Doug Berger – Page 168

July 13, 2004April 18, 2020

Stewart zings Blitzer – film at 11

I was watching The Daily Show tonight and Jon Stewart had on Wolf Blitzer from CNN. Stewart just hammered Blitzer about the 9/11 Senate Report released today.

The following exchange is from memory so the exact wording is iffy:

Stewart: So do you think that this Senate report should be the biggest political scandal ever?
Blitzer: You never made a mistake?

Stewart: So did the media go over what went wrong?
Blitzer: Yes we had meetings.
Stewart: I’m not talking about deciding what to put on the crawl (at the bottom of CNN’s picture) but did you look at what you could have done differently?
[funny bit about the crawl here]
Stewart: What could have the media done differently?
Blitzer: We should have been more skeptical.
[Stewart has a large facial reaction as if he was going to say “Isn’t that your job.”]
Stewart: So is it that the Republicans and Bush intimidated you guys not to ask the questions?
Blitzer: No. It wasn’t that. I’m not sure what happened. Look i went to Kuwait I got all the briefings the CIA, Defense Department, FBI, Congress, and everybody said he had huge stock piles of biological, chemical weapons and it was only a short time before he had a nuclear bomb….
Stewart: Right….
Blitzer: Condoleeza Rice said on my show ‘Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer’ [audience laughs at obvious plug] before the war, that she didn’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud….
Stewart: Right but we have since learned that Pakistan sold ‘mushroom’ material to every country in the area BUT Iraq. This is a crazy world…. whoooo….hoooooo. [then Stewart twirlls in his chair and waves his arms crazily]

COMEDY CENTRAL TV Shows: The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

July 12, 2004April 18, 2020

Wonder Woman on DVD

At last now I can die (not really but close).

Wonder Woman with the sexy Lynda Carter was one of my favorite shows in the mid 70’s.

Seeing her transform into her super hero outfit each episode made me feel all warm and tingly (if you know what I mean).

It was campy but fun and the theme music was bitchin’.

Now if they would just put out Square Pegs on DVD then I could die.

Amazon.com: DVD: Wonder Woman – The Complete First Season (1976)

June 17, 2004April 18, 2020

A Look At the Uber Fan

Music, like all forms of art, allows us to express ourselves to others. Music can convey the full rage of human emotions. Music we love is any that touches us in whatever way we are feeling or want to feel.

It is a given that not all of us feel the same way or enjoy music in the same way.

Some of us love lyrics. We are thrilled by the combination or words and stanzas drawing pictures in our heads like poetry can if done well.

Some of us, like myself, love the music itself. We like the use of instruments and voices into a compact container of sound. I love music with strings, horns, and good percussion.

I can’t fathom how anyone could enjoy rap music yet my family shakes their heads at my fondness for female rock singers.

The joy of music is finding that song or album that ripples through your entire being and it seems when we do we have a mission to spread that music to every corner of our world.

Rest of the article is on Doug World!

June 12, 2004April 18, 2020

Interesting Quote from the funeral of Ronald Reagan

While browsing some of the news sites about the funeral of President Ronald Reagan, I came across the following quote contained in the transcript of the remarks from his son Ron Reagan Jr. The remarks were part of the interment ceremony held in California on Friday evening June 11th.

“Dad was also a deeply, unabashedly religious man. But he never made the fatal mistake of so many politicians wearing his faith on his sleeve to gain political advantage. True, after he was shot and nearly killed early in his presidency, he came to believe that God had spared him in order that he might do good. But he accepted that as a responsibility, not a mandate. And there is a profound difference.”

Full transcript

Mayhaps Bush Jr. will get the message, but I doubt it.

June 7, 2004April 18, 2020

Omissions, Ronald Reagan, and death

President Ronald Reagan died on June 5th at the age 93. It is never a good thing when someone dies.

The worst thing about being human is we have a life cycle. We are born, we live, then we die. The second worst thing about being human is we don’t know how our lives will turn out or how or when we will die. That lack of knowledge and control strikes fear in all of us. Although we know we have a finite life cycle we really don’t want it to come to an end. Even most Christians who claim their actions are so they will get to heaven in an “afterlife” aren’t all that anxious to get there.

Reagan found out he had Alzheimer’s disease about 10 years ago. The end of his life came in a fog to him where he didn’t remember his loved ones or the events of his life. It was if he was a lost person wondering around. Not much of a life to live for him or his loved ones who were shut out.

All of the media and political leaders have been saying many kind things about Reagan. It is traditional to say kind words about someone who has just died even if they are enemies.

As President, Reagan was a dyed blue conservative. When he was elected in 1980, he got the conservative movement on to the “A” list and that begat the lack of compassion and the “we’ve got ours so screw you” form of politics that we have had to put up with for 24 years. Talk radio, the loss of Union influence, NAFTA, and the continued efforts to mix religion and politics all started with Reagan.

In all the gushing words heard this weekend, some facts about Reagan were not expressed. In the early 1950’s as President of the Screen Actors Guild, he was an informant to the House Un-American Committee, naming names of suspected Communists in Hollywood; as Governor of California, sent the National Guard to UC Berkeley to quell student riots and said “If they want a blood bath I’ll give them a blood bath”; traded weapons for Hostages; began the fantasy StarWars defense system; made ketchup a vegetable for school lunch programs; got very cozy with the Moral Majority and started the so-called “culture war”; and wrongly took credit for having “won” the Cold War.

Biographer Lou Cannon also said that by the time Reagan ascended to the presidency, “his mind was filled with movie scenes more vivid to him than many actual events.” Reagan judged stories to be told “by their impact rather than their accuracy.”

At best he was a cheerleader and host rather than a leader.

By the end of the 2nd term you could tell he was not all there.