Saturday Sessions: Music for Halloween (Part II)

A bit more contemporary selection.

Donovan: Season of the Witch

Warren Zevon: Werewolves of London

Rob Zombie: Dragula

Bonus Ebola Track:

Eric Burdon and the Animals: Black Plague

 

And yes, I do believe that is an old black and white television

United States: Irrational Actor

Given the disparate motives of the various parties, it is unwise for U.S. officials to view the fight against ISIS as a stark conflict between good and evil. Instead, it is a complex, multisided, regional power struggle in which murky alliances and questionable, if not sleazy, objectives are the norm. U.S. leaders need to ponder the options very carefully, because Washington is barging into a geopolitical minefield with a high potential for policy failure and frustration. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread. (National Interest - America's Fatal Blunder)

Does anyone really believe the "strategy" of Obama's amateur warlords (John Heinz-Kerry, John McCain, Lindsay Graham, Samantha Power and Susan Rice) will produce anything resembling success in the Middle East?

Can anyone explain what "success" would look like?

Does anyone really believe the "good" Syrian terrorists they propose to train and equip can defeat Assad's Russia- and Iran-backed regime, while simultaneously vanquishing ISIS?

Can anyone explain why the "good" Syrian terrorists won't take the money and run into the arms of ISIS, providing them another bonanza of munitions and trained fighters?

President Obama's ISIS/Syria policy absurd, and yet no one is throwing the BS flag. If only it were Bush doing this, at least some tired hippie college professors and OWS rabble would attempt rouse themselves enough to get a news camera’s attention...

It doesn't add up. I've tried following the money, exploring different angles... All I can come up with is that this is expensive political theater to prop up the president's image.

The Islamic world is a madhouse, but each state is acting in its own rational interest.

The Saudis and the Gulf states fund ISIS and oppose Iran's BFF Assad because they don't want Iran running through the Middle East like crap through a goose, and their devil's bargain is a bribe to the terrorists to go pick on someone, anyone other than their own rotten regimes.

Turkey refuses to fight ISIS because that organization is killing Kurds, which gives Erdogan and his filthy Islamists great glee.

Iraq is split along the old Kurd, Sunni, Shia lines, and Iran is prepared to help us defend Baghdad while leaving the Sunnis in Anbar to the predations of ISIS. Iraqi Sunnis welcome ISIS because of their mutual hatred of Baghdad's Shiite regime.

The Euros and the UN dither and blather because they are toothless, balless, feckless, hopeless.

The US is the only nation whose actions are unexplainable, and possibly irrational.

He that strikes my brother strikes me

D. Gordon E. Robertson

Cpl Nathan Cirillo, Facebook

 In the course of my military career it was both a privilege and an honor to serve side by side with our Canadian allies.  In the wake of this tragic and cowardly attack we stand with our brothers in the Great White North.

I originally had a more formal version of Oh Canada posted, but after seeing this, the Canadian National Anthem played as a symbol of solidarity at the Pittsburgh Penguins - Philadelphia Flyers game, I had to switch to it.

A P.S. to Stephen Harper:  If there's any truth to the rumor that this terrorist attack was prompted by the deployment of 6 CF-18's in the fight against ISIS, go ahead and deploy the other 132 of them if you want, we got your back.

Boredom? Anxiety? Despair?

Veteran Jeffrey Adams and his service dog Sharif

How absurd men are! They never use the liberties they have, they demand those they do not have. -- Soren Kierkegaard

I asked a question yesterday, and unfortunately, I don't have the philosophical chops to answer it, or to even moderate a discussion of the topic.

Is there a common thread running through these news items?

* Dutch biker gangs travel to the Middle East to fight against ISIS
* Western Jihadi wannabes travel to the Middle East to join ISIS
* College children bust up a New Hampshire pumpkin fest
* Idiots rush to Ferguson hoping to start a revolution
* Adults fighting over sporting events, from Pee Wee League to NFL games
* The number of 'causes' people become passionate about continues to grow
* An explosion of offense-taking and demands for apology
* A continued increase in psychotropic drug use, including antidepressants

Could it be an existential crisis?  A search for meaning?

