Maggie's Farm

How close it is to March 06th, 'Alamo Day'.

Davy Crockett died fighting for free Texas, not 45 minutes drive from where i sit now.

I've grown up listening to nonstop slurs on Crockett and all the Tennesseeans and Louisianians and Carolinians who died in the Texas War of Independence; slurs on the basis of their having been promised by the new government a section of raw land (640 acres), iirc along the Nueces mostly, in payment of their military service. Just tro show how insidious this crap is, tho i paid little attention to it, it never dawned on me until not so long ago to ask, "So what?"

Disproporion is just too nebulous a concept i suppose, but taken out far enough it soon shows its colors. Jesus could've stepped on a grasshopper while dragging the cross to Calvary, and these Crockett-haters would think nothing of joining a class-action lawsuit against his mother Mary led by the American Grasshopper Rights Association.

Instapundit points to a nice site which is very much relevant to today's politics. There printed is a famous speech he made in a long-ago Congress, often refered to as the "Not Ours to Give" speech:

h ttp://www.juntosociety.com/patriotism/inytg.html

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A few letters from the surrounded Alamo have survived, they show what Crockett and all the defenders were made of:

h ttp://www.freedomdocuments.com/Travis/text.html

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Here is a lovely piece by the great Brendan Miniter, in the WSJ some years back:

h ttp://www.opinionjournal.com/taste/?id=110003130

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Here is a year-old Maggie's featuring "El Deguello", the Moorish tune used by Spanish and Mexican armies as a bugle call signifying "no quarter", in the era often called the "slit throat order". It would have been the last music heard by Davy and the Volunteers at the Alamo.

h ttp://maggiesfarm.anotherdotcom.com/archives/10791-El-Deguello.html

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(note, to escape the no-session-hash scarlet-letter eviction, i added a space after every 'h' in 'aych-tea-tea-pea)

good point, feeblemind --those theme songs are real totems --try to find someone over 15 who can't ID the Beverly Hillbillies theme song --you can't. that's pretty remarkable.

...and you could hardly better explain the early 60s in America than via the raw futuristical optimism --as well as the superb technical jazz skill --of the Jetson's theme song (especially if you listen loud thru headphones for all the 'found sounds'):

http://www.televisiontunes.com/Jetsons_(The).html

Perfect popular culture musical bookend to 'theme America, early 1960s', feeblemind --thanks for the reminder --man this is SOME movie theme!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6jeWVzdyqeA

Newman & Darby, theme from 1962's How the West Was Won

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Longer, more orchestral version --by Prague Philharmonic:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7ZPy-7BzSw&feature=related

...and Adios, Fess, Mr. Parker, sir. RIP, ya done good.

>>for the "Let's-have-an-Alamo-in-the-Levant" file:

http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2010/me_israel0217_03_18.asp

(snip)

In 2008, the United States approved an Israeli request for bunker-busters capable of destroying underground facilities, including Iranian nuclear weapons sites. Officials said delivery of the weapons was held up by the administration of President Barack Obama.

Since taking office, Obama has refused to approve any major Israeli requests for U.S. weapons platforms or advanced systems. Officials said this included proposed Israeli procurement of AH-64D Apache attack helicopters, refueling systems, advanced munitions and data on a stealth variant of the F-15E.

"All signs indicate that this will continue in 2010," a congressional source familiar with the Israeli military requests said. "This is really an embargo, but nobody talks about it publicly."

(end snip, bolding mine, read more @ link)