Celebrating Beatlemania 60 years on

I have often heard that if you sing to yourself, it means you are happy. I don’t know exactly if that’s true but for the past few weeks now I have found myself trapped inside a Yellow Submarine singing to myself songs from The Beatles.

At times I was off either searching for “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” or taking that “Magical Mystery Tour.” Sometimes, I’d feel like I want a “Revolution.” When having H & R Block do my taxes, I couldn’t get the lyrics to “Taxman” out of my head.

There is a reason for this. While Americans every year look back on “Yesterday” recalling such somber anniversaries as 9/11, Pearl Harbor, Oklahoma City, the Newtown and Aurora Massacres, the Titanic disaster and most recently, the JFK Assassination, finally there is an actual event that is worth celebrating: the 60th Anniversary of The Beatles coming to America that began with their arrival in New York in Feb. 7, 1964. On Feb. 9, "The Fab Four" made their first US television debut on "The Ed Sullivan Show" which drew 73 million viewers.

I am not going to waste newsprint regurgitating the past. You want to read about The Fab Four’s arrival in America, read Rolling Stone. I wasn’t born in the early 50s, so I don’t know what it was like to go through a traumatizing event as President Kennedy’s assassination in November 1963 and yearning for something, anything positive to look forward to a mere three months later with the arrival of four British mop tops from Liverpool.

Instead of paying attention to the documentaries that might air this month about The Beatles, I'll do what I've done so many times before - celebrate in my own way watching the band’s movie debut in "A Hard Day’s Night" (1964) which was both a clever mixture of British comedy and documentary.



I was amazed watching these four mop tops acting so naturally in front of the camera without making their performances look like they needed coaching.

There is John; the practical joker and smart aleck who often calls his manager (Norman Rossington) a swine. The minute he finds out the train station is swarming with girls Lennon asks jokingly if he can perform surgery.

Paul is the polite one who answers all questions reporters ask him with either the comments, “I like to keep Britain tidy” or “Actually, we’re just good friends.”

George, on the other hand is the opinionated one; always speaking his mind in situations even when he is not solely involved in a project.

Finally, Ringo: the sensitive one who gets the most fan mail and hates it when other people touch his drums.

To my surprise I wasn’t too far off in describing their characteristics. According to IMDB.com, writer Alun Owen created their stereotypes saying, “John Lennon is a smart-ass, Paul McCartney is cute and sensible, George Harrison is quiet and shy, and Ringo Starr is dim-witted and sad.”

The story is like a day in the life of a classic rock band as The Beatles prepare for a television concert where the audience consists of no one but giddy schoolgirls (not a single male member of the audience can be spotted).

The picture, shot entirely in black and white, not only spawned a half-hour rock and roll sitcom two years later on NBC called "The Monkees" (1966-1968), but made it possible for future filmmakers to create imaginative music videos for other successful bands and recording artists.

Prior to the performance, the band frequent nightclubs where their number one hits like "All My Loving" and "I Wanna Be Your Man" are played and run around in open fields like kids.

Watching the group smile and sing over the loud cries and cheers of adoring fans in that packed, small auditorium, I can understand why The Beatles didn’t perform that many concerts in the United States. They wanted the audience to hear their voices over all the commotion.

This is where the real joy of "A Hard Day’s Night" comes in though; hearing the soundtrack that includes along with the film’s title song, "Can’t Buy Me Love", "If I Fell", "Tell Me Why", "She Loves You", and "I’ll Cry Instead". They are songs that one friend of mine, Greg Hehn, called “feel good hits.” Songs you can dance to, he said, but they are lyrics with not much meaning.

Hehn said he thought the band’s later works he heard on "Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band" (1967), "Abbey Road" (1969) and "Let It Be" (1970) were some of their best and showed how much the group matured.

Those hit albums though came a few years later when the four were no longer the handsome, innocent looking, clean cut gentlemen from Liverpool you see in this film. As they got older and their hair grew longer, the outfits changed, and so did their attitudes.

The rest is history as the band’s personal and creative differences would eventually cause their break-up in 1970.

Seeing them run freely throughout England’s yards and kidding around with each other in this movie, however, I got the notion back in The Fab Four’s early days that being a Beatle was as much a joy for them as it was for the fans who embraced their music 60 years ago this month.

©1/19/24

I’m all in for putting a “badass” Republican woman in the White House…EXCEPT…

Minutes after former U.S. ambassador and South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley announced her run for president Feb. 14, 2023, I did what I continue to believe to this day not a single voter or very few voters actually do when choosing a president.

