Tuesday, August 04, 2009

August 2009: Memories of Paul McCartney in Dallas!




We remember Paul McCartney at Cowboys' Stadium back in 2009.  This is how Pete Freedman saw it:  
For the first hour or so of Paul McCartney's set at Cowboys Stadium last night, the show had a little trouble gaining traction.     
Blame the set's start; though McCartney opened with the Beatles hit "Drive My Car," then immediately followed things up with one of Wings' best tracks, "Jet," the show seemed to stall in its efforts to really take off--even McCartney's performance of "Blackbird" seemed a little dry.
The fact that, now, with some of the glitz rubbed off of the new stadium, the sound issues in the cavernous space seemed even more noticeable than ever, certainly didn't help, either. It was a shame: Affable as he was on stage, McCartney's performance seemed destined to disappoint. Was this a rock show, or just a live tribute to the man that was?
Then, 16 songs into the night, McCartney addressed the crowd for a moment, just as he had been doing all night long.
"When we were kids back in Liverpool. one of the biggest influences on us was a man from Texas," he said, before calling out Lubbock, and then Buddy Holly, by name, much to the audience's delight. "Here's a song we don't do for everyone. It's special. So we're gonna do it for you."
McCartney and his band then launched into a cover of Holly's "It's So Easy," a performance the crowd lapped up with joy.    
And so it was.   McCartney in Texas and the crowd went home happy!

P.S. Speaking of summers past, Paul McCartney had the # 1 song in the country this week in 1980:  "Coming up"! 

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Thursday, July 23, 2009

July 23, 2009: Mark Buehrle and the perfect game






Mark Buehrle was an outstanding pitcher:  214 wins & 3.81 ERA.
 
He threw a no-hitter against a very tough Texas lineup in 2007.
 
 
Every perfect game has its moments. (In 1994, I remember watching Rusty Greer saving Kenny Rogers' perfect game with a diving catch!)
 
Around the 7th inning, one of the Rays hit a shot down the left field line. It was foul by an inch!
 
In the 9th inning, Dewayne Wise made one of the greatest catches in major league history.
 
How in the world did this guy catch-up with the line drive, jump over the fence and hold on to the ball?
 
Congratulations to Mark Burhle for pitching the 18th perfect game in MLB history on this day in 2009.

 P.S.  You can listen to my show.  If you like our posts, please look for ”Donate” on the right column of the blog page.








Thursday, July 16, 2009

July 2009: Cubans in the major leagues, from Adolfo Luque to El Duque!


Image result for old cuba baseball images

Back in July 2009, we had a special show about Cubans in the major leagues.

Our panel included Jose Reyes and Vinnie Puente.




P.S. Don't forget to check "The pride of Havana":



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Saturday, July 04, 2009

July 2009: 35,000 at the Dallas Tea Party!


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A show from July 4, 2009:

On Tuesday's show, Adryana Boyne and I looked back at the Dallas Tea Party.

By any measurement, it was a huge success: 35,000 Show Up for July 4th Tea Party in Texas!

It was 100 degrees. It was unbelievably warm!

Yet 35,000 people show up!

Click here for the show or go the radio box on the left!

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Remembering Michael Jackson (1958-2009)


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Jody Rosen has a good post on Michael Jackson's best album:
"Thriller (1982) was Jackson's masterpiece; it was also his curse.

It won him unprecedented adoration:

No one—not Frank Sinatra, not Elvis Presley, not the Beatles—commanded as large a global audience.

But it was also a commercial and artistic milestone that Jackson spent the rest of his life trying in vain to repeat."
I understand Rosen's point.

"Thriller" spoiled us.

Michael Jackson was 25 years old and he had the best selling album in pop history.

The songs were great. The dancing videos were spectacular.

"Thriller" was like a hitter winning the triple crown! How do you ever have a better season than that?

How do you top "Thriller"? You can't!




Friday, May 29, 2009

A word about Beverly Eckert (1951-2009)



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On 9-11, Beverly Eckert was one of the many ladies at home talking to their husbands at the collapsing World Trade Center or aboard one of those jets.

We came to love Beverly Eckert and all of the other 9-11 widows. They became part of our family!

We loved their courage and commitment to their heroic husbands.

We loved their grace and how they handled the terrible tragedy of 9-11.