All I have are three quotations from proto-existentialist Soren Kierkegaard:

Boredom is the root of all evil - the despairing refusal to be oneself.

Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.

The most common form of despair is not being who you are.

For many, perhaps life has no meaning outside of their immediate existence. What is the value of a life that revolves around itself and is lived only for itself?

I could be way off base, but people who study this stuff tell us that a common human desire is to be a part of something bigger than ourselves, to belong to a cause that transcends who we are.

Institutions are crumbling around us, as is our belief in them. Where does one turn?

Smashing Pumpkins

Is there a common thread to these recurring news items?

* Dutch biker gangs travel to the Middle East and join the fight against ISIS
* Jihadi wannabes travel from Western Christendom to the Middle East to join ISIS
* College children bust up a New Hampshire pumpkin fest
* Idiots rush to Ferguson hoping to start a revolution
* Adults attack one another over sporting events, from Pee Wee League to NFL games
* The number of 'causes' people become passionate about continues to grow
* An explosion of offense-taking and demands for apology
* A continued increase in psychotropic drug use, including antidepressants

Is senseless* violence on the increase? Anyone? Anyone? Finntann?  I think it is.
*-Senseless: No reason whatsoever, no "he bumped into me," or "She stole my guy." Just idiots doing damage to property and persons for kicks.

I withhold my opinion because I want to hear yours. Hopefully we'll get some good comments and I will write a follow-up post.

Welcome to the Fourth Reich

In the stupid things people say department...

When a gambler went to cash out his chips, the man told the dealer he was gambling to avoid catching Ebola from his ex-wife, a nurse who had returned from West Africa.  He then left the casino but a witness was able to get his license plate number.

In the moronic over reaction department...

The 60-year-old man was arrested at his home Wednesday and charged with inducing panic after making the comment at the Horseshoe Casino Cleveland.  He's facing a fifth degree felony charge of inducing panic, and a misdemeanor count of criminal trespass for entering a place of amusement to cause a disturbance.

Cleveland New 5

 WKYC 3

Eyewitness reports indicate there was no panic.

Seriously Folks...

Is this your America?  

Alt+0162 or C backspace /

My First Laptop

 

You can only take so much ISEBOLA  

 

In the not too distant past a comment thread started with a German saying and soon turned to the creation of the mysterious letter Ö.  That thread came just a few days after I was contemplating the tragic cultural loss of the ¢ symbol, an atrocity equal in my mind to the Taliban blowing up the Buddhas of Bamiyan.  How can you mind your cents and let the dollars take care of themselves when there aren't any ¢'s?  

My thoughts on $'s and ¢'s probably came about from a discussion at work regarding the now commonplace QWERTY keyboard and someone complaining about the layout.  In the discussion of the QWERTY keyboard I tried to explain that the reason for the layout of the letters was to prevent the typebars from colliding and/or jamming on their way to and from the ribbon and platen.  The blank stare, glazed eyes, and accumulation of spittle at the corner of the mouth disclosed that I was dealing with either a late Generation-X'er or possibly an early Millennial and I realized I needed to resort to Youtube.  

"Was that before or after you did away with the chisels and stone tablets?", he snidely asked.  So, after smacking him on the nose with a rolled up newspaper I volunteered that the QWERTY keyboard layout went back to 1878 and the Sholes and Glidden Type-Writer... 

 

... that was before they sold out to Eliphalet Remington and his boys who produced the Remington No.2.  The mention of Remington immediately brought back some of the street cred previously lost.

Someday, some learned person will write about the decline and fall of the American Empire, I'm sure he'll start with the introduction of the IBM Selectric and their accursed ball!

 

I remember when my first office got a brand new IBM Selectric III.  I was the assistant manager (ANCOIC actually), and my boss called me into his office one day.  He was red-faced and fuming... "WHY? Why does this damned thing keep beeping at me", he roared.  I studiously examined the machine, the paper inside it, turned it off and on, and started typing...

"The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"... I typed, "Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party", (obviously socialist indoctrination in schools started early).

No Beeps!

"Hmmm", I ventured, "Perhaps if you don't misspell so many words it won't beep".  That was a valuable life lesson for me, for shortly after uttering it I found myself assigned to typing duty and soon learned to keep my mouth shut. 

