I may be late to the party to knowing about this innovation in recycling that I stumbled upon (figuratively) after a few beers at the local beer hall. A quick look at the Internet says that there are many variations available, even make your own (a worthy project for fraternity houses).

My son is in Orlando on business and went to the capacity filled (20,000+, with attendees waiting in rain before)) stadium for President Trump's 2020 campaign kickoff rally.

Pregame at Powerline. For live coverage from sarcastic local reporter. Fox also has live coverage. 

Vice President Pence was powerful. Loudest applause at the move of our embassy to Jerusalem. President Trump so far:

"Our radical Democrat opponents are driven by hatred, prejudice and rage," Trump adds. "They want to destroy you and they want to destroy our country as we know it. Not acceptable. It's not going to happen."

"They went after my family, my business, my finances, my employees, almost everyone that I have ever known or worked with, but they are really going after you. That's what it is all about. It's not about us. It's about you. They tried to erase your vote, erase your legacy of the greatest campaign and the greatest election probably in the history of our country."

Keep America Great is 2020 slogan.

It's not Veterans Day. It's not the Marine Corps Birthday. It's just like any other day, taking a moment to give thanks for those who serve and protect, and say Hallelujah ("G-d be praised").

The Bible directs us to observe Passover and to remember that G-d delivered us from slavery to the freedoms of body, faith and observance. Passover begins tonight with the ceremonial Seder of symbolic foods, narration of the Exodus story, and prayers and songs. Oh, don't forget the feast!

Some may ask why has this biblical holiday survived intact for thousands of years? In large part, as many of our daily prayers say, to remember who we are and from whence we came, and to thank G-d for those and all our existence. And, it is a "big tent" holiday, which keeps Passover relevant to the present, both in welcoming the stranger into our tent and in welcoming Passover's many other meanings that are derived from Passover.

One of those meanings is the freedom from the slavery to our egos.

"We are slaves. Slaves to our own inhibitions, fears, habits, cynicism and prejudices. These self-appointed pharaohs are layers of ego that prevent us from expressing our true inner self, from reaching our spiritual potential. Our souls are incarcerated in selfishness, laziness and indifference.

"Pesach means "Passover." It is the season of liberation, when we pass over all these obstacles to inner freedom. On Pesach, we give our souls a chance to be expressed.

"Reread the Haggada [Exodus narrative]. Every time it says "Egypt" read "limitations." Replace the word "Pharaoh" with "Ego." And read it in the present tense."

Another meaning is the central importance of gratitude in guiding our lives. The fun song Dayeinu during the Seder means "It would have been enough."  Gratitude is expressed for every facet of G-d's miraculous deliverance: for example, "Had G-d but split the sea, and not passed us through it on dry land -- it would have been enough." An attitude of gratitude in all facets of our lives enriches ourselves and those around us. Giving thanks even for the partial and incomplete, even for the disappointing parts of living, is crucial for living in peace and happiness in an uncertain world and sharing that blessing with others. The Matzoh, unleavened and tasteless cracker (unless flavored or topped with a good spread), that we eat instead of breads, is a reminder to be grateful for even that in our rush to exit Egypt and to share that feeling thousands of years later.

Exodus 13:8 says that we are to teach our children "It's because of this that G-d did for me when I went out from Egypt". In every generation we are obligated to see ourself as one who personally went out from Egypt, and freed of limitations and full of gratitude.

Here's another allied take, "Passover's Three Steps To Personal Freedom":

The Democrat women at the State of the Union speech sitting on their hands, with sourpusses, bring even more attention to their immaturity and rigid hatred of the success of America and of this administration. Thank you for wearing your uniforms, so more Americans can see the evidence of their refusal to be part of a constructive future, instead seeking to castigate and harm those who actually build America.

But, they finally do stand to cheer themselves.  Sexists? Yes. Men don't stand to cheer themselves. All Americans should cheer those who keep us safe and labor at the most taxing and dangerous jobs.

