In times like these, it helps to remember there have always been times like these. – Paul Harvey
Paul Harvey was an American radio announcer, fondly remembered for, among other things, his news commentaries. His father was a police officer killed in the line of duty when Harvey was three and he secured his first job in radio at KVOO Tulsa, Oklahoma in 1933, when he was 14. At his peak, Harvey reached 24 million Americans every week on 1,200 radio stations. His trustworthiness not only got him a loyal audience but loyal sponsors as well, both equal parts of a radio announcers job and this is not the first time this quote has been featured in this column. Click Here For More
The Daily Dose/August 1, 2018 By Gaylon Kent America’s Funniest Guy
News Notes And Comment We received feedback on yesterday’s column, where we said we were opposed to our government providing medical care for everyone, asking if we really wanted our government to provide us with cradle to grave coverage.
Well, someone, age and gender unknown, wrote to say health care is a basic human right and the sooner our government started providing it the better off we will be.
Interesting point, that health care is a basic human right. It’s something you hear from time to time and it is a point I disagree with. Health care is not a basic human right. It is, of course, a basic human need, but medical care is provided by professional men and women in business to earn a living and no one has a basic human right to anyone else’s professional services.
The only human right is liberty. We all have the inalienable right to utilize the 24 hours we have every day as we see fit and we should not expect our government to do too much more than to provide for that.
Today At The Site Sparrow completely loses his mind and goes off and introduces himself to the new neighbor across the street on today’s edition of The Diary of a Nobody. His name is Brad and he seems nice enough and this makes two neighbors Sparrow now knows, including Jerry, who lives across the alley.
The Lewis and Clark Expedition provides the inspiration for The Thought for the Day. It comes from a book on the medical aspects of the expedition written by Dr David J Peck. We read the book a year or two ago and it was as good as it was fascinating, even for nitwits like us. Today’s Thought concerns heading out with little preparation and how we must sometimes wing it.
On This Date In 1944 – The Polish resistance launches the Warsaw Uprising, an attempt to drive the Nazis from their city. The uprising would last for two months and result in a German victory. The destruction of Warsaw was such, however, that despite the victory, the Nazis would abandon the city the following January.
In 1906- Harry McIntire of the Brooklyn Superbas, now the Los Angeles Dodgers, throws 10 ⅔ innings of hitless baseball before giving up a hit in the eleventh against the Pittsburgh Pirates, establishing the major league (ML) record for the longest time before a no-hitter was broken up. Pittsburgh would win the game 1-0 in the 13th inning. Though this record was broken by Harvey Haddix, who pitched 12 perfect innings before also losing in the 13th in 1959, it remains the second-longest such game in ML history.
In 1964 – A Hard Day’s Night by the Beatles reaches #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It would spend two weeks at the top and was the Beatles fifth of six #1’s they would have in 1964, still the record for most #1’s by one act in a calendar year. At the same time, the album A Hard Day’s Night topped the album chart and both the single and album were simultaneously #1 in Great Britain, the first time one act has topped both charts in both countries at the same time.
Trivia Time One other act has topped the American and British charts with the same single and album at the same time. Name this act. – Answer next time!
Shameless Plugs Backstairs at the Monte Carlo: A Vegas Memoir!: Clock in with the graveyard crew at the Monte Carlo Security Department on the glamorous Las Vegas Strip. You’ll meet drunks, reprobates and scoundrels, and those are just the officers! The funniest Vegas memoir ever! Promise!
The Regular Guys: Meet Lenny and Larry, two comedians who team up more or less out of desperation and become the biggest in show business. As funny as you would expect from Gaylon, and poignant, too.
Click here to read previews of both! Click here to subscribe and get your all-access pass.
For Lewis and Clark there would only be a little bit of practical knowledge, some theoretical nonsense, and a small supply of mostly worthless medications. – Dr David J Peck, Or Perish in the Attempt: Wilderness Medicine in the Lewis and Clark Expedition.
Dr David J Peck is a retired American physician, and this book is a fascinating look at how people of this era cared for themselves. Far from being dry and technical, Peck makes everything accessible for nitwits like me while not boring his brethren in the medical field, either. Click Here For More
The Daily Dose
By Gaylon Kent America’s Funniest Guy
Notes from around the Human Experience…
In The News
The latest Medicare For All plan has been issued by Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders. It calls medical care for every American and is expected to cost about $32 trillion (T) for ten years. Forget the fact we can’t afford this. Forget the fact the taxes required to pay for it will strangle our economy. This proposal cuts right to the heart of what our country is about:
How much do we want our government to do for us?
Friends, do we want our government to provide cradle to grave coverage? Do we want a government program interfering with our lives at every milestone? We shouldn’t. All we should require from our government is 24 hours every day to make something good happen for ourselves.
