from the Fiscal Cliff and higher taxes and the erosion of our Constitutional Rights, I guess....Smoke, Mirrors, Hope, Change, Disaster...

Revisiting Harold Estes and his Letter to Obama

I really don't know how this ever escaped my attention when it was first news, but since our Dear Leader is returning early from his latest $4,000,000 vacation to Hawaii, where he stopped relaxing just long enough to turn a eulogy of the late Senator & Medal of Honor recipient Daniel Inouye into a speech about himself, mentioning himself no fewer than 63 times, I thought I'd pay respects to another WW2 veteran who was laid to rest in Hawaii.

On Tuesday, May 11, 2011, America lost retired Master Chief Boatswain's Mate Harold B. Estes, a man who gave more than 20 years to the Navy and continued to work for years to help create the USS Missouri and USS Bowfin memorial museums to Pearl Harbor. Harold was also famous for a stinging rebuke of Barack Obama in a letter to The Dear Leader in 2009. I have reprinted the letter below. Maybe it will remind the President that he works for US, not vice versa.


"Dear President Obama,

My name is Harold Estes, approaching 95 on December 13 of this year. People meeting me for the first time don’t believe my age because I remain wrinkle free and pretty much mentally alert.

I enlisted in the U.S. Navy in 1934 and served proudly before, during and after WW II retiring as a Master Chief Bos’n Mate. Now I live in a “rest home” located on the western end of Pearl Harbor , allowing me to keep alive the memories of 23 years of service to my country.

One of the benefits of my age, perhaps the only one, is to speak my mind, blunt and direct even to the head man.

So here goes.

I am amazed, angry and determined not to see my country die before I do, but you seem hell bent not to grant me that wish.

I can’t figure out what country you are the president of.
You fly around the world telling our friends and enemies despicable lies like:

” We’re no longer a Christian nation”
” America is arrogant”

– (Your wife even announced to the world,” America is mean-spirited. ” Please tell her to try preaching that nonsense to 23 generations of our war dead buried all over the globe who died for no other reason than to free a whole lot of strangers from tyranny and hopelessness.)

I’d say shame on the both of you, but I don’t think you like America, nor do I see an ounce of gratefulness in anything you do, for the obvious gifts this country has given you. To be without shame or gratefulness is a dangerous thing for a man sitting in the White House.

After 9/11 you said,” America hasn’t lived up to her ideals.”

Which ones did you mean? Was it the notion of personal liberty that 11,000 farmers and shopkeepers died for to win independence from the British? Or maybe the ideal that no man should be a slave to another man, that 500,000 men died for in the Civil War? I hope you didn’t mean the ideal 470,000 fathers, brothers, husbands, and a lot of fellas I knew personally died for in WWII, because we felt real strongly about not letting any nation push us around, because we stand for freedom.

I don’t think you mean the ideal that says equality is better than discrimination. You know the one that a whole lot of white people understood when they helped to get you elected.

Take a little advice from a very old geezer, young man.

Shape up and start acting like an American. If you don’t, I’ll do what I can to see you get shipped out of that fancy rental on Pennsylvania Avenue . You were elected to lead not to bow, apologize and kiss the hands of murderers and corrupt leaders who still treat their people like slaves.

And just who do you think you are telling the American people not to jump to conclusions and condemn that Muslim major who killed 13 of his fellow soldiers and wounded dozens more. You mean you don’t want us to do what you did when that white cop used force to subdue that black college professor in Massachusetts , who was putting up a fight? You don’t mind offending the police calling them stupid but you don’t want us to offend Muslim fanatics by calling them what they are, terrorists.

One more thing. I realize you never served in the military and never had to defend your country with your life, but you’re the Commander-in-Chief now, son. Do your job. When your battle-hardened field General asks you for 40,000 more troops to complete the mission, give them to him. But if you’re not in this fight to win, then get out. The life of one American soldier is not worth the best political strategy you’re thinking of.

You could be our greatest president because you face the greatest challenge ever presented to any president.
You’re not going to restore American greatness by bringing back our bloated economy. That’s not our greatest threat. Losing the heart and soul of who we are as Americans is our big fight now.
And I sure as hell don’t want to think my president is the enemy in this final battle…

Sincerely,
Harold B. Estes

BMCM (Retired) Harold B. Estes

The new Giant Sucking Sound

Sssshhhhh....hear that? Hear that Gigantic Sucking Sound? I do.

