The LG Report Recieves a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame!

You've all probably read by now in People Magazine, or on Page Six of the New York Post, that The LG Report was recently awarded its own star -- a first for a blog -- on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (not to be confused with that ole Walk of Shame that you used to do in college...) 

Not being a Hollywood insider like LG, you probably don't realize that for the first few months of induction, each star on the Walk of Fame is designated with a hand-written note on a page torn from a spiral notebook (see photo above.)  This is a tradition that started with Jerry Lewis. 

Eventually, master sculptors in Paris (the French love Jerry) will carve the official nameplate for the star.  As you can see, the symbol chosen to represent blogs on the Walk of Fame resembles a page of a blog with a big "V" above it.  The "V" stands for "veracity," since most blogs are beacons of the truth, The LG Report included.   

A large group of internationally-known celebrities showed up for The LG Report's star unveiling, including one of LG's childhood favorites, Bob Denver (also known as Gilligan of "Gilligan's Island.")  You've heard the term "blue hairs" to describe older people who've had their hair dyed so much that it appears to be blue?  Well poor ole Bob not only has blue hair but also a blue face:

Nonetheless, it was nice of him to come out to the proceedings.  

And that's not my friend Chris's foot in the photo of the star, despite the fact that he was recently on vacation in Los Angeles. 

That's it for today kids, mosey along peacefully now....

Jacksonian Honor Among Pundits: Walter Russell Mead Challenges Rush Limbaugh to a Duel

by Michael Kaplan

Andrew Jackson kills Charles Dickinson in a duel, 1806

Jacksonian honor is alive and well, and in some unexpected places. Earlier this year two of my favorite pundits, Rush Limbaugh and Walter Russell Mead, engaged in an affair of honor that so far has been kept in the realm of words. Jacksonians (past and present) do not like intellectuals. In fact it’s not an exaggeration to say that Jacksonians loathe and despise the intellectual elites. The feelings are mutual. (This makes it interesting for me as both a Jacksonian and an intellectual). Outspoken contempt for academic intellectuals has long been a staple of Rush Limbaugh’s radio program and political rhetoric. It’s a large part of his appeal for his Jacksonian audience. In a January 7, 2010 segment on his radio show (titled in the transcript at RushLimbaugh.com “An Intellectual Analysis of Obama”), Rush attacked Walter Russell Mead for trying to analyze Barack Obama’s seemingly indecisive foreign policy on PBS’s The News Hour with Jim Lehrer instead of just calling him a coward. For Rush this showed that Mead was a head-in-the-clouds intellectual out of touch with reality. Rush, in good Jacksonian fashion, went on to mimic Mead’s ums and ahs while mocking the entire concept of intellectual analysis as mere academic narcissism:

I can do intellectual-speak. I’ve studied these people. I know how to do the affectation. I know the words. I know all this stuff, and one thing I know when you do intellectual-speak is you are not immersed in any kind of reality. You're doing something else. You’re trying to impress yourself. You’re trying to impress everybody else around you with your so-called smarts and so forth, and your ability to, “Analyze things in ways that other people just can’t come up with because, you know (deep breath), they’re just not equipped as we intellectuals are.” But in the meantime these are the last people you want with you in a foxhole. I mean, they don't even know where one is.

A caller from Birmingham, Alabama named Barry could not agree more with Rush’s contempt for the intellectual elites:

CALLER: We’ve got our emerging ruling academic elite like Russia and China, but, you know, we're talking about this intelligent elite, I'd love to see ’em stacked up with Jefferson and Madison, I’d love to see them debate with a real resonance man who can run a farm and handle commercial enterprises and really walk with common sense. These people have never seen the outside of a classroom. And, by the way, who ran the ship into the ground anyway? If Sarah Palin is ineligible because she’s not an intellectual, well, tell me, who ran the ship into the ground? I think it was the intellectuals. I’d love to have a framer, a truck driver, maybe a Sarah Palin, somebody that can kill and skin a moose perhaps.

Barry from Birmingham no doubt speaks for many Jacksonians who believe that the common sense of ordinary Americans is more important for a leader than academic credentials. Rush concluded that the real problem he has with intellectuals is that they are overeducated:

RUSH: So I just got an e-mail out there during the break: “Rush, what is an intellectual? What's so bad about smart people?” It's a good question, folks. The modern iteration of intellectual, when I use it, we’re talking about academics, people who have done nothing but spend time in a library or an office or a classroom and have no hands-on, real-world experience doing or producing anything, including meeting a payroll, pure and simple. Overeducated.

