Gimme that Rock 'N Roll Music

Battle of the Bands, 1967.  Lightfoot on the Right

What has happened to rock 'n roll music these days? I'm talking about music that rocks.  Apart from the un-listenable drivel that passes for rap and hip-hop, there simply isn't any new, innovative rock music being brought out.  Is it the result of the doom, gloom and malaise that permeates the current culture that prohibits the recording of feel good rock 'n roll?  I think so, too.  When we have to resort to such unimaginably inappropriate combinations as Bob Dylan covering Frank Sinatra's hits, we are admitting that there's a serious dearth of any decent new rock music.  No wonder aging rockers such as the Rolling Stones, the Who, and Led Zepplin are still doing tours.  They're filling venues even with astronomical ticket prices because people want to hear rock music, and there's none being made.  I can applaud Sir Chritopher Lee's new Christmas album, however.  He's 92 years old, and can actually rock.

Even Nashville's thrown in the towel and produces very little real country anymore; it's all just homogenized popular music with a little twang, a fiddle and a slide guitar.  Some exceptions exist, of course, but mostly the current crop is pablum.  Outlaw country retired when Waylon, Willie, Merle, Bocephus, Johnny and others quit recording. I know this is just my opinion, but God, I sure miss 'em.

Election Nullification

You gotta be kidding me.  Yesterday, at a little after 2000 hours, (that's 8 PM for you civilians) John Boehner, Speaker of the House of Representatives, presented a omnibus spending bill that is 1,603 pages long. That means it will be impossible for any member of Congress to read the entire bill before voting on it this week. This bill - you have to pass the bill before you can know what's in the bill - essentially is a $1.1 trillion open checkbook to fund not only amnesty, but a host of other very unpopular spending allocations.  This is obviously an attempt to "conduct business as usual" in Washington before - according to Mitch McConnell - and even after the GOP gains a majority in both houses.

If this bill passes, and is evidence of the truth of the matter, I fear that conservatives, Tea Party supporters and others will feel as though the midterm elections have been nullified.  And rightly so.  If the entrenched political class feel as though they can make and enact law irrespective of the voters' wishes, then we have truly lost our republican system of government.  And when that happens, an environment exists for pure tyranny.  When tyranny exists, resistance follows.  And that may not be pretty.

What Life is Out There?

The Ancient Lunar "Glass Dome"

The images that China's Jade Rabbit - their rover on the Moon - has sent back seem to verify two things:  first, that Americans did in fact repeatedly land on the Moon and return to Earth during the eight Apollo missions, and secondly, photographic evidence confirms earlier NASA contention that ancient artifacts have been found.  Apparently in the ancient past, there was vast intelligent construction on the Moon, obviously built by other than Homo Sapiens.  A base or outpost, perhaps?  The curious part is that this discovery is being globally suppressed by the US, Chinese and other space agencies.  But why? Is this considered a threat to religious notions?  Do they fear a panic of the masses in learning of this?  I don't know.  But I do think most thinking people, regardless of religious affiliation and beliefs (well, there may be one exception), can intellectually accept the notion that in the whole of space there certainly must be intelligent life forms other than just us.  The universal popularity of space adventures in science fiction has certainly permeated every culture.  Again, perhaps except for one.  Think Star Trek and Star Wars. Who isn't aware of the possibility of alien life?  And with four nations (United States, India, China and Russia) along with the European Space Agency now exploring space at a furious pace, it's inevitable that we will find that we are not alone.  Even today, a NASA report indicated that NASA's Martian Rover Curiosity has found evidence water once was plentiful on Mars.  Vast lakes, and perhaps even seas once existed on Mars.  If so, intelligent life as we understand it was most assuredly abundant there, as photos of Martian artifacts indicate.  And NASA's Cassini probe, launched years ago, has found liquid water - essential for life as we know it - on Europa, one of Jupiter's moon, as well as under the ice on Enceladus, one of Saturn's moons.

Curious Skull Configurations

Some scientists speculate ancient beings on Mars may have seeded the human race on Earth tens of thousands of years ago.  It just may be that we are them, after all.  Interestingly, here on Earth some ancient civilizations sprang forth fully developed, and then suddenly disappeared. Incubation?  Or merely an anomaly?  I don't know.  But I can understand caution by the scientific community in declaring positively there are aliens, or at least there once were, in our solar system and elsewhere.  Perhaps the caution is borne of Stephen Hawking's famous admonition that if aliens do exist, they're probably not going to be friendly toward us.  I don't know about that.  I lean toward the notion that alien civilizations certainly do exist, and that there's a variety of species, as there are here on Earth.  And I think we've probably encountered both benevolent and malevolent aliens in mankind's past, and that fact will come to light soon. Stay tuned.

Day of Infamy

Sunday, December 7th, 1941: the day the Imperial Japanese navy attacked the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor Hawaii.  The attack was intended as a preventive action in order to keep the U.S. Pacific Fleet from interfering with military actions Japan was planning in Southeast Asia against overseas territories of the United Kingdom, the Netherlands, and the United States. There were simultaneous Japanese attacks on the U.S.-held Philippines and on the British Empire in Malaya, Singapore, and Hong Kong.

The  photo above is of Battleship Row taken from a Japanese plane at the beginning of the attack. The explosion in the center is a torpedo strike on the USS West Virginia. Two attacking Japanese planes can be seen: one over the USS Neosho and one over the Naval Yard.

Seventy-three years later - today - we remember this event as the start of the US involvement in World War II, and rightly so.  Probably the most iconic image of that day is the sinking of the battleship USS Arizona, which lies on the Oahu lagoon's bottom, and is a both a monument and a memorial as the ship's crew are still entombed there.

Even though few WWII veterans are still alive today, we as a nation must never forget the attacks upon our sovereign soil. As with the infamous attack of the Twin Towers in New York on September 11, 2001, those who attack us may, in the end, regret doing so.