Debra Heine deconstructs President Obama's fanciful, tin-eared comments after capture of 2nd Boston terrorist, and reminds us of the sad reality he ignores: "The Terrorists Didn't Fail"; David Remnick's curiously sympathetic column on Boston terrorists will likely go unmentioned by his media pals, esp. Charlie Rose; Anorak (U.K.) reports: American ignorance forces Czech ambassador to issue statement saying Czechs are not Chechens

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 Debra Heine deconstructs President Obama's fanciful, tin-eared comments after capture of 2nd Boston terrorist, and reminds us of the sad reality he ignores: "The Terrorists Didn't Fail"; David Remnick's curiously sympathetic column on Boston terrorists will likely go unmentioned by his media pals, esp. Charlie Rose; Anorak (U.K.) reports: American ignorance forces Czech ambassador to issue statement saying Czechs are not Chechens

A collection of pieces re the murderous Tsarnaev brothers and the Boston Marathon bombings that you may've missed since Friday night when President Obama pretended we hadn't seen what we all had seen for ourselves this past week. The Terrorists Didn't Fail, The American News Media Did.
Wishing doesn't make it so.

Breitbart
The Terrorists Didn't Fail
By Debra Heine
20 Apr 2013, 6:15 PM PDT 

In response to Obama's rush to judgment:
These words from Obama's weak and uninspired statement following the capture of the second terrorist rang  hollow to my ears., 
"One thing we do know is that whatever hateful agenda drove these men to such heinous acts will not — cannot — prevail. Whatever they thought they could ultimately achieve, they’ve already failed. They failed because the people of Boston refused to be intimidated. They failed because, as Americans, we refused to be terrorized.", 

While Obama struggles to figure out what "hateful agenda" might have driven these men to such heinous acts, I have a newsflash for him.
They didn't fail.

Read the rest of her insightful column here:
http://www.breitbart.com/InstaBlog/2013/04/20/The-Terrorists-Didn-t-Fail

Debra Heine's past columns are at:
http://www.breitbart.com/Columnists/Debra-Heine


Los Angeles Times
FBI: Boston suspect Tamerlan Tsarnaev followed 'radical Islam'

By Andrew Tangel and Ashley Powers

April 20, 2013, 5:33 p.m.

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-boston-bombing-suspect-radical-fbi-20130420,0,4341067.story

In the coming week, will Charlie Rose have his pal and New Yorker editor David Remnick on his PBS show or on the CBS Morning News so that Remnick can be asked some hard questions about his curious choice to write a sympathetic New Yorker column Saturday about the two terrorists, a column that in the end blamed both the U.S. and social media for what happened?
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2013/04/29/130429ta_talk_remnick

Yes, we all already know the answer to that question is no, and we also note for the record the absence of the word Beslan in Remnick's column.
Beslan as in murderous Beslan school hostage crisis of 2004:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beslan_school_hostage_crisis
Oh, THOSE Chechans!


Anorak (U.K.)
American ignorance forces Czech ambassador to issue statement saying Czechs are not Chechens
POSTED: 20TH, APRIL 2013

DID you hear the CNN anchorman root the Boston Marathon bombing in “the Islamic Czech Republic”?, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, 19, and 6-year-old brother Tamerlan, 26, were born in Chechnya.

Ambassador Petr Gandalovič, Czech ambassador goes on the record:

Read the rest of the post at:
http://www.anorak.co.uk/354659/news/american-ignorance-forces-czech-ambassador-to-issue-statement-saying-czechs-are-not-chechens.html/

I wonder what this presages for the Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia next February?
Even Putin can't lock up everyone in the city who isn't an Olympic employee.

#MUSLIMRAGE - 2010 video is perfect follow-up to my last post on problems associated with Muslim immigration to Sweden, inc. inability or unwillingness to adopt Western norms re free speech, are proven in video thru use of heckler's veto to stop performance, attack caricaturist Lars Vilks in Uppsala

BeTheBalls video: The Muslim attack on noted Swedish caricaturist Lars Vilks in Uppsala, Sweden 2010 - "the Entire Event". Uploaded May 27, 2010. http://youtu.be/lbpyk1uHNWY
Be sure to watch the woman in the second row wearing the multi-colored sweater, holding cell phone. This was captured by the TV operation of newspaper Upsala Nya Tidning in Uppsala.

