ShowMeBlog

The last launch

  I watched online the launch of Atlantis.  Ken, my son, saw the launch up close.  He was at the closest point that you can get to the launch.  He was in a kayak.  He said it was amazing and a awesome view.

  It has been 30 years for the space shuttle program.  

  But I been following man in space since the launch of Sputnik 1 on October 4, 1957 by the USSR (now Russia).  I tracked some of satellites using my shortwave radio and I wrote about them in a printed publication.  It is has been a long time.

  We need to be in space and reaching out.  With budget problems we still need to be going into space but I fear for right now it maybe to costly to send men into space until we want to do joint project with other nations.  I do not see how we can afford to do it alone.

Okefenokee River

  CNN has a story on “Weeks-long wildfire forces closure of massive Okefenokee swamp.”
That brings back some memories of this old man.  I would have to check the date on some old photos but I spent a summer living in a trailer with Jim and Betty (my father and mother) in Barnwell SC. My father was a boilermaker and was working on the H-bomb plant in Savannah (SC).  I can remember that my father had a “Q clearance.” Funny what you remember sometimes.

  I guess I have been in the Okefenokee Swamp because we spent a day fishing on the Okefenokee River.  It was not the most fun day for me.  I must have been about 12 or 13 years of age.  It was hot and I was in a boat with my father and a boilermaker friend and they were both drunk and fishing. They would hook a log and think it was a fish and were standing up and rocking the boat.  I did not know how to swim and the water was filled with alligators.  They were looking at me and I was watching them – the alligators that is.

 

The Story of the Republican Party

  Here is a little of the history of the Republican Party.  I call them the “evil empire.”
So this video is 30 minutes of me telling you just a few of the reasons that I think the Republican Party is the evil empire.

America’s Forgotten Liberal

  Here is a story by Rick Perlstein published in The New York Times opinion pages.

“JANUARY was the 100th anniversary of Ronald Reagan’s birth, and the planet nearly stopped turning on its axis to recognize the occasion. Today is the 100th anniversary of Hubert H. Humphrey’s birth, and no one besides me seems to have noticed.

That such a central figure in American history is largely ignored today is sad. But his diminution is also, more importantly, an impediment to understanding our current malaise as a nation, and how much better things might have been had today’s America turned out less Reaganite and more Humphreyish…”

 

Hubert Horatio Humphrey, Jr. (May 27, 1911 – January 13, 1978), served under President Lyndon B. Johnson as the 38th Vice President of the United States. Humphrey twice served as a United States Senator from Minnesota, and served as Democratic Majority Whip. He was a founder of the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party and Americans for Democratic Action. He also served as Mayor of Minneapolis, Minnesota, 1945–1949. In 1968, Humphrey was the nominee of the Democratic Party in the 1968 presidential election but lost to the Republican nominee, Richard Nixon.

 

  A friend sent me the link.  An old liberal progressive like me that remembers Hubert Humphrey.  It is sad that someone like him is forgotten.
 
  It does go to show that being Vice President just does not mean very much. 
( John Nance Garner described the Vice-Presidency as being “not worth a bucket of warm piss.”) Garner should know he was Vice President from 1933 to 1941.
  I don’t know anything about Garner but Hubert Humphrey was a great man and it is sad that he has been so forgotten.

Downtown Kansas City

“5/22/2011:

Today, a night shot of downtown Kansas City, MO. This image was taken from the top of the Liberty Memorial with Union Station in the foreground.

Kansas City refers to two cities and a metropolitan area situated at the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri Rivers. Kansas City, Missouri, the largest city in Missouri, anchors the Kansas City Metropolitan Area, which has a population of over two million. Kansas City, Kansas sits across the river from downtown Kansas City, Missouri and is the third-largest city in Kansas. from wikipedia.