I went to Haley’s website to see what qualifications and accomplishments she did as governor of South Carolina. I can’t tell you how disappointed I was when the only thing I saw posted on her site that day was her announcing her candidacy. Perhaps it’s just me but if I were to announce I’m running for president the first thing I’d do is post my accomplishments and qualifications and why I feel I am the right person for the job.

Isn’t that what any person applying for a job would do in the real world today?

To be fair, Haley’s site did post her accomplishments days later, but I didn’t wait until then to read them.

I instead went to her Facebook page on social media to see what others were posting about her record and presidential plans.

I can’t say I read anything positive social media users posted on her site that jumped out at me. The one act I recall Haley did as governor of South Carolina was anything but positive regardless of who you ask. The measure happened July 9, 2015, when she signed into law to remove the Confederate flag from the state capitol after flying there for 54 years.



There’s only one reason why she signed that bill into law. It was because three weeks prior 21-year-old Dylann Roof opened fire killing nine African Americans June 17 at a prayer meeting at Emanuel African Methodist Church and suddenly she felt the state let alone the country had a race problem.

In an October 2015 blog I wrote “A sick individual cold-bloodedly murders minorities in hopes of starting a race war and now South Carolina and the rest of the country have a change of heart? If such supposed historical symbols of the Civil War had been taken down years earlier, would have that kept Roof’s shooting rampage from happening? I doubt that about as much as I doubt more stringent gun control laws would stop mass shootings from happening.”

To date, mass shootings across the country have not stopped. They’ve instead become common place like this is how it’s supposed to be.

I believe and still do believe the only reason Haley signed that bill into law is to secure more votes from black Americans much the way the reason President Biden and his administration won’t do shit about the border crisis is to get more votes for the Democratic Party from the illegal dregs of society who have no desire to start a better life here. They just want the free benefits us taxpayers pay and a chance to either wreak terrorism and/or kill a few law-abiding Americans over money or who knows what.

When I asked a friend and South Carolina native if then Governor Haley did anything positive or negative for that matter during her term in office, she replied texting, “I don’t want to discuss that right now out of fear I won’t get a goodnight sleep.”

Hours before the third Republican Presidential debate on Nov. 8 I heard political commentator Mark Levin discuss Haley’s record on his radio show. He had nothing positive to say either.

“Nikki Haley is running for president as a China hawk, but her record suggests a different picture. I've been warning you about Nikki Haley now for a while, as I have about Ramaswamy. But Nikki Haley is George W. Bush in a dress. Eight years in South Carolina, she's not running on her record because she doesn't have much of a record. DeSantis runs on his record. And Nikki Haley runs attacking Trump. She took a job from Trump as the UN's ambassador. She appreciated that. Mike Pompeo writes in his book, effectively and essentially, that she was a political climber, not a team player, and you can see that.

She is the establishment's candidate. That's who they (her supporters) have now rallied around. She's the candidate of many of these RINO billionaires in the Republican Party. That's who they're rallying behind because they love the Bush dynasty. They never supported Reagan.

She was not a great governor. Nobody's told me to say this. I'm not coordinating with anybody -- I look at the records. And there's a dearth of information about all her great and profound accomplishments.”

Up until the three presidential debates last October and November, I had hope that maybe given Haley’s “record” so to speak as U.S. ambassador and supposed experience in world affairs that if she weren’t to get the presidential nomination that she might make a good vice president. Of course, everyone thought the same thing about Kamala Harris and how her being the first black woman vice president marked a step forward for this country. I don’t need to tell you the results of her tenure so far.

When Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy, who I call a “Mini-Trump” in terms of stirring up train wrecks at the three debates, called Haley out Nov. 8 citing her daughter’s use of TikTok, a Chinese-based company considering how much she has spoken out against China, I saw nothing wrong with Ramaswamy’s accusation.



“In the last debate, she (Haley) made fun of me for actually joining TikTok while her own daughter was actually using the app for a long time,” Ramaswamy said. “So, you might want to take care of your family first.”

That was nothing compared to when Ramaswamy challenged Haley to name the three Russian provinces during the fourth debate Dec. 7 she’d send American troops to, should they be needed to help Ukraine.



All audiences and I got was a blank stare from Haley on television.

“Foreign policy experience is not the same as foreign policy wisdom,” Ramaswamy said. “One thing that Joe Biden and Nikki Haley have in common is that neither of them could even state for you three provinces in eastern Ukraine that they want to send our troops to actually fight for.”

Again, it’s probably just me but if I were actively serving in the military and still years away from retirement (Haley’s husband Michael serves in the South Carolina Army National Guard and was just deployed to Africa in Dec. 2023 through 2024) I’d want to know where my president plans to possibly send me and or my fellow soldiers in other military branches to risk my life and others to fight in a foreign country’s war no one really wants any part of.