Cheez! They even sit still for infanticide! 

Read the speech for yourself. Really a good one.

Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will NEVER be a socialist country

America was founded on liberty and independence — not government coercion, domination and control.

We are BORN FREE, and we will STAY FREE.

Take that to market, new Congresswomen, and the Democrats who encourage or tolerate them and their anti-Semitism.

The conclusion:

"This is the time to rekindle the bonds of love and loyalty and memory that link us together as citizens, as neighbors, as patriots.

This is our future –our fate — and our choice to make.

I am asking you to CHOOSE GREATNESS.

No matter the trials we face, no matter the challenges to come, we must go forward together.

We must keep America FIRST in our hearts.

We must keep Freedom alive in our souls.

And we must always keep FAITH in America’s Destiny –that One Nation, Under God, must be the HOPE and the PROMISE and the LIGHT and the GLORY among all the nations of the world! "

Thank you, President Trump. 

CBS NEWS POLL: 76 percent of viewers approved of what they heard in Pres. Trump's #SOTU speech; 72 percent said they approved of Pres. Trump's ideas for immigration.

The "woke" Superbowl, starred virtue signaling liberal self-congratulations, and a cussing halftime rapper repeatedly blinked out, aside from boring ball, should have instead aired this ad CBS refused:

Chanukah (Hannukah transliteration from the Hebrew for those who can't pronounce the guttural Ch) begins tonight. Many non-Jews also celebrate Chanukah for it common significance of overcoming religious oppression and rededication to sacred traditions and observance. It's also fun and a learning experience for children to see the lights glowing, to eat the tasty latkes (potato pancakes) and sufganyot (jelly donuts), and play dreidal (top) for gelt (chocolate coins or pennies).

And here's a brief video of how to light the candles.

 In the November Commentary: 

Theirs is not an effort to raise boys into men who can integrate into a kinder, gentler future economy of helping professions and easily expressed feelings. It is an effort to overcome maleness itself. And it is an admission of failure, because when boys fail to grow into civilized men, everyone suffers, just as they do when women are denied equal opportunity. The answer isn’t reeducation in radical feminist notions of men’s innately violent natures. It’s raising boys and girls to treat one another with respect and to uphold gender-free values such as the presumption of innocence and due process and equal opportunity. Civil society relies on due process not only because it’s an objective good (though it is). Everyone should embrace both due process and the presumption of innocence because everyone might need these themselves one day, regardless of his or her gender.

My son Jason, who just started at UCLA, was honored last night at a banquet by the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation.

It's a generous scholarship, though quite small compared to the whole bill at UCLA. But beyond the money lay a bigger honor and lesson nailed home to Jason.

(BTW, you'll note from the awardee photo below that many of the recipients are female children of Marines. Female Marines are an increasing number and force within the Marine Corps, and all that I've met are fully Marines. As with them, these female award recipients will add much to our heritage and nation's strength.)

As with other award recipients, all awardees stressed the character lessons drummed in by their Marine Corps parent. What gave me extra pleasure was Jason seeing something additional I've always told him: The Marine Corps is the tightest, most lasting, dependable fraternity (that includes female Marines) in the world. From a bevy of Lieutenant Generals and other top officers and executives, down to this Sergeant, all there interacted and discussed as equal-- and honest and humble- brothers.  No need to embellish or brag. We've already proven who we are: Marines.

Among the Board members there was the actor David McCallum.  (NCIS; Man From Uncle) Everyone was so thrilled to meet him. He is a kind man with a real sparkle and caring in his eyes.

Here's a few more photos from the event.

That's my son Jason, fifth from the left (above), second from left (below).

 If you'd care enough to continue this furtherance of building the next strong American generation, please contribute, whatever you can, to the Marine Corps Scholarship Foundation.

You can also contribute by drinking Firestone winery Jarhead Red. Over $700,000 has been contributed from sales of this wine. 