Visit www.toddlandryphotography.com/blog for more”

 

  I was reading about the storms in Missouri tonight.  I then came across this photo of Kansas City (MO).
  Great HDR photo.  I been at the Liberty Memorial many times.  (No, I am not gay.) I was at the Union Station many times in my life.  Just to the right of the Union Station I took my Selective Service Physical Examination when I was about 19 or so.  There were 200 of us all nude during the examination.  I was the only one out of 200 that could not give them a urine sample. The other 199 got to leave and I was there for hours waiting to try and give them a sample. At last I talked them into letting me go over to the Union Station and drink a Coke and then I went back and gave them their sample.
  The Western Auto sign brings back memories.  My mother worked there when I was a kid.
  I worked for five and a half years at Trinity Lutheran Hospital which was a few blocks from the Liberty Memorial.  Right at the Liberty Memorial was St. Mary’s Hospital and then back behind it was TLH.
  The photo brings back memories.

Trump Avoided Vietnam

   The Smoking Gun got documents that show that Donald Trump avoided servicing in the military and having to go to Vietnam.  Remember he was the son of a VERY rich man.
   That information could be why he never runs for political office.  He has lied about why he did not go into the military.  He has said that he had a very high number but the truth is that he got four student deferments and one medical deferment.

  

  The reason, I think, it is so bad is that he has been saying on TV recently that if he was President of the United States he would use the military power of the United States to kick ass. He has said he would take the oil from other nations and do all sort of crazy and wild things and now we find that he did everything he could to not go into the military and serve his nation in uniform.
  Also his father was a multimillionaire and it seems that when Republicans have money their sons have not served in the military. 

  By the way… Donald Trump and I have something in common!  No not a rich father.
I also got a “1-Y” medical deferment.  We also have something else in common.  We both went to a military high school.
  But after high school I went down to join the military and they refused to take me because I was so under weight.  Donald Trump went to college after high school.
  Both of us a few years after high school got called down for our Selective Service Physical Exam.  I passed and was issued a 1-A card and I went right to the Army and attempted to join.  They said they had a list of everyone that was 1-A and I was on the list and they would have been contacting me to join if I had not come down.  So I started filling out paper work to join and picking what I wanted to do in the military and then they checked with the Selective Service again and found that they had failed to look at my height and weight and that I was under weight and the Selective Service told them that they would send me a new card and that I was “1-Y”.  So the Army showed me the door.  Later the SS would change all people that were “1-Y” to “4-F”.
  Donald Trump also got called for his physical examination and failed for some reason and he got a “1-Y" card that was later changed to “4-F”.

  I will be glad when we do not have to hear about Donald Trump.  I am sure most real Republicans feel the same way.  Most of the right wing blogs I have seen call Donald Trump a Democrat.  So you know they fucking hate him.
  Truth is I am not sure Trump has a party other than the Donald Trump Party.  He is just a self promoter.  He is like the balloon boy dad except smarter and he has lots of money.

Rosebud

  I just had a grape drink from CVS.  It was in a glass bottle.  It was good.  I remember the good old days when milk and pop and everything was in glass bottles.  Hell, the milk man would bring glass bottles to your door.  Hell, the ice man would bring ice to your ice box and carry it in and chip it down to fit in your ice box.  They would bring bread to your door in the old days.  In fact my father did it for a time when he was young.  He had a cart that was pulled by a horse. 
  I can remember in grade school one time walking home and it was so hot.  I got a ice cold bottle of grape pop, in a glass bottle, at a neighborhood store and I still remember the taste of it.  It tasted so good.  (“Rosebud!”)

  I can remember in September of 1953 walking home from school and going into a neighborhood store and they had the radio on and they were talking about the kidnapping of Bobby Greenlease.  I can remember following the story on TV.
  I was 12 years old. 

  Here is the FBI report on the The Greenlease Kidnapping. 

  If you read the FBI report on it… The two were found guilty, in federal court, on November 19, 1953 and put to death in the Missouri gas chamber on December 18, 1953!  Times sure have changed. 

  I am not sure those were the good old days.
  I can remember the ice box had a drip pan under it, ice melts, and I had to empty it.  We lived in a house that had a coal furnace and I had to shovel coal into it in the winter.

