Monday Music Saga "On the Loose"

I know...It is Tuesday...Not Monday....The rant I posted Yesterday was supposed to go on Sunday but it didn't happen.  it would up going out on Monday.....So Guess what..."Monday Music" goes out on Tuesday this week...*.Eh* It happens...But anyway, I remembered seeing this song on MTV back when they played Music video's and this song had a cool sound and a cool video and I really liked the song.   This song went out on Saga's 4th album "worlds apart" and to me it is a good "driving song"  one you can play loud.

Widely considered Saga's best album (and certainly their most commercially successful), the album has become the band's most recognizable work to date. The first song on the album, "On the Loose" was a single that hit #26 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #3 on Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks in 1981, landing Saga their best chart performance. The single was helped with a music video which appeared on MTV during the station's inaugural year on the air. Videos were also made for the singles "Wind Him Up" and "Amnesia". The success of the album was also largely credited to an expanded tour roster which saw the band enter new territories and venues, particularly in the United States, to expand their musical presence. Worlds Apart has been certified Platinum in Canada and Gold in Germany, Denmark, the United States and Norway.

Scandals and the media....

I happen to catch this image on "scandals" surfing around and I would avail myself of it.

As many are aware, Chris Christie is having to deal with "Bridgegate" and the media is howling for blood.  The media is taking extra excitement with this one, I kinda wish they would have been as diligent with the various scandals that are implicated with the Obama Regime besides Bengazi where Obama couldn't be troubled from his sleep because he had a big fundraiser in Vegas that he had to be on top of his game for.  Now I  don't care for Chris Christie at all, I consider him a self serving politician who put his own aspirations of power above the nation.   Y'all remember the "Bromance" photo from Christie and Obama?

Romney was screwed over by Christie at the convention then by the bromance photo-op that made Obama look "presidential" right before the election and heavily swayed undecided voters to vote for Obama despite his poor showing the first 4 years of his presidency.  You notice that there are no conservatives supporting Chris Christie, they haven't forgotten the screwing Romney got.  They consider Chris Christie an egotistical bully who put his own aspirations before country.  Romney had the lukewarm support of the  conservatives at best due to his policies in the past, but we don't like people that screw over others even less.   We conservatives do have principles...unlike democrats that have party before all.

   Now I will touch on the media, Despite my hangups with Christie, he gave a press conference and was totally available to the media to ask their questions, and Christie fired people that were involved.  I never seen Obama do the same thing, he dodged the media and they let him, people died with Fast and Furious and Bengazi and a myriad of other scandals and the media just rolled over and went with it.....After all he is THEIR guy and they are totally supportive of him....He was never vetted, unlike in 2008 when Sarah Palin was hounded and pilloried, Obama got a walk.  There are large parts of Obama's life that is shrouded in secrecy and no reporter has bothered trying to penetrate the veil and fog of misdirection that the Obama regime is very skilled at.

The media made a big thing that Sarah Palin didn't have a whole lot of executive experience and somehow her time as a mayor then a governor didn't count as enough experience for VEEP but somehow Obama being a freshman senator and a community organizer was enough experience to be a leader of the free world...The hypocrisy is galling.

And during the 2012 elections, everybody remembers in the second debate that Candy Crowley sold her soul for her hero and endorsed a lie given by Obama despite the evidence to the contrary.  I am ticked at the establishment GOP for picking these liberal elitist as moderators even though past performance will show that they will log softballs at the democratic candidate and fire off heaters at the GOP candidates and the establishment GOP keep doing the same thing and then they wonder how they get killed on elections.    What is the definition of insanity?   Keep doing the same thing and keep hoping the results are different next time.

     People like Andrew Breitbart considered the old established media obsolete and ineffective.  when a large part of the population doesn't even bother tuning in to them to get their news because they use the internet that gives them news that hasn't been spun for political agenda and the old school newspapers keep wondering why their subscriptions are falling and quite a few of them have closed down because to be truthful.....We don't trust them.  Our founding fathers considered a unbiased and aggressive media to be one of the best defense of liberty so the populace can make an educated decision.   Sadly our media has fallen far short of expectations and we have several generations of low information voters that get their information from entertainment tonight and other sources that cater to the bread and circuses atmosphere and the worship of entertainers. 

   And on another note, we have Dianne Feinstein from California that wants to have the "Press credentials and protection given only to "established media and reporters."   She don't like bloggers because bloggers tend to see through the fog and BS spread by the establishment and actually report them.  Remember Fast and Furious was broken by a blogger, when the establishment dead tree media wouldn't even touch it because they believed in his agenda and were willing to let the president walk guns to Mexico so he could use the spike in violence to justify a major gun control agenda.  Then people wonder why the establishment media is dying off because nobody trust them to be objective instead of a party organ for the democratic party.

