DiPinto Guitars And The Fender-Gibson Hegemony

DiPinto Galaxie 2s

When I saw my first DiPinto guitar I thought...this is the guitar the Jetsons would play.  A guitar with a really funky design with graceful curves and rounded horns.  The oversized headstock added to a cartoon look and I don’t mean that in a bad way.  Just cool and different.  I then started searching the Net looking for everything I could find on DiPinto guitars.  The model I first saw and would later buy, was the DiPinto Galaxie 2s in green sparkle finish.

The DiPinto story is an interesting one based on typical American ingenuity and innovation.  A young guitar player, Chris DiPinto, is a lefty and had a hard time getting left handed instruments.  He also had a love of offbeat guitar design. The kind of guitars found pawn shops with obscure names, odd designs, and more knobs and switches than they should have had.  The solution?  Make your own.  Soon others starting seeing his guitars in performance and wanted one too.  As Chris said in an interview, all he wanted to do was make guitars and own a guitar factory.  His dream came true.

Galaxie 2s signature headstock.

Craftsmanship
Overall, quite good for an Asian made guitar.  Really, we need to stop looking down our noses at guitars built over there.  My Squire 50’s Classic Vibe Telecaster is built in Fender’s facility in China and it’s the best Telly I’ve ever owned.  DiPinto guitars are built in South Korea and with Chris and his American luthiers doing the final set-up.  Each guitar is checked out by Chris and an inspection card comes in the box with guitar.

The glossy green sparkle finish is condensed with only close inspection revealing it.  The maple neck is finished in satin, my personal preference for necks.  Nice and smooth, thin and fast.  

Another of my preferences is smooth fret ends and Galaxie 2s has fret ends are properly tapered and dressed.  You won’t get scraped up traveling up and down the neck playing this guitar.  On the green Galaxie model, the body is mahogany with a dark rosewood fretboard.  The guitar itself has some heft but not boat anchor heavy.  The action was good right out of the box. 

The parts are all nicely finished of quality materials especially the tremolo assembly.  I did notice that the bridge pickup is not sitting level with a light tilt up towards the treble side.  The neck pickup sets level.  Since these guitars are examined and set up before shipping to dealers I found this to be a bit peculiar but I’ve left it alone for now.  There seems to be no lasting effect in regards to tone.  It may have gotten out of whack in the shopping.  It was shipped in a thin cardboard box, which the dealer didn’t seem fit to double box.  (I always do in selling a used guitar, without a case, and they always arrive safely.)

Close up of Galaxie body shape.

The Sound
My first thoughts after plugging it in was how reminiscent the sound was of a Telecaster. But not really.  Using two DiPinto branded single coil pickups, its sound is not as bright as a Tele and there is no twang.  The pickup selections are similar to a Telecaster with a neck, bridge, and then both selected.  So far, my favorite selections are the neck, or the bridge, selected separately, with the neck being my favorite of the two.  For some reason, the neck pickup sounds louder.  On the other hand, the bridge pickup features some nice spank, only to my ear, cleaner without being rawboned.  Both pickups together sound a bit too diffused.
  
Overall, just simple, clean bright tone designed for surf music but I think it can find a home with many different music styles.  I like older stuff like Bluebell and Mr. Sandman and the Galaxie sounds perfect on those tunes.  I’m not a surf music guy but with the clean tones, I’m already getting ideas for all kinds of musical exploration.  

Overall
For me, the Galaxie 2s is real keeper and a pleasant surprise in feel, playability and great tone.  Would love to add another DiPinto in the future if they are going to be this nice.  I hope someday to see a Galaxie 2s in red.  Currently, they are in cream and sunburst finish. 

And if the Galaxie 2s is not your thing, their site offers a dozen different guitars with at least three basses and note that DiPinto guitars are very lefty friendly.  

Maybe to some people DiPinto guitars are deemed to niche instruments.  As with Taylor, all they need is some well known musicians (or soon to be well known) to play these instruments and off they will go.  I do like the fact that it’s a small company that produces these instruments and takes a great deal of care to make sure their guitars go out set up correctly.

Overall, DiPinto guitars offer a great alternative to the Fender/Gibson nexus in regards to affordability, style, and sound.  I hope they can break on thru and be the next great American electric guitar.


Sources

The Site
http://www.dipintoguitars.com/

Interview with Chris DiPinto at NAMM 2010.
http://www.300guitars.com/articles/namm-2010-thats-a-wrap/

2013 interview with Chris DiPinto.
http://fishtownspotlights.com/2013/01/29/dipinto-guitars-chris-dipinto/

Latest interview 2015
http://thekey.xpn.org/2015/07/16/dipinto-guitars-philly/#more-166095

Nice Guys Finish Last on Dating Sites

Some of the charming ladies found on dating sites.