Many years later there was a bright up and coming young boy that worked in the office.  We all know that he had only the best thoughts of us in his heart when he went out and purchased these for all our computers...

 

Yet to this day all that knew him and experienced this unnatural abomination of Satan curse his name, although he did fair better than that other guy, the one who like Lord Voldemort shall not be mentioned, he's the one that purchased these...

 

So, close your misogynistic eyes and start the video below.  Perhaps you'll be able to conjure forth the angelic image of the girls in the steno pool, feel the oily ink upon your fingers, breath in the sweet aroma of carbon paper and the sour wafting perfume of WhiteOut and remember civilization before the digital collapse. (Don't worry, you'll probably get the full effect in a minute or so... after that you're welcome to continue listening if you so desire.)

Stay tuned, perhaps someday when the memory is not so recent and painful, I'll reminisce about dot matrix printers.

Saturday Sessions: Music for Halloween (Part I)

Béla Bartók: Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta

Franz Liszt: Totentanz (Dance of the Dead)

Sergei Rachmaninoff: Isle of the Dead

BONUS EBOLA TRACK:

André Caplet: The Masque of the Red Death

Come on, every plague needs a cool yet ominous name.

 

SNOW with RIVELS

    1 cup chopped carrots
    1 celery rib, chopped
    1 medium onion, chopped
    2 teaspoons canola oil
    2 cans (14-1/2 ounces each) reduced-sodium chicken broth
    2 cups fresh or frozen corn
    2 cups cubed cooked chicken breast
    1/2 teaspoon minced fresh parsley
    1/4 teaspoon salt
    1/4 teaspoon dried tarragon
    1/4 teaspoon pepper
    3/4 cup all-purpose flour
    1 egg, beaten

1. In a large saucepan, saute the carrots, celery and onion in oil until tender. Add the broth, corn, chicken, parsley, salt, tarragon and pepper. Bring to a boil.
2. Meanwhile, for rivels, place the flour in a bowl; mix in egg with a fork just until blended. Drop dough by teaspoonfuls into boiling soup, stirring constantly. Cook and stir for 1-2 minutes or until rivels are cooked through. Yield: 7 servings.

Read more: http://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/chicken-corn-soup-with-rivels#ixzz3GAQFK8hm

I know, I know, I'm an...


Omnivore ;)

I have the utmost respect for those who make the personal choice to go vegan... but seriously?

God's Nut House

ISIS is poised to take Baghdad, but the Pentagon is gearing up to fight our nation's #1 imminent threat: Climate Change.

If we can only fight one war at once, I say fight that one.

Better to engage in fantasies akin to ridding the world of unicorn poop than to spend one more dime or one more drop of American blood on that murderous insane asylum known as the middle east. I've been there, been shot at and bombed, and got the permanent tinnitus to prove it. If God were to to give the world a proctology exam; that's where his finger would go.

Why are our airstrikes against ISIS not working?

Because you need JTACs on the ground to coordinate them, and you need soldiers to take advantage of air strikes, and other than the Kurds and a few ragtag bands of anti-assad jihadis, no one else is stepping up. The cowardly Iraqis threw down their arms and ran like little girls, and none of the other regional 'militaries' (whom we arm) are committing any soldiers. Do the Saudis or any other dictatorships even have any soldiers fit for anything besides posing with weapons and oppressing the local populace?

Why isn't Turkey helping? Because ISIS is doing their work right now by killing Kurds. Turkey will step in only when they have to. A cynical game, but remember it was the Turks who committed the Armenian genocide.

Assad and the Iranians stand aside because we are doing their dirty work. And there are other dark and dirty agendas bubbling beneath the surface.

Holding the Jihadi Puppet Masters Accountable (or not)

Cold Wars Simmer in the Middle East

Any solution we attempt to impose would not be viable. Iraq and Afghanistan stand as two sad examples. The peoples of those lands will have to sort it out themselves.

Imposing our version of a 'solution' on bellicose and backward Muslims has not worked. This stands in contrast to places like Nicaragua and El Salvador in Central America, Columbia in South America, and The Philippines, where we provided assistance and the people there did the fighting, bleeding, sacrificing and dying to achieve an outcome that they themselves conceived and strove for.