The Saga of Biorn and other musings

Biorn the Viking is old and wants to go to Vahalla like all good vikings.......

But his problem is that he can't find a worthy opponent.   at first.    Very good short film

    I remembered posting this video a year or so ago and I happen to watch it on you tube, I have it saved there and I got another laugh out of it.

     There is this scene in 13th warrior that is more serious but still describes the mindset of the Norsemen

I really liked that movie 13th Warrior and it is a good Saturday movie.

    And here is a belief that I have...

     I worked 12 hours overtime, so now I will go to sleep:)

50th Anniversary on the war on poverty..........

I am a student of history and I tend to remember certain dates,   I remember in my history books(before revisionist history really took on roots) 50 years ago when President Johnson pushed through his "Great Society" program to eradicate poverty in America.   If I recall, it was during this time that they put social security trust fund into the general budget to hide the cost of these programs and the Vietnam war that were going at the same time.  Back then there was a surplus in the "trust fund" and they needed it to cover the cost of government.  Now the Social Security fund that I and many others have paid into is full of government I.O.U's and I believe that the money taken by force from me will not be available for me when I retire.  That is why people from my generation(the smart ones anyway) have been funding our retirement through our 401K and other vehicles.  If SS is there, it will be means tested so that people that have other income will not be able to draw from the money that was supposed to be set aside because they will have to restrict access to keep the program afloat.
     What has me and others concerned now is that I have heard rumblings that the government is looking at ways to get at the money in the retirement accounts of Americans to "shore" up social security. "Because it isn't fair that all Americans havn't planned for their retirement and the fortunate few have."   This mindset is prevalent on the liberal websites and think tanks.  I and others like me skimped and saved and denied ourselves the latest and the greatest so we can live ok when we retire
now the "gimmecrats" are talking about taking MY money to put it into the ponzi scheme known as social security so others who didn't bother preparing can benefit?

  You don't believe it can happen.,...Look at Cyprus and Greece, the government went into bank accounts of private citizens and took money without permission of the owners, they decided by imperial fiat to just take it.  Where is the rule of Law?   Oh Wait this is the President that likes to thumb his nose at the rule of law and do whatever he wants.  Remember the GM bailouts....Everybody got hosed on that deal including the tax payers except the UAW which backed President Obama.  The Obamacare mandates, the president arbitrarily delays certain aspects of the law for political reasons even though by law, he can't do it.  And nobody will call him on it because he controls the media and the mob.

Here is the LINK that inspired the rant

The DEMOCRAT'S War on Poverty cost us TWENTY TRILLION DOLLARS, that is, a 20, followed by TWELVE ZEROS! And as usual, it is an epic failure and even more Liberal is the fact that they keep throwing OUR MONEY at it, to no avail!

EXCERPT:  "Fifty years after President Johnson started a $20 trillion taxpayer-funded war on poverty, the overall percentage of impoverished people in the U.S. has declined only slightly and the poor have lost ground under President Obama. Aides said Mr. Obama doesn’t plan to commemorate the anniversary Wednesday of Johnson’s speech in 1964, which gave rise to Medicaid, Head Start and a broad range of other federal anti-poverty programs. The president’s only public event Tuesday was a plea for Congress to approve extended benefits for the long-term unemployed, another reminder of the persistent economic troubles during Mr. Obama’s five years in office.

“What I think the American people are really looking for in 2014 is just a little bit of stability,” Mr. Obama said. Although the president often rails against income inequality in America, his policies have had little impact overall on poverty. A record 47 million Americans receive food stamps, about 13 million more than when he took office."

Stability? Really? We've had five YEARS of this incompetence and the only thing that he has down is run this nation into the ground!

Let us remember that when LBJ signed all of these giveaway he made a comment "With a stroke of the pen, I guarantee the blacks voting democrats for the next 50 years."  I have heard 50 to 200 years bandied about. 
What do we have to show for it? We still have poverty. It’s gotten worse not better. And our poor live better than middle class people in other countries. They have TVs and smart phones. And look at the crime. Look at the feral blacks playing the Knockout Game. Look at the rise of the illegitimacy rate for both black and white mothers. It’s worse among black women where it’s over 70% but it has risen among white women as well. Get yourself knocked up and you can go on welfare. And you can keep irresponsibly having babies and we will pay you for it. 

     Economist Thomas Sowell argues that the Great Society programs only contributed to the destruction of African American families, saying "the black family, which had survived centuries of slavery and discrimination, began rapidly disintegrating in the liberal welfare state that subsidized unwed pregnancy and changed welfare from an emergency rescue to a way of life."