I knew that I had the links to this video somewhere saved in Draft on my Gmail account, it's just that it wasn't yesterday when I really needed it to buttress my points in my blog post that eventually got around to the subject of Muslim immigrants' assimilation in Sweden, which is not going so well, owing mostly to the fact that many new refugees, mostly male, think they can out-smart the system that demands they make an honest effort to do several things, including adopting the norms of the country they're now living in, not being held hostage to the ones of the country they left behind in the rear-view mirror.

re Fouad Ajami's Washington Post essay: Why is the Muslim world so easily offended?; What Muslim "moderates"?; Målmo as the European canary-in-the-coal-mine doesn't auger well for the success of Muslim "moderates" or assimilation efforts; #MUSLIMRAGE
http://www.hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2012/09/re-fouad-ajamis-washington-post-essay.html

This 2010 video of a rather shocking display of anti-democratic behavior by Muslims attending an event in Uppsala that I heard about a day or two after it first happened, serves as a friendly yet-chilling reminder that unlike authoritarian regimes in Muslim-controlled countries around the world, when you live in a real democracy, like the U.S. or Sweden, it doesn't mean that you have a right to NOT have your personal feelings or religious sensitivities hurt, nor do you have a right to prevent other citizens from exercising their guaranteed rights, like freedom of speech.

You can always choose to not attend events that will be upsetting, but you get the sense in watching the video that the whole thing was almost pre-meditated if not pre-ordained, given the reaction that you can see for yourself.

Unfortunately, as we have seen for the past week with respect to the protests/riots in Egypt and Libya, and the premeditated murder of the U.S. Ambassador to Libya, this concept of tolerance continues to elude both many Muslims who leave the Middle East, as well as ones who stay there and who seem to go out of their way to continuously be outraged.

That's made worse by many in the American Mainstream Media who ought to know better, but who instead of dealing with them realistically, and call them on what they say and do, instead, coddle them, like ABC News' Christiane Amanpour, wife of a former Clinton State Dept. spokesman, Jamie Rubin, now an executive editor at Bloomberg News.

Breitbart's Big Journalism

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: WEST IS EXTREME, NOT ISLAMISTS

by William Bigelow  

15 Sep 2012 

http://www.breitbart.com/Big-Journalism/2012/09/13/Christine-Amanpour-Thinks-West-Extreme-Not-Islamists

ABCNews video: Christiane Amanpour, Martha Raddatz, and Brian Ross join guest host Jake Tapper to discuss political issues sweeping across the Middle East. Uploaded September 16, 2012. http://youtu.be/A0wPXV-BL5k



ABCNews video: Muslim Violence, Anti-American Protests, Fallout From Middle East: 'This Week' Roundtable. Uploaded September 16, 2012. http://youtu.be/miqHPq5l3SE

Melanie Phillips fillets out-of-touch female reporters in the Beltway, like Gloria Borger, who WON'T let facts get in the way of their asinine predictions about Newt Gingrich & women voters. She shoots and she scores!

In her Daily Mail blog post of Sunday titled, Well, what a surprise (not), Melanie Phillips quite properly fillets out-of-touch female reporters in the Beltway who WOULDN'T and WON'T let self-evident facts get in the way of their asinine predictions about Newt Gingrich & women voters, per the Marianne Gingrich contretemps of last week.


Predictably, longtime Washington Week in Review panelist Gloria Borger of CNN was among the most egregious of these disconnected talking heads for her asinine "women won't vote for Newt" comments of Thursday immediately following the debate in Charleston on CNN and then on Friday night on PBS.


Phillips , author of one of my favorite books of the past 20 years, 2006's Londonistan: How Britain is Creating a Terror State Within, wrote, in part:

All those who said the onslaught upon Gingrich by his ex-wife Marianne would leave him dead in the water, particularly among women, have been shown to be spectacularly out of touch. Gingrich actually won more women’s votes than his opponents.

She goes on to conclude that in the battle of Newt vs. Mitt, 

The gladiator in question may be flawed and far from ideal in a number of respects, but if he’s the only one who can fell his opponents rather than be felled by them, he wins.