Not being one to let a challenge to his honor go unanswered, Walter Russell Mead responded in his own blog in good Jacksonian fashion, by challenging Rush to a duel:

Call me an Obama apologist, Mr. Limbaugh and I can take it. Call me a pointy headed intellectual and shill for the establishment, and I can weather the storm.

But to reproduce my ums and ahs, sir, is a step too far. Pistols at forty paces; my second will be in touch with yours to designate the time and place of our meeting.

So far there has been no word in any media outlet of this duel taking place—outside the realm of words that is. That’s just as well. After all it’s for the best that pundits pushing sixty fight their Jacksonian duels to the death in the realm of ideas.

Entertainment value aside, this exchange between Rush and Mead raises a serious issue in American history and society: what is the proper place of the intellectual and the life of the mind in a populist democracy? If Jacksonianism has an Achilles heel it is its almost visceral anti-intellectualism. Now Jacksonians do have good cause to mistrust the liberal intellectual elites, many of whom make no secret of their contempt for traditional American virtues and values and those people who uphold them. But Jacksonians, like Rush in this case, do throw out the baby with the bath water when they summarily dismiss the value and legitimacy of the life of the mind and those who dedicate themselves to it. Many intellectuals, scholars and teachers, support Jacksonian values of patriotism, honor and American exceptionalism and greatness while rejecting the anti-Americanism of the left. Historian Victor Davis Hanson is one example, as are Walter Russell Mead, Thomas Sowell, Monica Crowley, and I, your humble blogger. More on this issue in an upcoming post.

© 2010 Michael Kaplan

Join me tomorrow for "Lottie Da, Poet I Am" by Lottie Porch at Paa ya Paa, 1st August

This is to invite my fans and poetry lovers and especially members of TWO HOURS BEFORE to a "Spoken Word Poetry Event" tomorrow at Paa Ya Paa Art Gallery, Nairobi starting 2:30pm to 6pm. Paa ya Paa on Ridgeways Road, Off Kiambu road next to Ridgeways Boys Academy.


Two Hours Before shall be performing the poems...... 'When I Am Gone', 'Return Of The Foetus' and my other captivating poem 'A Woman's Meat' Other poems include the sensational 'Letter To My Father', The Midnight Visitor', 'Appear Tonight', 'The Wrong Turn' and the horror poem....'The House Of Pain'

Guest artist-poet, is America's renounced poet and educator Lottie E. Porch who is currently an adjunct professor at New York University. For over thirty years Ms. Porch has shared her talents in the realms of performing arts, written word, and cultural education. Whether she is acting on stage, publishing written works, teaching students in an African village, or singing a late night set at a jazz club – Lottie Porch brings her creativity to all aspects of her life and work.

The event will enable Kenyan poetry lovers to sample some Spoken Word from this amazingly multi-talented lady. It will also be an opportunity for Lottie to hear what Kenya has to offer in Poetry and Spoken Word.

Also present at the event is Kenya's sensational Poet, Njeri Wangari, who is the Author of the book 'Mines & Minds Fields'. Njeri, my fellow blogger and poet is an IT expert and one of the newest 'spoken word' artist in the country. She runs the Art blog called Kenyan Poet

Entertainment shall be lead by Grand Master Masese. Other performing poets includes Rhoda Jura, Mwangi S. Muthiora, Wario Helena, Bernard Muhia, Valentine Kamau and Denis Ikwa.

ENTRY IS FREE..... INVITE YOUR FRIENDS

You can follow this link to see the map/ direction to Paa Ya Paa Art G Off Kiambu road Ridgeways.

Read about the Author on the February issue of Parents Magazine 2010 and read his untold story. Also Join Two Hours Before on facebook and twitter. NOTE: Two Hours Before is the fastest growing poetry blog in the country with over 27,000 visits and several reputable Reviews across the world.

MWANGI S. MUTHIORA
EXCECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Two Hours Before
fafdays@gmail.com
+254 725 385 654

DO YOU HAVE AN EVENT/ OCCASSION YOU WOULD LIKE THIS AUTHOR TO GRACE? WRITE BACK TO US ON THE CONTACTS ABOVE AND WE ARE JUST A CLICK AWAY FROM ENTERTAINING YOUR GUESTS. TWO HOURS BEFORE........WE ARE ALWAYS AHEAD. DREAM IT AND WE SHALL MAKE IT BECOME
For more details contact Paa Ya Paa on 0733270109 or me on 0725385654

Romain Barras - champion d'Europe 2010

Selection 2010 - Nelson Ribeiro

My Beef With A Certain Driver...

Have you ever become extremely annoyed with a driver in front of you who was just hot dogging it, driving crazily, all over the place, showing off and just generally being a wiener? 

I recently had such an experience.

