The Top Ten

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New World Notes News
Vol. 3, No. 6 -- February 6, 2010

This Week in New World Notes, radio program #101, Feb. 9:

The Top Ten

Top quotation of the decade #5

Executive summary

Let the corporate media fret about the Top 10 fashion blunders, TV bloopers, waist-trimming foods, tennis players, and the like. We'll read or play recordings discussing the Top 10

• quotations, 2000-2009
• reasons to visit New Zealand
• high-level political sex scandals (Bill & Monica didn't even make the list!); and . . . this ya gotta hear . . .
• military combat rifles.

I add a few footnotes here and there, but--honest!--I didn't make any of this stuff up.

This week's song

• Jeanne C. Riley, Harper Valley PTA (1968)

Top: New Zealand Prime Minister John Key (2009).
Bottom: Top high-level sex scandal #5: JFK & Marilyn Monroe.
Is that Dean Martin on the far left? The President also enjoyed the
favors of Angie Dickinson (actress), Inga Arvad (journalist),
Blaze Starr (stripper), Judith Exner Campbell (mistress to Mob
boss), two White House secretaries affectionately called
"Fiddle" and "Faddle," and possibly Jacqueline B. Kennedy--though
who could blame her for having a headache? And they
complained about Clinton!

Notes and Credits

New Zealand and combat rifles from videos available on YouTube. David Rosen, "America's Top Ten Sex Scandals," CounterPunch, August 1, 2007. David Sirota, "A Decade's Top Ten Quotations," Common Dreams, January 1, 2010.

New World Notes is produced under the auspices (Latin for "gun") of WWUH-FM, a community service of that beacon of light in darkest Connecticut, the University of Hartford. Feedback to kdowst at hotmail period com.

Each site has its quirks and blind sides . . . but for consistently fine analysis, commentary, and (in the latter case) news--all from a Progressive perspective--you won't go wrong with CounterPunch (www.counterpunch.org) and Common Dreams (www.commondreams.org). Each updated daily, each free, each with very unobtrusive (CP) or no (C.D.) advertising.

Fearless Prediction (a propos de rien), here placed on the record: Venezuela gets it next. Before Iran. You read it here first!

Free subscription to weekly New World Notes email newsletter upon request.

Top sex scandal #6: Two prominent politicians and diplomats of the mid-
19th century-- James Buchanan and William Rufus King--were house-
mates and long-term intimate companions ... intimate enough to attract
the mockery of their peers. After serving six weeks as Vice President
(1853, under Pierce), King died of tuberculosis and hence was unable to
act as First Lady during Buchanan's presidency (1857-1861). Historians
still hotly debate who was the worst President ever: Pierce or Buchanan?
For a century and a half after Buchanan, Americans have resolutely
refused to elect another homosexual or another Pennsylvanian as President.
Daguerreotype of King by Matthew Brady.

Coming Soon

• February 16 -- Not All Christians Are Evil
• February 23 on WWUH -- Live, hour-long program (Pledge Marathon)
• February 23 elsewhere -- Resisting Violence: Kathy Kelly

Catch New World Notes (all times Eastern):

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• Any time: Listen to or download any installment ... or subscribe to a podcast ... at A-Infos Radio Project: http://www.radio4all.net/index.php?op=result&action=series&series=New+World+Notes

Top: Top combat rifle #4: M-1 Garand. The M-1 talks, nobody walks.
The WWII-era soldier holds a "clip," which holds eight .30-'06
cartridges for the rifle. By now, armies have largely replaced big,
heavy, powerful battle rifles such as the M-1 (Garand is the name of
the model's inventor) with smaller, handier, and less-powerful
"assault rifles." While assault weapon is a meaningless if scary-
sounding term concocted by the Gun-Ban Lobby to frighten the
uninformed, assault rifle is a real type of rifle.

Bottom: April 17, 2004. Flanked by NRA Executive VP Wayne
LaPierre (left) and NRA President Kayne Robinson, Vice President
Cheney admires the new Model 2003A2 U.S. Army Assault Rifle. The
'03A2 is slated to replace the current standard, the ageing M-16, by
the end of 2011. A Marine Corps sniper version now in late
development--the Model 2003A3--features a longer barrel, collapsible
ramrod, and a telescopic sight engraved with verses from the New
Testament.
Yes, I'm pulling your leg about the Model 2003A2 & 'A3. The rifle
shown is a new flintlock "Kentucky long rifle"--the sort of gun used
by Daniel Boone's uncle. In 2004, the Vice President accidentally
shot and injured a friend and hunting partner. Why the NRA would
give the man a firearm escapes me!