Read the rest of the post at:
http://phillipsblog.dailymail.co.uk/2012/01/well-what-a-surprise-not.html

-----

C-SPAN video: Melanie Phillips - Londonistan. Heritage Foundation. May 10, 2006. http://youtu.be/DvgypX2-f4k
To watch a higher-quality video of this, see: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/192456-1

http://phillipsblog.dailymail.co.uk/


http://www.melaniephillips.com/


http://twitter.com/MelanieLatest

Forget your own Cyber Monday nonsense, the military's Digital Engagement Team is doing the heavy lifting to counter online Islamic extremist ideology

The Council on Foreign Relations video: Counterterrorism and Homeland Security: Does the United States Have the Right Strategy? September 12, 2011.

Thom Shanker of the N.Y. Times is the panel moderator, with Henry A. Crumpton, Frances "Fran" Fragos Townsend, and John F. Lehman as featured guests. I highly recommend watching the entire video at one time when you have no distractions. In particular, I urge you to listen at the 10:03 mark to former Navy Sec. Lehman, a member of the 9/11 Commission, who makes some spot-on comments I agree with 100% re wasted band frequency, the failure to fully comply with the 9/11 Comm.'s recommendations, and the remaining bloated bureaucracy in the intelligence community, In fact, Lehman is so disgusted with that bureaucratic red-tape that he admits he'd favor the Office of DNI being abolished if it can not be kept intentionally small as it was originally intended.

On 9/11, I was four blocks east of The White House and working in an office on Pennsylvania Ave. directly across the street from the FBI and DOJ. http://youtu.be/HQXveZjQgdg

-----

Forget about your own silly Cyber Monday nonsense, read this GREAT story recently written by Thom Shanker & Eric Schmitt of the New York Times -co-authors of the book "Counterstrike: The Untold Story of America’s Secret Campaign Against Al Qaeda"- about the military's Digital Engagement Team, who is doing the heavy lifting to counter online Islamic extremist ideology, "promote cultural awareness and explain U.S. interests” Yes, strategic counter-terrorism that will make a tangible difference.

New York Times

U.S. Military Goes Online to Rebut Extremists’ Messages

By Thom Shanker & Eric Schmitt

November 18, 2011

MacDILL AIR FORCE BASE, Fla. — The morning sun had barely cast its fresh light over Tampa Bay when Ardashir Safavi — born in Iran, a refugee to Turkey, educated in the mid-Atlantic states — was up and patrolling two dozen Persian-language Web sites, hunting militant adversaries in cyberspace.

His mission was to scan news reports, blogs, social media and online essays to identify those he viewed as “containing lies, misinformation or just misperceptions” about American military operations and Pentagon policy across the Middle East.

Read the rest of the article at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/18/world/us-military-goes-online-to-rebut-extremists.html

Readers comments at:

http://community.nytimes.com/comments/www.nytimes.com/2011/11/18/world/us-military-goes-online-to-rebut-extremists.html

See also:

Office of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI):

http://www.dni.gov/

University of Southern California Center on Public Diplomacy blog

CENTCOM’S DIGITAL ENGAGEMENT TRIES TO COUNTER EXTREMISTS

August 26, 2010

Posted by Philip Seib

http://uscpublicdiplomacy.org/index.php/newswire/cpdblog_detail/centcoms_digital_engagement_tries_to_counter_extremists/

Council on Foreign Relations website: http://www.cfr.org/

Council on Foreign Relations YouTube Channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/cfr

ABC News on one of Osama bin Laden's strategies: "to inflame race and class tensions in hopes of tearing down the [U.S.]"; Exploit Minority Converts

It will be very interesting over the coming weeks to see how the U.S. Mainstream Media -outside of ABC News- reports on this angle of this week's Osama bin Laden story, given how early on, the MSM seemed eager -almost devoted!- to framing anyone who said anything along the lines of what they're now reporting as fact at ABC News' The Blotter, http://abcnews.go.com/blotter, as either stupid, paranoid or possibly even racist.

Well, don't hold your breath waiting for the MSM to now suddenly see the error of their condescending and patronizing ways and suddenly apologize to those very individuals, many of whom spoke of the environmental role of prison life as a factor leading to Muslim conversions among minority prisoners, a topic which, itself, is one that has been reported on to the point that it's Common Knowledge.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/08/19/AR2005081901460.html
http://www.pbs.org/weta/crossroads/about/show_homegrown.html

And yet if you weren't a certified Beltway 'expert' and said this same thing, look out below!