The car ahead of me was doing stupid things; I wanted to yell, but I couldn't ketchup in time to say anything. 

Finally, she pulled over and I got out and said, "I want to be frank with you, you're a bad driver.  Your skills behind the wheel simply don't cut the mustard."  I was on a roll.

I was red hot.  

When she got out to talk to me, I immediately noticed that she had nice buns.   Sexist, I know.  She also seemed to have a rather sauer personality, but I let it go. 

Anyway, I told her my beef and grilled her for a few minutes about her driving habits.  We then shook hands and both got back into our respective cars and drove away. 

Luckily, I got a picture of her car, just in case the police need it in the future.  Here's what it looked like:

Obama vs. Jacksonian Populist Conservatives: Disconnect and Conflict

by Michael Kaplan

In this, the inaugural post of The New Jacksonian Blog, I’ll work through some ideas on the conflict between the liberal elite thrust of the Obama administration and Jacksonian America.

Much of the criticism of the Tea Party movement from Obama supporters and the mainstream media, and now the NAACP, sounds like the classic elite liberal stereotype of Jacksonian populist conservatives as ignorant, unwashed, know-nothings, racists and bigots—“boobus americanus” as H. L Mencken famously put it back in the 1920s.




Andrew Jackson, "Old Hickory"

The point made by liberal commentators like Michael Lind on the tension between conservative economics and Jacksonian populism is well taken. Jacksonian populism is neither completely of the right nor the left, and at different times has switched its allegiances between the Democrats and the Republicans. Jacksonians lean left populist on economic issues: they hate collusion between big government and big business—think of Andrew Jackson’s war on the Second Bank of the United States and William Jennings Bryan’s Cross of Gold—while they lean right populist on social and cultural issues such as gay rights or abortion. Here’s Old Hickory’s statement on the specter of crony capitalism from his 1832 Bank Veto Message:

It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes. Distinctions in society will always exist under every just government. Equality of talents, of education, or of wealth can not be produced by human institutions. In the full enjoyment of the gifts of Heaven and the fruits of superior industry, economy, and virtue, every man is equally entitled to protection by law; but when the laws undertake to add to these natural and just advantages artificial distinctions, to grant titles, gratuities, and exclusive privileges, to make the rich richer and the potent more powerful, the humble members of society--the farmers, mechanics, and laborers--who have neither the time nor the means of securing like favors to themselves, have a right to complain of the injustice of their Government. There are no necessary evils in government. Its evils exist only in its abuses. If it would confine itself to equal protection, and, as Heaven does its rains, shower its favors alike on the high and the low, the rich and the poor, it would be an unqualified blessing. In the act before me there seems to be a wide and unnecessary departure from these just principles.



General Jackson Slaying the Monster Bank.  Library of Congress.


Old Hickory was not a demagogue out to confiscate the property of the Bank’s wealthy shareholders and redistribute it. Like the Founding Fathers, Jackson accepted that natural inequality—that people had differing talents and abilities and would achieve different outcomes in life—was part of human nature. Jacksonian populism, unlike its European counterparts, was never about despoiling the haves and giving to the have nots. But Jackson was absolutely opposed to artificial inequality; or as we would say today, to the government using its power to pick winners and losers in the economy and in life. Henry Olsen of the American Enterprise Institute writes in National Affairs that Jacksonian populism is as exceptional as America, and that “far from threatening to destroy the republic, has at crucial moments helped to balance and rejuvenate it.” Jackson did not proclaim Nicholas Biddle and the partisans of the “Monster Bank” traitors to the nation who had forfeited their rights as American citizens. His goal, whether in opposing federal funding of internal improvements or abolishing the Bank, “was to end the purported depredation of the people by the wealthy, not to enrich his own supporters. In Jackson's morality play, he restored the American heritage to a dispossessed, but fundamentally self-reliant, people—not by taking from the rich, but by ennobling the ordinary.”

The modern conservative movement has been an uneasy coalition between the Hamiltonian supply side economic conservatives on Wall Street and the Jacksonian cultural conservatives on Main Street. Ronald Reagan joined them together, though for a few years after 2006 they seemed to be coming apart. But what George W. Bush tore asunder, Barack Hussein Obama joined back together. Jacksonian populists define themselves according to a producerist ideology which validates the productive labor of the working and middle classes, but is very suspicious of the unproductive poor at the bottom and the unproductive rich at the top. Jacksonians despise illegal immigration by unskilled Mexican laborers, welfare for the nonworking poor, and bailouts to irresponsible Wall Street banks. But it is more likely—and it has been happening over the past year—that the policies of the Obama administration will drive the Jacksonians back to the conservative Republican side. Renewed Jacksonian engagement with conservatism produced the Tea Party movement. Jacksonian populists are anti-socialist. They believe in capitalism, especially the capitalism of small business and entrepreneurship. They are suspicious of both big government and big business, especially when, as over the past year, the two are seen to be in collusion. This has certainly been true of the Tea Party movement.