We've had no success in the Middle East because we were the ones doing the sacrificing, bleeding and dying, and it was our vision, not theirs. They need to do this themselves. Sure, they are not all jihadis, but too many of them are either OK with organizations like ISIS, or are too cowardly to stand up to them.

Think I'm being harsh? 

Recall how the Iraqis opposed us there, mortaring our bases every day, blowing up our convoys with IEDs, and destroying Iraq's petroleum producing infrastructure.

Why aren't they doing that now to ISIS?

Finally, in an ironic twist so common to the Islamic world as to be unremarkable, Christian George Bush's actions in Iraq resulted in more Christians being kills and chased from their homes than if he had left Saddam alone. Same applies in Syria.
Why is Obama expending more blood and treasure there?

Haven't we done enough damage already?

Not Ebola, Blackmail

Photo: Michael Wuertenberg

Guatemalan President Otto Perez wants 10 billion, 2 billion a year from 2015-2019 to stop the flow of illegal immigrants.

The United States has to support this, it has no other option," Guatemala's foreign minister, Carlos Morales, told Reuters. "If they don't support it, the crisis will kick off again, you can count on it."

Central American leaders are due to meet Vice President Joe Biden on Nov. 12 in Washington to sound out U.S. support for their plan, Morales added.  YAHOO

I have a better idea, how about we ship back all we catch and impose sanctions?  We might still have an illegal immigrant problem, but it won't be benefiting you Culero.

The Pinnacle of Poor Taste?

If the embed doesn't work, please go here to view:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uYiJ_Dc-y_M


The song comes from Fickle 93.3 (WFKL) out of Rochester NY that brands their format as "We play everything". 

Columbus Day?

Why do we celebrate the man who stopped in the Bahamas and refused to ask for directions?  Not only that, but in spite of overwhelming evidence to the contrary... insisted he was in Asia.

San Salvador, or Guanahani in the native Taino tongue is most likely the island in the Bahamas that Christopher Columbus visited. A very important discovery, for without Christopher Columbus

TampAGS

 cruise ships wouldn't have anywhere to go.

But was he the first?

Setting aside those who walked here some 14,000 years ago there are many candidates.  

Brendan the Navigator (512-530)

One candidate for discovery is the Irishman known as Brendan the Navigator.  While no one knows where Brendan went, Tim Severin demonstrated in the 70's that it was possible to sail across the Atlantic in an Irish currach (a boat made out of hide).

Photo:Michealol

 

Erik the Red (980)

It's pretty much settled that there was a Norse settlement of 3000-5000 people in Greenland at L'Anse aux Meadows. The church below at Hvalsey had a documented wedding occuring there in 1408

 

More interesting

A Roman head confirmed to be Roman work dating to the 2nd to 3rd century dug up Tecaxic-Calixtlahuaca region of the Toulaca Valley 65 kilometers southwest of Mexico City.  The head was discovered buried under a building dating to 1476.

(C) Romeo H. Hristov

The Olmec civilization flourished in Mexico from about 1500 BC until around 400 BC.  Noted for producing colossal statuary heads, some of which have distinctive, non-native American features, including those believed to be both African

and Asian

From Peruvian mummies treated with the resin from the Monkey Puzzle tree (native to Oceania) and dated to 1200 AD, to the fact that when Europeans reached Polynesia, the Polynesians had sweet potatoes (native to the Americas) and sweet potatoes had been around Polynesia since about 700 AD (Sweet potato remains have been radio-carbon dated to around 1000 AD in the Cook Islands).

Stories of past visits true or not, it was the voyages of Columbus that opened the New World to the main European exploration and colonization of the continent.

Don't be a Virist!

You can't condemn an entire form of life (?) based on the behavior of a radical few malcontents like Ebola, Variola, or EV-D68.  You need to shed your anthropocentric biases and embrace our little viral friends.

The photo above illustrates the friendly legions of viruses resident in your oral mucosa coming to your defense and attacking an unwanted bacterial invader.  While this behavior occurs naturally among our viral friends, phage therapy as a medical treatement was developed in the Soviet Union in the 1920's and is only currently approved for use in Russia and Georgia, but...