Beverly Eckert was born on this day in 1951.  

She was killed in a Buffalo plane crash in 2009.     Beverly was on her way to Buffalo to attend a ceremony related to her husband at Canisius High School, a Jesuit school.   

What an amazing and sad story.

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Friday, April 10, 2009

The Brothers Gibb and other brother/sister musical acts!



(You can listen to my show (Canto Talk).  If you like our posts, drop a dime here.)
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The brother/sister act is one of my favorite parts of popular music.  It must be fun to sing with your brother or sister.  Wouldn't that be fun?

In this post, I will tell you about my favorite "family" groups.

Let's start with The Beach Boys.  They were the Wilson brothers: Brian, Carl and Dennis. You can add cousin Al Jardine and good friend Mike Love.  The result was wonderful harmonies and great songs like "Barbara Ann".

Second, Richard and Karen Carpenter were very successful in the 1970's.  Karen died in 1983.  They left us some wonderful songs, such as "Goodbye to love".

Third, Donny and Marie Osmond were cute and part of The Osmond family.  They were also very talented. I liked their version of 'Morning Side of the Mountain":

Fourth, Before Michael Jackson, there was The Jackson 5. Why did Michael ever grow up? I loved their songs back then. They still sound great:

Fifth,  The Cowsills were the whole family. They were mom, little sister and brothers. They eventually inspired "The Partridge Family", a popular TV series about a singing family. The Cowsills recorded some very nice songs. Their harmonies were great. I still love "The rain, the park and other things":

Sixth, The Bee Gees.  Barry, Robin and Maurice Gibb wrote some of the greatest songs of the pop era. Maurice died in 2003 and The Bee Gees were retired. It's hard to pick one song. I love "Country Lanes" from the "Main Course" LP released in 1975.

Last, but not least, let’s remember The Everly Brothers. They were a bit before my time but their harmonies were great! In fact, their harmonies were very influential on the Beatles' sound. I love "Devoted to you".

Thursday, April 09, 2009

Remembering some of the great Cuban players of major league history






Friday, April 03, 2009

And they play baseball on Good Friday?



Allow me a departure from the politics to share some memories of our first Easter in the U.S.  
It was indeed a welcome sight to see the first signs of spring after heavy snowstorms in February and January.  
It was also a time for a few cultural adjustments for this Cuban kid embracing his new homeland.
We came from a very traditional Spanish Easter culture. We called it “Semana Santa” or Holy Week.
Before Castro outlawed religious celebrations, took our guns away, and shut down the press, Cubans generally celebrated the very Catholic Easter. 
It was a very Spanish country, as most Cubans of my generation have grandparents who moved to the island from Spain from the 1850s to the first half of the 20th century. These Spanish immigrants brought Catholicism and very traditional Christmas and Easter customs. Many of the small merchants were also Spanish immigrants and you could see their traditions in the storefront decorations.   
It started on Palm Sunday. It was followed by Lunes Santo, (Holy Monday), Martes Santo (Holy Tuesday), and Miercoles Santo (Holy Wednesday).
Then it got seriously holy with Jueves Santo (Holy Thursday) leading to Viernes Santo (Holy Friday).   
As I recall, Holy Friday was a day of total meditation and reflection. There was no music on the radio, the TV was practically unplugged and all of the merchants closed. Only hospitals were open but no one wanted to end up there that day.
The meals were light and my mother encouraged us to sit and read Catholic books.   
The streets were empty and everyone was in a very somber mood. We did go out to see the religious marches and the recreation of Christ carrying the cross.
It continued on Sabado Santo (Holy Saturday). In fact, Saturday was another very quiet day. It all had the feeling of mourning the loss of a loved one. My mother reminded us that we were mourning the loss of a special one.
On Sunday, every changed and we called it “El Dia de Resurreccion” or literally the day of resurrection.  
The church bells rang. The wardrobe changed and it was a party atmosphere. We finally had the chance to watch TV. I recall one year that we got to watch Erroll Flynn’s Robin Hood!
Our first encounter with Easter in the U.S. was indeed a cultural shock. My parents did not understand the bit about going to the beach for Easter.    
My favorite recollection of our first Easter was hearing my mother’s reaction to a major league game on TV. She looked at me and said: “They play baseball on Good Friday?”
Have a wonderful Easter however you celebrate the holiday. To be honest, Easter brings me a lot of memories of my parents and grandparents.
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Monday, March 30, 2009

The Democrats' baby problem

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Birth rates are lower today than they were back in the 1950's. 