ABC News
The Blotter
Osama Bin Laden's Anti-U.S. Strategy: Exploit Minority Converts
By Pierre Thomas, Richard Esposito, Lee Ferran
May 7, 2011

Osama bin Laden aspired to damage the United States not only through persistent terror attacks, but also by attempting to inflame race and class tensions in hopes of tearing down the country from the inside out, according to officials briefed on the evidence trove recovered from the al Qaeda leader's Pakistan compound.

According to materials in the cache of documents recovered in the U.S. Navy SEAL raid that brought down the terror leader, bin Laden planned to specifically recruit African-American Muslim converts to carry out attacks on the homeland.

Read the rest of the story at:
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/osama-bin-ladens-anti-us-strategy-exploit-minority/story?id=13547780&nwltr=blotter_featureMore

"Extent of radicalization among American Muslims" hearing; Rassmussen: 39% Say U.S. Govt. Not Focusing Enough on Threat of Domestic Islamic Terrorism

If, like me, you don't get C-SPAN 3 as part of your cable or satellite package, you can watch the House Homeland Security Comm. congressional hearing titled "Extent of radicalization among American Muslims" that I wrote about yesterday at:
http://www.c-span.org/Live-Video/C-SPAN3/

The entire four-and-a-half hour meeting will be re-run again this afternoon on C-SPAN 3, and will also be shown in its entirety on C-SPAN starting at 10 p.m. tonight.

If you want to see a tone-deaf article that completely mis-characterizes both the purpose of the hearing and the reason why it's long-overdue, I've got just the article for you, and trust me, the confusion is neither accidental nor is it due to language or translation problems.

That's my way of saying to those of you who have wondered from time-to-time, via emails, why I mention so many things here that are related to either Swedish or Scandinavian sources -short answer: because I can and they're interesting- that I'm not going to give you a link here to something that's all in svenska.
I'm really not.

No, the offending article that stands common sense on its head is one that is easily found on one of the world's most popular media sites, The Telegraph, which I have been reading in print or online, for more than thirty years.

That dates back to my days at IU in Bloomington when I had one of the most distinguished professors of comparative politics and British politics in the country as a teacher and sounding board, the late James B. Christoph.
http://www.grad.ubc.ca/awards/james-b-christoph-prize

I took every undergraduate class on British politics that he taught and was fortunate enough to be among several British Politics students asked to attend an annual barbecue he hosted at his home for folks who were really, really into the subject.

He was a great professor who knew his subject inside-and-out and inspired his students to think more clearly and wisely for themselves.
What else can you ask for?

Prof. Christoph's wisdom, keen insight and thoughtful comments on the interplay between politics, human behavior and cultural tradition, and why some systems work and others don't, during what were then the early days of the Margaret Thatcher administration, still ring in my ears.

What also rings in my ears are the names of the myriad books and the newspapers he both required -and strongly recommended- we read, even if we might disagree with them politically, to get the true nuance and context.
Obviously, for both reasons of history and the quality of its writing, The Telegraph was on that list.
That was enough for me.

A few years ago, once I started this blog, I even ran some of their widgets on this site in order to give them the widest possible circulation, but they had technical problems too often so I had to remove them.

Early this morning, I left a comment at The Telegraph relative to the Alex Spillius column titled, US hearing on radical Islam: a waste of time, but not witch hunt http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/alexspillius/100079257/us-hearing-on-radical-islam-a-waste-of-time-but-not-witch-hunt/

Spillius definitely seems like he could pass that rigorous employment process at NPR and start work tomorrow. And yes, you know exactly what I mean when I say that.

Today's Rassmussen Reports has a poll detailing results of how Americans feel about some of the issues mentioned in today's hearing:

39% Say Government Not Focusing Enough on Threat of Domestic Islamic Terrorism
Thursday, March 10, 2011

A House committee is expected to begin controversial hearings today about the potential danger of domestic Islamic terrorism, and a sizable number of voters think the government is not paying enough attention to this possible threat. Most voters still worry, too, about homegrown terrorist attacks.

