Month: July 2019

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This is my first time that I placed the song of the day before writing anything, but today I’ve changed my format because of the subject matter. I remember my Grandmother brought a copy of the LP of Welfare Cadillac and I thought it would be a good song to start my series on the poor in America. I always I found the video of the song on the internet. To be honest I was amazed by this video from the Porter Wagoner show. You might need to watch it another time in order to really understand what’s going on. I’ve heard the song from listening to the LP when I was a little kid, but I was not prepared to see this video as an adult and to see the disgraceful laughter of the audience during the song and if that wasn’t pitiful enough Porter decided to take it to another level and talk to this singer where he could make fun of his “big fat lazy wife” and the audience laughed even more at that. After all what could be more funny than lazy, fat, poor people!

Today I don’t believe there are a lot of people who remember Guy Drake and one would have to be as old as me to remember The Porter Wagoner Show. Of coarse there is something we all remember from the show. That’s Dolly Parton! The grand lady of country music who wrote the song Coat of Many Colors about her poor mother sewing her a coat out of different pieces of cloth because that’s all she had. She goes to school and the other kids laugh at her, just like this audience laughs, but Dolly sings that every stich was sewed with love. I wonder what did Dolly think of this song, did she watch it live backstage or was she busy and didn’t see it at all? Now I know that you know where I’m going with this and you would be right. However something happened the other day in the Arkansas Legislature that changed my focus on this post. It’s about the poor, reading, and the school lunch funding. But as it turns out, Dolly Parton is still important to this cause.
Dolly Parton started the Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library in 1995. The program mails out a free book each month for children from birth until they are five years old. The books are chosen by experts in the education and writing field and are age appropriate for the child. I can tell a personal story about Dolly’s Imagination Library. My niece has always been a big fan of Dolly and when she gave birth to Mollie (her big brothers named their new sister Mollie Dah! Mollie is the girl train on Thomas the Train) my niece enrolled Mollie in Dolly’s program. Every month Mollie received a book, but somehow our sweet Mollie thought the books were coming from her daddy. We couldn’t ever get Mollie to understand that they weren’t coming from her daddy so after a while we just let her go on and believe that.

Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library is an example of showing love, that’s right real love to the poor kids of America. The Republicans in the Arkansas Legislature are not showing love to the poor kids in Arkansas they are showing what’s really in their hearts. That’s the hatred Republicans have for the poor. They claim that by taking away the little funding (money) they have their helping the poor. Because just like today’s song and the audience agreement they believe giving any money to those poor, fat people is stealing from them!

Yes I have a story to tell about Porter’s interview, where this singer makes fun of his big fat wife, and the audience thought that was so funny! My sister was a church secretary for several years serving at three different Southern Baptist church’s including our current church we attend. At the first church my sister served at the pastor came into her office one day and told her that there was a needy family that the church was going to help out and he needed my sister to find out what size of clothes the family needed. My sister got the information and put in on the Pastor’s desk. The next day the Pastor came back in and told my sister that he got some else to help that needy family, we (our church) wasn’t going help them. What changed we were going to help them one day and the next day not. Well my sister got the clothes sizes and it turned out the woman was very large, so that explained that. If fat people came to the church the Pastor would give them a box of food but as soon they were out the door, complain or say something demeaning about those fat people wanting free food. So there was no doubt what happened here as so as the Pastor found out it was a big fat woman, he handed them of to someone else. By the way he never did use that as an illustration in any of his sermons! I’ll have more to say what “good” people think of fat people in a later song. I haven’t decided on a song for tomorrow but it may be Dolly’s Coat of Many Colors.

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I first heard this song about twenty years ago when our church choir did a Fourth of July cantata. Unlike what I could find on the internet our choir wore white shirts with Fourth of July ties and when we sang flag waving American we all had little American flags that, guess what, we waved during the song. I guess our choir leader was the only one to think of that! On You tube there’s a church choir singing this song and their dressed in orange, I guess they were celebrating Home Depot day!

