TheBlackberryAlarmclock.com

Thingish Things

Polly Wanna Go Home

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - May• 02•12

Say what you will about Matt Drudge; he does highlight gems like this one sometimes. 

A Japanese parakeet gets lost.  The cops find him (this is sounding like a joke, I know) and the parakeet tells them his address. Classic. 

Kind of reminds me of the one with the man walking down the street with a penguin.  Cops pull up. “What are you doing with that penguin,?” they ask. “Bringing him to the zoo,” replies the man. Cops drive off.  But the next week they run into the same man walking down the same street with the same penguin.  They pull up: “Hey, I thought you were bringing that Penguin to the zoo…” “I did,” the man assured them. “Now I’m taking him to the movies.” 

But I digress…

 

Newsday Piece: Living a Lie

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - May• 01•12

Anyone looking to see the best and worst of America all in one place should stand outside St. Francis Assisi Church in Mount Kisco on Sundays at around 1:15 p.m. It is a remarkable sight.

There you will see multi-generational families — a couple of hundred at least — in their Sunday best, waiting to enter 1:30 mass. It’s St. Francis’ weekly Spanish-language service and it is a standing-room-only event, every week.

The scene is the stuff of Norman Rockwell. From grandmothers to infants — girls in ribbons and boys with spit-polished hair — gathered to worship as families. It is a custom we so often lament as lost in an increasingly secularized America. But there it still is, on glorious display, each Sunday on East Main Street.

The problem, of course, is that about half the families assembled probably aren’t supposed to be there. They are illegal immigrants. There, the Rockwell portrait is marred…

The rest of this piece is available on Newsday Westchester. Thanks for reading. 

 

Obama’s bin Laden Brick

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - May• 01•12

 I don’t know what President Obama was thinking. He was going to get credit again this week for the elimination of Osama bin Laden.  Tomorrow is the one year anniversary of the terrorist’s death.  It’s not like the news media would have missed that milestone.

But the President and his team tried to squeeze too much juice out of the orange, and it exploded in their faces.  In the process, they have turned the bin Laden victory into a campaign negative.  That’s not easy to do. But with people like Ariana Huffington and Seal Team Six members joining Republicans in condemning the President and his campaign team for overtly politicizing the military action, Obama for America has a mini PR crisis on its hands.

The mistake was in making a political ad about the raid that attacked Mitt Romney. An ad itself would have raised eyebrows, but it would have been fair-ish game. Mr. Obama was President when the action took place.  He rightly gets credit as Commander in Chief. But in attacking Governor Romney in the spot, it crossed the line. 

The Obama campaign has been acting very strangely of late, though. And anyone who works in politics can tell you, unmistakably, what it suggests.  The President’s re-election team is scared.  Campaigns resort to hard and risky negatives only when they’re in trouble. But this ad probably only deepens the President’s challenge in November. The bin Laden issue, which should be his greatest strength, is now tainted for him. 

President Obama should have taken the easy layup this week.  He took a three pointer instead and it bricked. 

 

Newsday Westchester Column

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - Apr• 30•12

Just a quick note to thank you for enduring — and helping grow — this site. A bit of good news for me personally, which comes only as a result of your loyalty: I will be penning a twice-weekly column for Newsday beginning today as part of the media company’s expansion into Westchester, Rockland, and the Hudson Valley. My column will be focused on politics, but, just because I can’t help it, will also bleed into other areas of life. 

Newsday Westchester launches today to great fanfare. It has a crackerjack reporting and editorial team that will blanket the Hudson Valley with news coverage. If you live in the Hudson Valley, you should recognize the names of some of the veteran journalists recruited to write for the new publication.  

Newsday Westchester is free to Cablevision subscribers everywhere — as is its outstanding app, available on IPads, IPhones, and other mobile devices. If you are not a Cablevision subscriber, there is a nominal fee for full access.  A free trial offer is going on now. Definitely worth checking out. 

I will link my columns on here and hope you will read today’s, which is on President Obama’s futile attempt to portray Mitt Romney as an extremist. 