In 2006 the US FDA approved the use of ListShield  a product developed by Intralytix for spraying on meat to combat Listeria monocytogenes, so yes there is a virus in every bite.

Mmmm... Cowpea Mosaic Virus

Thomas Splettstoesser

Not only that but viruses, of which there are about a million in a teaspoon of seawater, are responsible for removing 3 Gigatons of carbon from the atmosphere a year.

So don't be a Virist!

Saturday Sessions: Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd has announced it's first album in twenty years The Endless River.  They also announced that this will be their last album.

Although an unconfirmed made up rumor has it that their last official performance will be headlining the 2016 DNC Convention with this number:

Others say they'll be playing the RNC Convention instead:

Some say they'll simply do both gigs and play the same song at each:

Speaker's Corner: Friday Free-For-All

I'll get you started:

HHS: "There may be other Ebola cases in the US".  

Of course there may, we never had any doubts of that, you're not doing anything effective to prevent its arrival.

CDC: "No way to eliminate Ebola risk in US".

Of course there is no way to eliminate the risk in the US, even if you stop them at the airport they can still walk across the border... but that is entirely another government induced problem.

There is a way to significantly reduce the risk of Ebola in the US.  Last time I checked, although given this administration I may be wrong now, you needed a passport to get into the US.  Passports are stamped as you enter/exit countries... anyone from west Africa with a recent exit stamp from Ebola countries, or lacking any stamp at all can automatically be quarantined for the requisite 21 days.

IHR: "Flight cancellations and other travel restrictions continue to isolate affected countries, resulting in detrimental economic consequences.  Those three countries stand to lose up to $809 million by the end of 2014."

Honestly? I don't give a rat's ass.  How about you? Any of you have some overwhelming desire for Liberian products about now? Concerned about medical access? We already have troops there, I'm sure we can spare a C-17 to ferry medical personnel back and forth as necessary.  

Family of Dallas Ebola Patient Who Died Upset Over 'Unfair' Treatment

Really? You're gonna go there? 

"The care provided Ebola patient Thomas Eric Duncan may have cost as much as half a million dollars, a bill Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital Dallas is unlikely to ever collect."

You going to pay it? Not only did he lie to get here, you most likely just stuck the American taxpayer with the bill.  

Federal health officials will require temperature checks for the first time at five major American airports for people arriving from the three West African countries hardest hit by the deadly Ebola virus. However, health experts said the measures were more likely to calm a worried public than to prevent many people with Ebola from entering the country. NYT

Just as groping granny isn't going to protect you from terrorism, taking temperatures isn't going to protect you from Ebola... and they admit it.  But this is indicative of what your government thinks of you plebes... it's all about the optics.  

Have at it... any topic under the sun.

How we long for simpler times

At about 12:30 in the afternoon on January 15, 1919 near Keany Square, at 529 Commercial Street, a molasses tank 50 ft tall, 90 ft in diameter and containing as much as 2,300,000 US gallons collapsed. Witnesses stated that as it collapsed, there was a loud rumbling sound, like a machine gun as the rivets shot out of the tank, and that the ground shook as if a train were passing by.  The collapse unleashed a wave of molasses 25 feet high at its peak, moving at 35 miles per hour. The molasses wave was of sufficient force to damage the girders of the adjacent Boston Elevated Railway's Atlantic Avenue structure and tip a railroad car momentarily off the tracks.  Wiki

Aren't you tired of Isis, Ebola, and Obama?

Age of Incompetence

Cascading crises, serial gaffs followed by serial apologies from Palooka Joe Biden...

Everybody is talking about Ebola.  It's so serious that it has almost pushed the outbreak of nude celebrity selfies out of the news.

Meanwhile, ISIL rolls on, and the news isn't good...

President Barack Obama has called on the United Nations to endorse a US mandate that the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, better known as ISIL, drop the word "Islamic" from its name.

"Muslims everywhere," insisted the president, "explicitly, forcefully and consistently reject the state's characterization as Islamic.  I have directed my UN ambassador, Samantha Power, to put forward in plenary UN assembly a binding resolution demanding the organization drop the word Islamic from its name."