It's the New Suck for the Second Term of His Emptyness, Lord Obama the Immaculate (Blessed Be His Name), whereby the Leech Class of benefit scroungers hold open their mouths like baby chicks waiting to gobble down the regurgitated welfare of the beaten down American bald eagle. From the cradle to the grave, Uncle Sugar will feed you, shelter you, clothe you, and give you free phones. Welcome to the Welfare States of America.

America: Land of the Free Phone

You'll recall that back in March I highlighted the mentality of the Leech Class in their own words, and that a few days earlier I had broken down the entire Leech Class system of milking the taxpayers for everything under the sun from my own vantage point as an EYEWITNESS to the shenanigans & chicanery. And right before the election I showed you a review of the Leech Class in their own words once again, expecting the Feral Gubmint to pay for all their stash.

Well, in case you needed some more reminders of how people bilk the system, look no further.

The above pictures, friends, were taken in a local gas station/convenience store by me. They show several 2.5 gallon jugs with a pre-mixed flavor powder inside. They weren't selling too well until one of the workers made a sign letting the local Leech Class know they could pay the ten bucks' cost for it on their EBT cards. In three days they sold the rest. Of note is the fact that the bright green one is for making margaritas. Yes, kids, all you have to do is sell some of your EBT money for cash (more on that later) to buy you some tequila and you have two and a half gallons of premium margaritas on tap for your next party, paid for by the taxpayers of the US of A. Of course, the tequila is optional; you could just have a sour lime drink for the kids, so it's EBT approved. There's a loop hole for everything, including margarita mix.

I mentioned the selling of EBT for cash. Say somebody has $100 on their card but needs cash now for sundry items like a hairdo, a new iPhone to supplement the free Obama phone they use to conduct illegal business or, of course, weed. They'll find someone who needs some groceries and sell them that hundred bucks of EBT for $75 cash and then either go buy the groceries with that person or just simply hand that person their card since seldom does anyone ever bother to match the name of the cardholder with a photo ID...that'd be racist.

Now, I know the clerks at this store, and one of them provided me with a plethora of valuable intel as to how the scams work. Like I've said before, the Leech Class will go into a store with a retinue of kids and buy an armload of junk food and pay for it on their EBT card, and the receipts will show the balance remaining on the card. That leaves them their own cash left over from their welfare or unemployment checks to buy lottery tickets, extra minutes for their cell phones, cigarillos to pack full of weed, Newport 100s, and 22-ounce Icehouse cans. Again, I have watched this happen with my own eyes. I am NOT making up the list of necessary Leech items out of thin air. These are the bulk of all purchases at this store, not gasoline.

Lo, and behold, Taxpayer, your money hard at work. The top receipt shows the purchase of three 20-ounce Pepsi products, a Lipton Brisk Tea half & half tea & lemonade, an almond Snickers, a bag of sunflower seeds, a bag of Blow Pops, a shortbread cookie pack, a Hershey Cookies & Creme bar, a miscellaneous loose candy piece, and a Jolly Rancher item. Total purchase of junk food: $11.83, on your dime. The bottom receipt shows the remaining EBT balance of......$914.90. Almost a thousand dollars in groceries available. Now, here I am clipping coupons and buying off-brand stuff trying to scrimp & save every dime on my grocery bill trying like hell to make it and there's a grand's worth of vittles for free, waiting to buy more junk food and steaks and sugar-frosted cereal nuggets and cases of Mountain Dew and energy drinks.

Energy drinks? Oh, yes, my friends. That same store has certain energy drinks, like Red Bull, classified as food items in their register codes so then those items are EBT approved. Need a quick pick me up after a night of pounding cans of Budweiser Lime-a-Rita and smoking blunts packed with quality Sticky Icky? The taxpayer shall provide. Go get a 20-ounce Red Bull for $4.99. Hell, get two. Why not? It's free.

I myself am a fan of caffeinated carbonation and have tried dozens of varieties, and found a new one last weekend that I'd never tried before. It was called Neuro Fuel Max, and promised I'd basically rule the universe after imbibing a can of this magical elixir. The side of the can extolled the virtues of the product, making sure to use the word "may", as in "may increase" or "may enhance", as a disclaimer against being sued when the drinker is just as stupid as they were before they opened the can, just $1.59 broker...or were they? They were, unless they paid for it on EBT because the can itself actually says that it's EBT approved. I can't make this stuff up, ya'll. Truth is ALWAYS stranger than fiction.