Just enter “online dating sucks” in Google and you will get over three million hits.  Very telling, right?  I remember the early days as the Internet took off in popularity, it was real easy to meet women online, back back then (1996) the meeting place was either Usenet newsgroups or pen pal sites.  In fact, most of my internet based relationships (and hence, long distance) were thru a pen pal site, a Christian based one.  It didn’t take long for dating web sites to appear.  

I’ve read that women are so barraged with emails that they can be selective with whom they respond with.  That must be true because I rarely get an email answered.  I realize I am not everybody’s cup of tea but it’s getting to be a total blackout.  I’ve read this is a major complaint from men regarding online dating and the complaint is reflected in their profiles. These days I just sit back and wait for somebody to write me.  I don’t mind waiting weeks for that to happen.  Sending polite messages to women who I think I have a lot in common with and getting nothing but a profile view is gotten to be so frustrating, why bother? 

To back this up, a while back OkCupid listed on profiles what a person’s response rate was.  I was on the site one day and over 20 profiles were listed as, “rarely responds” with just a few women listed as responding back.  They dumped that feature.  Obviously, it’s going to be hard to get paying customers for the upper tier features if they know the response rate is that bad. (See Cupid on Trial below for more on this.) 

Getting a response back is rare it’s a delight when one comes!  You are supposed to write people that you have similar interests with so you can have a conversation starter. Sounds good in theory but in real-world application, forget about it.  It often doesn’t work.  I’ve had women list me in their “favorites” list on PoF which I assume is a sign of interest.  When I’ve written them a nice return message, nothing.  This has happened twice.  What is this, a hobby?  I’ve had women write me and if I was not interested I would send them a polite “not interested” email and I’ve never had a woman do that for me in return.  In my age group they are mostly divorced, mostly aging badly, and in an age group where men are not standing in line for them.  And with all of that, they are unmoved and picky as when they were 21 and considerably more attractive.

The greatest mystery to me is why do some of these women stay on these sites for years on end.  Some women have been sites such as Plenty of Fish for over 6 years with the same profile and with often the same pictures on display.  If this is not working, why stay on a dating site this long?

So the word is out.  Woman basically do not respond to messages sent to them.  

(I should note of late, women are getting picky about who the respond to on pen pal sites as well.  And it’s just platonic friends!)

Farmer’s Only

I have to mention them specifically because they are one of the worst dating sites I’ve ever experienced.  Supposedly set up for isolated rural singles many women don't appear to be that country.  The rural dating site with the down-home TV ads, Farmer’s Only allows for free generic messages to be sent called “flirts.”  I got one once from a CherryB that featured the message, “You email me and I’ll email you back.”  Boy, was I duped!  I paid my $21.95 (now six dollars more) and sent a regular intro message to this lady and waited.  And waited some more.  Never got a response.  I emailed her one more time, a polite message to see what happened, and no more response from her.  True, she may have had a change of heart, but I kept feeling it was a fake message sent to spur me into buying a membership.  It’s quite possible this woman had no interest in me and site’s code generated the flirt message to inspire me to pay up.  If so, it worked.  But it will never happen again.  (Of note, CherryB’s profile is still on there after over a year with the same picture on display.  It’s unclear if this is a real profile or not.  In January of this year the site was showing she viewed my profile on a day when I visited the site and never saw the visit posted then, or many days afterward.  The view has since disappeared and then showed her again viewing my profile at around 2 AM in February.  Then disappeared again.  Wonky code at work.)

I got off the site seven months ago but recently got back on to see any new trends on the site (oh, and your profile is never deleted once you leave, it’s stored on their server forever).  Nothing has changed except it’s more expensive.  The site design is as cruddy and minimally featured as usual.  The coding seems to be in a state of decay as information will disappear and then reappear a few days later.  I had one person’s visit to my profile, email notice, and “like” notice disappear.  She may have left the site.  People will be listed as having viewed your profile on days when you were on and never noticed them, or they might disappear, the end result of a poorly coded database of what is going on regarding your profile on the web site. Or, just coded for false traffic.  Also, many of the members that were there over a year ago were still there with the same pictures on display (this is true on other sites too--some women on Plenty of Fish have the same pictures up from 6-7 years ago).  Other members appear to live on the site 24 hours a day or are shown to be on the site at odd times of the day when they should be at work.  

Many people complain of being ripped off by Farmer’s Only, being billed for memberships they don’t want and not getting a refund when requested.  What is really happening is that if you pay for one month of membership it’s turned on thereafter.  A user has to go the “Manage your Subscription” section under the Account Settings and turn it off.  Or else, your card will be billed  in perpetuity.  So watch the fine print. 