As of yesterday it matters which American flag you wave. Like a whole lot of people , Nike was totally oblivious to what the Betsy flag means to white supremacy groups. Before I talk about the Betsy Ross flag I want to talk about the meanings flags have. In my neighborhood when it comes to flags the Buddhist temple, literally down the street from my house, has all us beat. The picture below is the entrance to the Temple the brink flag posts go around the entire 1/2 block parking lot. There are probably over hundred posts with a different flag on each one. I don’t know what’s the meaning of any of these flags. But if I walk around the parking lot along each of these flags, there’s a house on the corner and in it’s back yard, whoever lives there, has a large Confederate Flag. I’m pretty sure what’s the meaning of their flag next to a Buddhist temple.

As you can see there’s not a picture here. As it turns computer stuff keeps chancing and I don’t remember anything from all those computers classes in my late 70s high school days. So since both Google Images and Bing Images have changed how you get an image to my blog, I guess there won’t be any pictures today. It took me 2 or 3 days how to figure out how to do the old way. So I just drove down to the Buddhist temple to take my own pictures of it, but there are some day they have their flags out and today is apparently is not one of those days. You can go to Google or Bing Images, type in Buddhist Temple Fort Smith Arkansas and it’s one of the first images.

If you go to Bing Images and type in KKK Betsy Ross flag, the first image that appears is a couple people in KKK “uniforms” and a 13 star Betsy Ross flag. When I first looked at this image said it was placed there 19 hours ago. On down there’s a picture of teenagers at a high school football field with the band practicing behind them holding a MAGA flag along with a 13 star Betsey Ross flag. Now I’m just guessing here, but what I think may have happened is whoever took this photo may have found it a little strange that these kids were holding a 13 star Betsy Ross flag and after the news yesterday, figured out why they were holding a Betsy Ross flag and put on the internet. That’s just my guess, but hate groups such as the KKK have always had “secret symbols” that only the members knew the meaning of. It turns out the hate groups have “hijacked” a nation symbol instead of freedom, they of turned the 13 star Betsy Ross flag into a symbol of hate. If it wasn’t for Colin Kaepernick, an American patriot, who Trump says disrespects the flag what greater disrespect for the flag than turning our American flag into a symbol of hate? The Nike shoe would had sold tens of thousands pair of these shoes unaware that many people that purchased them knew the current meaning of the Betsy Ross flag. It’s also very unfair to the people that would had purchased the shoe unaware of it’s meaning.

I have learned that symbols are very important to racists and they are proud and will defend their symbols. Back when Trump first took office I did a post on Face Book that I thought I would get a few comments like This is interesting or I never thought of it like. I posted a picture of President Trump sitting in the oval office with a view of the portrait of Andrew Jackson that Trump placed on the wall. I wrote on my post explaining how white supremacist admired Andrew Jackson because it was Jackson that made America white again with the Trail of Tears. The United States Army marched Indians tribes from their homeland in the east to the Indian Territory, after all the Indians weren’t U.S. citizens they were the illegals of the 1830s. Then I went on to explain how just as much that the white supremacist loved Andrew Jackson they hated Abraham Lincoln because he freed the salves. Not long after I posted it I had a very long comment from one of my Face Book friends I new from school who is now a personal injury lawyer with a lot of commercials on local TV. He went on with three very long comments about how evil Abraham Lincoln. Then another friend took exemption with his hate filled comments. This other friend of mine is a teacher at the same Jr. high where I first meet this lawyer friend. What subject did he teach? American History! The lawyer had no idea, but even if he did schools in America teach Fake History! Their comments went back and forth for several comments. You may ask if this lawyer was on TV all the time why would he steam out so much hate for the whole world to see, wouldn’t that hurt his law firm? Oh no his clients agree with him and would be proud to pay him in all twenty dollar bills! And that’s the sadist part, Andrew Jackson was admired so much he’s on the twenty dollar. Maybe they will put Trump on the three dollar bill. Trump most admired president was Andrew Jackson, and Hitler’s most admired president and who he would justify removing Jews from Germany, he would say he was doing the same as Jackson did in America. But the Trump base has no problem with Trump and Hitler having the same favorite president. If anyone thinks Trump put Jackson on the Oval Office wall for any other reason than racism you are mistaken, because any white supremacist can tell you why! That’s why standing up against racism is so important and never give racist the benefit of doubt, because they know what they are saying.

Please share this with your friends, not knowing these symbols can give people the wrong idea of what your values are.