This is what we've created, the Welfare States of America. The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 (Well, actually  The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996) was supposed to limit the amount of time someone could be on The System and prevent generational career welfare, by which I mean people spending a lifetime on the government tit and raising kids on the tit and those kids go on the tit at 18 and continue it through the next generation. Welfare isn't a career move, America. But all the Welfare Reform Act did was make people become more creative in their measures, as in moving state to state when their benefits ran out. When I was in Maine people would get 2 years of bennies in Massachusetts or another New England state and then claim there were no job opportunities and the state would PAY TO MOVE THEM to another state, where they'd do the same thing all over again, bouncing state to state.

Now the current administration is just reverting back to the Carter days of generational career welfare and the Leech Class Handout Mentality. And it's just gonna get worse. 

Gun Control? My hands are neither cold nor dead so no, you can't have it.

I can't even begin to say what a horrific tragedy it is, what happened Friday in Newtown. And pretty much anything that could be said about the victims and how tragic it was has already been said by people more eloquent than I.

Of course, the expended brass had barely finished clinking on the classroom floor when yet again people were screaming for gun control. On my Facebook wall my European and Canadian friends were all wondering when the USA would finally start doing serious gun control, because it works oh-so-well in their own countries. In fact, the person who started the conversation lives near gun-controlled Toronto, where in June a guy opened fire in a shopping mall, hitting five people, two of whom died.

If you're an avid reader of my stuff here, you'll recall that after the theater shooting in Aurora, Colorado I wrote against gun control, because I feel that gun control is not the solution to things like this. Liberals and the ill-informed & under-informed who swallow whatever pabulum the Leftist media spoon-feeds them think guns are evil, using the logic that an inanimate object commits crime unto itself all on its own without a human being being responsible for their own actions.

The guy who opened fire at the Clackamas Mall in Oregon last week? He stole the weapon that he used. All the media reported on was that the shooter used an AR-15 with emphasis on calling it an assault rifle. This is one of those instances where although it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's not a duck. The media adores the term "assault rifle" or "assault weapon". If I assault you, then by default the weapon I used is an assault weapon. Cain killed Abel with a rock, making a large stone the first assault weapon. Last I checked, no one was advocating rock control.

Historically the term "assault rifle" is generally traced back to the German Sturmgewehr-44 in the latter part of World War Two. Up until then their standard infantry rifle was a bolt-action rifle with an internal 5-round magazine. The word Sturmgewehr literally meant "storm rifle"....as in a rifle to storm, or assault, a fortification. It used a 30-round detachable box magazine and could fire fully automatic. It was later the basis for the Soviet AK-47 family of rifles.

Herein lies the rub. Civilian models of military-style weapons, by law, are semi-automatic. They are incapable of firing the entire magazine off in a continual burst like the original assault rifles. A semi-automatic weapon requires you to squeeze the trigger each time you wish a round to be fired. The only "automatic" part of the operation is that the expended brass cartridge is automatically extracted & ejected as the next round is fed into the chamber from the magazine. It is not a machine gun. The US military's M-4 carbine, the latest permutation of the M-16 family, does not fire full auto except for a special variant used by Special Operations forces. Instead, the weapon has the S-1-3 trigger group, which means you have the options of Safe, Semi-Auto, and 3-round burst only. Back when I was a soldier, I carried an M-16A1 that was able to fire full auto, and they were being phased out in favor of the A2 with a burst feature instead; this was in 1988.

But, the media thinks anything with a detachable box magazine is an assault rifle. Uninformed talking head politicians on the Left who want to outlaw large-capacity magazines fail to realize that it's even easier to conceal three ten-round rifle magazines than to conceal a larger 30-round magazine, and anyone with a bare modicum of experience with a weapon can drop an empty magazine & insert a fresh one in under five seconds.

The media also likes to mistakenly refer to something they call an automatic pistol. Again, this is because they are either A) stupid, B) manipulating the masses, or C) both.  A pistol is either a revolver with a cylinder that holds on average 6 cartridges, you know, cowboy style six-shooters....or it is a magazine-fed semi-auto that (say it with me now, kids) fires a round each time the trigger is squeezed and it extracts & ejects the spent casing & a new one is loaded from the magazine. Depending on caliber, they will carry an average of 7 to 18 rounds. Mine carries 8 in the magazine and I can have a ninth round in the chamber.