(Also, foreign ISP’s are blocked. So don’t try to access the site during international travel.) 

UPDATE:  Farmer’s Only now blurs over profiles of everybody that views your profile, ‘like’ messages, or sends an email.  Where is the incentive to being a paying member to see who is checking you out or sending a message?  Another authoritarian move from this outfit.  My account there is closed...again...final.

Cupid On Trial

Jon Millward’s blog posted a revealing article in June of 2012 regarding a test he conducted, using dummy profiles on OkCupid to test the success that men and women might receive there (click HERE).  Photos were selected of five women and five men all of differing degrees of attractiveness.  All were caucasian.  At least a few were overweight.  All of the profiles had generic information posted about each person.  No messages sent to the dummy accounts were ever answered. 

      

The results were interesting.  Women got a (not surprising) far larger response.  In 24 hours, the women got a total of 90 hits.  The men got 2 hits and those went to one man only.  Ouch!  After 7 days the women’s responses outnumbered the men 17 to 1.  And at least three of the men received no messages at all.  One of the women got 236 emails.  The second highest was 128. 

So there you have it gentlemen, this little experiment confirms the sum of our fears regarding dating sites.  They rarely write back if you write them.  There are no minorities in the test so it’s unknown how different the results might be if they were included.  

However, their summery of the data doesn’t make sense.  As stated:  “In the end men and women probably do have it about equal, it’s just a bit different for each.”

That statement contradicts the data presented.  A 17 to 1 ratio and it’s about equal?  I think not.  Obviously, women have it much easier getting contacts from men, at least on OkCupid.  The data presented, if accurate, should scare off any man from being a paying member.  

Profiles

I cannot comment in regards to men’s profiles on dating sites so I don’t know what women go thru except for reading about dishonest, nutty, or over-sexed men contacting them.  

Many women are setting themselves up for failure.  Some profiles are written up to show a nice person there, even if that sweet heart is filled with romantic notions she should have discarded after getting past the age of thirty or the first divorce.  Others are Nurse Ratchets, bitter and bossy.  The Nurse Ratchets demand that a man chew his food with his mouth closed; bath more than once a week; not lick his fingers at the table; brush his teeth often and so on.  As if the only available men just emerged from the stone age.  Yes, computer literate cave men.

Some women are hung up about looks.  Remember where you have landed ladies...on a dating site on the internet.  Your chances of meeting a real, live man in real life, is dim.  Men are deemed shallow if they discount a woman in regards to her appearance, in particular weight (and let it be noted that women are the harshest judges of beauty of other women).  Yet woman are very comfortable in their shallow view of men.  They hate beards, baldness, weight, height (a biggie), and a whole host of other physical features.  

Other women narrow the field of available men by demanding they have similar interests.  Such as golfing, horse riding, motorcycle riding, jogging and so on.  Nurse Ratchet will say, “If you don’t golf, don’t bother emailing me.”  I certainly hope they don’t complain later about not being able to meet men online if only golfers are in the running.  The act as if they want a male copy of themselves.  Nothing better than me, than another me!

Blossoms

Cherry Blossoms is a site where there is a lot of action for men.  The only catch is the women are mostly Filipinas and they are mostly impoverished, and they are all too far away.  They tend to be aggressive and sent out emails to anybody of any age group.  Even 18-year-old girls throw themselves at men of any age.  If you are in your 50s or 60s and want a teenage child-bride there is the place to go.  As opposed to American women, these girls will mostly answer emails so most men should have no trouble getting in contact with women there.  Just remember what you are getting into.

I’ve heard the Filipinas make good wives but one has to precede with caution with Asian women.  Many are ready to hook up with any man of any age to get out of the grinding poverty in the Philippines.  A man will need to get a passport, travel over there, and then pay and apply for a fiancee visa.  And wait it out.

The Chinese women are quite beautiful, mostly well educated and seem to have good English skills.  They are friendly and will generally answer emails. But I noticed that most of their profile photos are all professionally done.  Being a photographer I know professional lighting and backdrops when I see them.  I suspect this is a red flag.  There is a huge male to female ratio in China so I wonder why they would be on a dating site, unless they have a preference for western men.  Seriously, it would be a good avenue to send agents over here to gather information.  Don’t laugh...intelligence agencies employ all kinds of data gathering assets.

So There You Have It

Good luck!  It’s a jungle out there with false profiles, false traffic to trick you into to paying up, women who don’t for a multitude of reasons don’t or won’t reply to emails, to women who do and the whole thing runs out of steam before you can even meet them.  I just basically try to write up a good profile that attracts interest and let them write me.  They do in time.