It is, of course, human nature to want to depend on someone. As kids, we depended on our parents and as a husband, Lord knows, I depend on my wife. But that’s where it ends. Our government cannot even deliver medical care to a few million veterans, how can we expect it to provide health care to 320 million of us? We can’t. The government will screw it up.
Doctors and health insurers must be allowed back into the free market. When they are, when their survival depends on pleasing us consumers, quality will go up, prices will come down and innovation will flourish. We allow the free market to provide food, clothing, shelter and video games. We must allow it to provide health care, too.
Today at the Site Sparrow is once again lured in by attractive packaging and buys yet another product for his hair on today’s edition of The Diary of a Nobody. This is particularly curious since Sparrow has little hair up top. Also, there is the latest from the hotel and the Sleep Log is updated.
Not for the first time, Gore Vidal has The Thought for the Day. Today’s Thought is from Creation, a historical novel set a few centuries before Christ, mainly in Persia. Confucious, however, makes an appearance and the subject of today’s Thought is conformity and deviance.
On This Date In 30BC – Forces commanded by Mark Antony earn a modest victory over Octavian’s forces in the Battle of Alexandria. Inspired by this win, Antonian forces desert in droves, leading to his suicide the following year.
In 2012 – At the Summer Olympics in London, American swimmer Michael Phelps wins his 19th Olympic medal, breaking the record for most Olympic medals that had been held by Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina. The record-breaking medal was a gold in the 4×200-meter freestyle, one of four gold medals Phelps won at the London Games. To date, Phelps has won 28 Olympic medals, including 23 gold medals.
In 1954 – Little Things Mean a Lot by Kitty Kallen is at #1 on the Billboard Best Sellers in Stores chart – a predecessor to the Hot 100 – for the ninth and final week. It was the fourth and final #1 for Kallen and was Billboard’s biggest song of 1954. It would be the last time a female solo act would have the #1 song for a year until Lulu’s To Sir, with Love was the biggest song of 1967.
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I was startled to find how often this traditionalist sage was at odds with received opinion. – Gore Vidal, Creation
Longtime readers of mine know the reverence we have for both Gore Vidal and Creation. For our money, Vidal is unsurpassed at cutting to the heart of our human experience and we have yet to read a book that does it like Creation, a historical novel set a few centuries before Christ, mainly in Persia, but also in India and China, among other places. Today’s Thought concerns Confucius, one of several famous people (Buddha, Zoroaster, Lao Tzu, Darius the Great, Democritus and Socrates are others) who appear in the book, though the main character is fictional. Click Here For More
The house across the street has sold and Sparrow notes there is evidence of humans having moved in on today’s edition of The Diary of a Nobody. Sparrow also shares something he forgot when recapping his trip to see The Wife: their excursion to the virtual reality arcade they took…The Wife staved off invaders while Sparrow took a trip into outer space.
Miguel de Cervantes, the first modern novelist, has The Thought for the Day, a quote from Don Quixote about how fate will guide our affairs better than we can if we are brave enough to allow it.
On This Date: In 1619 – The first representative assembly in what would become the United States, the Virginia House of Burgesses, meets in Jamestown. The house had 22 elected members, plus the governor and an appointed council of state. Though scheduled for a six-day session, a malaria outbreak would hinder their progress and the House of Burgesses would become the House of Delegates in 1776.
In 1930 – Uraguay wins the first soccer World Cup, defeating Argentina 2-1 in Montevideo. 13 teams showed up and were divided into four groups, with the group winners advancing to the semifinals. Thought a third place wasn’t played, the United States is listed as the third place team, thanks to a better goal differential than Yugoslavia.
In 1966 – Wild Thing by the Troggs reaches #1 on the Billboard Hot 100, where it will stay for two weeks. It would be the Troggs’ only #1 hit in the US, though With A Girl Like You went to #1 in Britain. A contractual dispute led to Wild Thing being released by both Atco and Fontana records. Billboard combined the sales figures from both labels and Wild Thing remains the only single to reach #1 for two companies at the same time.
Many thanks for reading, and have a good day.
Gaylon
Fortune is guiding our affairs better than we ourselves could have wished. – Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
Miguel de Cervantes (1547-1616) was a Spanish writer, with Don Quixote universally acclaimed as a landmark of human letters. It is the second-most translated book in human history, trailing only the Bible, and its influence on other writers has been profound and the word quixotic quickly worked its way into languages the world over, referring to something that is foolishly impractical or exceedingly idealistic. Today’s Thought actually comes from when Quixote and his faithful companion Sancho Panza come across three dozen or so windmills that Quixote, who has lost his mind, wants to go to war against, thinking them giants whose slaying promises fame and fortune. Click Here For More
