Thomas Sean Connery was born in the Fountainbridge area of Edinburgh on 25 August 1930, the son of a Catholic factory worker and a Protestant domestic cleaner.
His father’s family had emigrated from Ireland in the 19th Century; his mother traced her line back to Gaelic speakers from the Isle of Skye.
The area had been in decline for years. Young Tommy Connery was brought up in one room of a tenement with a shared toilet and no hot water.
He left school at 13 with no qualifications and delivered milk, polished coffins and laid bricks, before joining the Royal Navy. Three years later, he was invalided out of the service with stomach ulcers. His arms by now had tattoos which proclaimed his passions: “Scotland forever” and “Mum & Dad”.
In Edinburgh, he gained a reputation as “hard man” when six gang members tried to steal from his coat. When he stopped them, he was followed. Connery launched a one-man assault which the future Bond won hands down.
He scraped a living any way he could. He drove trucks, worked as a lifeguard and posed as a model at the Edinburgh College of Art. He spent his spare time bodybuilding.
I guess that bodybuilding probably boosted his chances to play James Bond. His first movie was in 1963, and you know the rest of the story.
Yes, he was my favorite James Bond, but it was the movie Hunt for Red October that always comes to mind when I think of Connery. I’m sure you remember the story of the Soviet submarine captain trying to defect to the West. It was a great book and fabulous movie.
I remember this movie so well because I watched it one Sunday night, loved it, went to bed, and then woke up with the story of the coup and arrest of Gorbachev in the USSR. Watching those Soviet Politburo members explaining the coup reminded me too much of the movie, especially when the official at the Kremlin got the news that the submarine was defecting.
RIP, Sean Connery. Loved you as Bond but will forever remember you as Soviet naval officer Marko Ramius!
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It’s getting harder and harder for the Democrats to pretend that they’re not anything like those Democratic Socialist
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Let me tell you that I’d be rich like the Clampetts if I had a dollar for every Democrat telling me that those DSA folks running with a “D” next to their name are not real “Ds.” Maybe they are trespassers or people driving with someone else’s license. Yes, they are trying very hard to distance themselves from those people who want to eliminate the Senate and legalize everything currently illegal.
It’s too late, as Harrison Berger points out. There’s a rot in this party deeper than the ocean. No reflexive denials that DSA members are the next generation will fix this party. This is a party broken by DEI:
One of the more striking developments in American politics over the past three decades has been the transformation of the Democratic Party from a big-tent movement built around working-class Americans into an elite-driven institution obsessed with diversity, equity, and inclusion.
I think that diversity, equity, and inclusion spells DEI, or the point in history when everything went south (downhill) for the once mighty Ds.
All of us have experienced this with an old friend. Once upon a time, my friend and I could talk politics and even disagree. It’s impossible now because every conversation turns into one about Trump or skin color. Everything is Trump’s fault or something like that. Every story has a victim of color or a bad white guy who voted for Trump.
In the end, DEI has killed friendships and promoted bad feelings. It has turned the HR lady into an obnoxious jerk telling everyone how to talk or what to say to people.
It has killed our society and the Democrats too. It’s time to replace DEI with USA and get Democrats to love their country again.
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Click to read:
https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2026/08/will-the-real-d-please-stand-up/