Rosh Hashanah, Jewish New Year, began last night, beginning the ten days of awe, days of atonement, resetting our course, leading up to the day of judgment Yom Kippur. This fun music video demonstrates the lesson of renewal, of living our better side.

Below is a speech, "Why Men Matter",  given on August 13, 2018 at the Salinas Men's conference by Archbishop Chaput (Philadelphia). Although it focuses in part upon Catholic men and teachings, the message is fully applicable to any religion. Well worth the read:

"Reaching Out"

I spent the 1960s studying to be a priest, so I was exempt from the military draft. I never served in Vietnam.  I can’t and don’t claim to know what combat is like.  But I have friends who did serve, and no one in my generation could really avoid the war because it dominated our country’s life for more than a decade.  The Vietnam War intersected with a sexual revolution and a wave of social turmoil here at home that, in some ways, remain with us today.  And yet, along with the war’s bitterness and suffering, there were moments that are frozen in time because they had an impossible beauty.  They can move the heart even now.  I want to focus on one of them.

In your conference booklets, you’ll find a photograph with the title “Reaching Out.”  I want you to study it.  October 1966 saw a series of heavy firefights between American Marines and North Vietnamese regulars in the jungles and hills just south of the DMZ.  This photo was snapped on Hill 484, moments after a hand-to-hand battle for the hill had ended.  The man with the head wound is a gunnery sergeant, or “gunny,” the senior enlisted man in a Marine company. 

Two things are obvious.  The Marines around the gunny are trying to get him to a medic.  And the gunny is doing the opposite – ignoring his own pain to help a wounded young Marine bleeding in the dirt.  What’s not obvious is something outside the frame.  The same Marines had just dragged the sergeant away from the body of their dead company commander, who had called down friendly artillery fire on his own position to keep his men from being overrun.  The beauty in this photograph – what the poet William Butler Yeats called “a terrible beauty” – is the love among men in the shadow of death; men in the extremes of pressure and suffering.  Not a romantic love.  And certainly not an erotic love.  But the loyalty-love of men made brothers by the tasks and burdens they share. 

Men don’t often talk about this love, but it’s real.  It’s the love that enables a man to sacrifice his own life in service to someone or something more important than himself.  It’s the love that takes the male of our species and remakes him into a man.  And that leads us to our theme this afternoon: why men matter.

 It’s an odd question to ask, isn’t it.  Why do men matter?  In a healthy time and culture, we wouldn’t need to ask, because the answer is obvious.  The role of good men is to provide, to protect, to build, to lead, and to teach, both by our words and by the example of our lives.  None of these things is exclusive to men, of course.  Women can do all of these things in their own way, with their own particular genius.  But men have the special responsibility to create a secure and just society where new life can grow and thrive to ensure the human future. 

The trouble is, we don’t live in a healthy time and culture.  We live in an on-going civil war in this country over the meaning of sex, gender, family, marriage, human nature and whether our lives have any higher purpose at all.  And that makes the sound of any sane voice all the more precious.    

In 1971, during one of his retirements, my father went to Mexico City for six months and loved it. My father could pass for Mexican, about 5'5", pudgy, dark complexion, black hair, did not speak Spanish but smiled and said Si to everything. Ever since, Mexico City has been on my bucket list. Last week, my sons away, I went. Literally, everything and every moment was a great favorable surprise.

Read below and see photos: 

From Les Miserables.

Want to know more about him? 

My heart beamed Friday night as my sons welcomed the Sabbath with perfectly sung prayers. My heart broke Saturday night as my sons fought while I grilled a perfect wild-caught salmon, and I got indigestion instead of the meal I thought I deserved.

I'm reminded of the saying, "A Man's children and his garden both reflect the amount of weeding done during the growing season." And, the growing goes both ways as we fathers grow, have to grow -- into the men we want to be under our children's careful observation, into the men that they need.

