Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan. Except for a whole bunch of Americans getting killed or seriously wounded, what was accomplished?

Ah, the war hawks are beating their drums again.

Libya!

I can guarantee the loudest of these war hawks never spent one minute in a military uniform. Here's something else I'm damn near willing to guarantee. These war hawks have a financial piece of some company, compan-ies or they're being financially encouraged by lobbyists who represent outfits like the former "Blackwater", etc.

Libya? American troops (maybe) in LIBYA? If this were to happen, we would be told that our troops wouldn't be there for very long.

Isn't that pretty much what we heard when we sent our troops to Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan?

Here's a very serious question I'd like to ask. Besides a whole bunch of Americans getting killed or suffering life altering wounds and billions on top of billions of American dollars being spent, what did we actually accomplish that was "positive" in any of those places?

And here's a question I've asked before and I'll ask it again; When did the rest of the world, or ANY PART of the world say, "America, we want you to be our policeman!"

We once had a civil war HERE! What do you think our reaction would have been if a foreign country had come here and given/gave military support to our Blue or Gray army?

Thoughts and or Comments? Please write to me at scottstjames@sbcglobal.net.

Our Wonderful Economy:

How 'bout dem gas prices?!? In my part of the Los Angeles area, the lowest price is $3.97 a gallon and climbing. How 'bout dem food prices?!? Brutal, huh? When's the last time you got a raise at your job? OR...When's the last time you HAD a job?

Have you been paying attention to all these robots and other machines that are doing jobs that we Americans used to do? And how about all those patriotic American business owners who have outsourced thousands on top of thousands of what used to be jobs done by Americans to places like India? I heard Donald Trump tell David Letterman about how American Express "customer service" employees are now in India. As much money as an outfit like American Express makes from AMERICANS, you would think they might.....

But then again, why should they? They've got the politicians making sure their taxes are lower than low instead of being taxed surcharges for this "slight of hand" crap our political leaders let them get away with.

And then there's the issue of illegal immigrants. Some behind the scenes very influential people have to be the ones responsible for spreading the nonsense that illegal immigrants aren't any kind of "drain" on our economy. And are we sick and tired of hearing about how illegal immigrants do jobs here that Americans won't do? YO!!! REALITY CHECK TIME! If you have to provide for your family and you (as so many others have) were laid off (fired) because the company you were working for didn't want to pay your salary anymore, don't you think you would take a job picking grapes if that was the only job that was available? Or working at a 7/11, A&P, cleaning toilets, mowing lawns, etc. etc.? Of course you would! But as long as we have newspaper columnists and churches providing "cover" for these "criminals", we will continue to get closer and closer to becoming a 3rd world country if we don't rise and demand that our laws be enforced. REALLY enforced! Illegal immigrants cost this country billions and billions of dollars. Anyone who tells you they don't and that they (the illegals) are in fact a benefit to our country is LYING TO YOU!!! With one exception. The people that "champion" these illegals are, for the most part, people who HIRE illegals instead of Americans! And yes, those criminal illegal immigrants are a "benefit" to the criminal Americans who hire these criminals.

WHEW!!!

Okay....I'm going to lighten things up a little....

Jon Badeaux is a long time reader of this blog. In fact, when I first started writing this blog, I was writing it everyday. Jon owned three radio stations and he asked me to do a daily audio version of this blog which I did until I had to turn this blog into a once a week thing.

Jon wrote me a little joke before I started writing this blog and here it is:

There was a knock on the door this morning. I opened it to find a young man standing there who said, "I'm a Jehova's Witness."

I said, "Come in and sit down. What do you want to talk about?"

He said, "Beats the shit out of ME, I've never gotten this far before."

Ba-da-bing and thank you, Jon!!!

Political quote of the day:

"If GOP candidates continue to smear Obama about where he comes from, the president will be staying right where he is for another four years."

The person who said that was/is, Mark McKinnon. Who is Mark McKinnon? Former Bush and McCain strategist.

QUICK HITS....

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann says she'll make a decision on whether or not to be a presidential candidate in a few months. She sometimes comes across as being a little wacky because of the way she often "stretches the truth", but I'll give her props for doing what Sarah Palin doesn't do and that's allowing herself to be on the air with people who will ask tough and or serious questions. If Bachmann does decide to be a presidential candidate, she has to know that along the way, someone will ask her about her son, Harrison.

Speaking of Sarah Palin, Palin's good friend Katie Couric is trying to get herself a syndicated deal of some kind. Why? Couric's contract with CBS expires in June and if Couric stays, she will do so with a salary that's considerably less than what her salary is now.

One more Palin item....Julianne Moore will play Sarah Palin in an HBO film that's about to be made. It will be called "Game Change" and it'll be about John McCain's unsuccessful presidential campaign. No announcement has been made about the actor who will play McCain.