By the by, I have been safely handling, operating, and carrying weapons of various types from pistols to rifles to shotguns to belt-fed machine guns to grenade launchers (though mostly rifles and handguns) for over 25 years. I also have a 100% success rate at never injuring anyone with any firearm I have had in my possession, either for duty or for pleasure shooting. Not every gun owner is a homicidal maniac, despite what the media would have you believe.

Back to Oregon; something else the media doesn't want you to know: the Clackamas Mall shooter was confronted by a private citizen with a concealed carry permit, and afterwards the next shot he fired was to take his own life. The media is also not too quick to report an armed, off-duty female deputy working security an a San Antonio movie theater prevented a mass shooting after a gunman opened fire this past weekend. In 2006, assistant principal Joel Myrick used a handgun to stop fleeing school shooter Luke Woodham. Woodham, who had killed his mother that morning, murdered two students and wounded several others before Myrick, an Army reservist, rammed his car into Woodham's and then drew his .45 and forced Woodham to surrender.

The media will bury the story of the Utah man who shot & killed an intruder in his home this morning in defense of his wife & three young children.

No, the media wants you to believe all law-abiding gun owners are monsters.

I generally don't read the Huffington Post (if it was printed on paper I'd line a hamster cage with it) but happened upon this article of theirs and all the dimwitted anti-gun rhetoric that went along with it. Of particular interest was the rank system used by their acolytes, where by the more posts you parrot the Liberal party line on, the farther up the HuffPo elite ladder you climb. 

Meanwhile, some businesses are either buckling to pressure from the anti-gun lobby or are closing ranks to pull spin control.

Mail order and online shooting supply retailer Cheaper Than Dirt! issued this statement at 6PM Tuesday :

Cheaper Than Dirt! has temporarily suspended online sales of firearms.
As a long time supporter of the Second Amendment, Cheaper Than Dirt! will continue to promote the safe and responsible use of firearms by law abiding customers. During this temporary suspension, we will review our policies and promotions.

They issued a statement earlier today letting us know they will resume their online sales once they update and improve their process....I dunno what's to improve. They do not ship direct to your door like Amazon. They send it to a Federal Firearms License gun dealer in your area who then facilitates the rest of the sale, like calling in the background check, and tacks a small user fee onto the transaction for the service. Sounds to me like they tucked tail & are laying low till this blows over.

Meanwhile, Dick's Sporting Goods announced today they will no longer sell military-style firearms, afraid that soccer moms will no longer come in to buy overpriced sneakers and yoga mats. And Walmart pulled the Bushmaster rifles from their online advertising, because the very name is due to quickly become poison and all of you pariahs who own one will be vilified & ostracized by people who wouldn't know an M-4 from a musket. The venture capital company that owns Bushmaster, Cerberus Capital Management, has now announced that they will sell the company, knuckling under to pressure from their biggest shareholder, the ultra-liberal California Teacher's Union's retirement pension plan.

Look, people. Over 900 people were killed after drinking tainted Kool Aid in Jonestown in 1978. No one's ever tried to ban Kool Aid, because Kool Aid didn't kill those people; a guy who had them drink it after lacing it killed them. It was merely the delivery system. Guns were the delivery system that was central to the killings in Newtown, but it was a mentally ill 20-year old who killed those people.

And that brings me to the fact that this is not a gun control issue; it's a mental health issue. Pretty much all these high profile killings have mental illness in common. Loughner in Tuscson, Holmes in Aurora, the list goes on & on.

Has anyone stopped to think about the long term effects of brain candy on the mentally ill? How many acts of violence are tied to long term use of severe antidepressants and ADHD meds? I really want to know.

So, of course, Obama and the Liberals want to once again come for our guns. The people who want to take away guns from private citizens are protected by....people with guns.....yeah, exactly. Turns out that Feinstein & Reid both have carried guns for protection but they want to make sure you can't. And so Obama will appoint a panel of sycophants to look for ways to disarm the populace, while they run guns to Syria and Mexico.

Simon Cowell gets his knickers in a twist

How dare you look at Simon Cowell directly, you insect....

Oh dear. It seems as if a tiff has developed between a founding member of my favorite band and a man I have always found to be a complete and utter tool, Simon Cowell.

Why does this man in his 50's insist on wearing shirts sized for little boys?