EXCERPT:  "President Obama’s anti-poverty efforts “are basically to give more people more free stuff,” said Robert Rector, a specialist on welfare and poverty at the conservative Heritage Foundation."

 EVERYTHING the Democrats DO is to give people more freebies and make them slaves to the state and dependent on voting democrat to keep the largesse coming and the democratic party in power using the ballot.  Only their LOW IQ and dumbed down education keeps them from seeing it.

How's that Hopey/Changey working for you America? "Poverty level under Obama breaks 50-year record?" Now THAT is CHANGE you can BELIEVE IN!

Edmund Burke was right. Our Founders were right. George Orwell was right. Ayn Rand was right. McCarthy was right. Ronald Reagan was right. Joe Wilson was right. Anyone ELSE see a pattern here?

We're 17 TRILLION in debt with 150 TRILLION in unfunded liabilities and morons like Krugman, Goolsby, and Obama, to name a few, think we can STILL spend our way out of debt

Plane Crash Hoax...?

I saw this video while I was at work and I was impressed that the pilot survived and appeared unhurt.

As they say looks can be deceiving.  I did a bit of research and discovered that this was a hoax, from the plane flying to the pilot getting out.  When I first saw this, I was very impressed and commented to a fellow co-worker "Man that guy is the guy you need to go to Vegas, with luck like that, he would own a casino."   

     Well when you watch it again and again, some things start to jump out at me, the big thing was that the plane seemed toylike with the flight characteristics.  Well I decided to post the video under "lucky Pilot" and apparently others have reached the same conclusion and proved that it was a hoax.

    Here is the video in question...

    Now I did remember a F-15 landing with most of a wing missing, so I will  find that video to post an actual airplane landing missing most of a wing.

Monday Music "Hazy Shade of Winter" from the Bangles

With the cold weather that is hitting everywhere despite the shrill cries of various people decrying the effects of "Global Warming" or was it "Global Cooling", oh yeah, they changed it to ....Wait for it.....Drumroll........"Climate Change!!! So sayeth the Pope of the Climate Change Religion Albert the First.   Well anyway I decided to go with the Bangles "Hazy Shade of Winter"   I started researching this song and discovered that Simon and Garfunkel released a version much earlier and I didn't know that....*Wow*.   I liked the Bangles because they sing good and to be tacky, they were HOT...Well I am a guy and I was a GI during this time......so there!

    
In 1987, The Bangles were approached to record a song for the soundtrack of the film Less Than Zero. They chose to record a cover of "A Hazy Shade of Winter," a song they had been performing since their early days as a band.
Their cover, simply titled "Hazy Shade of Winter," was vastly different from the original, turning it into a harder-edged rock song, and removing most of the bridge section. The record, like the rest of the soundtrack album, was produced by Rick Rubin. After a fruitful but disappointing experience with the producer of their Different Light album, David Kahne, where they were given little input in the production of the songs, the group decided to take more control for the recording of this song, and they were given an additional producer credit. Michael Steele later commented that "we sounded the most on this record the way we actually sound live", and that "If we hadn't been so messed up as a band, it could have been a turning point for us"
Lead vocals were performed jointly by all four members of the group, with a short solo led by Susanna Hoffs towards the end of the song. This was a rare occurrence in the Bangles songs, as they mostly had just one member singing lead on their songs. Due to pressure from their record label, The Bangles removed the verse from the original song that contained the line "drinking my vodka and lime." According to liner notes on the Soundtrack album, Steve Bartek from the band Oingo Boingo played guitar on the track.
When released as a single in November 1987, "Hazy Shade of Winter" became a huge hit, surpassing the popularity of the original version, peaking at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100, only behind "Could've Been" by Tiffany, and also #11 in the UK. It was also a hit around Europe.

The music video for the song featured the band singing in a studio surrounded by television screens on the walls, similar to a scene of the Less Than Zero film. Scenes of the film also appear throughout the video.
"Hazy Shade of Winter" was not included on any of the band's studio albums, but was later included on the band's first official Greatest Hits in 1990, and on many of the band's subsequent compilations. The accompanying Greatest Hits video compilation did not feature the "Hazy Shade of Winter" video, due to complications with the licensing of the movie rights of the Less Than Zero scenes that appear on the video clip.
The Bangles version was commonly used as bumper music for late night radio talk show Coast to Coast AM hosted by Art Bell in the mid to late 1990s.

9 things you didn't know about the 2nd Amendment.