Charlie Sheen? While I'm writing this, I'm sure that Sheen is on his internet radio station complaining about how terribly he's been treated by CBS and Warner Brothers. The best thing (career wise) that could happen to Sheen is for his pal Sean Penn to get him on a plane to Haiti and keep him there for a few months.

ENTERTAINMENT STUFF:

As if the last couple of items weren't entertaining enough...

Two new films that are at your favorite multiplex...

"Unknown", starring Liam Neeson, January Jones and some other fine supporting actors. Neeson has become the big dog action guy and this is an action packed movie. I don't think this is as good as the Neeson's last film about his search for his kidnapped daughter, but if you like action films, you won't be wasting your money.

"Just Go With It", starring Adam Sandler, Jennifer Aniston, Nicole Kidman, 2 adorable kids and (what was to me) a surprisingly good performance from Brooklyn Decker. To the best of my knowledge, this is her first film and she plays a very big role. If her name sounds familiar it's because you heard the name a lot when she was last year's cover girl in Sports Illustrated's swimsuit issue. This is by no means, a great film, but it is an entertaining film and worth the price of admission.

Speaking of movie stars, if you saw Tuesday night's episode of "Glee", you saw Gwyneth Paltrow make her second appearance on that show and she was (again) terrific. As was the whole show, a show that was about the subject of "sex". In between the great musical numbers, viewers got a little "sex-ed" that wasn't at all rammed down your throat. Charlie Sheen's friend John Stamos was also a part of the show. "Glee" has to me, become "Must See TV".

As is "American Idol". I've been a fan of "A.I" for several years, but with the new judges and new ways of doing things, I think this will end up being "American Idol's" BEST season!

QUESTIONS AND OR COMMENTS? Please write to me at scottstjames@sbcglobal.net and I will respond to you ASAP. All "Anonymous" emails are ignored.

THE NEXT BLOG?

Gang, this is my LAST blog for maybe, quite a while!

I'll tell you "why" in a minute. This blog was the brain child of my long time friend, Kevin Gershan. I've known Kevin for more than 30 years and when I met him, he was the producer for the Hall of Fame broadcaster, Robert W. Morgan. Since then, Kevin has been a long time producer/director for a little television show you might have heard of. "Entertainment Tonight".

Kevin wrote the little bio about me that you see to the right of the most recent blog that's been posted. The title of the blog, "The Jammer With The Hammer" was also Kevin's idea. He came up with that title because that's the nickname that was given to me by Robert W. Morgan.

Kevin knew that I had written all my scripts for the nightly television sportscasts I did here for many years and he thought I might like to try writing for something like this. "THIS", being the blog.

Four or five years ago (or whenever it began), I think I was writing mostly about entertainment stuff. But it wasn't long before most of the blog became about topics having something to do with politics.

No bells and whistles associated with this blog. Not even pictures. I also didn't publish comments from readers that would normally appear below each new posting. As you readers know, I responded to every email you sent me and sometimes I would use an idea or complaint you sent to me and identified you by name.

I learned very quickly that people who have been regular readers are people who are very interested in and concerned about, the condition our country is in. Politically, readers of this blog are all over the map. Location wise and idea(s) wise. I have heard from people all over this country and many other countries like (in no particular order), Egypt, China, Russia, Germany, Canada and other countries I'll probably remember after I've posted this.

I have developed many email friendships over these last four or five years and I'm sure I'll be staying in touch with a lot of you. And I hope you know that many of you were responsible for keeping me "on my toes" so to speak. You "challenged" me and I enjoyed the dialogue immensely.

Okay....So why am I stepping aside?

This "labor of love" takes up a lot of my time. As most of you know, I'm not in the radio or television news or sports business anymore. I'm a sometimes actor who has recently "kicked myself" several times because I didn't study enough for roles I was going to audition for because of time I was spending researching something for or actually writing this blog.

And now something else has come up. I'm about to participate in pre-production of and actual shooting of a few scenes that when completed will be shopped to "money people" along with the whole script with the hope that we can produce the full length feature of what would be (if you're an illegal immigrant) a "horror film". My role would be the "villain". A smooth talking former Texas Ranger who sweet talks illegal immigrants into living (for a fee) at a very nice and secluded place where they will be given American identity papers and after they've given me all the money they can give me, they are given something else that is whacha call, "shocking".

Are there any guarantees for me? Absolutely not. In fact, this could end up costing me money, But because I like the project and I really like the role I would play, in my heart of hearts, I have to try! When I was much younger, I learned (the hard way) that if you never TRY, you're never gonna get the girl. Needless to say, this time I'm gonna TRY to "get the girl", so to speak.

Meanwhile, from the bottom of my heart, thank you very much for taking your precious time to check out my opinionated weekly musings and please know I will be as easy to contact now as I have been.