To be fair, online dating isn’t good for men or women.  I’ve read lots of stories about women dealing with sex obsessed males that hit women up for a romp only, which is a total turn off.  Many men have severe personal issues from criminal backgrounds to drug abuse and lie to cover up a shady past.  Some men have issues with women and go on these sites to take cheap shots at them.  

Most men should understand when trying to contact women on these sites that you are not going to be everybody’s cup of tea.  It’s only after a while that you realize that you are nobody’s cup of tea!

So, precede with caution.  You might get lucky.

Update  4.2.15
Ended my accounts on Plenty of Fish, Okcupid, and Farmer's only.  What a good feeling!  I have found it's easier to meet women on pen pal sites.  None local but they are as a group, much friendlier than women on dating sites.  You can actually meet somebody to have a conversation with.  Maybe that is because they are not Americans?


Update  4.2.15
Though I had decided to not to get on these single sites again, low and behold, I was tempted to try Our Time after seeing the ads.  I found quickly, it's the same old song and dance.  The same flood of apparently false traffic, local users viewing my profile at odd hours of the night (two local women at 3 AM?  Please...), added to lots of favorite lists, and other nonsense.  Badly coded site as well, though not as bad as Farmer's Only.  Every time I login I'm told I have 9 minutes to sign up now.  Got back in an hour and the same countdown start all over again.  Pressure to pay up? Not like that. That should play once for one login, not off and on all day.

Sources

Cupid On Trial

http://jonmillward.com/blog/attraction-dating/cupid-on-trial-a-4-month-online-dating-experiment/

Online Dating Sucks For Men Because Of Women Like Me

http://www.rolereboot.org/sex-and-relationships/details/2013-02-online-dating-sucks-for-men-because-of-women-like-me

Reviews dating sites
https://bestreviews.net/?s=dating+sites

What’s Wrong With the Teeth?

On the night of November 20, 2014 President Barak Obama gave his much anticipated speech regarding immigration.  However, as I watched the the speech I noticed something didn’t seem right with the President’s teeth.  Those perfect pearly whites were different.  There were gaps, some teeth seemed crooked.  I got out my my digital SLR and started shooting pictures right off the screen.  I have no DVR to record the speech.  On display here is the results of these photos.  The bottom image is the standard Obama smile.

The TV I have is a plasma Samsung 43”.  I shot directly off the screen.  A plasma TV has a heavy contrast which results in inky black shadows with little shadow detail.  That may be the case here.  None of the video’s of Network feeds on YouTube show the deformities in the President’s teeth.

However, if these are his real teeth then it makes no sense not to wear temporary caps for such an important event.

The Knuckle Dragger

Recent New York Times article documents President Obama's close relationship with CIA director Brennan...but not much is revealed.  

“The CIA is not a rogue organization."  John Brennan, CIA Director

Of course one should never judge a person by their looks but with men of power like John Brennan, but I can't help myself.  His raw looks complete with a thuggish, heavy brow, produce a mean appearance.  A man who looks like he was trained to kill with his bare hands.  Who knows?  Maybe he can.  But he had no trouble selecting people to be executed via drones in the Middle East.  When he was Obama's anti terrorism czar, he was placed in charge of drone killing and had a free hand to set up the kill list and then was granted authority to launch drone killings without needing presidential approval.  Remember that innocent people get killed in these attacks too.  He then in dubs this sort of targeting of people as a "disposition matrix."  Fancy, huh?  So maybe his mean looks are a good judgement of his character. 

Ironic that he would be in charge of so many Muslim deaths, his fellow Muslims, since Brennan is a follower of the Prophet too.  I imagine they don't like that.  I would also imagine there is price on that brutish head of his as well.

The Times piece, "Brennan Draws on Bond With Obama in Backing C.I.A.," by Peter Baker and Mark Mazzetti, relates a brief history of John Brennan's rise to the CIA director's job and how along the way he supposedly became "kindred spirits" with the president.  Actually, there is more background story on Brennan's rise and little of how he and Obama became such close together.  Other than an unnamed Obama aide calling them "kindred spirits" there is no substance to the assertion.  Absolutely nothing is mentioned of relevance to establish the claim.  

Perhaps because they left out the real reason why they are so close.  The real reason, as a good source told me, is that John Brennan is Barrack Obama's CIA handler.  And others have said this too.  Dr. Steve Pieczenik, the inspiration for the Jack Ryan character in a host of Tom Clancy novels due to his extensive foreign policy and  intelligence work, also said that Brennan was Obama's handler on the Alex Jones's Info Wars program.  Pieczenik goes even farther by calling Brennan a "professional liar" on his blog and pointing out that Brennan was the CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia at the time of the 1996 Khobar Tower bombing disaster that took the lives of 19 American Soldiers.  He was second in line after Director George Tenet at the time of the 9-11 attacks.  Brennan has had his share of stumbles in his career.  Not a sign of competence.  