Secretary of State John Kerry added that Muslims need to "reclaim Islam," and White House Spokesman Josh Earnest "strongly encourage(d)" the White House press corps to refer to the terrorist organization as simply SIL, insisting that using the old name was reinforcing anti-Muslim stereotypes.

But not all Muslims are applauding the Obama Administration's efforts. Many have written blog posts and created social media campaigns to criticize what they see as the US government's knee-jerk instinct to unfairly connect faraway atrocities to local Muslim communities.

"Why have they not stripped the word "Democratic" from North Korea's official title?" Abdul-Malik al Shababbi said as he stood in front of the White House with a group of peaceful protesters that included women in hijab and men in traditional Islamic attire.

Vice President Joe Biden met the protesters on the sidewalk and tried to diffuse the tension by suggesting they all go out for kebabs and falafel.

Tempers flared when the Vice President suggested the imam leading the peaceful protest go "relax, pop open a Penthouse magazine and have a relaxing shave" at the Vice President's favorite barber shop in Bethesda, where, according to Mr. Biden, "the staff is all babes, and man are they hot!"

An unnamed White House staffer told gathered reporters that an official apology would be forthcoming.

Never let a crisis go to waste

Former White House Special Advisor for Green Jobs Anthony Kapel Jones made his case on This week with George Stephanopoulos:

Hey, you know, government is always your enemy until you need a friend. This Ebola thing is the best argument you can make for the kind of government that we believe in.

 I think I'd rather have Ebola than the kind of government 'Van Jones' believes in.

You got to start putting the Republicans on the defensive for the fact that they believe that you can take a wrecking ball to America's government, never pay a price.

Would that be the price of government democrats aren't paying for?

$17,856,281,000,000

For a brief moment in time, the number NOW

Their wild steeds are pawing the ground with impatience

Scientists have used Ebola disease spread patterns and airline traffic data to predict a 75 percent chance the virus could be imported to France by October 24, and a 50 percent chance it could hit Britain by that date.  Those numbers are based on air traffic remaining at full capacity. Assuming an 80 percent reduction in travel to reflect that many airlines are halting flights to affected regions, France's risk is still 25 percent, and Britain's is 15 percent.

Yahoo News

Belgium has a 40 percent chance of seeing the disease arrive on its territory, while Spain and Switzerland have lower risks of 14 percent each, according to the study first published in the journal PLoS Current Outbreaks and now being regularly updated at http://www.mobs-lab.org/ebola.html.

The WHO has reported, as of September 22, that 384 health-care workers have gotten the virus and 186 have died.  President Obama has promised to train 500 health workers per week to work to beat back the epidemic.  Vox

500 a week... boy, I feel better already... I'm not a virologist but I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last night; at least now we know what the military engineers are going to be building in west Africa.

"It's really a lottery," said Derek Gatherer of Britain's Lancaster University, an expert in viruses who has been tracking the epidemic...

Wanna buy a ticket? 
 

"And when the sun arises in a few hours, the world will see coursing through its fields the four horsemen, enemies of mankind. . . . Already their wild steeds are pawing the ground with impatience; already the ill-omened riders have come together and are exchanging the last words before leaping into the saddle."  ~Vicente Blasco Ibáñez 

Nothing promotes a little humility like the world getting all medieval on your ass. 

Risk and Direct Contact - NY Times 

September 20th Worst Case Scenario - 500,000 cases

September 23rd Worst Case Scenario - 1,400,000 cases

CDC Worst Case Scenario Triples in Four Days

The Problem with California

As her neighbors’ wells began running dry, Ms. Serrato warned her three children that they should cut down on hour long showers, but they mostly rebuffed her. “They kept saying, ‘No, no, Mama, you’re just too negative,’ ” she said. MSN

Hour long showers? Really? I can take a shower in five minutes, after about ten minutes I'd be banging on the bathroom door and wouldn't take "No, no" for an answer from my kids.  It's hard to feel empathetic towards people like this.  Seems like they get what they deserve, unfortunately her neighbors also get what she deserves.

This is what happens when liberal government removes consequences from peoples lives...

Tulare County, just south of Fresno, recently began aggressively tracking homes without running water, delivering bottles to hundreds of homes and offering applications for biweekly water deliveries, using private donations and money from a state grant. In August, the county placed a 5,000-gallon tank of water in front of a fire station on Lake Success Road, and plans to add a second soon.

