I got one of these as a present when I was a tad. The slide was inoperable as it was for looks only, and I recall that I annoyed a lot of adults with it. Somehow it disappeared for a long while, but reappeared a couple of years later.
The CHAMBER OF HORRORS at the Southwestern Historical Wax Museum in State Fair Park of Dallas, Texas, recreates an event that took place in Ada, Oklahoma, April 19, 1909, when a lynch mob took four suspected murderers from jail to a barn where they administered frontier type justice.
According to the Tuskegee Institute, 4,743 people were lynched between 1882 and 1968 in the United States, including 3,446 African Americans and 1,297 whites. More than 73 percent of lynchings in the post-Civil War period occurred in the [Democrat-controlled] Southern states. [Wiki]
77 years ago, The Battle of Midway dramatically changed the outcome of WWII in the Pacific.
An out-gunned flotilla of US warships took advantage of information provided by Joe Rochefort‘s codebreakers and caught Imperial Japan’s massive attack force off guard. It was perhaps the most decisive battle in naval history.
By mid-1942, Rochefort’s codebreakers could read much of the Japanese Purple Code (Rochefort was fluent in the language) and they knew that an attack was imminent on “AF” but they didn’t know where AF was. They arranged that an un-encrypted message be sent from Midway Island claiming that the desalinization plant was down and the island was almost out of fresh water (it wasn’t).
Japanese intelligence intercepted the alert and sent coded messages that “AF” was out of water, and the codebreakers confirmed that “AF” was Midway. Rochefort’s team also predicted the direction that Admiral Admiral Yamamoto’s armada would attack from.
It wasn’t an easy fight. The U.S. Navy lost the USS Yorktown, the destroyer USS Hammann (DD-412), and nearly 150 aircraft. More than 300 Sailors were killed or injured. But when you stack it up against Japanese losses (four carriers, a heavy cruiser, more than 300 planes, and some 2,500 casualties) there’s little room for doubt as to who won.
Admiral Yamamoto’s armada was successfully ambushed while attempting to ambush the US Navy.
[Image and quote from here. More at the links above.]
P.S. If you think Hollywood’s version of Midway is accurate, it’s not.
Max Mueller II, mayor of Idyllwild, California, is a real SOB and everyone knows it.
Mom ordered a t-shirt from China for her 3-year-old and it came with a surprise bonus feature.
And it’s all supposed to be spontaneous. Yeah, right.
Un-Aborted Pro-Abortion woman tries to make the argument:
“Let’s eliminate suffering by killing those who MIGHT suffer.” Pheew. Even Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger was against abortion as a contraceptive (except for blacks). The entire premise is false.
Leon Redbone was an iconic performer who reinvigorated the music of the late 19th to early 20th century, including blues, ragtime, dixieland jazz and country. That he pulled it off in the mid 1970s is an interesting commentary of the state of music of the time (mainstream rock was sucking donkeys). You couldn’t get more retro than Leon Redbone at that time, and he stepped right into the mix.
Rolling Stone described his repertoire as “so authentic you can hear the surface noise of an old 78 rpm.” During a 1974 interview (prior to release of any album) they asked where he first played in public. Redbone responded, “In a pool hall, but I wasn’t playing guitar, you see. I was playing pool.” Apparently he was pretty good at it.
I learned of the song “Ain’t Misbehavin‘” via some sheet music my late grampa had, and I liked the tune. I’d never heard of Fats Waller before I heard Leon Redbone’s version.
In the early ’80s I saw Mr. Redbone perform at The Golden Bear (a small but famous venue with no bad seats). His props were a rattan chair, a side table with a lamp, and his guitar. He was in the middle of a song when he saw the flash of a Kodak Instamatic camera. With lightning speed, he stopped, grabbed a Polaroid Swinger and took a photo of the photographer, then sat quietly humming until the image appeared. He held it up to view.
“Ahhh. Not a bad likeness.”
Then he resumed the song exactly where he left off.
I wasn’t aware of this until today, but there is a documentary on Leon Redbone. Here’s the trailer:
“He was always mysterious, he was always coming and going. It was almost like he was there one second and he’d be gone the next… and you never knew where he’d gone or why or how he’d even left, but suddenly he wasn’t there anymore.” – Jane Harbury, Publicist.
Here’s a link to the full documentary if you’re interested. It’s only 16 minutes, but it’s worth it.
Leon Redbone, you were a breath of fresh air into the stagnant late 70s music scene. May You Rest In Peace.
No, that’s not the “Taliband.” Apparently they’re in Morro do Turano, a favela [slum] in Rio de Janeiro, and there’s a program that donates musical instruments and teaches kids how to play them.
From The World is Run by C Students Department:
In 2017, Jim Kenney, the democrat mayor of Philadelphia increased the soda tax to 1.5 cents per ounce, raising the price of a two-liter bottle of soda by roughly 67%. Tax revenue fell by 51%, shops closed and workers lost their jobs as people began shopping out of town. Brilliant move, moron.
[Top image found in here. Happy 30th Anniversary to Bunk & Bunkdalene.]
Okay, so there’s a bird, a turtle in love with a river rock, a dinosaur with antennae, an ambient lawn light, an ex-girlfriend, a mock turtle, a bat sleeping upright, and a giant hummingbird riding a whale.
Not sure of the original Japanese artist who created this, but he’s got nothing on these guys.
Tacky Raccoons 