Jacksonians deeply resent the Aquarian left’s (what Charles Krauthammer calls “The New Liberalism”) insistence that they are too dumb to know how to live their lives and so need to be “enlightened” by liberal elites. The passion on the left has shifted from fair rewards for labor to lifestyle environmentalism. This accounts for Jacksonian hostility to Al Gore’s climate change crusade, which is seen as just another ploy by the New Liberals to shove their Aquarian values down Jacksonian America's throat. Liberal environmentalists want to engineer a utopian social transformation that will undermine individual liberty and produce the Jacksonian nightmare of arrogant social and cultural elites dictating where and how the average American should live his life.

Post 1960s Aquarian New Liberalism is quite different from the classic 1930s liberalism of Franklin Roosevelt. FDR’s New Deal maintained Jacksonian producerist values which emphasized jobs over benefits (such as health care). Only job creation, whether through the private sector, or if necessary, through public works, could give workers the leverage to obtain higher wages and their share of the nation's wealth. Today's New Liberalism has shifted its emphasis from the empowerment of working- and middle-class Americans through productive work to redistribution of wealth. Contemporary liberal Democrats are an alliance of educated, successful, self-actualized, urban professional elites (the “Bobos” or “Goo-Goos”), ethnic- and race-based, often corrupt, urban political machines (Charles Rangel comes to mind), and the disenfranchised urban poor. Urban historian and Rudolph Giuliani biographer Fred Siegel calls this “the coalition of the overeducated and the undereducated.” Liberal Democrats since the 1960s have transformed themselves from Jacksonian populists to European social democrats. The New Liberalism has redifined liberal progressive politics from self-help on the part of citizens to charity for the disadvantaged “victim” groups performed by affluent liberal elites.  “A homogeneous college-educated overclass,” Michael Lind explains, “which favours diversity in complexion but rigid liberal orthodoxy in opinions, increasingly lords it over a divided and heterogeneous class of high school graduates and drop-outs. Obama is the new face of this emergent establishment.” And so the Jacksonian working and middle classes have been transformed in liberal ideology from the backbone of America, to what Barack Obama called the unenlightened folk who cling to guns, God, and hatred of foreigners.

Here are then-candidate Obama’s remarks from the now infamous 2008 San Francisco fundraiser:

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Well it looks like Obama’s “bitter clingers” have had enough. Walter Russell Mead, the foreign policy analyst who wrote a seminal work on Jacksonian populism, sees in Republican Scott Brown’s victory in the Massachusetts election to succeed Ted Kennedy in the Senate, more evidence of a Jacksonian rebellion against the upper middle class professional elite “bobos.” Many liberal Democrats, Mead argues, have a paternalistic attitude toward middle and working-class Jacksonians. And Jacksonians will no longer put up with being condescended to as too ignorant and stupid to manage their lives without the guidance of educated liberal elites. The liberal elite, in Mead's analysis, divide the world into three groups:

a large mass of basically good but oppressed and poorly-educated working people (and small farmers) who need guidance, enlightenment and protection; evil and greedy corporations and special interests who seek to grind them down and suck them dry; and honest, competent, well-educated professionals whose job it is to steer society forward in the interests of the ignorant mass. Unfortunately the evil and greedy interests and their sly minions are good at befuddling and confusing the dumbass masses, using such retrograde themes as patriotism, religion and always and everywhere racism.

It seems that whenever Jacksonian conservatives express an opinion on any issue, it's immediately condemned and dismissed by liberal elite commentators as racism and bigotry. This of course relieves these commentators of the need to respond to the substance of the arguments Jacksonian conservatives are making. As Charles Krauthammer writes “promiscuous charges of bigotry are precisely how our current rulers and their vast media auxiliary react to an obstreperous citizenry that insists on incorrect thinking.”