However, one important point left out of the article could have bound Brennan and Obama closely together.  It was in 2008 when the two senators, Barak Obama and John McCane were running for president.  A mini scandal erupted when it was discovered that employees of contractors were digging into passport records of the two senators.  One such federal contractor was the Analysis Corporation.  Who was the CEO and president of this company?  None other than John Brennan.  His employee that got caught was not fired but reprimanded. So what was gong on here?  Was Brennan sending his people in to cleanse the Obama files for any embarrassing or damaging information?  Or digging up dirt on McCane?  Or both?  

So in the end, maybe they are not two peas in a pod, but more like a baby sitter protecting his baby.  They have a shared Muslim faith (when Brennan was sworn in as CIA Director he placed his hand on the Quran, not the Bible).  Obama’s affiliation with the Muslim faith is well known even if it is admitted by few.  There are many indications that Obama hails from a CIA family–namely his mother and maternal grandparents.  The passport scandal would serve to cover up anything Obama was doing in his past travels.  These two men may go back years together.  It would be newsworthy to see when they actually met.  Brennan spent many years in the Middle East; Obama has done his travels in that area of the world in the early 1980‘s.  Much will most likely be uncovered in the years that follow that may reveal more on this relationship.  But one thing is assured, it won't be from press outlets such as the New York Times.

Oh, and John.  You say the CIA is not a rogue organization?  Tell that to the other John.  The John your predecessors killed in Dealey Plaza in 1963.

Addendum - 12.17.14

The Analysis Corporation is now known as, Global Defense Technology & Systems, Inc.  It now a subsidiary of a British defense contractor, the Global Strategies Group.  

Addendum - 1.12.15
Washington Post (6/22/06)
The Analysis Corporation's advisory board also featured three CIA officers.  Former CIA Director George J. Tenet, former Chief Information officer Alan Wade, and former Intelligence Analyst, John P. Young.

Sources

New York Times:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/15/us/politics/cia-chief-and-president-walk-fine-line-.html?_r=0

Dr. Steve Pieczenik's John Brennan articles:

http://pieczenik.blogspot.com/search?q=john+brennan

Don’t Get Stuck Behind the WIC Momma At the Store!

Because if you do, you are going to be in for a long wait in the check-out line.  This week was behind a tall, chatty, athletic young woman with a cute baby girl buying groceries.  Her items were primarily baby foods.  Just then the manager of the store passed by and motioned me over to lane two and I am glad she did because as soon as I got there to upload my cart, the young mother mentioned her WIC card to the cashier.  

Oh, good thing I got out of her lane!  If you have ever been in a check-out line behind a woman with one of those assistance cards it is going to take a good 10 minutes to get out of there.  Everything that is bought with a WIC card has to meet an itemized government nutritional guide. The cashier has to make sure every item meets those requirements.  That takes time.

WIC stands for the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children.  WIC is a Federal assistance program for mothers meeting the Federal poverty requirements or found to be 185% below the poverty level. If a person is in other benefit programs or has a family member that is, they automatically meet eligibility requirements.  The cut off age is 5 years for children receiving this type of assistance.  As stated on Wikipedia, “Currently, WIC serves 53 percent of all infants born in the United States.”

I hate to add that this young woman did not appear to meet the Federal poverty requirements.  She was dressed nicely as was her baby.  She is white.  She was a talker in a happy sing-song way.  She seemed intelligent and gave off an appearance of being upper middle class.  Later I saw her getting into her car and driving away.  It was a recent model automobile in very good condition.  

I am not trying to imply this young mother is cheating the system over the truly needy.  If anything she is the face of contemporary poverty in 21st century America.  If 53% of babies born are receiving WIC, America is in trouble.  Some people I know are resentful of these people.  I am not.  The money is after all going to the needs of a child, an American child.  Better for the money to stay here than to enrich those that hates us.  And is not the first one I have encountered.  Not long ago I was behind a rather portly young mother with baby and it was taking so long I called over to a young man that works there and asked him to open a lane for me.  He did.  I got checked out, loaded my groceries in the pickup, put up the cart, walked a few stores down to get my lunch at the Chinese take-out.  And when I emerged from there with my Hunan chicken in hand, the mother was just loading her car up.  

So as I said, don’t get stuck behind the WIC card momma at the check-out line.  Unless of course you like reading the tabloids.  

Conservative Talk Radio Games Its Listeners

“Like fake cheese in a mousetrap, Beck’s conservative facade has managed to steer an awakening conservative public back towards the black hole that the establishment media and political machines want them lost in.”