 

The band is Depeche Mode, my favorite band for about 28 years now. Poised to release what will be their 13^th studio album in the spring, the band has been doing interviews after last month’s announcement of yet another world tour (dates for which are already mostly sold out months in advance). In an interview last week with Music Week, founding member Martin Gore stated his displeasure about manufactured music and admitting he really hates reality shows, especially Cowell’s X-Factor.

Gore declared: "I'm not advocating violence, but I think somebody should shoot Simon Cowell.

"His influence in the music industry over the last God knows how many years it's been now ... it's just like so many people think that that's what music is."

Gore pointed out that in contrast to manufactured bands, Depeche Mode had been allowed to form and mature at their own pace.

"What happened to bands getting together? They are very few and far between now, and the ones that do probably can’t afford to get into a studio and make a record," he said.

Fellow band member Dave Gahan also shared his view and admitted that it is difficult for acts to be successful in the current musical climate, adding: "It's a pretty horrible business today really, I've got to say. You have to be tough and you've got to be thick-skinned because there are going to be things written about you that you're not going to like. 

"You're going to get scrutinized, your work will not always be liked and if they do like something really a lot they’re probably not going to like the next thing and compare it to the last thing. It takes a time for a band to grow if they're any good."

Gahan also said artists need time to grow and his band were lucky they didn't suffer the same pressure musicians are under today. "We were lucky that we were taken under the wing of [producer] Daniel Miller who never once in the studio said, 'Where's the hit song?'" he added.

Even former bandmate Alan Wilder was behind Gore, agreeing with him via a nickname on a Facebook post. “Well done to Gorak for articulating the feelings of an entire nation. Anyone who pulls his trousers up that far is bound to get his knickers in a twist."

Martin Gore, who tells it like it is

Dave Gahan, who does not wear his shirts 2 sizes too small

Alan Wilder, who supports his former band mate

Clearly, Gore meant this as a metaphorical shooting, and of course, Cowell flew off the deep end. I suppose if someone said it was raining cats & dogs the simpering smug bastard would peek out the window looking for a deluge of pets falling screaming from the heavens?

Cowell took to Twitter in a scathing rant: 'I read Martin Gore wants to shoot me. He was is in Depeche Mode. Do you realize how weird and stupid that makes you? Go and watch the news.' He added: 'Why I am angry about weirdo Gore is a ton of people have got shot this year, and people like weirdo Gore encourage this.'

My God, Cowell….you say you get death threats all the time. Maybe that’s because you come across as an asshole and you thrive on the attention of being an asshole? You’re an A&R guy, an overpaid talent scout, who got his start from his father’s connections and then rode the coat tails of the legendary Stock, Aitken & Waterman group. You seek out kids to exploit to a vapid and jaded audience who in general neither write their own material nor can properly sing it without studio tricks, barring a few notable exceptions. Almost every winner on American Idol has fizzled out as a musical footnote.

You do realize, of course, that your very own Susan Boyle covered Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence” on her last album, a song written by Gore? I’m sure you made some coin in that deal, no?

Is this the face of a killer?

 
Depeche Mode, according to Q Magazine, is "the most popular electronic band the world has ever known.” and included the band on their list of the "50 Bands That Changed The World!" They have released 12 studio albums, six live albums, ten compilations, and placed 48 singles on the UK charts. Depeche Mode have sold over100 million records (60 million albums / 40 million singles) worldwide over a 30+ year career.
Martin Lee Gore is also of the greatest artists the UK has produced. A winner of the coveted Ivor Novello award, he is today, with and without the band, cited as a major influence for an entire genre of music and hundreds of artists. In fact the list of awards the band has either won or been nominated for is longer than I have time to list.

Unlike Cowell, Gore has never been associated with the Power Rangers or the Teletubbies.

All that money and you can't button your shirt like a grownup or get pants that fit?

 
Call me when one of your associated acts approaches anything remotely as long or as impactful as the career of Depeche Mode, Mister Cowell.

Depeche Mode: Martin Gore, Dave Gahan, and Andy Fletcher

More news from Diddle Me Elmo

Elmo swears kid was 18!

Ah, what have we here? In the few days since I wrote about longtime Elmo puppeteer Kevin Clash being implicated in an underage gay sex scandal, not one but TWO more men have come forward claiming that they, too, had sexual relations with Clash whilst under the age of 18.

Part of me thinks that now that there's blood in the water, all manner of men are going to come forward demanding payouts over this, much in the same way you discover all these new cousins and other long lost relatives after you win a lottery. The smell of money draws them out of the woodwork.