A new Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey finds that 39% of Likely U.S. Voters believe the federal government does not focus enough on the potential threat from domestic Islamic terrorism, although nearly as many (38%) say the government’s anti-terrorism focus is about right.

Read the rest of the report at: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/march_2011/39_say_government_not_focusing_enough_on_threat_of_domestic_islamic_terrorism

For more information, see: www.homeland.house.gov

Zuhdi Jasser of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, its President and Founder, had many good common sense points to make, esp. between 1 and 1:30 p.m., the last hour of the meeting, and I encourage you to go to their website and learn more about their efforts.

Their goal: "taking back Islam from the demagoguery of the Islamo-fascists."
http://www.aifdemocracy.org/

Just common sense - Peter King's long-overdue hearings on Muslim radicalism in U.S. gets backing from an unexpected ally at The WaPo: Ruth Marcus

Above, 9/11 pilot Mohammed Atta's Florida Driver's License

While living in Arlington County, I followed the 9/11 Commission hearings VERY closely, more than just about anyone I knew, watching or taping many of them off of C-SPAN, and, consequently, often staying-up late at night to catch up on their activities. Though it seems obvious now, while I'd heard from many sources that some of the hijackers had used Broward County Library computers to access the Internet to send messages -and book their flights- it never dawned on me to think about where, specifically, they had lived in South Florida.

But despite how much of the hearings I watched, I couldn't see everything, so it wasn't until another Washington-area friend who worked on Capitol Hill -also originally from Florida- pointed it out to me one night at a sports bar, that I found out that 9/11 pilot Mohammed Atta lived in Hollywood.
In fact, 4.6 miles from my father's home in Hallandale Beach.

(Not the subject of the column below, true, but just wanted to mention it all the same. Also relevant: On the morning of 9/11, I was working directly across Pennsylvania Avenue from the Dept. of Justice, the FBI and The National Archives. I was working on a litigation project for the law firm Crowell & Moring, a project involving DOD that was supposed to send me and my team to Dayton for a few weeks that Fall, but that was cancelled for obvious reasons.
From the firm's large windows facing Pennsylvania Avenue -and even more so from the large balcony that overlooked the street that were clearly perfect viewing for Inauguration Day festivities- I and the dozens of us on my flooor could clearly see the dark smoke arising in the SW from The Pentagon, just past our view looking towards the Old Post Office.
More about my 9/11 experiences in Washington, D.C. here, from a Sept. 2011 post, 
http://hallandalebeachblog.blogspot.com/2011/09/911-george-f-will-on-american-landscape.html)

Well, I've been sitting on them for a while now.
Wondering, wondering, wondering just when to run them in this space, but this excellent common sense perspective by liberal columnist Ruth Marcus in today's Washington Post about voluble Rep. Peter King of Long Island, and his resolve to finally have some long overdue congressional hearings on radical Islam in the U.S., despite protests from the usual suspects and however an imperfect a vehicle for that overdue development she thinks he might be, just might be the sign I've been waiting for.

So what's the them?
My sign to let you know that coming soon to the blog will be some delicious articles, columns and video about Islamic radicalism and not-so-democratic Muslim immigrants (not at all interested in assimilation) that I guarantee you you haven't seen or heard about elsewhere in the American Mainstream Media.

At least, as represented by the Miami Heralds and NPRs of the world, where news stories and real-life actualities that don't fit their political or social template never see the light of day in print or make the airwaves.

That's largely because even some liberals can see the lie of the fiction long articulated by the MSM, in the U.S. as well as in Europe, that EVERY Muslim -esp. immigrants- are just like Jane & John Q. Public, whether they live in Northern Virginia, Queens, London, Paris or Malmö.
Nope.

Some are but more than you think are NOT.
Just because the press wants it to be so doesn't change reality -or human behavior.

I know something of this first-hand because my first roommate at IU was a great guy named Salim who just also happened to be a Kenyan-born Muslim from Oman, who was at school on a World Health Organization (WHO) scholarship.

Salim was very appreciative of the opportunity he had to live and study in the United States and loved IU and the beauty and friendliness of Bloomington more than many of my other friends, who were blase about it, and because of his personality and willingness to talk about what he knew about growing-up in a life different than ours, Salim made friends easily.