Jack Blood, Dead Line Live

It’s coming more apparent as one goes thru life learning things that our national media is a giant psyop.  Everything we are told is a lie.  If you take the time to do some digging you’ll find it out.  As Reagan’s CIA Director William Casey once said, “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”  It worked.  It happened. Everything from World War II, the Kennedy assassination, Watergate, to the attacks of 9-11. 

Whether left or right, most of what comes out of media is false.  Conservatives dominate the radio airwaves and I listen to them the most.  Two I listen via the Internet is Alex Jones and Clyde Lewis.  Despite these two men being considered fringe broadcasters they produce some of the best, most useful and in-depth reporting.  In many ways Alex Jones is considered an outcast and is shunned by the likes of Rush Limbaugh and the rest of the conservative fraternity, while openingly attacked and vilified by Glen Beck.  But his online news operation breaks stories.

It has been said by some that the main purpose of the conservative talkers is to keep the public from open revolt.  You can see that with Glen Beck’s constant call for Gandhi-style peaceful civil disobedience.  With the appalling amount of lawlessness taking place in government, the lack of checks and balances on executive power, the rise of militarized police, and the continuing loss of liberty, these are indeed troubling times.  This may well be the case since few mention the slow of creep of tyranny or what we are supposed to do other than vote the bums out.  Talker Mark Levin will, to a point, mention the existence of a “soft tyranny,” but that is about as far as it goes with this lot.  

Glen Beck is now promoting the Martin Luther King non-violence approach, apparently thinking this course of, “You’ll look bad beating me up,” will actually work.  It might in some countries but it did not work against Hitler, now did it?  I now view Beck as the controlled opposition.  He portrays himself as a conservative, but a tearful, sensitive one.  But something about him doesn’t seem quite right.  As if there is some self-loathing in this man’s soul.  He has had numerous verbal battles with Alex Jones who has in turn accused Beck of plagiarizing his news articles and says Beck suffers from jealousy.  Beck’s news site, The Blaze is nicely laid out with appealing graphics but the articles rarely get a mention on the Drudge Report.  Meanwhile, Jones’ Info Wars site gets a link posted on Drudge just about every day.  It must irk Beck with the amount of hostility he send’s Jone’s way, at one point calling Alex a “piece of human garbage.”  But Beck’s Blaze is just a bunching of articles seen elsewhere with catchy titles that fail to state what the stories are about.  He has few reporters out digging stuff up like Jones does.

Franken ad on The Blaze

Original screen capture, 1.24.13

From January to February of 2013 Glen Beck's The Blaze website ran this ad from liberal Senator Al Franken attacking Citizens United, a conservative lobbying group.  Why would Beck run such an ad on a conservative leaning website?

Another disturbing trait of Beck is his statements about his Mormon faith and Christianity.  Beck describes himself as a Christian.  But Mormons believe in their theology, that Satan and Jesus are brothers.  This is of course Blasphemy 101 for any Bible believing Christian.  The Bible is clear that Christ is not a created Being while Satan is.  Beck was recently invited to speak at the Baptist college, Liberty University. Beck told the gathering at a convocation ceremony that “I share your faith” and referring to Mormonism as a “different denomination” in mainstream Christianity.  That is not true. Mormonism rejects or contradicts many basic Christian doctrines such as salvation by the free gift of Grace and not by works, that Jesus physically rose from the dead, they reject Monotheism, they believe God is an exalted man of flesh and bone, that all must stand before Joseph Smith at the Judgement, and many other Biblical creeds.  Beck then goes on to say that the founder of Mormonism, Joseph Smith was a martyr.  This is standard Mormon nonsense.  Smith was killed in a gunfight in which Smith killed two men.  A true martyr lays down his or her life without violence towards others.  Beck’s comment is absurd.  

Glen Beck is simply not being honest here, another reason to be wary of trusting him as real conservative.  And Liberty University practiced poor judgement in inviting him to speak.

Clyde Lewis, mentioned earlier, really doesn’t do conservative talk. He is a new favorite of mine since I can’t determine what his political views are.  Clyde doubts the official version of events we are told and I admire him for that too. Lewis is all over the board with subject matter, from conspiracy, politics and the supernatural, to UFOs.  Callers get a real conversation with him instead of a sound bite and while genial, he does seem to get his back up with people that disagree with him or criticize him.  Nevertheless, he covers topics that nobody else tackles. 

One fascinating show involved the FOX freelancer on the streets of New York the day of the 9-11 attacks.  The freelancer, Mark Walsh was telling a reporter on the street that first building collapse was due to the tremendous heat melting the steel supports.  Sound familiar?  There you have what will become the official explanation of what happened that day, before any investigation was launched.  How would Walsh know?  So that narrative is established within a few hours of the attacks.  Fast forward to November of 2013 and a shooting occurs in the Los Angles airport.  One witness appears by the name of Nick Pugh. Lewis plays the audio of both men talking, side by side.  They both sound alike because they are both the same person and each looks similar in Youtube videos.  What a hoot!   This is how we are all being played.  For suckers.