I have blogged frequently about the 2nd amendment on my blog.  I ran across this on my very infrequent forays into the land of Facebook.  I decided to post it on my blog.  If it helps anybody else  to better defend themselves or the 2nd amendment from the irrational attacks from emotional liberals, than it has served its purpose.  This will also help against those liberals that pride themselves on their logic and try to twist something to their point of view.  These are the most dangerous ones, the liberal with a logical thought process and you gotta wonder, what is THEIR agenda if they can still support gun control which is a flawed concept for 2 simple reasons...1.,  By definition, only the law abiding will obey the law...criminals which is a major democrat base by the way will disobey the law...wait for it....THEY ARE CRIMINALS...it is what they do.  They also like unarmed victims...makes it easier to do what they want.   2.   It is about control...if the people are disarmed...they must look to the all mighty power of the state for protection, and if you gotta depend on somebody, you gotta do what they want.   This is against the belief of a free people.   Liberals are statist anyway and it ties in with their belief that they KNOW what is best for you, if you would only do what they want, then this great utopia is just over the hill and everybody will join hands and sing kumbaya.  If you would only give up your guns and bibles, and embrace the socialist vision.   Pardon me while I try to suppress the bile.

1. The Second Amendment codifies a pre-existing right

The Constitution doesn't grant or create rights; it recognizes and protects rights that inherently exist. This is why the Founders used the word "unalienable" previously in the Declaration of Independence; these rights cannot be created or taken away. In D.C. vs. Heller, the Supreme Court said the Second Amendment “codified a pre-existing right. The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it “shall not be infringed ... this is not a right granted by the Constitution” (p. 19).

2. The Second Amendment protects individual, not collective rights

The use of the word "militia" has created some confusion in modern times, because we don't understand the language as it was used at the time the Constitution was written. However, the Supreme Court states in context, "it was clearly an individual right" (p. 20). The operative clause of the Second Amendment is “the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed,” which is used three times in the Bill of Rights. The Court explains that "All three of these instances unambiguously refer to individual rights, not 'collective' rights, or rights that may be exercised only through participation in some corporate body" (p. 5), adding “nowhere else in the Constitution does a 'right' attributed to “the people” refer to anything other than an individual right" (p. 6).
3. Every citizen is the militia


To further clarify regarding the use of the word "militia," the court states “the ordinary definition of the militia as all able-bodied men” (p. 23). Today we would say it is all citizens, not necessarily just men. The Court explains: “'Keep arms' was simply a common way of referring to possessing arms, for militiamen and everyone else" (p. 9). Since the militia is all of us, it doesn't mean “only carrying a weapon in an organized military unit" (p. 11-12). “It was clearly an individual right, having nothing whatever to do with service in a militia" (p. 20).

4. Personal self-defense is the primary purpose of the Second Amendment

We often hear politicians talk about their strong commitment to the Second Amendment while simultaneously mentioning hunting. Although hunting is a legitimate purpose for firearms, it isn't the primary purpose for the Second Amendment. The Court states “the core lawful purpose [is] self-defense” (p. 58), explaining the Founders “understood the right to enable individuals to defend themselves ... the 'right of self-preservation' as permitting a citizen to 'repe[l] force by force' when 'the intervention of society in his behalf, may be too late to prevent an injury' (p.21). They conclude "the inherent right of self-defense has been central to the Second Amendment right" (p.56).
5. There is no interest-balancing approach to the Second Amendment

Interest-balancing means we balance a right with other interests. The court notes that we don't interpret rights this way stating “we know of no other enumerated constitutional right whose core protection has been subjected to a freestanding “interest-balancing” approach. The very enumeration of the right takes out of the hands of government the power to decide on a case-by-case basis whether the right is really worth insisting upon. A constitutional guarantee subject to future judges’ assessments of its usefulness is no constitutional guarantee at all” (p.62-63). This doesn't mean that it is unlimited, the same as all rights (more on that below). However, the court states that even though gun violence is a problem to be taken seriously, “the enshrinement of constitutional rights necessarily takes certain policy choices off the table" (p.64).

6. The Second Amendment exists to prevent tyranny

You've probably heard this. It's listed because this is one of those things about the Second Amendment that many people think is made up. In truth, this is not made up. The Court explains that in order to keep the nation free (“security of a free state”), then the people need arms: “When the able-bodied men of a nation are trained in arms and organized, they are better able to resist tyranny" (p.24-25). The Court states that the Founders noted "that history showed that the way tyrants had eliminated a militia consisting of all the able bodied men was not by banning the militia but simply by taking away the people’s arms, enabling a select militia or standing army to suppress political opponents" (p. 25). At the time of ratification, there was real fear that government could become oppressive: “during the 1788 ratification debates, the fear that the federal government would disarm the people in order to impose rule through a standing army or select militia was pervasive" (p.25). The response to that concern was to codify the citizens' militia right to arms in the Constitution (p. 26).
7. The Second Amendment was also meant as a provision to repel a foreign army invasion