A later roommate in the Washington area was a completely different story. I had known many Iranian-born friends as a kid growing-up in North Miami Beach, even seeing Grease at a drive-in with two -count 'em two- ridiculously cute and vibrant Iranian sisters in our family's convertible when I was in high school.

Their brother was a soccer teammate of mine and as I've related here previously, I sometimes went with him and his family to anti-Shah rallies at the JFK Torch of Freedom on Biscayne Blvd. in downtown Miami because members of his own family had been tortured or killed by the Savak. http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,912364,00.html

The Iranian-born medical student I was somewhat forced to live with in Arlington once another roommate moved-out just weeks before the lease was up -a know-it-all with with a real superiority complex- told me plenty of amazing stories about ways that Iranian students he knew played the State Dept. reps in Europe at the embassy or consulates for fools, in order to get visas.
They accomplished this by telling them the appropriate narrative that would allow them to be admitted into the country.

He said there even was a list of which State Dept. consular offices were more easy to fool than others, and since it was important to get to the U.S., they didn't mind the additional costs of flying out of whatever European country they might be living in in order to get to a consular office with a reputation for letting people in. Fly from Germany to Copenhagen or Portugal or... He knew that for a fact because it worked for HIM.

If college students knew how to game the system, do you honestly think that well-trained people with nefarious intentions and unlimited resources can't do even more?

Some people can never let go of their internal anger, never really want to fit in and are keenly disposed to wreck havoc on civil society wherever they can, even if that means corrupting freedoms or denying other people's guaranteed rights.

And when they're caught on film, they... yes, often celebrate their anti-social behavior.
That is, until they realize that it will make them look bad once it is shown on TV or the Internet. That moment of clarity is always a sight to see!

As you will soon see here for yourself, there's almost nothing better on TV then when the often-dubious world of Reality TV slams head-first into the behavior of the 'Real World' that the Left and its apologists in the media has been making excuses for for years.

That it happened in Sweden is not so surprising, sorry to say, but I can't help but think that if it had happened on a British TV show, where the conversation would've been in engelska, we'd all have long since seen the video by now and that it would be sure-fire water cooler conversation once 20/20 or Nightline or Sixty Minutes highlighted the behavior for Americans.

That is, if people still really have water cooler conversation as shown on The Office, instead of sipping their dopey Five-Hour drinks and $4 fruity organic drinks from their desk when there's a perfectly good cold Dr. Pepper in the soda machine looking to add drinking satisfaction.

-----

The Washington Post
Islamic radicalism: The questions that Rep. Peter King is right to ask
By Ruth Marcus
Wednesday, March 9, 2011

One of the odder exchanges I've ever seen during a congressional hearing involved Attorney General Eric Holder, Texas Republican Rep. Lamar Smith and the phrase "radical Islam."

Smith, at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee last May, cited three recent terrorist incidents: the Fort Hood shooting rampage, the underwear bomber and the Times Square bomber. "Do you feel that these individuals might have been incited to take the actions that they did because of radical Islam?" he asked Holder.

The attorney general did his best not to go there.
"There are a variety of reasons why I think people have taken these actions," he said.
"I think you have to look at each individual case."

Smith tried again - and again.
Holder repeatedly resisted, before grudgingly acknowledging the obvious. "I certainly think that it's possible that people who espouse a radical version of Islam have had an ability to have an impact on people like" the accused Times Square bomber, he said.

Read the rest of the excellent column at:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2011/03/08/AR2011030804487.html

----

Dr. Pepper TV commercial, 1960's
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpByXzdMQfk

When I first got to Bloomington in August of 1979 and told people I met at my dorm, Briscoe Quad, or people I met on and off the IU campus that I was from North Miami Beach, it was very quickly obvious that they imagined that my life down here in high school on weekends was probably not unlike the end of this commercial, albeit many years later, with grill parties at the beach, throwing frisbees and footballs around and cute girls prancing around everywhere...

Believe me, it was very disappointing to have to tell them the truth about how boring and mundane late 1970's life in NMB was, or how many great opportunities or locales were wasted.

Haulover Beach on the Intercoastal side could get crazy on weekends, but it was never fun like life depicted in films or TV about teen life in SoCal, whom I envied.
You know, where people describe every other thing they go to as "epic"?
If only we had had cell phones and digital cameras and the Internet then...