We yearn to please but, most important, to pass on life's lessons.

Father's Day is full of platitudes and real feelings, of missed and appreciated opportunities. And, of how much we care by just being there. I'm reminded of George Strait's "A Father's Love", of Conway Twitty's "That's My Job", of Rascal Flatt's "My Wish." True, heartfelt, and missing the tougher choices we have to make and impose to make as sure as we can that our children grow into responsible, resilient and caring adults.

There's a wisecrack, "If God is so perfect, how do you explain us." As fathers, we're not perfect, but we try to find and know the ways to be better, and most of us find it. We continue to strive, and so may our children, with a higher hand to reach for and give us the strength to be better and have hope.

It's not easy being the father or the child.

Tomorrow, June 14, is Flag Day. So, please get out your flag for your house or flag lapel pin or whatever, and celebrate our flag and what it represents.

 The Thomas More Law Center helps us:

" A Brief History of Flag Day:

   On June 14, 1777, Continental Congress adopted the American Flag in the First Flag Act. They declared: "That the flag of the United States shall be of thirteen stripes of alternate red and white, with a union of thirteen stars of white in a blue field, representing the new constellation." 

   Over 100 years later, in 1885, a small-town Wisconsin teacher named Bernard Cigrand came up with the idea of an annual flag birthday to be celebrated every June 14. He lobbied Congress for years to celebrate it as a national holiday. He is sometimes called the "Father of Flag Day."  In the following years, many schools and communities observed their own flag celebrations. On May 7, 1937, Pennsylvania became the first state to establish Flag Day as a legal holiday, a recognition that Pennsylvania holds today.

   Both President Wilson, in 1916, and President Coolidge, in 1927, issued proclamations asking for June 14 to be observed as the National Flag Day. But it wasn’t until August 3, 1949, that Congress approved the national observance, and President Harry Truman signed it into law. 

The U.S. government encourages its citizens to display Old Glory outside of their homes and businesses. Today is a day of reflection as we consider the sacrifices our ancestors made and consider how we might carry on their work so that our children and grandchildren may live in the freedom the Stars and the Stripes majestically proclaim.

   God Bless America"

And sing along "You're a grand old flag" with James Cagney as George M. Cohan in Yankee Doodle Dandy

I saw a poster that spoke to me: We do not remember days, we remember moments.

On Memorial Day, just take a moment to remember that special moment with a loved one, that kid down the block, that young soldier or Marine you saw in an airport or on a train, and either give thanks that any one of them might not have survived but did or respect that he didn't in a good cause and brotherhood with comrades.

The other night I went to a high school Seniors Award Ceremony. In honor of classmates lost in Vietnam a group from the class of 1966 handed out awards  to some of the 18-year olds in the senior graduating class. Heck, I thought, most of their parents weren't even alive or much out of diapers during the Vietnam War, and probably have absorbed the defeatist excuses pushed by leftist academics. Heck with that, I thought again, maybe the awardees will take some time to learn something about the cause, the facts,  in the deceased's name they received an award for the promise of their future, a future gained by others' loss.

Netflix and don’t chill: Obama deal sparks conservative boycott

I honestly don't know if I'll boycott Netflix, which I watch since I cut the cable two years ago. But, I will be looking for alternatives.  Meanwhile, over my transom comes this prospective lineup of Obama Netflix Shows. 

Obama Netflix Shows

So You Think You Can Keep Your Doctor

The spy who loved himself

No country for Anatomic Males

At Some Point You’ve Made Enough Money... Except For Me.

Yes We Can-Can

The Beta Bunch

You Didn't Build That: a documentary series. In each episode, Obama instructs individual business owners as to how they did not build their businesses.

Snakes on a Plane: The Loretta Lynch and Bill Clinton Story

I Killed Osama Bin Laden: office comedy where incompetent executive is constantly causing disasters and doing illegal things, but always gets let off the hook when he says 'Remember, I killed Osama Bin Laden!'

