The election of 2024 could very well be the last one we ever get if the wrong person wins. Hopefully the generations that have the most at stake will go to the voting booth and pull the handle that keeps our democracy alive.
There are rumors of all sorts flying around about both major candidates and when it comes to health issues we can only speculate as to the truth. The age thing is possible in both as neither man is a spring chicken. Age does not make you sit on the bench as much as whether your whole being is broken would require you to stop playing in the sand box. Trump is reported to have an STD and with his lifestyle it is believable and his hero was sick when he died. His mental well being has been questioned but anyone that consumes McDonalds all the time would be lucky not to have brain issues.
A call to send National Guard troops from other republican led states to challenge federal authority on the southern border of Texas is not a bright move. If I were a guardsman in one of the states I would refuse to go to Texas as it is not my state that I am assisting, and it is an attempt to overthrow the US government. Crossing the border is a mistometer not a felony. Seeking asylum is not a crime. What the governor of Texas is doing is according to the Supreme Court. May be time to send forces to Texas and make arrests and removal of criminal elements
At present one of our greatest difficulties as a nation is the fact that we are not using duplex communication devices. By that I mean we are speaking into a radio that is broadcasting and never listening to anything or anybody in response to any issue. If we start to use telephones and take time to listen to a response when we make a point, and I mean listen not just hear a response we may be able to fill the potholes in our political highway..
Please use your better judgement and let this Democratic Republic have a 250th Anniversary.
If my chance I were to win a lottery no one would know I won. First I would receive the winnings under a LLC and the proceeds would instantly go into a trust that would pay out to me a set amount every month. I would not quit working or start buying expensive toys. I would in the words of a friend have ‘Fuck You’ money and have to ability to just walk away from a bad situation without thinking twice about it.
I read a lot and there are always new titles I want to read but what I would like to do is reread things I read before but read them like it’s the first time. Classics like ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’, ‘ Moby Dick’, ‘The Great Gatsby’… all titles I have read many times but to read them like it is the first time again would be amazing.
Write about a few of your favorite family traditions.
When my dad went back into the military in 1980 we moved away from paternal family and any loose traditions dissolved. I have been away from my family since college and never had a desire to participate in any gatherings. When I was married I did spend more time participating in my wife’s families events but now divorced those things have been forgotten. I am trying to start a father son tradition of going to a Green Bay Packers game every year but due to finances that hasn’t happened yet but hopefully it will, we started by going to a game for my sons 18th birthday and I hope it will be an annual event.
It’s hard to say precisely when rock ’n’ roll began, though the genre has its roots in African American music such as jazz, rhythm and blues, boogie-woogie, and gospel, as well as country music. Ask a room full of music historians what the first rock ’n’ roll record was and you’ll likely receive a number of different answers. Was it Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s “Strange Things Happening Every Day” in 1944? Or perhaps “Rocket 88,” first recorded in Memphis by Jackie Brenston & His Delta Cats in 1951? Or Bill Haley & His Comets’ 1955 single “Rock Around the Clock?” It’s hard to say for sure.
What we do know is that rock ’n’ roll became a defined mainstream genre during the 1950s, when the sound and the image coalesced around one man: Elvis Presley. Elvis took rock music to new and giddy heights, bringing about a seismic shift in popular culture — and causing deep concern among certain sections of society that considered rock the “devil’s music.” Once unleashed, however, there was no going back: Rock ’n’ roll was here to stay. Here are some of the most defining moments in the history of the genre, from the King himself to the rise of MTV.
On September 9, 1956, Elvis Presley made his first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show. At this point, Elvis had already put out a number of successful singles, and his debut album, Elvis Presley, released in March 1956, was the first rock ’n’ roll album to make it to the top of the charts. Elvis had yet to cement his status as the “King of Rock ’n’ Roll,” but his first performance on Ed Sullivan can be seen as his coronation. He performed a number of songs — including “Don’t Be Cruel,” “Hound Dog,” and “Love Me Tender” — in front of screaming audience members at the studio and watching from home. Despite ongoing fears that his hip-shaking gyrations would corrupt the nation’s youth, viewers were given full head-to-toe shots of the 21-year-old singer’s performance. The show was a massive success, as 60 million people — 82.6% of the entire television audience at the time — tuned in to watch the then-21-year-old perform.
Photo credit: Alice Ochs/ Michael Ochs Archives via Getty Images
Dylan Goes Electric
Rock historians aren’t in total agreement as to what precisely went down when Bob Dylan took the stage at the Newport Folk Festival on July 25, 1965. They all agree, however, that it was a hugely significant night for rock music. Dylan was the champion of the folk music revival of the early 1960s — a traditionally all-acoustic movement. So, when he strode onto the stage carrying a Fender Stratocaster rather than his more familiar acoustic guitar, the crowd was not pleased.
At the time, Dylan’s now-classic single “Like a Rolling Stone” was hugely popular on the radio, but folk purists didn’t like the song’s mix of electric blues and rock ’n’ roll. When Dylan and his accompanying backing band — some also wielding electronic instruments — started playing, sections of the crowd began booing. Accounts vary as to the intensity of the crowd’s reaction, but Dylan played only three songs before leaving the stage. When he returned, he performed two songs on acoustic guitar — “Mr. Tambourine Man,” followed by “It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue” — and then left for good. It was an edgy night by most accounts, but a pivotal moment in the development of folk rock, expanding the bounds of rock ’n’ roll.