An example of this scenario is presented by Telly Davidson in Frum Forum. President Obama came into office truly desiring to reach out to middle- and working-class Jacksonian whites. But along the way the demagogic leaders of the conservative and Tea Party movements and the right-wing media machine twisted and distorted the new president’s message and intentions. Now Davidson admits that middle- and working-class white Jacksonians have good reasons to be angry and bitter about their declining prospects in life; they rightly fear that the American dream may be forever out of reach. But since they’ve allowed their anger to be exploited by hateful, racist, demagogues like Rush Limbaugh and Sarah Palin, the poor “dumbass” Jacksonians have lost whatever claim they had on the president’s sympathies. The Tea Party protests and town hall meetings were designed by the right-wing media machine to create a racist, reactionary narrative that successfully demonized Obama in Jacksonian hearts as an illegitimate, anti-American radical, making it impossible for the president to reach out and address their legitimate concerns. “By claiming to represent the issues and concerns of working and middle class whites,” Davidson laments, “the ultra-right-wing media machine has discredited them and sent their issues and concerns, temporarily at least, to the ash heap of history. And Obama has been forced by the grammar of politics to essentially forfeit middle America on his end, as long as the face of middle America remains Glenn Beck’s or Michele Bachmann’s.” This is just old wine in new bottles. With Davidson and the like we’ve come full circle in liberal elite discourse back to Mencken’s boobus americanus.

The Beer Summit, July 30, 2009

The Jacksonian populist revolt against Barack Obama and his administration is a revolt against the world view that legitimizes upper-middle-class privilege. The Jacksonian “dumbass masses” furiously reject the claims of elite liberals that they need guidance to manage their lives. “They hunger and thirst for social and political autonomy—it is the liberal world view that they long to be freed of.” Mead’s analysis, ironically, is very close to Rush Limbaugh’s and other conservative commentators. Professors have replaced bankers as the chief villains of the Jacksonian public. They sense that upper middle class liberal elites are trying to secure and enhance their own social status, wealth, and power under the guise of helping their “inferiors.” “It is insufferable (and will not long be suffered)” writes Tony Blankley of the Jacksonian public, “to be lectured to and imposed upon by a ruling class that loathes our nation's history, values and accomplishments; by those who are not, in fact, our genuine betters. They are neither better educated nor more profoundly morally versed.” “The war on upper-middle class privilege” Mead concludes, “is the cause today that, for better or worse, embodies the spirit of American populism.” Most liberal Democrats won’t get this. Barack Obama’s public support of Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr. in his dispute with police Sergeant James Crowley, ending in the famous “beer summit” last year, illustrates just how clueless both the president and elite liberals are when it comes to comprehending the passion for honor and liberty that moves Jacksonian America.

© 2010 Michael Kaplan

Criminal Assistance Program

Let's say your kids are really starting to bug you.  And we mean REALLY starting to bug you, to the point where you wouldn't mind if someone would take them off your hands for a while. 

You, know, like kidnapping them. 

What would be the best way to go about getting it done?  Well, a good start would be to advertise their availability like this:

As we can see, while daddy is off working and mom is enjoying her shopping time, the kids are playing field hockey and football.  There are also two dogs waiting to be snatched in the yard.  What an excellent advertising campaign!

Here's another one.  This diagram would lead one to believe that mommy and daddy sleep upstairs while Junior is downstairs with the dog.  These decals are made of a special static-cling material so that Junior's image will come off in a jiffy when he gets snatched.

What a thoughtful way to help kidnappers find their prey!  That's why we call it the CAP: Criminal Assistance Program. 

In this household, it looks like we have two women, one who loves to garden (we picked up the subtle clue) and one who loves to shop.  Or is it two sides of the same woman?  She/They also have two dogs and a cat.  We guess they ran out of "Loves to post idiotic decals on her car" decals. 

Displaying these decals, like skateboarding, should be a crime.

PS: Geo's wife Anne played a major role in inspiring this posting; she's the most vocal anti-family-decals-on-car-windows opponent we know...

PS 2.0:  If any of your faithful LG Report readers have similar stickers on your car, rest assured that we're not making fun of you so please don't stop reading because of this posting...thanks!

Selection 2010 - Raphael Hildebrand

Mines & Mind Fields- My Spoken Words, By one of Kenya's top poet Njeri Wangari

Mines & Mind Fields- My Spoken Words,
Author: NJERI WANGARI
On 16th June 2010, I received an extraordinary text message from one of Kenya's newest poetry sensation,Njeri Wangari, She was inviting me to the launch of her first poetry collection book, Mines & Mind Fields- My Spoken Words, published in Canada by Nsemia Inc. International Publishers. Though Kenyanpoet, as she is popularly known, had inspired me to start my own blog, I did not expect the author to mention me in her book especially alongside the reputable Daily Nation- Kenya's Leading Newspaper. I had learned about her blog from the DN several years ago and despite the fact that we have never meet in person, we developed a strong bond online. It was a very big surprise when I learned that my blog Two Hours Before and I were appearing on the jacket of this pulsating publication.