“We will give people water as long as we have it, but the truth is, we don’t really know how long that will be,” said Andrew Lockman, who leads the Tulare County Office of Emergency Services. 

Saturday Sessions: The Tower Theater

Photo: Mtruch

I grew up in this neighborhood, my family shopped on this street, and I saw a movie or two here before it returned to its musical past (vaudeville and burlesque) and became a springboard for contemporary musicians.  In 1970 the theater was showing 3rd run movies for the price of $1, in 1972 it showed its first revival concert under the Midnight Sun banner, Dave Mason and Buzzy Linhart.

Also in 1972 it showcased some relatively unknown artists:

Genesis  also had a midnight show here in 1972, tickets were $4

In 1974 a local artist unveiled his new backup band here... The E Street band. It was Springsteen's biggest show yet: $5000

In 1975 the owners of the theater sold to Electric Factory Concerts.  Regulars at The Tower included Jackson Browne, Lou Reed, Steve Miller, and Jerry Garcia. David Bowie returned to record his David Live album. In 1980 Paul Simon performed here as part of his One Trick Pony tour, the concert at The Tower was to become the video Paul Simon in Concert.

The theater continued to showcase both up-and-coming and established artists.

And the theater is still going strong today

The Tower Theater was built in 1927 by John H McClatchy (I grew up in a McClatchy home, he built more than 40,000 and is perhaps most famous for The McClatchy Building) for William Freihofer (of bakery fame), and the interior design was by  Erte; Romain de Tirtoff the noted Art Deco designer.  It opened in 1928 just before the great depression.  Less than a block from the Philadelphia suburban transit hub, the 69th Street Terminal, making it convenient for both suburban and urban concert goers. Contrary to popular belief, the theater is not in Philadelphia.

The Tower Theater

No Force On Earth Can Stop Us

NOT EVEN THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

President Obama gave this message to immigration activists at a dinner last night.  

 

"That's the promise of America then and that's the promise of America now. People who love this country can change it. America isn't Congress."

 

Actually Mr. President you're right, America is a continent, the United States however is represented by the congress of the people assembled.  For a constitutional law scholar, you are either a complete and utter idiot... or you just don't care, and the underlying message in your speech is repugnant to the principles of a democratic republic.

Coyotes, no really, the canine.

Photo:Yathin S Krishnappa

 CUTE HUH?

HOW ABOUT NOW?

 

Coyotes are becoming a problem...

... not just in the United States but all of North and Central America.

“They are killing our animals. They are scaring us. I go out every morning with rocks in my pockets, tennis shoes on, mace on my neck, a whistle on my neck and a foghorn on my leash, and I still don’t feel safe,”

Earlier this month, a woman living in the Leisure World retirement community opened her screen door to pick up her newspaper, only to watch a coyote scamper inside, grab her cat, and run back out. Washington Times

This guy was in Chicago's Lincoln Park

Photo: John Picken

They've been captured in San Francisco's Golden Gate park, New York's Central Park, one even wandered into a Quizno's in downtown Chicago.

Mangled pet carcasses turn up on front lawns, often identifiable only by their tails.  How long before one runs in that open screen door and snatches an infant?

    In rural America, the solution is obvious: Trap and shoot the varmints. In suburbia, however, local governments are increasingly adopting a “coexistence” philosophy promoted by animal rights groups that rejects lethal control in favor of education and behavior modification.

The question is whose behavior is being modified? The coyotes or the humans?

Washington Times

Ebola in Dallas

So you have to figure, what... maybe he flew in on an international flight to maybe La Guardia? Perhaps 250 people on the plane?  Then a flight to Atlanta, say another 225 people on that flight.  The layover in Atlanta, might have eaten lunch at one of the restaurants there, then the flight to Dallas, maybe 225 more people.  

Airports say they are unprepared for screening passengers... does it take a rocket scientist to figure out that maybe, just maybe we ought to be quarantining, or giving thorough screenings to people entering the country with passport stamps from Guinea, Liberia, Nigeria, and Sierra Leone?

Just Sayin'