The post World War 2 period gave us Eisenhower, East Berlin, Marilyn Monroe, rock and roll and the famous baby boom. 

Many of us were added to the world's population because of the baby boom, i.e. anyone born between the end of the war and '64. (Clinton and GWBush are the first first baby boom presidents, both born in '46)

Today, there is a new reality in the world. It is low birth rates, i.e. not enough babies in the industrialized world!

This is what David Brooks wrote in 2004, and it is still very relevant today:    
You can see surprising political correlations. 
As Steve Sailer pointed out in The American Conservative, George Bush carried the 19 states with the highest white fertility rates, and 25 of the top 26. 
John Kerry won the 16 states with the lowest rates.
In The New Republic Online, Joel Kotkin and William Frey observe, "Democrats swept the largely childless cities -- true blue locales like San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, Boston and Manhattan have the lowest percentages of children in the nation -- but generally had poor showings in those places where families are settling down, notably the Sun Belt cities, exurbs and outer suburbs of older metropolitan areas."
It will have political consequences, to say the least.

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Thursday, March 19, 2009

Remember when Democrats supported the Iraq War?




(My new American Thinker post)

President Obama recently said that ISIS is the consequence of our invasion of Iraq.  Unfortunately, the interviewer did not challenge him or ask a couple of follow-up questions.   

For example, why didn't ISIS exist when we had troops as late as 2011?  Is it just a coincidence that ISIS filled the vacuum that our departure created?

Yesterday was the 12th anniversary of President Bush starting the 2nd Iraq War:
On this day in 2003, the United States, along with coalition forces primarily from the United Kingdom, initiates war on Iraq. Just after explosions began to rock Baghdad, Iraq’s capital, U.S. President George W. Bush announced in a televised address, “At this hour, American and coalition forces are in the early stages of military operations to disarm Iraq, to free its people and to defend the world from grave danger.” 
After President Bush spoke that night, a bunch of Democrats ran to the microphones and news shows to support the invasion.  These are the same Democrats who looked at the information and came to the same conclusion about weapons of mass destruction.

By the way, where was Barack Obama that night?  I don't know, but he had the luxury of not having to make a decision about the war, unlike Hillary Clinton and John Kerry, who had to vote one way or the other on the issue.

The tragedy of the Iraq War is that it was shamefully politicized by Democrats and the postwar period terribly mishandled by President Obama.

We did not leave a military force and created the vacuum that ISIS filled and continues to fill.   

What if we had walked away from Korea after the 1953 truce?  Or Germany after the war ended in 1945?

The answer is that we would have lost South Korea to the communists, and Europe would have drifted into chaos and potential intervention of Soviet troops.  The bottom line is that the Korean peninsula and Western Europe would have had a very different timeline if we had come home too soon to fulfill some misguided campaign promise.

Thankfully, we had leaders and statesmen like Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower, who saw the big picture rather than just telling people what they wanted they hear.

Last but not least, we remember today the sacrifice of the soldiers and their families, especially those who were killed.What's worse than a war?  The answer is ending a war irresponsibly, as President Obama did with Iraq.


One of these young men was Nathan Aguirre, from our community and church.

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Iraq then and now: Bush was right and Obama was wrong