Oh...If this movie thing falls apart? Don't be surprised if a few weeks or months from now you see a new blog that begins with the words, "Anyone remember ME?!?"

Most sincerely,

Scott, "The Jammer with the Hammer", St. James

CHARLIE SHEEN! Is it possible that America's last two Presidents have been our WORST two Presidents? Annnd...Kirk Douglas, Oscar Savior!!!

Charlie Sheen, Charlie Sheen, Charlie Sheen!

Until he got his kids taken away from him last night, he was a non-stop talking machine.

Gang, this Sheen story is disturbing to me on several levels.

When he first started popping off, the only radio stations that put him on the air were stations that have next to zero ratings. Oops, I'm sorry, KLAC here in Los Angeles has a rating of 0.8. Or is that 0.7?

Anyway, the first three of Sheen's interviews were two on KLAC and the other one was on a Podcast.

Everyone else got interested in having conversations with Sheen when they heard about the outrageous things he was saying.

Those of us who were paying attention to what Sheen was saying knew that we were listening to or reading words being shouted by a sick human being who was committing career suicide. And these hosts/stations were acting as "enablers". Wanna commit career suicide, Charlie? We'll help you and maybe you can help US get a rating of something over a "1". The Podcast guy? What does he care? He's just dieing to get on a real radio station. Step right up, Charlie. While you die, you give me/us, life.

As we all know, ABC and NBC were hearing about these things that Sheen was saying and they decided to use Charlie Sheen to get higher ratings for THEM! CBS? No, CBS wasn't interested because that's the network that Charlie was saying bad things about.

Then, of course, TMZ got involved. TMZ! We all know what their standards are don't we? Oh, wait a minute. That's right! TMZ doesn't have ANY standards, do they.

Somewhere along the line ABC and NBC lost sight of their standards as well. I say this with confidence because I spent a lot of years on both radio and television making decisions about whether or not to have people like Charlie Sheen on the air. If I had decided to have Charlie Sheen on the air with ME, I would have asked him some tough questions as opposed to simply letting him continue to dig a hole so deep, it would be a hole he'd never be able to climb out of. If he showed displeasure because I had the audacity to "challenge" many of the things he was saying, might I have to worry about him ending the interview which might leave me with egg on my face? My attitude would be, "Walk on Brother Charlie!" and I would go to bed that night knowing I didn't have to take a shower because of what I had allowed to happen.

Here's the bottom line deal as I see it, gang. Instead of Charlie Sheen simply committing career suicide in these interviews, I couldn't help but get the feeling that deep down inside....And maybe they weren't consciously aware of it....I was thinking that career suicide wasn't enough for these camera and microphone holding jackals. They seemed to be hoping for "The Real Deal!"

One more Charlie Sheen observation: During his recent rants, he has said a lot of bad things about AA, otherwise known as Alcoholics Anonymous. Sheen believes AA is populated by a bunch of "losers" and the number one "AA loser" in Sheen's mind seems to be the "Two and a Half Men" Executive Producer, Chuck Lorre.

I guess a reasonable question at this point might be, if the star of the show (Sheen) is a consumer of many drugs and his boss is a consumer of a lot of booze, is anyone on that show clean, as a rule?

But that's not where I'm going with this.

Charlie Sheen says he doesn't need any help. He can (and does) get clean on his own.

Okay. I'm not going to argue with that because I have beaten TWO addictions on my own. In March of 1991 I quit drinking. Haven't had a "drop" since. The other addiction ended a few years earlier than that.

But I don't buy Sheen's charge that AA is for losers. I know too many people who have told me about their "friendship with Bill" and how that has saved their lives. Different strokes for different folks. As long as you really REALLY want to quit something, you can. If you don't, quit talking about it. You're using up air with meaningless conversation. Which is where Charlie Sheen appears to be right now.

THOUGHTS and or COMMENTS? Please write to me at scottstjames@sbcglobal.net


GEORGE W. BUSH and BARACK OBAMA:

Is it possible that we are living through a period in which our last two Presidents of the United States are the two worst Presidents that this country has EVER had?!?

I know. The economic problems we have didn't begin with the Bush administration. They actually began somewhere around the time we were hearing about a "trickle down" economic theory thought up by David Stockman and embraced by President Ronald Reagan. An economic policy that was described as voodoo economics by George H.W. Bush before he was asked to be Reagan's running mate.

Since then, Stockman (yes, he's still alive) has admitted he was wrong about his "trickle down" theory. The Bush administration isn't responsible for the beginning of our economic problems, but those problems were exacerbated by the Bush administration with all the spending that they did. Not to mention the lack of regulations that allowed the housing mess, credit card mess, outsourcing on top of outsourcing, billions upon billions given to countries who don't like us, two wars that weren't paid for, etc., etc.

If the Bush administration didn't lie to us about Weapons of Mass Destruction that didn't exist, but was used as an excuse to go to war in Iraq, then they're guilty of being stupid for hiring people who gave us this so-called "intelligence" information.