Going back to Mines & Mind Fields, I can only term this book as a gem in my home library. Njeri Wangari has captured both the mind and the soul of any poetry enthusiast who is by any standards looking for realism. Her work consists of a wide range of sounds and styles; free verse, traditional verse, narrative, lyric, dramatic and even experimental. In 'Maisha Ya Hawker- Life Of A Hawker', she has exhibited a very powerful voice in both style and content. In this piece of work, she focuses on the reflective power of word to inform the public and create awareness about significant issues, like police brutality, unemployment, class struggle etc, through frequently meaningful observations and vastly different poetic style.

One of the traits that makes Njeri Wangari(N.W) collection unique, is her range of themes and her use of very simple and coherent style, unlike the typical poetry of 'yester' years. Whileas all art is meant to be appreciated, the real beauty of this poetry collection is its inspiration. In some ways, all of us can relate to the topics and themes expressed in these poems which address important and often timely issues that we might otherwise ignore or suppress. In 'Fire She Said' the author captures news breaking in a very simple way. This poem conveys its own message, and provides a vehicle of expression for diverse attitudes and fresh insights.

This book appeals to a broad spectrum of poetry lovers, and forms a strong and intimate bond with any adventurous reader. From the poem '10th Daughter Of Mumbi' to Digital Hearts....Mines & Mind Fields, is just but a good read.

Mines & Mind Fields- My Spoken Words by Njeri Wangari is available in all leading bookshop in the country.

Njeri is a multi talented Kenyan poet and performer, IT specialist and Art Blogger at Kenyapoet.
The 114 paged book contains over 40 poems that explore themes on Urban Blues, Love, Identity, Traditions, Cultural changes, Exploitation and Politics among others. Njeri’s poems are mainly in English with a few in Kiswahili, Sheng and in Gĩkũyũ, making it an appealing mix to wide audiences.

For more info contact:-

Nsemia Inc. Publishers Ltd.
1011 Upper Middle Road East, Suite 1124
Oakville, Ontario, Canada L6H 5L2; Tel: 1-888-587-1150
Email: info @ nsemia.com.
www.nsemia.com

NOTE:
You can now 'follow' Two Hours Before on facebook by clicking on this link.

Tel: +254 725 385 654
Email:fafdays@gmail.com,
fafdays@yahoo.com
fafdays@hotmail.com
fafdays@ovi.com
Blogsite: http://www.twohoursbefore.blogspot.com
Facebook: Two Hours Before
Simon Mwangi Muthiora

Selection 2010 - Ashton Kutcher

Random Thoughts

Well it should be.  

And who bothers making up these signs?  It seems like there's almost unlimited growth potential for a business that makes signs telling people what things aren't crimes.  They should be running their production lines 24/7.  That wouldn't be a crime either (another sign idea...)

OK, dogs I'll allow to skateboard.  That shouldn't be a crime. 

I'm always amused by obituaries (yes, I've hit the age where I scan them...it's not a crime...I find it interesting to read about people's abbreviated life stories...) that say things like "Lived in the area 15 years ago," or "Son lives in Middletown," or "Once had a cup of coffee in this county on way to Florida."









Couple other quick thoughts: 

* I'm pitching a TV series idea to The Discovery Channel.  It's about men who die or suffer severe injuries picking tomatoes to supply Heinz.  It's called "The Deadliest Ketchup."  

*  All businesses advertise that they're "Conveniently Located."  My ass.  How do they know exactly where you are and what's convenient to you?  Although I guess they're within their rights to say this since, like skateboarding, it's not a crime... 

Until next time kidz.  And don't forget to recommend The LG Report to all your friends....thanks.

'Genetic Damage' In Fallujah: The BBC Reports

Before

The BBC has posted a video report from veteran war reporter John Simpson, concerning children growing up in Fallujah and the genetic damage inflicted on them by the depleted uranium ammunition so generously expended in defense of their freedom and democracy (and to make them an ally!) by the most righteous of all possible superpowers.

True to form, the BBC runs the phrase 'genetic damage' in quotes, as if it weren't real but only alleged -- and without doubt the allegations would have been made by conspiracy theorists whose twisted minds have been warped against BBC and its excellent, impartial coverage, ever since 9/11.

People who cannot handle reality were stunned when the BBC scooped the world's media in reporting the destruction of World Trade Center's Building 7, (WTC-7), a 47-story skyscraper many people still haven't heard of, which suddenly turned to dust and broken twisted steel on the afternoon on September 11, 2001.

American media -- and the 9/11 commission -- have been criticized for not reporting the amazing disintegration of this building at all. But the BBC reported the "collapse" before it happened. Some people have gone to excessive lengths to try to make something incriminating out of this excellent reportage.

During

For its part, the BBC says it wasn't part of any conspiracy, just a fluke. So it's probably also a fluke that the video either sits and spins, or says

"This content doesn't seem to be working. Try again later".