The Know More Than They Tell Us
Take the billionaire Koch brothers, Charles and David.  The are vilified and hated by the liberals and Democrats.  In reality, the Koch brothers fund both sides.  As investigative reporter Greg Palast has pointed out on Ground Zero, during the Clinton/Dole presidential campaign, the Koch’s gave Bill and Bob $100,000 a piece.  Dole got caught and had to return his money.  Clinton didn’t and kept his.  The fact that the Koch’s play both sides is information you’ll never hear Limbaugh, Hannity, or any mainstream right-wing talker.  But Alex Jones will.  If Jones knows, surely Limbaugh, a major Koch defender, does as well. Knowing this, we can see how important information can be covered up so the left/right narrative plays out.

However, the Democrats continue playing the public for suckers as Senator Harry Reid says on his web site that Republicans are “addicted to Koch” (pronounced Coke).  Right...as if the Democrat Party is not.  

Drudge Report a Source...World Net Daily Is Not
All on-air conservatives, Limbaugh, Levin, Hannity, Beck, and so on avoid World Net Daily (WND.com) like the plague. WND was founded by journalist Joseph Farah in the late 1990s as a conservative online news web site.  The site has been highly successful and now hosts a knowledgeable group of columnists.  

I don’t know when any of the conservative talkers have ever made mention of the site or used one of their articles as a talking point.  Certainly not like they do a host of article links on The Drudge Report.  While Rush may brag he’s doing show prep for the mainstream media, The Drudge Report stands as the show prep for all of conservative talk radio–including Rush.  That is why there is a boring sameness from show to show.  They take the Drudge article links, discuss them and have callers join in the fray. Rinse. Repeat.  All day long.

But a link from World Net Daily?  Forget about it.  And Joseph Farah is a leading member of online news reporting, a pioneer in fact.  His name never rates a mention.  He might as was well be a leper to them.

It may well be the subjects they investigate that are too hot to handle such as the controversy over Obama’s birth certificate.  

The Birth Certificate
Probably one of the greatest controversies of the early Barak Obama presidency involves his eligibly to run for high office.  Early on he set up a PAC to funnel money to lawyers to make sure a divergent batch of files on Obama’s background would never see the light of day.  Not only does this include his birth certificate but educational records, passport records and so forth. Obviously it looks suspicious to spend millions of dollars fending off legal challenges to keep one’s birth records from release.  Who does such a thing? Eventually up to three birth certificates were released and there are serious problems with all of them.  

Those people who looked into this issue were labeled “Birthers” by Obama supporters who are basically made up of the mainstream press and various pro-Obama, mostly liberal bloggers.  WND ran a lot of articles from the research of Dr. Jerome Corsi who later published a book on the subject called, Where is the Birth Certificate?

All of the conservatives on the talk radio never touched this birth certificate issue.  If they had, some real hay could have been made with it.  With an army of media sources to ridicule any critic as a Birther, Limbaugh and gang ignored it as did the so-called conservative FOX News channel.  This issue might not be cast into fringe research channels and might have really taken off, if they had the guts to tackle the issue.  Fortunately, Joseph Farah published the ongoing research from Jerome Corsi at WND and I think that is why he is treated as a pariah by his fellow conservatives to this day.  The only radio show that will have him on is Alex Jones.  It’s all similar to the issue of Obama being a Muslim.  There is plenty of evidence for it but right wing radio hosts will cut off any caller that broaches the subject.

However there are some serious issues at play that CNN and other outlets should have pursued rather than portray the whole mess like one big pot of kookiness.  Just look into it and there are many serious issues here.  One stunning event occurred in 2008 just before the president election when Brian Schatz, a Democrat party official who would not sign off on Obama’s eligibility form to run in Hawaii.  As Douglass Vogt uncovered in his research the short-form birth certificate had two errors–the wrong date of issuance and a stolen certificate number.  This birth certificate is a fraud and Schatz must have known that. The false certificate number is evidence of a felony having occurred.  The subject was bumped up to Democrat party central committee and it was finally signed off on by none other, than the then Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. If we had a real investigative press in this country this would have been exposed. The only place it is will be is on the Internet.

In many ways the talk radio broadcasters aid and abet President Obama just as much as his allies at MSNBC do.  Sure, they document a host of scandals but the really damning, illegal activities, some of which are really far-out, are ignored.  

Addendum  5.13.14
Today on Glen Beck’s show he mentioned meeting Al Franken.  He was amazed that Senator Franken was a different man from his public persona of being a sarcastic wise guy.  Beck described him as serious and quiet in person.

