Sad but true! I show this to my students in my US history class for the sole reason of pointing out why they should take my class seriously!
Author Archives: Ryan S. Walters
A Tribute To My “Uncle” George
In the South we have a tradition, a tradition not well understood in much of the rest of the country. Most of us who are dyed-in-the-wool Southerners grew up with more uncles than those we are
actually related to. As for myself, even at 41 years of age, I still have quite a few.
I was deeply saddened to learn that one of those “uncles,” a very dear family friend, passed away on Saturday, March 14. George Imbragulio, a man I affectionately called “Uncle George,” was a lifetime resident of Ellisville and a retired professor of music at the University of Southern Mississippi.
The Imbragulios emigrated from Sicily. Uncle George’s father, Sam, ran a local store on Front Street in Ellisville, a building that no longer stands. And with that business the Imbragulios prospered, even in South Mississippi. They got along great with their neighbors and remained valued members of the community.
I was fortunate to live on Court Street right next to my great-grandparents, who were friends and neighbors of Uncle George. That’s how I knew him. And Uncle George was a man of a great many talents.
From his obituary:
He graduated from Jones County Junior College and received BMUS and MMUS degrees from Michigan State University, where he studied with Ernst Victor Wolff, he also studied with Claudio Arrau and Rudolf Firkusky.
He was on the music faculty at USM for over 30 years where he taught and mentored a host of young piano students.
A brilliant pianist, he played concerts throughout the southeast. He was a recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship for a year’s study in Rome, Italy. Also he was a judge for the Piano Guild of America. He served in the US Army during WWII as a chaplain’s assistant. He saw service in China and India.
He was also a fine writer who authored a novel, Miss Etta’s Arkansas Spring. He personalized an autograph copy for me, which sits in a place of honor on a special shelf in my library.
And unbeknownst to all but his closest friends, he was a magnificent chef who made the best Sicilian dishes you can imagine. I still recall with great pleasure his lasagna. But, in typical Sicilian custom, he would never part with his family recipe.
Uncle George was a man of extraordinary character and goodness. I never saw him angry, even when us kids played on his porch or his backyard. One would be hard pressed to find a kinder, gentler soul anywhere on Earth.
Those of us who knew him can mourn his passing, for we have lost a dear friend. And Mississippi lost a valued and accomplished son.
With his passing, our world became just a bit darker. But Heaven is now a bit brighter.
God speed, Uncle George!
The President of Fantasyland
“By almost every measure, we’re better off than we were when I took office. By almost every measure!” So said President Barack Obama recently on one of his latest fundraising trips, this one in Colorado.
Yet this is quite a strange statement, though conceited as it was and coming as it did on the heels of surveys that show his approval numbers in record-low territory, and a Quinnipiac poll that rated him the worst President since World War II. And rightly so, for one has only to look around to see there are problems aplenty.
Let’s start with the economy. How could the President even begin to imagine there’s been any meaningful recovery from the financial panic that struck as he took office? The numbers for the first quarter of 2014 show an economy that shrank by 3 percent. One more dismal quarter and we will officially be in a recession. But as any right-thinking economist will tell you, a true depression has been with us since 2008.
According to the latest stats, there are now more than 92 million Americans out of work, those who have given up looking for a job, even as the administration says the unemployment rate has fallen to 6.1 percent. How can they say such things? By not counting those 92 million unfortunate souls. By any measure the economy is a mess.
How about the porous (to put it mildly) southern border? As we speak, thousands of illegals from Mexico and Central America are flooding Texas, New Mexico, and Arizona, overwhelming an already weakened border patrol. Some 70 percent of agents are now trying to house and process the torrent of illegals, not secure the border from further encroachments. And Obama will not call out the military to assist.
Since October of last year, some 60,000, many of them unaccompanied children, have reached American soil, and Washington is expecting tens of thousands more, with no end in sight. According to reports, some 95 percent of these illegals expected to receive “permisos” upon their arrival. Yet we hear from the administration that the “border is secure” and is more secure than it has ever been. Do they think we are that stupid? And do they think we have not figured out that this is Obama’s own doing? Continue reading
Thad Cochran Is No Reagan Conservative
It remains fashionable these days for Republicans to cloak themselves in the legacy of Ronald Reagan, especially those who served in Washington during the 1980s. Thad Cochran and his supporters have already tried to remind the people of Mississippi of his steadfast conservatism. But don’t be fooled. Thad Cochran was no soldier in Reagan’s army.