Well, of course.

The BBC web page says:

Cancer, leukaemia and infant mortality are all increasing in the Iraqi town of Fallujah, which saw fierce fighting between US forces and Sunni insurgents, a new survey says.

Still one of the most dangerous places in Iraq, doctors have been reporting a large number of birth defects since the 2004 offensive.

John Simpson reports.

But that cold snippet of text was all I have been able to get [until later: see the update below].

After

The page was listed as "2nd most watched" when I first loaded it, but that's changed too, and rightly so, since a

20ft oak sculpture in the heart of Dartmoor national park is due to be pulled down despite a Facebook campaign to save the giant sculpture of a chair.

Thus the truth about horrible crimes burns itself into the consciousness of the multitudes.

Or, as Karl Rove writes in the Wall Street Journal:

Iraq is a democracy and an ally instead of an enemy of America.

It's remarkable the extent to which our bountiful leaders will go to make friends and instill democracy, is it not?

After

According to the Rational Optimist:

America believes ... that it would be a desirable thing if the world did become more democratic, and backward nations did become more like us. We regard that as our own national interest, and in the interests of those other nations as well. As John F. Kennedy said, “We seek not the worldwide victory of one nation or system, but a worldwide victory of men.” [And women.] And, with admittedly many zigs and zags, that is the essence of American foreign policy.

I can't tell you how relieved I am to have somebody so rational and so optimistic telling us what America believes, and what is the essence of American foreign policy.

After

When American cities look like this, we will know we have arrived -- the backward nations of the world will finally be just like us, and all mankind will enjoy the blessings of a democratic Paradise on Earth.

After

But in the meantime, the video is now available, and some of the details and images are indeed chilling.

It was only possible [for BBC reporters] to stay [in Fallujah] a few hours, but in that time we found large numbers of children with serious birth defects.

Some had six or more fingers on each hand. Many had tumors which affected their spines. There was plenty of evidence of brain damage. Some of the cases were too dreadful for us to show.

BBC decides what's fit to show, and what's too dreadful. Thus the truth about horrible crimes burns itself into the consciousness of the multitudes.

Nonetheless, BBC reports, the spectrum of genetic damage in Fallujah is similar to what was found in Hiroshima, but much, much worse.

This could be something serious. But then again, as the BBC report notes:

American legislation makes it extremely difficult for foreigners to sue the US government over acts of war.

So ... perhaps I'm too realistic ... but it's not possible for me to imagine all the uproar over this most recent revelation of state-sponsored made-in-America horror lasting more than about 15 or 20 minutes.

Currently top of the BBC most watched list: Archeologists unearth Neolithic henge at Stonehenge!

Do you see what I mean?

To comment on this post, please click here and join the Winter Patriot community.

The LG Report's FREE Career Evaluation Test For Your Child...And Other Thoughts...

People approach LG all the time (let me know when referring to myself in the third person REALLY starts to bug you; I won't stop, of course, but at least I'll know for sure that it bugs you...) and ask "LG, can you help me figure out what career my kid should pursue?"  

Not being a parent myself, I am, of course, the perfect person to provide career guidance to youngsters. 

So I've developed this simple test to determine if your child has natural talents in the engineering field.  

By now you've noticed that 7-11 logo up in the corner.  Yes, my test does have something to do with 7-11, but it's probably not what you think.  I won't have your kid working at 7-11 for a career, don't worry.   Sit back and entrust your child's future to LG's homemade test.  Thank you. 

When you go to 7-11 store to purchase one of LG's all-time favorite products, the most excellent Slurpee, you will encounter an array of lids for the cups.  LG meant to take a Blackberry camera photo of said array, but he didn't get around to it (sometimes in my Slurpee zeal, I forget things).  Here's what it sorta looks like courtesy of the internet:

This picture was obviously taken outside the U.S., since the lids are measured in "litres," but that's OK, it works for our purposes in determining the lifelong career path of your snot-nosed kid.  Err, I mean your angelic child.

So here's the test: have your kid pick out his/her desired size Slurpee cup.  Then, giving him/her one shot, ask them to choose the lid that fits that cup without any pre-measurements.  If your kid can pick out the right lid just by sight, he or she is destined to be a star in the field of engineering. They obviously have talents in spatial relations, geometric design, etc. 

If they choose a lid that is an inch too big or small, you've got yourself an English major.

