Free Republic

Procol Harum performing A Whiter Shade of Pale.. the 1967 version.... This is the original 16mm Scopitone conversion, from the 'summer of love' 1967 hit record. Vocals and piano played by Gary Brooker, Matthew Fisher played the Hammond organ, and these original lyrics were written by Keith Reid...[H/T maggiesfarm]

The illiberalism of student radicalism in the 1960s shaped the world we live in today.SDS leader Mark Rudd at a Columbia University protest, 1968It is now 45 years since that momentous year 1968, one of the turning points of contemporary world culture, if not quite of contemporary politics. Not unlike 1848–49 in Europe, 1968 was marked by events that involved student and political protests in several places. There was a dire sense of crescendo and momentum: the heightening of protest against the Vietnam War, the violent turn of the civil-rights movement, the assassination of Martin Luther King, the utopian libertinism...

To: Those of You Born 1930 - 1979 At the end is a quote of the month attributed to Jay Leno.. If you don't read anything else, Please read what he Said. TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED THE 1930's, 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's! First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can and didn't get tested for diabetes. Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-base paints. We had...

While watching the Grammy awards last Sunday, it occurred to me that American culture has been defined by music ever since the end of World War II. After the Germans and Japanese surrendered in 1945, millions of GI's returned home to marry and begin families. The big-band era of good-time music accompanied that, and romantic singers like Frank Sinatra ruled the day. In the '50s, many young people, tired of conformity, began to rebel. The rise of Elvis Presley illuminated that rebellion. Then the angst kind of died out as Chubby Checker ushered in "The Twist" in 1960, and...

The United States of America was the greatest nation in the history of the world, bar none, and just about every American school kid knew why http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/when-i-was-a-kid-reflections-of-a-50-year-old-american?f=must_reads

G.E. Hardiman I – Ralph Mosher (American) Hardiman is a name derived somehow, from "Human Augmentation Research and Development Investigation." and Man from MANipulator. Sometimes written as HardiMan, Hardi-Man, Hardi Man, Hardiman I. Said to also be officially called the "Powered Exo-skeleton." Note: some reports suggest that only one arm of Hardiman's was built. The above photo usually accompanies that comment, but it is incorrect. A complete Hardiman was built with both arms, but the comment refers to the earlier tests of just the single, upper manipulator. Later, even when the full machine was built, one side was made static,...

This will bring back some memories. You will love the cars in the photos too. Look at the price of gas in some of the pictures.

If you really want to understand the vast changes that have occurred in America over the past 50 years, all you have to do is watch James Bond. Back in 1962, the first Bond movie, "Dr. No," was released, catapulting Sean Connery to international stardom. Even President Kennedy expressed admiration for Ian Fleming's fictional British secret agent. Connery's Bond was ultra-suave but amazingly politically incorrect. The guy smoked constantly, drank, gambled and womanized without remorse. He was a rogue and couldn't care less what anyone thought. He was also brutal, liberally exercising his license to kill in the cause...

...Conservatives are shell-shocked. The event in Palm Beach drew no consensus for the future of conservatism. After four years of economic, political and moral depredations, it becomes increasingly difficult to predict when the pendulum will swing back or if it will at all. We wander along a desolate path of stupefaction, adrift in our bumping and stammering hallucinations. Can a moribund culture ever be revived to resemble the best times in America's past? When Tuesday (11/19/2012), US District Court Judge Audrey B Collins delivered a 28-page ruling denying my client the right to continue a 59-year-old tradition of exhibiting Nativity...

Skateboarding in the 60's

Newly released, declassified files from the United Kingdom reveal U.S.officials' concerns that Kenyans studying in America, including President Obama's father, may have had ties to Kenyan terrorist groups that were supported by communist nations in the 1950s and early 1960s. As yet the documents exist only in physical form at the National Archives in Kew, Southwest London – but they are open to the public, a British police source told the Law Enforcement Examiner on Sunday. The declassified documents, which had been kept secret for decades, "were privately condemned by Obama administration officials," a British source told the Law Enforcement...

The major Demo tactical effort against Mitt Romney is based on portraying him as a robotic, out-of-touch figure not much like other Americans -- at least not Americans of the 21st century. Romney is a creature of the 1950s, raised and indoctrinated within a Mormon cocoon, a man effectively living in a time warp. He uses words like "zany." His hair looks funny. He's been married to the same woman for nearly half a century. What kind of post-'60s American is this? The key element here, repeated in piece after piece, is that Romney was "untouched by the '60s." Liberals...