Let us begin our story in Kansas City, at the Republican National Convention in July 1976, the nation’s 200th birthday. Ronald Reagan, the former two-term governor of California, decided to challenge the unpopular President, Gerald Ford, who had angered a good many citizens by pardoning Richard Nixon before any charges had ever been brought in the Watergate case. His foreign policy was also a disaster, allowing South Vietnam to fall to the North without any response and signing the Helsinki Accords, essentially handing the Soviets control of Eastern Europe. Continue reading
The Tea Party and True Conservatism
There is a battle raging within the GOP for the heart and soul of the party. It is not about personality or for control of the machine. It’s about ideology, principles, and the direction of the country. It has been ongoing for years and will not abate until one side is totally defeated.
The two opposing sides – the establishment, elite, Rockefeller wing and the resurgent Tea Party – claim to be conservatives and represent true conservative ideology. But both cannot be right. The only way to see who best represents the truth is to determine what conservatism really is. Continue reading
And They Call Us the Extremists!
Since the rise of the Tea Party movement in 2009, which was a direct reaction to President Obama’s massive expansion of the federal government, the Left has fought back with a fury, mostly by hurling insults like “fascists,” “radicals,” “Nazis,” “arsonists,” “terrorists,” “anarchists,” and the favored “extremists.” This is nothing more than a misguided attempt to discredit us with smear tactics.
But why? If we true conservatives are really nothing but a tiny fringe movement, as they claim, why all the fuss? Because we are a vital threat to their very livelihood – a livelihood that depends on a government that rewards the elites and punishes the rest of us. Should we galvanize our movement to full control of the Republican Party, our candidates will emerge victorious, and their cash cow government is finished, and they know it.
So instead of taking the word of Reid, Pelosi, and Obama on what our movement is really all about, let us tell them! Continue reading
Thad Cochran Showing Early Signs of Desperation
With less than four months until the primary election for US Senate in Mississippi, the political season is now in full swing. And like clockwork, the long-anticipated attacks against Senator Chris McDaniel by allies of the Thad Cochran camp have begun in earnest, and sadly, in dishonestly, if not downright hilarity.
Finding themselves in what must be an increasingly desperate situation, Senator Cochran and his well-funded surrogates and friends have initiated a campaign of low blows. This operation of deceit is nothing more than the establishment of the Republican Party, both on the national and state level, rallying around a weakened leader in a desperate attempt to make him look good by tearing down his opponent. Continue reading
Thad Cochran’s False Leadership
Webster’s dictionary defines leadership this way: “The power or ability to lead other people.” A business dictionary defines it as “establishing a clear vision, sharing that vision with others so that they will follow willingly, providing the information, knowledge and methods to realize that vision.” Can we honestly say this describes Thad Cochran’s time in Washington over the last four decades? Many conservatives think not. Continue reading
Chris McDaniel: Mr. Fiscal Conservative
With the US Senate race in full swing throughout the state of Mississippi, new charges have emerged from supporters of Thad Cochran in a pathetic and desperate attempt to paint Chris McDaniel as an untrustworthy politician in regards to his fiscal record as a member of the state senate and to attack his “misguided criticism of Cochran’s service to Mississippi,” in the recent words of Mr. Brian Perry in the Leader Call. Mr. Geoff Pender of the Clarion Ledger has also made similar arguments to attempt to discredit Senator McDaniel’s record of fiscal conservatism.
To begin with, Mr. Perry and Mr. Pender engaged in a classic political trick: cherry-picking votes. They took one vote Senator McDaniel made in 2009 in favor of an $282 million omnibus spending bill to make their case that he is not as fiscally conservative as he claims and that he is, in essence, no different than his opponent, Thad Cochran. Their inference is that Senator McDaniel is a fiscal hypocrite willing to support pork and wasteful spending when it suits him, while attacking Cochran for doing likewise. Yet it is nothing more than political blather suited for the ash heap. Continue reading
Ranking President Kennedy
Was JFK a great President? As the nation marked the 50th anniversary of Jack Kennedy’s tragic assassination, new polling shows that many Americans consider him to be among our very best, ranking higher than any President in the last half century according to the latest Gallup survey. Two years ago, he rated fourth all time, ahead of such Presidents as Washington and Jefferson. But is this accurate?
As a historian, it makes little sense to rank a President who served just over one thousand days in office, rather than a full term or even two. It’s very difficult to judge his more limited accomplishments and what effect they had on the nation and even the world. Continue reading