The Good Book: A Humanist Bible

“By Jessica Ravitz, CNN

The question arose early in British academic A.C. Grayling’s career: What if those ancient compilers who’d made Bibles, the collected religious texts that were translated, edited, arranged and published en masse, had focused instead on assembling the non-religious teachings of civilization’s greatest thinkers?

What if the book that billions have turned to for ethical guidance wasn’t tied to commandments from God or any one particular tradition but instead included the writings of Aristotle, the reflections of Confucius, the poetry of Baudelaire? What would that book look like, and what would it mean?

Decades after he started asking such questions, what Grayling calls “a lifetime’s work” has hit bookshelves. “The Good Book: A Humanist Bible,” subtitled “A Secular Bible” in the United Kingdom, was published this month. Grayling crafted it by using more than a thousand texts representing several hundred authors, collections and traditions.

The Bible would have been “a very different book and may have produced a very different history for mankind,” had it drawn on the work of philosophers and writers as opposed to prophets and apostles, says Grayling, a philosopher and professor at Birkbeck College, University of London, who is an atheist…”  CNN

 
  This sounds like a book I would like to read.  I will put it on my Amazon WishList.  It would be funny if I read the book and then started carry it around with me. 

“Few, if any, thinkers and writers today would have the imagination, the breadth of knowledge, the literary skill, and-yes-the audacity to conceive of a powerful, secular alternative to the Bible. But that is exactly what A.C. Grayling has done by creating a non-religious Bible, drawn from the wealth of secular literature and philosophy in both Western and Eastern traditions, using the same techniques of editing, redaction, and adaptation that produced the holy books of the Judaeo-Christian and Islamic religions. The Good Book consciously takes its design and presentation from the Bible, in its beauty of language and arrangement into short chapters and verses for ease of reading and quotability, offering to the non-religious seeker all the wisdom, insight, solace, inspiration, and perspective of secular humanist traditions that are older, far richer and more various than Christianity. Organized in 12 main sections----Genesis, Histories, Widsom, The Sages, Parables, Consolations, Lamentations, Proverbs, Songs, Epistles, Acts, and the Good----The Good Book opens with meditations on the origin and progress of the world and human life in it, then devotes attention to the question of how life should be lived, how we relate to one another, and how vicissitudes are to be faced and joys appreciated. Incorporating the writing of Herodotus and Lucretius, Confucius and Mencius, Seneca and Cicero, Montaigne, Bacon, and so many others, The Good Book will fulfill its audacious purpose in every way.

About the Author

A.C. Grayling is professor of philosophy at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is the author of the acclaimed Among the Dead Cities: The History and Moral Legacy of the WWII Bombing of Civilians in Germany and Japan, Descartes: The Life and Times of a Genius, and Toward the Light of Liberty: The Struggles for Freedom and Rights That Made the Modern Western World. A fellow of the World Economic Forum and past chairman of the human rights organization June Fourth, he contributes frequently to the Times, Financial Times, Economist, New Statesman, and Prospect. Grayling's play "Grace," co-written with Mick Gordon, has played to full houses in London and New York, starring Lynn Redgrave; its central debate over the virtue of religion gives Grayling a strong platform for The Good Book. He lives in London.”
Amazon

Return of the Commodore 64?

  I must have had about five or more Commodore 64 computers.  I even had a SX-64 (that was their “portable” computer).  I ran Howard’s Notebook on a Commodore 64 for years.  So I have a place in my heart for the C-64. 
  So I was all excited when I found out that a new C64 is going to come out.

 

  So I called Russell into my room to tell him about it.  He kept saying what will it do and I was telling him what little I know about it.  He took a look at the photo and said “it is just the bottom of a laptop without the screen.”  God, he is correct.  He just ruined my dream and my day.

“…The Commodore 64 is back, after a US company announced plans to release a PC resembling the classic computer but this time including Intel dual- or quad-core processors and support for Windows 7.

