Posts Tagged ‘history’

Tip O’Neill, Beesshipping and Hallie Miller

Posted: November 24, 2010 by datechguy in blogs, business, DaTechGuy on DaRadio, employment, oddities, personal
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

As you know I love the book Man of the House In it Tip O’Neill tells the story of Mrs. O’Brien during his 1935 race for the Cambridge City Council. The only race he ever lost. When she says to him that she will vote for him even though he didn’t ask.

When O’Neill protested that he had known her since he was a child, had shoveled her walk and cut her grass, and didn’t think he had to ask for her vote, she replied, “Tom, let me tell you something. People like to be asked.”

Yesterday after my dentist appointment I was going door to door to business in Leominster promoting the show and trying to sell ads. I was having no luck selling when I noticed a small insignificant looking African variety store with a Ghanian flag on the door.

Logic said pass it by after all at best I could hope to sell a $20 ad for a single week, so why bother when Wyman’s Liquor Mart Inc was across the street and Leominster Credit Union was there. But you know I was there and it never hurts to ask. Turned out the man there owns an international shipping company that ships to the gold coast of Africa: Ghana, Liberia, Guinea, Nigeria and when I told him the range of my 50,000 watt radio signal he asked me to come back on Tuesday with Ad samples.

If I had ignored that little story I would have lost my best lead of the day.

Which brings us to the blog htotherdizzle and Hallie Miller.

Last night I found a comment pending for my Good News runneth over post it said the following:

Hi! My name is Hallie and I have entered a Savvy Magazine photo shoot contest. I know you don’t know me but the winners are chosen by the public and if the public doesn’t know they need to vote…well, you guessed it, no one votes! Could you take a moment and look at my photos and decide if you would vote for me or not? Thanks! Here’s the link, could you pass it along?

It had all the classic signs of spam, an icon of a beautiful woman, a link different from the e-mail but I also noticed it was a wordpress blog, and my spam filter didn’t grab it. Intrigued I searched for the name, and did a search for the link and sure enough it goes to a modeling site that is having a contest.

I thought of Tip O’Neill’s story and I thought of all the doors I have knocked on in the last few days and realized she is doing the exact same thing I am. She is chasing her dream unafraid to ask a total stranger to help.

So Hallie Miller this is my gift to you, I am not only approving your comment, and voting for you but I am linking to your post on the contest and putting up this blog post to let everybody know about it.

I hope my readers go to the Explore modeling Site to vote for you.

Happy Thanksgiving Hallie!

Update: I didn’t include a picture of Hallie Miller because I didn’t have her permission, but I did tell the story to Stacy McCain who is a lot less shy.

Oh BTW you can vote once per day. Works for me.

Why am I writing about Mildred Jefferson over a month after she died?

Posted: November 23, 2010 by datechguy in local issues, opinion/news
Tags: , , , , , ,

Simply to make a small point.

Mildred Jefferson was the first black woman to graduate from Harvard Medical School. This is the type of thing that one might have seen moving tributes on many TV shows. Not simple editorials but large tributes in papers and perhaps even a major magazine article. After all her achievement was not insignificant, it was in 1951 that she graduated from Harvard Medical. This is in the middle of Jim Crow, before MLK.

Why is there less fuss? Because of quotes like this:

“I became a physician in order to help save lives. I am at once a physician, a citizen, and a woman, and I am not willing to stand aside and allow the concept of expendable human lives to turn this great land of ours into just another exclusive reservation where only the perfect, the privileged, and the planned have the right to live.”

You see she founded National right to life applauded by Roe v Wade. That’s why you see long essays in the American Spectator and feminists for life.

I met her only one, during the hearings in Fitchburg in January. I actually had no idea who she was, but said this about her testimony:

With a quiet and calm demeanor she made the case that Fitchburg would be a less pleasant place with Planned parenthood. Her best argument however was the description of Planned Parenthood in terms of practices and their use of organizations that they fund to support their positions as if they were independent.

Consider, this is a person who is known within the movement and must have had many demands on her time and life, and yet, on a cold winter day she made the time to come to Fitchburg Mass. to fight for the lives of the unborn.

I consider myself a well-informed person and one who follows history, I am shocked that I didn’t know this woman, but I shouldn’t be, because the MSM and foes of abortion could not allow it for they might be inspired and that can’t be allowed to happen.

I guess Charles must have missed one.

Posted: November 17, 2010 by datechguy in blogs
Tags: , , , , ,

Stacy McCain notices what a difference 4 years has made in the mind of Charles Johnson.

Apparently when he wiped his archives he missed a post because the this link that I’ve kept in my blogroll still works to wit:

Yes Charles made Rush a Honary Lizardoid!

The above post is on my blogroll under “Honorary Lizardoid Rush Limbaugh” and still links to LGF. Charles has not yet purged this post from his archives, until he does it will remain my link to LGF to remind us of the days before the great 180

The Little Congress and the TSA

Posted: November 16, 2010 by datechguy in opinion/news
Tags: , , , , , ,

Back in the days when Lyndon Johnson was a congressional aide rather than a congressman or senator he participated in a group known as the Little Congress. This was an association of congressional aides formed to promote public speaking but in 1933 recognizing the potential for publicity and power that the organization had Johnson arranged without warning to bring in many additional voters of dubious eligibility and managed to win election as the speaker. He ruled over the little congress as speaker and then as boss until eventually a young man from Mississippi decided he was not going to go along with Boss Johnson.

In the 1935 elections for the little congress he managed to rally enough members to pass reforms (strenuously opposed by Johnson men) requiring people to sign ballots and to check them against the voter rolls. This of course eliminated the secret ballot, a sacrosanct right among voters but it turned out that once the ballots were properly checked against lists The Johnson candidate was defeated.

Lyndon being Lyndon instantly decided that the Little Congress was not worth his time he abandoned it and shortly thereafter the informal voting methods returned because the cause that prompted the draconian measures was gone. (this information is from The Years of Lyndon Johnson The Path to Power by Robert Caro)

Which brings us to the TSA.

A lot of people are objecting on the basis of decency and the 4th amendment. I disagree with the 4th argument since all passengers are subjected to the same methods thus not constituting an unreasonable search, but this debate is not the point.

The point is that the only reason why these methods are necessary is because The Flemish Menace a group of Islamic fanatics have declared war on the west and are attempting to kill us.

Our unwillingness to face and waste resources on people not remotely connected to terror would be as if the FBI decided to concentrate an equal percentage of resources examining the black community in Mississippi when investigating the murders of Chaney, Goodman and Schwerner in 1964.

The day we face that threat and acknowledge and act accordingly is the day that intrusive searches and pat downs will be unnecessary because we will be examining the actual people who have a motive to strike at us.

Of course the administration being the administration we are not only not doing it, but apparently considering the exact opposite.

Hey we elected this government, we did this to ourselves.

Older Entries
Newer Entries