Then there’s her answer she gave on what the reason for the Civil War which was an easy question if I ever heard one and I never paid attention to all the specifics of that era, not even in history class in high school. Even President Biden said was the reason the Civil War happened “was about slavery.”

I do, however, give Haley credit. She, like every other Republican candidate we’ve had in 2023 who put their hat into the presidential ring knows how to energize her fan base telling them what they want to hear.

When she told supporters Feb. 14 last year how she doesn’t “put up with bullies and when you kick back, it hurts them more if you’re wearing heels” I admit the comment turned me on.

Like Jack Nicholson’s Col. Nathan R. Jessup in “A Few Good Men” (1992) said “There is nothing on this earth sexier than a woman you have to salute in the morning. Promote ‘em all,” I too, believe there isn’t anything sexier than seeing a woman in charge. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wished the police officer pulling me over for speeding since I’ve been driving at age 16 was a woman.

I’m not just saying this to score brownie points with the opposite sex!

I had to do a double take when I saw supporters (women of course) holding signs showing Haley in heels stepping on President Biden’s head at that rally last February. Talk about “I am woman, hear be roar.” I thought that Helen Reddy song only applied to first lady Hillary Clinton when she ran for president against former President Donald Trump in 2016.

Seeing Haley and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis square off at the CNN republican debate Jan. 10 days before the Iowa caucuses Jan. 15 I found it to be nothing more than a two-hour he said/she said quarrel. I was only able to stomach an hour of the debate on youtube and I still can’t figure out who really won, much less tell who got the most applause.



What I felt like doing was rewatch the debate from the beginning so I could count how many times Haley told the audience to pull up desantislies.com to dispel all the myths her opponent accused her of. Then I could compare Haley’s website comment to how many times Julia Roberts says “fuck” in Netflix’s apocalyptic disaster movie, “Leave the World Behind” (2023). I’ve a feeling Haley would win.

Don’t get me wrong. I would desperately love to see a Republican woman in heels (five inch if you ask Haley) who not only wears them unless she can run in them and doesn’t see them as a fashion statement, but for ammunition take over 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue next Jan. This versus the possibility of the country seeing another Trump presidency the next four years. I didn’t vote for Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020 despite those few who know me personally think. Yet I still supported Trump because he ran the country like a business and was not considered a part of the Washington elite.

I would not be surprised if Haley were to read my blog here, she’d say the same thing she told DeSantis and Ramaswamy at the Dec. 5 debate. “I love all the attention, Darth Stumpo – thank you for that,” she’d tell me.

Watching the debates the past three months, I’ve hoped to see a “Reagan moment” come out of those debates – someone who can get me excited about the 2024 presidential race instead of having the ghost of Donald Trump hanging over the candidates where the real attention is on the elephant nowhere in sight.

I fear this country is over four decades long past that with who we got running today (that applies to both sides of the aisles – left and right) except on the Democratic side, the leadership is three times worse.

In January 2012, I wrote in a blog how there is no such thing as the perfect candidate. I don’t believe there ever was since George Washington became the country’s first president. Back then I wrote I had no idea who I’d vote for come election day that November.

I wrote “as much as it pains me to say it, whoever it is I vote for my decision will be based on who I think can do the job as leader of the country and not so much on their negative past, despite my wish that there was someone out there has some moral character to be president.”

I want a woman president who not only exhibits style but substance. Haley’s got a lot of style and not enough of the other if that.

Nikki Haley, Ron Desantis, Vivek Ramaswamy (who is still in the presidential race but will no doubt back out soon) and former President Trump are all prime examples of those who are from being the perfect candidates. I’d rather, however, be for the devil you know than the devil you don’t know, in this case as much as it pains me to say it, be for Trump if he is chosen at the Republican National Convention in Wisconsin in July this year.

I’ve no doubt sometime before I leave this world both physically and mentally and have my ashes sent off into space and become one with the “Dark Side of the Force” that this country will have a Republican woman president in five-inch heels running the White House. We’ve got women governors on both sides of the aisles (Kathy Hochul, Kristi Noem, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Gretchen Whitmer) a lieutenant governor of Virginia (Winsome Sears) and women mayors here in the states and prominent women leaders in other countries. Why not add the USA to that list so long as she isn’t a Democrat.

I won’t say I am about to join Sen. Rand Paul’s “Never Nikki” campaign he started Jan. 12 urging people to not vote for Haley.

I do want to see America put a “bad ass” woman in the White House one day, a Republican one. Haley is right when she said, “sometimes it takes a woman.” I’m just not sure I’m truly ready or Americans for that matter are ready to call Nikki Haley, Madam President in 2024.

©1/12/24