The PC Commodore USA plans to launch in June retains much of the original Commodore 64's styling, but the updated specs include hardware that computing enthusiasts in the 1980s could only dream about.

According to Commodore USA's website, the computer can be configured with a choice of Intel chips, including a Core 2 Duo, a Core 2 Quad, a Pentium D or a Celeron D.

It has two DDR2 SDRAM sockets, populated with up to 4GB RAM, while the graphics are powered by an Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3100.

Other features include four USB ports, an optional 2.5in hard disk drive, a slimline Blu-ray or optical drive and a built-in Synaptic two-button touchpad.

With the keyboard and internal components built into one unit, much like the original Commodore 64, all that's missing is a monitor, which is supported via a DVI port. The system ships with the latest version of Ubuntu Linux, but there's an option on Commodore's site to include Windows 7 Home Premium, Ultimate or Professional.

Commodore USA said almost one million viewers visited its website within 72 hours of its launch on March 17, 2010…”  PCWorld

  It breaks my heart but I think it is not going to sell and they are going to lose money on the deal.  It is exciting to us old guys but I do not think the kids of today want it.  They want a cell phone or a tablet that can play Angry Birds or something.

Maine Governor Removes Pro-Worker Mural

“WASHINGTON -- The Maine Department of Labor quietly took down a mural depicting the state's labor history over the weekend, after Gov. Paul LePage (R) sparked controversy last week byordering it removed and saying it was biased against businesses and employers.

“The mural has been removed and is in storage awaiting relocation to a more appropriate venue," said LePage Press Secretary Adrienne Bennett in a statement provided to The Huffington Post. "Workers and employers need to work together to create opportunity for Maine's 50,000 unemployed. We understand that not everyone agrees with this decision, but the Maine Department of Labor has to be focused on the job at hand."

"This is government censorship at its worst," said state Rep. Diane Russell (D), who has been an outspoken advocate on labor rights…”

 

“(CNN) -- Maine GOP Gov. Paul LePage followed through with his decision to remove a mural depicting the history of the workers' movement from the state's labor department lobby, a spokeswoman said Monday.

"The mural has been removed and is in storage awaiting relocation to a more appropriate venue," said LePage press secretary Adrienne Bennett in a prepared statement. "We understand that not everyone agrees with this decision, but the Maine Department of Labor has to be focused on the job at hand."

The controversy over the 36-foot-long, 11-panel mural erupted last week when a LePage administration official announced that the artwork would be removed and that conference rooms dedicated to American labor movement icons would be renamed.

Administration officials said the change was needed to reflect a new image for the department, one not tilted toward organized labor. They said visitors to the lobby had complained that the mural is anti-business.

Maine AFL-CIO president Don Berry called it "a spiteful, mean-spirited move by the governor that does nothing to create jobs or improve the Maine economy."

Last week, acting Maine Labor Commissioner Laura Boyett announced a contest to replace the names affixed to the conference rooms. The names to be replaced include Cesar Chavez and Frances Perkins…”

                                                              

These right wing Republicans are the same type of Republicans that objected to the movies; “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” and “It’s a Wonderful Life.” 
  There is something wrong with these people.  They act like they love America and attack everyone else for being un-American but they hate everything that is good about America.

 

“…LePage's office originally said that the governor made his decision after complaints from businesses owners, eventually pointing to a single anonymous letter, in which the author said that when looking at the mural, he or she felt like it was something from "communist North Korea."

In an e-mail to The Huffington Post, Bennett also pointed to a Sunday blog post by Mike Violette, a conservative radio host in Maine, along with other anonymous statements from employers who support what LePage is doing and believe the mural has helped make the Department of Labor a "militant, angry, business-hating environment."

There have been several protests at the Department of Labor, and one attendee suggested forming a human chain to block the mural's removal. When asked by WCSH 6 what he would do if protesters did indeed form a chain, LePage replied, "I'd laugh at them, the idiots. That's what I would do. Come on! Get over yourselves!"”