You may find this one comical, but it's in there. The court notes one of many reasons for the militia to ensure a free state was “it is useful in repelling invasions” (p.24). This provision, like tyranny, isn't an everyday occurring use of the right; more like a once-in-a-century (if that) kind of provision. A popular myth from World War II holds Isoroku Yamamoto, commander-in-chief of the Imperial Japanese navy allegedly said “You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass.” Although there is no evidence of him saying this, there was concern that Japan might invade during WWII. Japan did invade Alaska, which was a U.S. territory at the time, and even today on the West Coast there are still gun embankments from the era (now mostly parks). The fact is that there are over 310 million firearms in the United States as of 2009, making a foreign invasion success less likely (that, and the U.S. military is arguably the strongest in the world).
8. The Second Amendment protects weapons "in common use at the time"


The right to keep and bear arms isn't unlimited: “Like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited” (p. 54). The Court upheld restrictions like the prohibition of arms by felons and the mentally ill, and carrying in certain prohibited places like schools and courthouses. What is protected are weapons "in common use of the time" (p.55). This doesn't mean weapons in common use “at that time,” meaning the 18th Century. The Court said the idea that it would is “frivolous” and that “the Second Amendment extends, prima facie, to all instruments that constitute bearable arms, even those that were not in existence at the time of the founding" (p.8). The Court's criteria includes weapons in popular widespread use “that [are] overwhelmingly chosen by American society" (p. 56), and “the most popular weapon chosen by Americans” (p. 58).
9. The Second Amendment might require full-blown military arms to fulfill the original intent

The Court didn't rule specifically on this in D.C. vs. Heller, but noting that weapon technology has drastically changed (mentioning modern day bombers and tanks), they stated “the conception of the militia at the time of the Second Amendment’s ratification was the body of all citizens capable of military service, who would bring the sorts of lawful weapons that they possessed at home to militia duty. It may well be true today that a militia, to be as effective as militias in the 18th century, would require sophisticated arms that are highly unusual in society at large" (p. 55).

They further added that “the fact that modern developments [in modern weaponry] have limited the degree of fit between the prefatory clause and the protected right cannot change our interpretation of the right" (p. 56). A full ruling has not been made, as this was not in the scope the court was asked to rule on in the D.C. vs. Heller case, but they left the door open for future ruling.

Shotguns and other stuff

This is an idea for a post that Murphy and Old NFO did a week ago? perhaps a bit longer where they pulled out a pump shotgun and a sporting related shotgun.  I thought that was a good idea but didn't have time to do one of my own until now.

The first one is my Remington 870 "Police", I bought it in 1987 at the Nellingen barracks Rod and Gun shop in Germany, I bought it at the same time I had purchased my first pistol.  The shotgun has stayed relatively the same since I purchased it with the exception that I added a magazine extension and I added a couple of extra magazine caddies on it.  One in the stock and I also used a "first aid" pouch to clip some more shells on the sling.  It actually has a regular sight rather than a bead which was unusual at that time.  I can go either slugs or regular 00 buck.  I got that idea from all the pictures of the WWII GI's clipping extra ammo on the sling of their rifles for easy access.  I need to add a light to it for target illumination.

    The second shotgun is my Czech over and under made by BRNO, it is a model ZH 107.  I had bought it from one of the Germans that used my skeet range and if I recall, I got it at a "fire sale" price.    The rifle looked rough at the time.  I had the internals reworked by another German friend that was a "technicker" by trade, I think that meant he was a industrial engineer.  Heinz rebuilt the internals.  One of the guys in my unit redid the furniture and added a shoulder pad.  I was blown away by the work he did.  And he just charged me $94 in 1988 dollars.  A lot of money but I though the work was worth it  The shotgun has 2 triggers, one for each barrel and a safety in the trigger guard that would automatically engage once the breech was closed after loading.  The shotgun also used an "open bore" no choke for the shot pattern, so when I shoot, I had to be fast. 
    

You can see some of the combloc craftsmanship.  No Western shotgun maker would have left such an exposed aesthetic flaw such as that.  I don't care, to me it adds to the character of the shotgun.
     There is no skeet range near my house so the last time I fired skeet was over 20 years ago.  I used to be decent, now I prolly suck at it.

    I have 2 weapons made by BRNO, I also have a CZ-50 that uses .32 ACP.  I carry that pistol on a regular basis, the 32 isn't a preferred man-stopper, but the pistol is easily concealable and it can fire single or double action and when I have a round in the chamber, I have the safety on which I can flip off and squeeze the trigger.  or pull the hammer back and squeeze the trigger.  That pistol used to belong to the Czech national police until they upgraded to the CZ-75 in 9mm.  I wish I had bought another one, but back then I didn't think of future value.  I was just a regular GI back then.
     On a different note, My son went to boy scout camp right after Christmas and one of the merit badges he got was his "rifle" merit badge.  The instructor commented that he was the only one that wasn't "prairie-dogging" after he shot which meant that he didn't raise his head up after each shot.  I had taught my son to keep his cheekweld on the stock while he operated a bolt action rifle so his point of aim wouldn't change and he shot some impressive groups.