That’s all nice but as mentioned above, Beck ran ads for Senator Franken attacking Citizens United, a conservative lobbying group, on his Blaze news page in early 2013.  So is Glen Beck a real conservative or just playing one on the radio?  Of course he makes no mention of taking Franken’s ad money. 

Odd, but much is odd about Glen Beck.


Sources

Dems hating Koch brothers
http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/the-koch-brothers-who-are-they-and-why-do-democrats-hate-them-1.2617472

Clyde Lewis, Ground Zero Media radio archives (MP3)
https://soundcloud.com/groundzeromedia

Glen Beck, all seeing eye shirt
http://deadlinelive.info/2012/07/30/glenn-beck-sports-all-seeing-eye-shirt-at-his-global-movement-for-freedom-for-all-mankind/

Glen Beck speech at Liberty University 
http://www.logosapologia.org/?p=5479

Douglass Vogt website and documentation
http://www.obamaforgerybook.com/

Hagman’s interview with Douglass Vogt
 http://www.blogtalkradio.com/cfp-radio/2013/12/05/douglas-vogt-exposes-obama-forgery

The Lonesome Death of Mariam Carey

The murder of Mariam Carey on the streets of the Capital reminds me of a chilling story a cousin once told me about sitting in a bar in Columbia when a death squad showed up and shot a patron at a table.  Another man, apparently an associate, rushed out the door but didn’t get far as he was gunned down in the street.  A truck came and they tossed the bodies in and off they went while someone else hosed the blood of the street.

And this is what America has become.  There is a mean spiritness creeping into all levels of government and law enforcement.  The sanctity of life which we all hold dear, is fading away into a cold death-stance of men who would be kings.  It’s as if the general public is the enemy and they are out to get even.  How dare that woman not stop her car when we told her to!

I was listening to a Clyde Lewis podcast today.  A caller gave a good analogy.  He said there was once a country where man killed some people and was chased by the police for a long time till his car ran out of gas.  They surrounded him and ordered him to get out.  He did so and was lead away for trial.  What was this country?  America.  It was the arrest of OJ Simpson.  What happened to that country?  Where did it go?

Indeed, where did it go?  We lost it.  And it’s been building for years with Barack Obama, probably one of the most corrupt and dangerous men ever to become President of the United States, as the open sponsor of the new meanness we see everywhere.  A man who early on, promised to punish his enemies and reward his friends.  That was not just a throw away line.  That should have sent a chill to everyone that loves liberty.  That is the words of a tyrant a man who feasts on the souls of others.

Mariam Carey’s public execution for blowing past a check-point is the same thing that would have happened in Nazi occupied Europe.  Yes, she should have stopped.  When a gun is drawn on you and you are ordered to halt by a police officer you’d better stop.  However, her actions that day are hard to fathom.  But most bothersome is the after-story; the defaming of her character, the releasing of medical records to further tar her as a person.  They say she was suffering from post-partum depression but her sisters say that she was over that and was off her medications as directed by her doctor.  

Brazenly, when the Carey family went to see the body they were shown a picture instead. They have yet receive the body.  Mariam’s baby is in some kind of federal custody and hasn’t been turned over the family either.  Where is the legal basis for this?  Just because they can?  

Another wild story to defame her character was that Mariam thought the President was talking to her in her thoughts.  However, her sister Valarie Carey said that Mariam, "did not believe the president or any government official was going to do her harm."  

Who do you want to believe?  The National Security State liars or Mariam’s family who knew her?  

The Civil Rights Players

So where is Rev. Al Sharpten, or Jessie Jackson, and other Civil Right’s figures in all of this?  A black woman is killed in cold blood, by a large group of white law enforcement agents, and never a peep out of them–any of them.  This happened earlier in the year with the burning death of former L.A. police office Chris Dorner, once again, by a group of white police officers.  

I think this shows who men like Sharpten and Jackson really serve.  Carey and Dorner are the untouchables, the throw-aways.  The Travon Martin types are safer and serve a greater political purpose.  

Operation Condor

Clyde Lewis did a show recently on Operation Condor, which was used by the CIA to destabilize leftist governments in Central and South America.  He chatted with several experts and there seems to be in his view, that we are approaching more of an Operation Condor situation than a Nazi takeover.  Please download the podcast listed below for this important show.  It’ll be worth your time.

I wonder who had the job to hose Mariam Carey’s blood off 2nd and Constitution?  

Sources

Clyde Lewis podcasts.  High recommended.

https://soundcloud.com/groundzeromedia/

'Pattern Of The Condor: More Echoes In Transition' w/ Frank G. Ford & Silvija Germek - Oct. 9, 2013

'Burn Witch, Burn' - October 7, 2013  (Mariam Carey)