The Beatles Release “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”
In 1967, Paul McCartney played the Beatles’ latest album, “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” to Bob Dylan. Dylan’s response: “Oh, I get it, you don’t want to be cute anymore.” He was right — the Fab Four had turned a creative corner. Deciding that live performances and screaming fans weren’t enough, they wanted to become a serious studio band, and with “Sgt. Pepper’s,” the Beatles announced to the world that they were true artists. The album was revolutionary. Regarded by many as the first concept album, it is bursting with creativity and musical innovation, featuring French horns, tape loops, bass harmonicas, harpsichords, sitars, and more. The album changed not only rock music, but pop culture itself.
Photo credit: Archive Photos/ Archive Photos via Getty Images
Woodstock
On August 15, 1969, 32 acts and more than 400,000 attendees arrived at Max Yasgur’s dairy farm in Bethel, New York, for three days of peace, love, drugs, and, most importantly, rock ’n’ roll. It was immediately obvious that the festival was going to be big, but no one knew just how iconic Woodstock would become. Despite various technical difficulties, food shortages, and bad weather, the festival became a living embodiment of the 1960s counterculture. As for the lineup, it was quite something: The Who, Carlos Santana, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Sly and the Family Stone, the Grateful Dead, The Band, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Joan Baez, and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, to name but a few. And then there was Jimi Hendrix, who gave arguably the most iconic performance of the entire festival with his stirring, feedback-fueled rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
Just after midnight on August 1, 1981, MTV — the world’s first television channel devoted to showing music videos — launched with the announcement, “Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll,” as the station went on air. The first video broadcast on the fledgling channel was, fittingly, “Video Killed the Radio Star” by the Buggles. Despite some initial hype and interest, MTV struggled in its early years, in part due to a lack of music videos. But as it expanded its programming, MTV took off in a major way. By the mid-1980s, it was having a major cultural impact not only on music and TV but also on movies and advertising. Record companies began noting video’s effect on record sales, and soon the channel was launching the careers of newcomers such as Prince, Cyndi Lauper, and Duran Duran, and turning the likes of Madonna and Michael Jackson into global superstars. Music videos became big business, and MTV’s adoption of grunge and rap in the 1990s brought about a major shift in popular music.
Reading a book about the harm religion has done and one of the stories is about a young lady that decided to join the Muslim religion. In this story she is being very close to an inman and he finally decides to make her a wife. Not in the sense of a wife you go home to or support or any of that just one you have sex with. According to the teachings this is okay as a man can have up to 4 wives and keep 3 of them out of the picture and unknown to his 1st wife.
It occurred to wonder if these shadow wives can have regular husbands and additional shadow husbands. That is probably not possible as women have no rights under that faith. The fact that a convenient way for a man to have multiple sex partners with no religious guilt is another indicator that men write the book and make up the story.
All of it, no matter what name you attach, is a cock and bull story that was dreamed up by one guy or a group of guys that were trying to control others and make a profit doing it. Every religious text has numerous pot holes in the story line that just scream to be recognized to be bs statements and nonsense. If you insist on believing then do not try to shove your beliefs up others’ tailpipes.
Every faith seems to take the view that they have a leg up on some other faith. Islam claims to have the highest ranking disciple as he came after all the others. The entire book is written to give a mortal the wisdom of the ages and the sages and yet nothing could be further from the truth, except perhaps Donald Trump.
Radical ideas to say the least. Teach and preach a document that forbids just about everything you can think of and that includes having sex outside of marriage and then create a loophole that makes it possible at least for the inman.
Being involved with a church that forbids the use of computers and scorns TV and basically attempts to keep everyone in the dark ages. Where do we find these ideas in any religious work? Apparently it is possible to find almost anything in a religious text if you twist it around to make it follow a certain line of reason.
Just like the law enacted by an all benevolent legislation that now allows for people in Kentucky to kill the homeless with nothing more than the suspension that they might be on your property to camp, rob or in some way interfere with the property owner. Are we a thoughtful nation or what?
Did George Washington know about dinosaurs? Most likely, no. Today, the existence of dinosaurs may seem like an immutable fact, but our knowledge of these ancient creatures is a relatively modern development. In fact, the very concept of dinosaurs is so recent that many of the founders of the United States lived most if not all of their lives without knowing that dinos existed. English naturalist Robert Plot described the very first fossilized evidence of dinosaurs, what we now know to be the femur of a megalosaurus, in 1677. But with no concept of dinosaurs in the mid-17th century, Plot theorized that the bone must have belonged to some ancient forgotten race of giant humans.
It’s likely that George Washington died in 1799 believing that such giant humans existed in the distant past. It wasn’t until the 1820s that geologists began to reexamine this theory and proposed that the mysterious bones belonged to an ancient reptile rather than a mammal. Even then, it took until 1842 for English paleontologist Richard Owen to offer up the word “dinosaur,” based on the Greek words for “terrible lizard,” to describe the ancient beasts (not entirely accurate, but close enough). This etymological creation arrived a full decade after Charles Carroll, the longest-surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence, died at the age of 95. The story of the dinosaurs is long and ancient, but our knowledge of them certainly isn’t.
Can’t say at the moment I do anything for fun, I write for catharsis and mental clarity, not fun. I enjoy driving but it’s a necessity that I don’t mind doing. I don’t have a bunch of people around me that I participate in events with or have hobbies that would be fun, I unfortunately exist day to day and fun hasn’t been a factor in my life for a long time.
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