Thanks again for giving me the chance to vent on a regular basis. It has lowered my heart rate and given me a rewarding side career.  

Quote of the Day, John Boehner

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - Apr• 29•12

“The president is getting some very bad advice from his campaign team, because he’s diminishing the presidency by picking fake fights, going after straw men every day,” John Boehner on CNN today.

Quote of the Day, Peggy Noonan

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - Apr• 27•12

 

“I listen to him closely and find myself daydreaming: This is the best-tailored president since JFK. His suits, shirts and ties are beautifully cut from fine material. This is an elegant man. But I shouldn’t be thinking about that, I should be thinking about what a powerful case he’s making for his leadership. I’m not because he’s not.” — Peggy Noonan on President Obama in today’s Wall Street Journal

Feds Banning Farm Work Now?

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - Apr• 25•12

I really have to get back to my real work today, but I keep seeing stories float in that I simply cannot ignore.

Get this one: The Labor Department is trying to ban young people under the age of 18 from performing certain farm chores. Are they out of their minds? My two older daughters work on a farm on the weekends, not because they can’t find jobs babysitting or scooping ice cream, because there is no work harder, more wholesome, or more quintessentially American.  I guess they’ll be forced into data entry soon.

From a story on this in The Daily Caller:

The Department of Labor is poised to put the finishing touches on a rule that would apply child-labor laws to children working on family farms, prohibiting them from performing a list of jobs on their own families’ land.

Under the rules, children under 18 could no longer work “in the storing, marketing and transporting of farm product raw materials.”

“Prohibited places of employment,” a Department press release read, “would include country grain elevators, grain bins, silos, feed lots, stockyards, livestock exchanges and livestock auctions.”

The new regulations, first proposed August 31 by Labor Secretary Hilda Solis, would also revoke the government’s approval of safety training and certification taught by independent groups like 4-H and FFA, replacing them instead with a 90-hour federal government training course.

The overreach of the federal government gets more alarming every day. And yet they get away with it because too many of us stay silent. 

We Have a Winner!

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - Apr• 25•12

With the Gingrich campaign announcing today that the former Georgia congressman will be dropping out of the Republican Primary for President next Tuesday (does that sound like a weird announcement to you?) it appears that we have a winner to the BlackberryAlarmClock chicken dinner contest.

Unless someone can prove me wrong, Michael D. of New York City, who guessed that Newt Gingrich would exit the race on April 5th at 12:02 p.m., was closest in guessing Mr. Gingrich’s exit date and will be sent a complete chicken dinner  from Omaha Steaks by Fedex tonight.  Mike guessed closer than my vegetarian sister Ann by a mere 60 seconds, for which  Ann is undoubtedly grateful. 

Again, this is no ordinary chicken dinner.  It is, according to Omaha Steaks, a “Delicate Herb Roasted Chicken like you expect to find in a fine bistro.”  And that’s not all.  This this “fully cooked half chicken is boneless, except for the wing. Add in Roasted Garlic Mashed Potatoes and Green Beans and you’ve got a perfectly balanced dinner with an elegant presentation.” Full retail value of this extraordinary poultry offer? $39.99!

Congratulations, Mike. Anyone wishing to contest this award should please do before 6 p.m.  Thanks. 

Out of Bounds? “If I Wanted America to Fail”

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - Apr• 25•12

Here’s an interesting if slightly-long conversation starter by the group Free Market America aimed directly at President Obama and his policies. The President is not mentioned once in this four-plus minute spot, but he clearly is the target.

The video is sure to raise eyebrows and get under the skin of a lot of people, which undoubtedly it is intended to. The name itself “If I wanted America to Fail” is tough stuff and very close to being out of bounds — in my opinion anyway. 

These type of web ads are intended to create background conversations in America leading into November. This one should certainly do that. 

http://youtu.be/CZ-4gnNz0vc

 

You’ve Got to be Kidding

Written By: William F. B. O'Reilly - Apr• 25•12

http://youtu.be/TtHoRBIXvvs