Billions on top of billions of dollars of our money was wasted while our own country was slowly sinking into the quicksand of the economic mess were all facing. And the Bush administration seemed to have done virtually nothing to stop the bleeding.

Conclusion? Worst President of the United States in our history.

We voted for a guy, Barack Obama, because of "Change" he said "We could believe in!"

Uh, huh.

I'm looking. I've been looking. I'm still looking. Hmmmm....Uh, this "Change that we can believe in"? Where is it?

I mean, we're still spending billions on top of billions for war stupidity, this president, like the last president is letting the corporations pretty much do whatever the hell they feel like doing, lower taxes for the rich are still in play while nothing is "trickling down" to the vast majority of us and instead of demanding that uber-rich crooked money people get prosecuted and thrown into the slammer with Madoff and his ilk, what do we do INSTEAD?

Drum roll, please!

We pay attention to what Charlie Sheen is saying.

Conclusion? Unless President Obama does things dramatically different and positive soon, he (at best) ends up sharing the title of "Worst President of the United States" in our history.

If not Obama in 2012, WHO?!?

On the Democrat side, even though she denies it, Hillary Clinton.

On the Republican side? The Governor from New Jersey, the former Governor, Mike Huckabee, don't laugh when I say, Jeb Bush and the other people we've all heard about, people who I think would have no chance at all.

There's one Republican guy I haven't heard anyone mention as a possible presidential candidate, but he's a guy who has my attention, big time. 10-year Congressman from Virginia and current House Majority Leader, Eric Cantor. If he doesn't have something in his past that could rise up and bite him, I think Eric Cantor has that "IT" factor that deserves serious looking into.

Gas Prices:

In my part of the Los Angeles area, the cheapest gasoline is now$3.89 a gallon and climbing daily.

Health Insurance Companies:

I don't know about where you live, but here, a 59% increase isn't unusual at all.

Again...WHERE's that "Change we can believe in"?


ENTERTAINMENT STUFF:

Pretty much no surprises as far as who won Oscars, Sunday night. But did you like the overall show?

Near the beginning of the show when co-hosts James Franco and Anne Hathaway did that monologue while facing the audience, I cringed with embarrassment and immediately wrote, "If it ain't on the page, it ain't on the stage!!!"

The overall writing was horrible, outdated, horrible, outdated, horrible....

The next day, Oscar officials talked about looking into any changes they might feel they need to consider for next year's show. To me, the first thing they should do is get rid of the writers who have been on that show for like, forever and bring in a whole bunch of new writers.

Shortly after that cringe inducing and embarrassing monologue, the show got lucky. When a 94-year old former film superstar named Kirk Douglas came on stage to announce the winner of the Oscar for "Best Supporting Actress".

This old man needs a cane to walk, because of strokes he has a little trouble talking, but this former box office giant became a giant because he knew how to entertain. Yes, he struggled a little, but no one denies he was entertaining. He flirted with Anne Hathaway, she blew him thank you kisses, he flirted some more, while looking at the nominees he stretched out the drama and when he finally announced who the winner was, the show got lucky again. Because the winner, Melissa Leo is a bit of a character herself and when she arrived at the stage and Douglas flirted with her, she flirted right back and a little later, while doing her acceptance speech, she said a word that everyone ended up talking about.

Yo, Oscar people. Yes, I know the show is about honoring movie folks who have done extraordinary work, but Oscar people??? We in the audience want to be entertained. You guys are in show business. Give us a SHOW!!!

Douglas and Leo did as did a few other folks, but c'mon. Nobody's gonna care how long the Oscars show is as long as it is indeed, a SHOW!!!

One more Oscar show comment. In addition to being a co-host, James Franco was also a Best Actor nominee. No doubt about it. Anne Hathaway with that infectious high school cheerleader/prom date thing going on, was adorable on stage. James Franco? He got a lot of criticism for coming across as a guy who had no business being a co-host and seeming to look like he was "too cool" to be doing something like being a co-host and some folks thought that he might have even been too stoned to be good even if he had the ability to be good.

I have another reason I think that James Franco might have been "disengaged".

Gang, he was one of only five people in the world who had a chance to win an Oscar for being "Best Actor". I don't know about you, but if that was me (and I LOVE to talk on stage), I think my mind might tend to drift until that winning or losing moment of truth arrives.

THOUGHTS AND OR COMMENTS? Please write to me at scottstjames@sbcglobal.net. I will respond to you ASAP. Don't write to the blog because there's no way for me to know your email address which means I won't be able to respond to you. All "Anonymous" emails are ignored.

THE NEXT BLOG? Barring something unexpected, late next Wednesday night, March 9 or early Thursday morning, March 10.

HAVE A GREAT REST OF THE WEEK EVERYBODY!!!