However, there;s also the small of smoke, and in general where there's smoke the proverbial fire is seldom far behind.

Last week, a fellow named Cecil Singleton filed a $5,000,000 lawsuit against Clash, claiming that he was just 15 when he and Clash began a sexual relationship. Now, hearing about this his original accuser Sheldon Stephens has allegedly returned the payment of $150,000 he received from Clash to redact his accusation that he and Clash had carried on a sexual relationship when Stephens was 16 and say it occurred after he was 18, because why settle for a mere $150K when there's potentially millions to be scored?

And this week, our third victim, known only as John Doe (rhymes with "dough") says in his own lawsuit that he was also 16 when he met Clash on a gay chat line and went to his apartment where they engaged in things adults & children of any orientation should not be engaging in.

Again, if the dude is gay & engaging in consensual sex with another ADULT, then I have no problems with it. But this is a guy who spent a lifetime working to entertain kids and was around kids a lot, and to hear accusations, spurious or not, that he preys on kids is more than just mildly disturbing.

Again some of this could just be blood in the water and sharks circling for an easy meal of payoff. Or, it could be Chris Hansen's dream come true.

Answering fan mail from a Liberal

Every year here in my little town we have an annual event called the Rice Festival. Why rice? Because back during them olden days of plantations in the Charleston area of South By God Carolina., those evil and wicked plantation owners needed somewhere to vacation....

From the Wiki about my village:
Walterboro (originally spelled Walterborough) was founded in 1783 as a summer retreat for local planters looking to escape their malaria-ridden, Lowcountry plantations. The original settlement was located on a hilly area, covered with pine and hickory trees and named "Hickory Valley." Two of the earliest settlers were Paul and Jacob Walter. The two brothers owned plantations in nearby Jacksonboro, SC. Paul's small daughter Mary was taken ill with malaria, a common disease amongst the families who built their plantations in the marshy areas of the Lowcountry, suitable to rice production. To save Mary's life the two brothers went looking for a more healthy location in which to live during the summer months when mosquitoes abounded and started the town that was later named for them.

So, we have a connection to rice. That said, we have every April an annual Rice Festival that used to be a big 3-day event taking up much of the town center and has decayed due to the economy, gang crime, and various & sundry other myriad reasons to where it barely takes up a side street and lasts less than 24 hours.  While walking around at the latest festival the wife & I ran into a couple and their kids at the food court and we were admiring the wife's tattoos. We struck up a conversation with the husband, as the wife was quite disinterested in us, and we compared tats. After seeing my collection of tats for the band Depeche Mode, the husband stated that he, too, was a huge fan of their music.The family was new in town and we welcomed them to the area and hoped to stay in touch. We said our goodbyes and that was that.

A few weeks ago we ran into them again at a local grocery store. I again chatted amiably with the husband while the wife and more or less ignored us when not looking at us like we were bothersome insects. I took the chance that, being educated and decent folk, might be fellow Conservatives and I invited the fellow to read my blog site. Imagine my shock when I got THIS is my email:

Hey,
    Finally got to reading your blog.....and seems the only thing we 
have in common is a complete disrespect for Donald trump and a deep 
liking for Depeche Mode. I am hoping that you don't believe half of the 
crap on your blog. The Elmo guy being gay....duh. He's a puppeteer.
    Did you think for one minute that Romney/Ryan had even the smallest 
of chance to win. The guy was a total tool! Total!

Anyway hope all is well. Drop a line sometime.

Go Obama 2016!! oh yeah...wait...never mind, he's already won twice. 
HAHAH!!!!

Um, okay. Why even bother to take the time out of your busy day to basically throw a bag of flaming dog shit on my porch? I know that my own time is too valuable to waste writing people I disagree with or comment on their blogs. I simply go on my merry way. Actually, I do believe the crap on my blog; I may not always write seriously but I do believe in my own Conservative principals. I'm not quite sure if he's questioning whether Kevin Clash is gay or not, or whether that, because he's a puppeteer it should be obvious that he'd be gay....I thought Liberals were more open-minded than that, as you love to claim that Conservatives are all wretched homophobes (I guess my annual blog posts celebrating National Coming Out Day went unread). And Kevin Clash has admitted to being gay...it's not something I just inferred or made up.

And really, I love the mature adult nanny nanny boo boo about the election. Enjoy your higher taxes and economic woes. You reap what you sow, pal.

You win some, you lose some. Back to the trenches.....