Step Brothers sequel: The Great Rotondo. Plot: A 30-year-old stay-at-home son heroically fights for the tenancy rights of other adult children.

Shovel Ready: a DIY show about companies that get huge government tax grants and then go bankrupt.

Take A Bow: a travel show where Obama visits foreign countries and spends hours bowing to anyone in power.

It's Always Sunny in Guantanamo Bay

How I Met Your Mullah

Guess Who's Coming to Jail...

Who Wants to Win a Pallet of Cash?

I Married a Wookie.

Are You Smarter Than the Ayatollah?

Bath House Diaries.

I Spy

How I Droned Your Mother...& Grandmother.

Fast & Furious: Narcos

Misery...loves company.

Epstein's Island

Barry and Michael: The Early Years

Happy Gays

Honey, I Shrunk the Middle Class

An Idiot Abroad

13 Treasons Why

Some like it acid washed

The Birth of a Police State...

Barry and the Legion of Choom

Pretty Little Lies

The Amazing Race Card

And She Still Couldn't Win!

How the Middle East Was not Won

It's America’s Fault

Cooking the Family Dog.

Tiny Dancer: The Rahm Emanuel Story, starring Peter Dinklage.

Dont Trust the B at 1600 P

Rev. Jeremiah Wright's "White Devil" lecture series.

Dealing Real Estate with Tony Rezko

Dude where’s Hillary’s email server?

Eternal Sunshine of the Keystone Pipeline

The Blunder Years

Saving Private Servers

13 Reasons Why I Became A Marxist

Obama the Economic Growth Slayer

The Voting Dead

You've got Mail (and I'm reading it)

A Series of Unfortunate Scams

The Big Bong Theory

Suddenly Susan Rice

Un-American Horror Story

How I Met Your Mom Jeans

Cheyenne – western TV show

Clint Walker, Star of TV Western ‘Cheyenne,’ Dies at 90

Gallup Poll (May 22, 2018):

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- The percentage of American adults identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) increased to 4.5% in 2017, up from 4.1% in 2016 and 3.5% in 2012 when Gallup began tracking the measure. The latest estimate is based on over 340,000 interviews conducted as part of Gallup's daily tracking in 2017.

Hollywood Reporter:

With GLAAD claiming that 20 percent of Americans 18 to 34 years old and 12 percent of those 35–51 identify as LGBTQ, Ellis noted, “If Hollywood wants to remain relevant with these audiences and keep them buying tickets, they must create stories are reflective of the world LGBTQ people and our friends and family know.”

Usually I regret whenever I'm flipping through channels of the car radio and come across NPR's pretty consistent litany of liberal and leftist commentators. So, I was amazed when I stumbled upon this show just now on my local NPR station. I heard the words University of Nebraska and hesitated to move on because a good friend graduated from there, so I was curious.

An hour radio show traced in detail the gross attacks by a faculty member upon a conservative student and the outcome: the faculty member was banned from teaching, the attempted coverup emails by the admin at U of Nebraska was exposed, and the state legislature may pass a free speech bill over the protests of the usual opponents of free speech for anyone but themselves.   Yes, this triumph for free speech and students' rights on campus is out of the ordinary on campuses and in states and media dominated by the liberal left, but it can be a portent if enough determined conservatives and others of good conscience act.

The lengthy article upon which the NPR story is based appeared in, again of all places, the liberal Chrinicle of Higher Education.  It is a MUST read. Here it is: "How a tiny protest at the U of Nebraska turned into a proxy war for the future of campus politics: State Of Conflict"

Here's a follow up about the resulting action by the U of Nebraska Board Of Regents. Here's the action by the state legislature. The Goldwater Institute furthers such bills in state legislatures.

Warning: Not safe for work....or for foo foo pizza eaters, frozen pizza eaters, chain pizza eaters, non-real New Yorkers