There was something awful about the year 1968.I was but a lad at the time, merely seven or eight years of age, but almost everything on the T.V. terrified me. Terrible reports from Viet Nam, (where my father was at the time), the Tet Offensive nightly reports of death and casualties (was my daddy one of the ones killed?). Riots and anti-war demonstrations in America’s cities and college campuses. The first stirrings of militant feminism. A second hideous year of hippies with their “summer of love” nonsense, which was just an excuse for selfish, spoiled college kids to get high,...

The Legacy of the Killer Years What was so wrong with Formula One racing during this period? Why were there a shocking 57 driver deaths from 1961 through 1973? What gruesome events finally forced a change in the racing culture for good? Grand Prix: The Killer Years, [airing Monday, March 5 at 7:00 pm Eastern on the Velocity Television Channel FIOS Veizon] is an uncompromising look at just what was going on in racing during those years, and is a tribute to those drivers whose deaths eventually forced a change. This is their story.********************************************************* I have watched it twice. It...

Oh how I yearned to be stranded with her... Former 'Miss Nevada' Dawn Wells as  'Mary Ann Summers' - Gilligan's Island (1964-67): Decades later, we at long-last know how they killed the time  on that (dopey) island: while going some ways towards  explaining the bizarre tree-licking episode above,  something still largely frowned upon  back in here in (what passes for) civilization... You know ALL bout that stuff, doncha lil' buddy... "All day... all night... Mary Ann"... Video tribute/more at Reaganite Republican _________________________________________ IMDb   Wikipedia

Following a couple of weeks of searching for a new buyer after being dropped by History, the controversial Kennedys miniseries has landed on ReelzChannel. The four-year-old digital cable channel, owned by Hubbard Broadcasting, has already set a premiere date, Apr. 3, and has put up a trailer for the mini, which is expected to run unedited. The little known Albuquerque, NM-based ReelzChannel, which runs movie-themed program and syndicated fare, is probably looking for some visibility with the high-profile acquisition. The mini, from 24 co-creator Joel Surnow, stars Greg Kinnear, Katie Holmes, Tom Wilkinson, and Barry Pepper, was previously shopped to...

Not everything that happened fifty years ago this month made international news or found its way into the history books. While President Eisenhower was sharing his caveat-laden farewell and President Kennedy was delivering his clarion call to Cold War vigilance, something else—quite microscopic in comparison—was going on about twenty miles to the west of Washington, DC. And it is something that still makes a real difference today. It all started with a guy named Floyd, a 38 year-old employee of the Federal government. He, along with a few other families, had a vision to start a new church in an...

On Sunday there was a thread that somehow ended up with postings of various different music videos. One of those videos really caught my attention, but I forgot to bookmark it, and now I cannot locate it here or youtube. It was a group of 3 girls with beehive hairdos, and I believe they were from Winnipeg Manitoba. I can't remember anything else but the ethereal quality of the music. The "video" (actually just a sound file with a still of the girls' album cover) was absolutely fascinating, using several different tempos at the same time, then overlapping and melding...

The Leftwing extremist group called 'The Southern Poverty Law Center' of Montgomery, Alabama has with one stroke of the pen smeared conservatives and Patriots in its new, infamous 'blacklist' it entitles, 'Meet the Patriots.' Among those it includes in the blacklist are some of the most reputable conservative Patriots in America today, such as U.S. Representative Michelle Bachmann (R-MN), federal judge and Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano, U.S. Representative Ron Paul (R-TX), Gun Owners of America (GOA) chief Larry Pratt, Fox News personality Glenn Beck, and U.S. Representative Paul Broun (R-GA), among others.

But Barack Obama is not an "other" so much as he is a child of the 1960s. His coming of age paralleled exactly the unfolding of a new "counterculture" American identity. And this new American identity—and the post-1960s liberalism it spawned—is grounded in a remarkable irony: bad faith in America as virtue itself, bad faith in the classic American identity of constitutional freedom and capitalism as the way to a better America. So Mr. Obama is very definitely an American, and he has a broad American constituency. He is simply the first president we have seen grounded in this counterculture...