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

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

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!

Remembering Michael Jackson (1958-2009)

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!

Thriller by Michael Jackson..... https://t.co/WiI5V4pGHH via @amazon

— Silvio Canto, Jr. (@SCantojr) June 23, 2017

April 2009: McCain looks better and better because he told the truth about Iraq and taxes!

A post from April 2009

On Sunday, Nov 2nd, we called on you to vote for John McCain: Vote McCain on Tuesday!

Today, Pres BO is dealing with the reality of taxes and McCain looks prophetic again.

McCain got it right on Iraq. We have already posted on how the Bush-McCain plan has been implemented in Iraq.

McCain got it right on taxes.

We said back then that "taxing the rich" usually translates into "taxing the middle class".

Pres Obama's vision will mean budget deficits of 10-12% of GDP in 2009 and 2010.

As we posted before: "the top 1% are already paying about 40% of the tax bill and the top 20% are paying about 70%." (Rubin)

McCain won't run again in 2012. He will be 76 and more interested in the Arizona sunshine than the Oval Office.

McCain will look real good as the current version of "hope and change" ends up like the first one, i.e. Carter!

We agree with Rick Moran:

"There is no free lunch. Middle Class Americans who elected Obama because he promised to lower their taxes and give them subsidized health insurance, low cost college loans, and a green paradise are about to get a very rude awakening."

PS: You can listen to my show (Canto Talk) and follow me on Twitter.

The Brothers Gibb and other brother/sister musical acts!

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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".

Remembering some of the great Cuban players of major league history

Remembering some of the great Cuban players of major league history.........https://t.co/WpZclsq4jj

— Silvio Canto, Jr. (@SCantojr) April 2, 2016

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The Democrats' baby problem

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.

Check out our podcasts.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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:

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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!

1943: Joe DiMaggio was drafted

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.   

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

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We remember Florence Henderson (1934-2016)

Florence Henderson (Feb 14, 1934)....the famous Mrs Brady... https://t.co/Zr3agCnDME via @YouTube

— Silvio Canto, Jr. (@SCantojr) February 14, 2017

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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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.

P.S.  Check out my blog for posts, podcasts and videos. If you like our posts, please look for ”Donate” on the right column of the blog page.