LG just saved you thousands of dollars in costly career assessment fees.  Throw me a bone and post a comment and/or get me some more followers, that's the coin of the realm around here in BloggerLand.  Thanks.
__________________________________________________________

Some random LG thoughts that have been piling up over the past week:

• Every call center in America is perpetually experiencing "higher call volumes than normal" and advises you to "listen carefully as our call options have recently changed."  I would politely ask all of those companies to take a flying suck. 
• Every buyer of gold, silver and other commodities (and there are plenty these days) advertises "Highest prices paid."  Where's the guy who pays the lowest prices and makes the biggest profit?  Doesn't exist apparently.  The high price payers can take a flying suck too.
• I love when the police bust militia nuts or other weapons-hoarding losers and then make a big show of it on TV, laying out all of the firearms for the cameras to see.  Invariably, here's how the list of confiscated items reads: 
• 54 automatic machine guns;
• 43 Uzis;
• 94 semi-automatic pistols;
• 22 hand grenades;
• 600 rounds of ammunition;
•  3 bazookas;
• 1 anti-aircraft gun; and 
• a samuri sword.  They all always have one goddam samari sword.  Why is that?  Do they expect Kung Fu to attack them?  He's dead, they can let the samurai sword go...

OK, that's it for today kids, keep clicking back and don't forget to recruit new LG Report followers.  Next time someone solicits you for the 100-Mile Walk to End Ingrown Toenails or the like, bug them back by asking them to become and LG Report follower.  Thanks much!

"WHEN I AM GONE" is about an exit that is both celebrated and cursed! It is a poem about a troubled 'man' who is reflecting on his Death.

The following poem came into my mind after loosing a friend whom I never thought would die so soon and become forgotten. It has made me think about my own exit and how the world would behave and react to my own death. Whileas many of my fans have failed to understand why I have written about death severally, it is prudent to state that, it is possibly my greatest inspiration. I have always wanted to live each day preciously such that, in my death, my age shall tell a million stories and I shall exit smiling for the 'great achievement'.
However, this is a work of fiction and events, descriptions and plot are not necessarily true. In the meantime, TWO HOURS BEFORE has the pleasure to thank you for your continued support and various nominations to Poetry Events around the world. Asente sana!



WHEN I AM GONE

My little world shall cry and mourn
It shall probably miss my smile
My alarming sense of humour
It shall not believe that I’m gone
‘How did it happen?’
‘The man is gone?’

When I’m gone
I shall leave a dent
In the hearts of my friends
And adversaries as well
They shall cry and weep
Their tears I shall not wipe
Neither shall I end their fears

When I am gone,
They shall also speak
Others shall whisper
Many shall shout
‘He is gone,
It took him away’
Many shall chirp

When I am gone,
They shall ridicule her
She shall cry and cry
The beasts shall be mused though,
and throw a party!
The breasts they shall want to see
And who knows what else.
They shall try to console her
And make her forget me as fast

When I am gone,
I shall carry my love with me
I shall take my presence
And leave my absence
They shall lay me on cold cement
Stuff wool in my mouth, nose, and ears
And God knows where else

She shall probably burn my clothes
To erase the memories and
Keep my dairies, to remind her of the ‘man’
She shall weep and then stop weep
She shall cry and then stop cry
She shall mourn and then stop mourn
Because the ‘small man’ shall always
Remind her of the 'big man'

When I am gone,
They shall all come to say bye
Their eyes shall see differently
One eye shall only see good
The other shall see bad
One eye shall see happiness
The other shall see sadness
One eye shall see righteousness
The other shall see evil
But the ‘man’
Shall remain......
Gone!

When I am gone
There shall be all sorts of theories
It is the Steam, Tusker, or Richot Brandy!
Some shall whisper!
No! It’s the ‘big disease’,
Kweli…..! He brew all the Vuvuzelas around
And kicked all the Jabulani’s
In the neighborhood
No! he hanged himself!
No, they shot him!
No, it ran over him in town
But the man shall remain gone.

That night, after I am gone
My shell shall lay trapped
In the middle of my shamba
My pillow shall be lonely
My pajamas lifeless
For the man shall be gone

And my epitaph shall read;
'I told you I was Sick,
and gone I am'-The Man
When I am finally gone!


AUTHOR: MWANGI S. MUTHIORA

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. REPRODUCTION IN PART OR WHOLE WITHOUT PRIOR CONSENT FROM THE AUTHOR IS STRICTLY PROHIBITED

MWANGI S. MUTHIORA
Managing Director
TWO HOURS BEFORE
P. O. BOX 147-00216
GITHUNGURI, KENYA

Tel: +254 725 385 654
Email:fafdays@gmail.com,
fafdays@yahoo.com
fafdays@hotmail.com
fafdays@ovi.com
Blogsite: http://www.twohoursbefore.blogspot.com
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Simon Mwangi Muthiora

Selection 2010 - Rafael Nadal