We recall this week the 13th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War II. It’s a moment to reflect on a decision that still looks correct to me a decade later.     
The first question we should ask is: What if President George W. Bush had not invaded Iraq?  
The problem is that we always know what did happen as a result of a war, but we will never know what didn’t happen.  
What if President Bush had not made the decision? Let me suggest this scenario:   
1. Saddam Hussein would have become a bigger threat to the region and the U.S. Saddam Hussein had clearly come to the conclusion that the West would not stop him and was acting as such. 
2. Iraq would have continued shooting at U.S. and UK planes enforcing UN resolutions. How many times do you allow someone to fire missiles at your aircraft without interpreting it as an act of war? 
3. What about Israel? Saddam was not a friend of Israel.  What would the Middle East look like with Iraq and Iran threatening Israel?  Maybe Iran and Iraq would have gone to war again? Or, maybe they would have attacked Israel? We do know today that Iraq won’t be attacking Israel or has WMDs to threaten its neighbors. We can thank President Bush for that.
Yes, Bush’s critics need to answer one simple question: what if Bush had not invaded Iraq?
So far, I have not heard anyone explain to me how the region would have been better if we had left Saddam in power. All I hear is that we lost 4,400 men and lots of treasury. Yes, that’s a serious cost, especially since one of my fellow ushers at church lost a son in Iraq.    
Or, they say “knowing what we know now”, a silly question at best. Leaders don’t make decisions that way. They have to make a call based on what we knew then. What we knew in September 2001 is that the twin towers had been brought down, Saddam Hussein was behaving very badly and no one wanted a nuclear 9/11.
It’s very easy to say that nothing would have had happened. We knew Saddam’s intentions to push his weight around the region. If Americans have learned anything since 9/11 is that when people say they intend to kill you please take them seriously.
The second question is: what if President Obama had left a force in Iraq in 2011 to protect our gains? This is a more relevant question and the Middle East is exhibit A of what our retreat accomplished.
For the moment, President Bush gets all of the criticism about Iraq and President Obama gets a free pass from a friendly media. Over time, it will change and President Bush will get credit for leadership and president Obama will be blamed for retreating and forcing his successor to have to go back in.
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Saturday, February 28, 2009

2013: Thank you Pope Benedict XVI

On this day in 2013, Pope Benedict XVI resigned and went into retirement.  Of course, he was eventually replaced by Pope Francis.  As a Catholic, I was very proud of Pope Benedict.  He showed grace and class right down to the minute that he stopped being Pope.

Thank you Pope Benedict XVI and continue to enjoy a very well deserved retirement.  
 

P.S.  You can listen to my show (Canto Talk).  If you like our posts, drop a dime here.

Saturday, February 21, 2009

Nixon in China 1972 plus other stories with Frank Burke



Guest: Frank Burke, businessman and author...........We will discuss the media and President Trump.........the Democrats in disarray...........President Nixon in China 1972 and how that looks years later..........and more stories......................

Click to listen:



Tags: Immigration raids and ban, Nixon in China 1972, Trump month 1 To share or post to your site, click on "Post Link". Please mention / link to the My View by Silvio Canto, Jr. Thanks!

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

1943: Joe DiMaggio was drafted


Image result for joe dimaggio military images

The great Joe DiMaggio was making $ 43,000 a year playing baseball.   Nevertheless, Joe D was drafted for the war effort on this day in 1943.   

Joe did not play for the Yankees again until 1946 or the war cost him 3 seasons.   

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Saturday, February 14, 2009

We remember Florence Henderson (1934-2016)



Thursday, January 22, 2009

January 2009: Charles Krauthammer turned out to be right!



This is a post from January 2009:

Charles Krauthammer is one of the nation's best political pundits.

His day job is over at The Washington Post, where he writes an extremely popular column. They usually reprinted at RCP. In fact, check out his archives!

In the evenings, Krauthammer is part of The Fox Report panel. He usually lines up often with Juan Williams and others.

One of my favorite articles was Historic Progress in Iraq!

A few years ago, Charles Krauthammer, who is a trained psychiatrist, penned Bush Derangement Syndrome:
"Bush Derangement Syndrome: the acute onset of paranoia in otherwise normal people in reaction to the policies, the presidency -- nay -- the very existence of George W. Bush."
Back in January 2009, Krauthammer commented on Pres. Bush's farewell press conference. He had a lot of interesting things to say.

Dr. Krauthammer concluded that history would treat Bush very well.

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Saturday, January 17, 2009

2009: A little thanks to Pres. Bush!






Jules Crittenden was the Boston Herald city editor and columnist. He has reported on politics, crime, science, maritime matters, foreign affairs and conflict in the United States, Asia, the Balkans and the Middle East.

After Obama defeated McCain, Crittenden looked at the world in 2008 and compared it with 2001.    

Without doubt, Crittenden was right that President Bush left us in a better position around the world than we were in when he came into office
"As the transition progresses and Barack Obama's inauguration draws closer, it's a good moment to mull the gifts George W. Bush has left for the incoming president.

Bush has made the world a better place, and if Obama wants to do the same, he will take the good things Bush has done and move forward with them."
We say thank you to President Bush for making all of those tough calls.

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