We had gone to the range right after Christmas so I could dislocate/relocate my shoulder making some brass for my friend who uses mosin nagant brass to load his .45-70 rounds.  My son also shot my EBR.

While the son went to camp we went car shopping for the spousal unit, whom had totaled her Ford Freestyle in early December.

Well we found a cherry 2009 Ford Edge limited with real low miles and got it for a real good price

This is why my postings have been light the past couple of weeks.  I can start raising hell about the Obama regime and all the things they do that is unconstitutional and the lamestream media gives him and the democrats a pass and actually carries his water up the hill for him.

100 years of commercial Aviation....January 1 1904 to January 1 2014

As my regular readers of my blog know, I work in the commercial aviation field, so anything that goes on with aviation has my interest.  There was a blerp on my company website about tomorrow being the 100 years of commercial aviation.  Sometimes this boggles the mind, aviation has been around for a little over 100 years at this point and soo much has happened in this time, it makes me wonder what the next 100 years will bring to the world as aviation makes the world smaller and easier for everybody that wants to to see the world.  I pulled this article from several different sources and some of the pics are compliments of "google"

Almost 100 years ago, on January 1, 1914, a small plane lifted from the water in St. Petersburg’s downtown with just one passenger, launching the world’s first regularly scheduled commercial airline flight.
The idea of the airline was Percy Fansler’s.  Percy was an engineer from Jacksonville, Florida. His vision convinced a dozen St. Petersburg business men and the Board of Trade to invest in a commercial airline to fly from St. Petersburg to Tampa, just ten years after the Wright brothers’ first flight. The St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line was born.

The First Passenger

The first passenger, former St. Petersburg Mayor Abe Pheil, paid $400 at an auction for the flight to Tampa.  His pilot was the young aviation pioneer Tony Jannus.  The airline operated two scheduled roundtrips daily across Tampa Bay, Florida, with two bi-wing seaplanes called “Benoist Airboats.”  Regular one-way fare was $5.00
With average airspeeds of 60 mph, flight time between the Bay Cities was just 23 minutes – a fraction of the time required for the trip by car, rail or boat.  That first New Year’s Day flight heralded what we have since come to know as “The Birth of The Global Airline Industry.”

Jan. 1 will mark the 100th anniversary of the first commercial aviation flight and the creation of the first commercial airline. 

On New Year’s Day 1914, pioneer aviator Tony Jannus, piloting a Benoist Airboat Bi-Plane with one paying passenger, took off from the St. Petersburg, Fla., yacht basin for a short promotional flight across the bay to Tampa, Fla. The Smithsonian National Air & Space Museum and aviation historians acknowledge the aircraft owner, the St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line, as the world’s first airline.

At 10 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2014, Kermit Weeks, the founder and CEO of Fantasy of Flight in Tampa, plans to fly his full-scale reproduction of the original Benoist bi-plane across Tampa Bay from St. Petersburg’s North Yacht Basin to the Peter O. Knight Seaplane Basin in Tampa. 

The Story of the World’s First Airline

(This account is adapted from The Making of St. Petersburg by Will Michaels, Published by the History Press, 2012)

Each year, the Tony Jannus Distinguished Aviation Society celebrates the world’s first airline and its record-breaking pilot, Tony Jannus. And where was this airline? New York? Chicago? London? Berlin? No. The world’s first airline originated in St. Petersburg, Florida.

    The world’s first regularly scheduled heavier-than-air airline took off from the Municipal Pier in St. Petersburg on New Year’s Day 1914. The airline was known as the St. Petersburg–Tampa Airboat Line. It was organized just a few months before that New Year’s first takeoff. The airline was the brainchild of Percival E. Fansler, a Jacksonville-based electrical engineer. Fansler enlisted the support of Thomas Benoist (pronounced ben-wah), an early airplane manufacturer who provided the planes-or, more precisely, the airboats. The airboat was known as Benoist Airboat Model XIV, no. 43. The model number referred to the year in which the plane was to be offered for sale (1914). The number indicated that it was the forty-third aircraft to be built from initiation of the Benoist Aeroplane Company. The Benoist Airboat was an early version of what we now know as a seaplane, able to take off and land on water. This was a necessity at the time as St. Petersburg had plenty of water but no airports. Airboat no. 43 was supplemented a little later by a second airboat, no. 45. The two airboats made up the airline’s total fleet. No. 43 accommodated one passenger in addition to the pilot. No. 45 was somewhat larger and capable of accommodating two. Benoist also provided the pilot, Antony Habersack Jannus. Tony Jannus was a test pilot for Benoist who set early records for passenger flight time and for overwater flight in 1913, and he was the pilot when Albert Berry made the first successful parachute jump. He also held the first federal airline license. 

