Weight: 206 pounds
Goal: lose 100 pounds in one year duration
Pounds to lose: 74 pounds
Waist Size: 44 inches
Rowing Duration: 98 minutes, eight (8) seconds
It is Sunday again, and I am unable to weigh myself because there is no scale in the house to do it, I guess I'll buy one at Walmart today.
I've decided to try harder than ever to watch what I eat, I work so hard at the exercise, and I do it at the start of the day, making a good beginning. I then blow it by eating something silly or by not considering the fat content or the calories in it, well no longer, today is the first day of the rest of my life, isn't that how the saying goes?
I had a great day yesterday with my nephew Raphael. I took Raphael to see Walt Disney' s,movie of "Secretariat" which is based on a true story. Both Raphael and I really enjoyed the movie, but I was a little disturbed by the previews before the movie. Please remember that the audience was seeing a Disney flick and is comprised of mostly children 18 years and younger. Anyway, the previews for the movie were on a restricted level and contained swearing, violence and brief nudity. I made the decision to say something to the manager of the cinema because I thought they should consider changing their preview selection. Well, it didn't go well, the manager said I was being ridiculous and that children did not pay attention to previews, but I beg to differ. Later, when Raphael met his mother Louise, he made a comment about the preview being not suitable for kids his age, and Raphael didn't say this because of me, I had spoken to the manager in private, so take that in your face Mr. Manager, and how about it if you stop being ridiculous!
I think the cost of going to the movies is cheaper in America than it is back home. My admission was only eight (8) dollars and I think that if I was back home, it would have cost me at least fifteen (15) bucks, so, you guessed it, I'm going to go to as many movies as I can whilst I'm down here. I, and my two nieces and one nephew are going to go see the Walt Disney movie "Tangled" on this Thanksgiving Thursday, which reminds me, I better make a reservation today. It has been a while since I've seen a movie in 3D so I'm quite looking forward to seeing it.
Once again, it looks like its going to be another fabulous day, did I tell you that we've had nothing but sunny weather in the eighties, oh, well, consider yourself told!
My brother Biff had taken his two beautiful daughters to a swim meet (the girls did very well, by-the-way,) so we inivited Raphael's mother, Louise, over for dinner where we indulged in chinese food. I have never been a big fan of chinese food but I did enjoy the boneless spare ribs, rice, and Kung Po chicken, not to mention the fortune cookies which I think were delicious.
Are you ready?, there are now only thirty-three (33) days left until Christmas, I can't wait!
Today would have been the birthday of Robert Francis Kennedy, whom I greatly admired. Following his successful management of his brother's campaign for the Presidency, Robert F. Kennedy served as the United States Attorney General and was John F.Kennedy's closest adviser, exerting considerable influence on the nation's domesic and foreign affairs. Robert F. Kennedy later won election to the United States Senate and, in 1968, announced his intention to run for president. After winning the California Democratic primary in his campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, he was assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan. I thought you might enjoy a little more information on Mr. Kennedy:
Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy (November 20, 1925 – June 6, 1968), also called RFK, was the United States Attorney General from 1961 to 1964 and a United States Senator from New York from 1965 until his assassination in 1968. He was one of US President John F. Kennedy's younger brothers, and also one of his most trusted advisors and worked closely with the president during the Cuban Missile Crisis. RFK also made a significant contribution to the African-American Civil Rights Movement.
After his brother's assassination in late 1963, Kennedy continued as Attorney General under President Johnson for nine months. He resigned in September 1964 and was elected to the United States Senate from New York that November. RFK broke with Johnson over the Vietnam War, among other issues.
President Kennedy once remarked on his brother that, "If I want something done and done immediately I rely on the Attorney General. He is very much the doer in this administration, and has an organizational gift I have rarely if ever seen surpassed."
Yet Robert Kennedy believed strongly in the separation of powers and thus often chose not to comment on matters of policy not relating to his remit or to forward the enquiry of the President to an officer of the administration better suited to offer counsel.
As Attorney General, Kennedy pursued a relentless crusade against organized crime and the mafia, sometimes disagreeing on strategy with FBI head J. Edgar Hoover. Convictions against notorious organized crime figures rose by 800% during his term.
Kennedy was relentless in his pursuit of Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa, resulting from widespread knowledge of Hoffa's corruption in financial and electoral actions, both personally and organizationally. The enmity between the two men was something of a cause célèbre during the period, with accusations of personal vendetta being exchanged between Kennedy and Hoffa. Hoffa was eventually to face open, televised hearings before the Attorney General, which became iconic moments in Kennedy's political career and which gained him equal praise and criticism from the press.
