It's an early Sunday morning as I write this latest
fan created blog entry about Ray Stevens. It's also a windy morning, too, as severe thunderstorms will be passing through later this morning and into the afternoon...causing my usual practice of shutting the computer off until the weather clears. I decided to do an early blog entry since I hadn't posted one at this time of the day in awhile...but mostly the reason for it is to make mention of the latest music video from Ray Stevens, "
Obama Nation", obtaining more than 40,000 unique views since my previous entry. The video began it's 2nd week of on-line availability on July 31 (it was uploaded on July 23). This increase brings the music video to 242,783 within a near 2 week time frame of July 23-August 5. Technically tomorrow, August 6th, will mark the end of it's 2nd week on-line with August 7th kicking off week 3. By that time I hope the music video is even
more closer to or
over the 300,000 mark. It's certainly possible considering the pace the video's on. Hopefully Ray will appear on television programs and promote the video...or the producers of any number of politically-driven programming will give the video some publicity as the summer fades into the fall and the 2012 elections get closer.
It's almost 3 months to the day that America will cast their vote for President...a hugely important election due to the implications that another 4 years of Obama will cost the nation both financially and socially. In 2008 the voters, in general, were not really aware of the radicalism and unorthodox ways of Obama but since he's been in office and his policy decisions have been on full display for the country to take notice of I highly doubt that he'll be swept into office the second time around as he was in 2008. His supporters like to say that the voters were well aware of Obama's visions for the country and they voted him in because of it. Reality, though, states that the voters were fixated on a myriad of issues that traditionally the 'Democrat' candidate are stronger in. Even if, in the end, the candidate would've been Hillary Clinton chances are she would've won in 2008...usually when a party controls the White House for 8 years the voters typically vote in the candidate of the opposing party simply for "a change".
Now, of course, the Democrats seize on the key phrase "change" and apply it to anything and everything even when it doesn't even apply to the situation at hand.
This time around, 2012, I think the voters want "a change" from Obama and so Romney hopefully will be the new President in 3 months. In my way of thinking there isn't anything Obama can say or do that can change the things he's done since 2009 that could make him look good. That's one of the ingredients in having a record. I still hadn't heard or seen a campaign commercial from Obama touting on anything he's actually done. The ones I've seen and heard all play on unrealistic goals and Utopian fantasies drawn from a community organizer's playbook. Is Obama for real? Does he really believe sensible voters across the country are going to look away from his agenda as President and simply vote for him because he has fantasy-laden visions. Look where those same Utopian, divisive visions from 2008 have taken the country. We're living in an "
Obama Nation" and sensible people don't like what they see.
I think a good majority of people agree, though, that Ray Stevens is perfect with his political songs. I know the political left and those who simply, for whatever reason, have no interest in politics at all will more or less take issue with Ray's political songs or shrug them off entirely. Ray's videos have always had much more positive feedback from viewers than negative. Also lately, there hadn't been what I call a flood of flamers popping in and leaving inflammatory remarks which was something that his first few music videos were littered with in the comment area.
It could be that those who'd traditionally give negative flack simply don't even bother since they know they're outnumbered or it could be that those on the left who disagree have trained themselves to not even watch in the first place. Whatever the reason I only bring it up because it's something I've noticed with the last couple of video uploads.
Ray's 2010 music video, "
Throw the Bums Out!", has vaulted past the 900,000 mark with 903,885 views. "
Caribou Barbie", from early 2010 as well, is over the half a million mark with 506,228 views. "
God Save Arizona", the commentary about immigration policies and the battle between the Federal Government and Arizona's State Government, has 882,809 views. The most-viewed videos of Ray Stevens on You Tube as of August 5, 2012 are:
1.
Come to the U.S.A; 2010 6,034,888 views
2.
We The People; 2009 4,751,339 views
3.
Mississippi Squirrel Revival; 2009 2,253,844 views
4.
The Streak; 2009 2,023,570 views
5.
Obama Budget Plan; 2011 1,556,380 views
6.
Osama Yo' Mama; 2009 1,330,579 views
The numbers will always be changing but that's a snap-shot of the view totals at the moment.
"
Mississippi Squirrel Revival" and "
The Streak" were both produced in 1992 and uploaded onto You Tube in 2009 when Ray started his You Tube channel. "
Osama Yo' Mama" originates from 2002 and was uploaded onto Ray's You Tube channel upon it's 2009 creation. I think at some point "
Throw the Bums Out!" will make it onto that million+ list.
When I removed the book from the packaging I was surprised by how it looked. On the web-store's page the image looks a lot wider and more along the lines of sheet music books (if any of you remember those!). So, anyway, I was prepared to receive a thin book with the appearance of a calendar and was pleasantly surprised to see a book of a shorter, more compact size and one that could easily fit onto a book shelf rather than having an over-sized book which is what I assumed it looked like. You can see what I'm referring to when you click this Let's Get Political link. In the image above the book looks bigger than it is so it must have something to do with the dimensions of the picture causing the book to appear horizontally stretched. I took a picture of the book's side view to illustrate that it's a lengthy read...lyrics to 33 songs plus commentary/opinion spread out all over this published gem. I especially like the forward...but there's also other portions of the book that jumped out at me, too, such as why he came to the decision of injecting his political views into his recordings rather than keeping them to himself. As I've often said in my blog entries, conservative humor is almost always attacked by the Hollywood media and those in the New York high-rises and by television critics while liberal humor and liberal points of view are rampant on any number of television comedies, drama's, and network newscasts and you don't hear an outcry from supposedly impartial television critics who are all too frequently blasting a writer or actor for injecting conservative politics into a script or performance. The bottom line is Ray and Buddy Kalb hit the nail on the head when they offer their opinions on all 33 songs found on the two CD's I mentioned earlier.