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Mural by George Snow Hill at Tampa International Airport.

    But this world first would never have been possible without the backing of Board of Trade manager L.A. Whitney and businessman and later city mayor Noel Mitchell. In order to make his plan for a new airline work, Fansler needed the support of the St. Petersburg business community and the city’s government. He also needed a subsidy to help reduce the financial risk to Tom Benoist. Fansler made his proposal to Whitney, who immediately pledged $1,200 to subsidize the airline. Whitney then referred Fansler to Mitchell, who pledged another $1,000. Mitchell then gathered eleven other local investors to pledge $100 each to start the airline. Mitchell even got the city to build a hangar for the airboat on the South Mole of the municipal pier, at the foot of Second Avenue Northeast. 

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  “Tony Jannus Will Make First Flight Thursday,” read the headline of the St. Petersburg Daily Times on December 30, 1913. On January 1, three thousand people gathered to see the first flight of this fledgling airline. This was a huge crowd for the city considering that the permanent population was perhaps seven thousand people at the time. Among the crowd was the humorist Will Rogers, who was performing at the Johnny Jones Circus in St. Petersburg. In a charity auction to raffle off the first flight ticket, former St. Petersburg mayor Abe Pheil bid $400 for the privilege of being the first passenger. Invited to say a few words just prior to takeoff, Percy Fansler commented, “The Airboat Line to Tampa will be only a forerunner of great activity along these lines in the near future…what was impossible yesterday is an accomplishment of today-while tomorrow heralds the unbelievable.”

Tony Jannus at the controls of a Benoist plane, 1913.

    Jannus then took off, skimming across the bay at a height of fifty feet.  After a twenty-three minute flight, including a brief landing on the bay to make adjustments to the propeller drive chain, Jannus and his single passenger, Ave Pheil, touched down on the Hillsborough River in Tampa.  An even larger crowd of 3,500 greeted the Benoist in Tampa.  Tampa mayor Donald B. McKay welcomed Jannus and Pheil.  The return trip took only twenty minutes.

   Upon arrival back in St. Petersburg, Jannus dropped his flight goggles, breaking the glass. Ten-year-old Judy Bryan ducked under the rope holding back the crowd. Running up to Jannus, she asked if she could have the goggles. Without hesitation, he gave them to her. Then he removed one of the brightly lettered Benoist pennants from the wing and handed that to her also.

  In the weeks that followed, Jannus made at least two regularly scheduled round trips a day between St. Petersburg and Tampa, carrying everything from Swift hams to bundles of the St. Petersburg Daily Times (now the Tampa Bay Times). Cost of a passenger ticket was $5 each way and $5 for each one hundred pounds of freight. This was not cheap, as $5 in 1914, adjusted for inflation, is valued at $115 in 2012. While $5 per trip was high compared with the cost of rail or steamship, it barely covered the costs of operations. When Tom Benoist was asked how he could cover his costs and make a profit, he stated, “There are at present about 30,000 tourists in the area and I believe a great many of them will patronize the airboat line to save time. Besides, I am anxious to demonstrate the capability and practicality of aerial transportation at a price anyone can afford even if such a low rate means a revenue loss to me, for today’s loss could very well be tomorrow’s profit.” 

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       Jannus lauded his time in the Tampa Bay area. In April 1914, he wrote in Aero and Hydro magazine, “All told we believe that our work has stamped St. Petersburg as the aviation headquarters of Florida and this is largely due to the hearty cooperation of the city and citizens of the town. There are now hangars that will hold four large [flying] machines and plenty of room to put more and I must say that Tampa Bay is a fine place to fly in winter.”

   Finally, as the tourist season wore down, the airline suspended its daily operations on March 31. The airline continued for another month with a reduced schedule and flights upon request. The last flight was on May 5. The airline did not break even but came close to it. It appears to have been self-sustaining in two of its three months of operation. In January, it only flew eighteen days. The amount of subsidy drawn from the business community ranged between $540 and $1,740. The exact financial net of its operations is unclear. Given more time for marketing and optimizing operational efficiency, the airline may very well have turned a profit.