Robert Kennedy expressed the Administration's commitment to civil rights during a 1961 speech at the University of Georgia Law School: "We will not stand by or be aloof. We will move. I happen to believe that the 1954 Supreme Court school desegregation decision was right. But my belief does not matter. It is the law. Some of you may believe the decision was wrong. That does not matter. It is the law." I think RFK was such an eloquent speaker, I wish I had a similar tongue, no funny comments there Lily!
Although it has become commonplace to assert the phrase "The Kennedy Administration" or even, "President Kennedy" when discussing the legislative and executive support of the civil rights movement, between 1960 and 1963, a great many of the initiatives that occurred during President Kennedy's tenure were as a result of the passion and determination of an emboldened Robert Kennedy, who through his rapid education in the realities of Southern racism, underwent a thorough conversion of purpose as Attorney General. Asked in an interview in May 1962, "What do you see as the big problem ahead for you, is it Crime or Internal Security?" Robert Kennedy replied, "Civil Rights." The President came to share his brother's sense of urgency on the matters at hand to such an extent that it was at the Attorney General's insistence that he made his famous address to the nation.
RFK was to maintain his commitment to racial equality into his own presidential campaign, extending his firm sense of social justice to all areas of national life and into matters of foreign and economic policy. At Ball State University, Kennedy was to question the student body as to what kind of life America wished for herself; whether privileged Americans had earned the great luxury they enjoyed and whether such Americans had an obligation to those, in U.S. society and across the world, who had so little by comparison.
After the assassination of President Kennedy, Robert Kennedy undertook a 1966 tour of South Africa in which he championed the cause of the anti-Apartheid movement. The tour was greeted with international praise at a time when few politicians dared to entangle themselves in the politics of South Africa. Kennedy spoke out against the oppression of the native population and was welcomed by the black population as though a visiting head of state. In an interview with Look Magazine he had this to say: "At the University of Natal in Durban, I was told the church to which most of the white population belongs teaches apartheid as a moral necessity. A questioner declared that few churches allow black Africans to pray with the white because the Bible says that is the way it should be, because God created Negroes to serve. 'But suppose God is black', I replied. 'What if we go to Heaven and we, all our lives, have treated the Negro as an inferior, and God is there, and we look up and He is not white? What then is our response?' There was no answer. Only silence."
On June 4, 1968, Kennedy scored a major victory when he won the California primary. He addressed his supporters in the early morning hours of June 5, 1968 in a ballroom at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles. RFK left the ballroom through a service area to greet supporters working in the hotel's kitchen. In a crowded kitchen passageway, Sirhan Sirhan, a 24-year-old Palestinian - Christian Arab, opened fire with a .22 caliber revolver and shot Kennedy in the head at close range. (Questions persist about whether Sirhan acted alone.) Following the shooting, Kennedy was rushed to The Good Samaritan Hospital where he died early the next morning.
RFK's body was returned to New York City, where he lay in state at St. Patrick's Cathedral for several days before the funeral mass held there. His brother, Senator Ted Kennedy, eulogized him with the words, "My brother need not be idealized or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it."
Senator Kennedy concluded his eulogy, paraphrasing his deceased brother Robert by quoting George Bernard Shaw: "Some men see things as they are and say 'Why?' I dream things that never were and say, 'Why not?"
Immediately following the mass, Kennedy's body was transported by special train to Washington, D.C. Thousands of mourners lined the tracks and stations, paying their respects as the train passed by.
Kennedy was buried near his brother, John, in Arlington National Cemetery. He had always maintained that he wished to be buried in Massachusetts, but his family believed that, since the brothers had been so close in life, they should be near each other in death. In accordance with his wishes, Kennedy was buried with the bare minimum military escort and ceremony. Robert Kennedy's burial at Arlington National Cemetery was the only one to ever take place at night.
Poltical commentators have written about what may have happened if Kennedy became president. Newsweek comments that "he might have found it difficult to get out of Vietnam", "would have tried to create massive jobs programs" and "willing to at least condone, if not order, CIA dirty tricks as his brother's surrogate chief of the spy agency's botched Get Castro operation in the early '60s." "He also had the ability to inspire." I know I was inspired greatly by him.
Enjoy this beautiful day!
Topics coming soon:
Art
Politics
Technology
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