     The Benoist no. 43, also known as the Lark of Duluth, was actually owned by banker Julius Barnes of Duluth, Minnesota. He had either loaned it or sold it back to the Benoist Company for use in the St. Petersburg–Tampa Airboat Line. According to aviation historian Warren Brown, after the airline closed, no. 45 was sold to Roger Jannus. Roger Jannus then sold the airboat, and it was taken to San Diego, where it crashed in the ocean in February 1915. Several local aviation enthusiasts bought Benoist Airboat no. 43 and took it to Conneaut Lake, Pennsylvania. The plane crashed but was rebuilt and named the Florida. The Florida was brought back to St. Petersburg, and Tony Jannus returned to fly it. On February 25, 1915, the flying boat crashed in the bay after a wing broke. It was again rebuilt. In November 1916, no. 43 was placed in storage, and after that was lost to history.

Thomas Benoist.

  Tony Jannus was killed in World War I in an accident while training Russian pilots over the Black Sea for the Curtiss Aeroplane Company. His brother, Roger Jannus, enlisted in the Aviation Branch of the United States Signal Corps during World War I and was killed in 1918 at Issoudon, France, when his de Havilland-4 burst into flames in midair. (The de Havilland was known as the “Flying Coffin.”) In referring to Tony Jannus, R.E.G. Davies, curator of air transport at the Smithsonian Institution National Air and Space Museum, said it best, “Of all the early aviators, his career and achievements were possibly the most influential before the outbreak of the First World War. Had Jannus lived, Charles Lindberg would have had a worthy rival.”

  Jannus’ achievements and the significance of the world’s first airline have long been recognized. In 1964, the St. Petersburg and Tampa Chambers of Commerce established the Tony Jannus Distinguished Aviation Society to annually honor Jannus and the first airline. The Jannus Society’s annual award is known as civil aviation’s premier recognition for extraordinary accomplishment. Past recipients include such aviation icons as Donald Douglas, Captain Eddie Rickenbacker, Lieutenant General James H. Doolittle, Frank Borman, Charles Yeager, Sir Freddie Laker and Norman Mineta. Portraits of Jannus and the first airline painted by 1930s Works Progress Administration muralist George Snow Hill hang at Tampa International Airport. Jannus was also inducted into the Florida Aviation Hall of Fame.

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  A new wing was built at the St. Petersburg Museum of History in 1992, dedicated to a permanent exhibit featuring the first airline and its founders. This includes a flying reproduction of the Benoist no. 43. The goggles and pennant given by Tony Jannus to ten-year-old Judy Bryan, along with a full-size working replica of the Benoist Airboat and other memorabilia relating to the first flight, are on permanent exhibit. Another replica hangs at the St. Petersburg–Clearwater International Airport. In 2006, Tony Jannus’ portrait was added to the First Flight Shrine at the Wright Brothers National Memorial in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. He was designated “A Great Floridian” by the State of Florida in 2010. Downtown St. Petersburg's Jannus Landing entertainment center is named after the famed pilot.

  In 2010, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) designated the Central Yacht Basin in St. Petersburg as a Historic Aerospace Site-the place of the first commercial airline flight. In 2011, astronaut Nicole Stott carried the original Benoist pennant on the thirty-ninth and final flight of space shuttle Discovery (STS-133). In 2012, efforts were underway to plan the celebration of the centennial of the first airline in 2014, including petitioning of the U.S. Postal Service for the issuing of a Centennial/Jannus commemorative stamp.
  The contributions of Percy Fansler and Thomas Benoist have been overshadowed by Tony Jannus over the years. While Jannus was the chief pilot of the St. Petersburg–Tampa Airboat Line and effectively served as its public face, the company could not have accomplished what it did without Fansler and Benoist. The idea of the airline was Fansler’s. It was he who enlisted the sponsorship of the Benoist Company, sold the project to the St. Petersburg business community and city government and served as airline manager. Tom Benoist provided the planes and chief pilot Tony Jannus and agreed to operate the airline on a break-even basis. Percival E. Fansler and Tony Jannus were inducted into the Florida Aviation Hall of Fame in 2003. Thomas Benoist was inducted in 2012.

    This is a story of both a Florida and world "first." But it is also the story of a future-oriented community that appreciated the latest in invention and was willing to take a risk to see whether the concept of an airline could be of practical value to a booming Florida area - and further add to that boom.  While the airline did not quite make a profit, it paid other dividends.  Commenting on the significance of the airline, Tom Benoist, the builder of the Benoist airboat said, "Someday people will be crossing oceans on airliners like they do on steamships today."  The airline served as a prototype for the future.  Others would build upon the St. Petersburg-Tampa Airboat Line’s experience to create the multi-billion dollar aviation business that the world enjoys today

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“To me, flying is not the successful defying of death but the indulgence in the poetry of mechanical motion, a dustless, relatively bumpless, fascinating sensation of speed; and abstraction from things material into an infinite space; and abandon that is more exciting but less irritating than any other form of mechanical propulsion…Florida is a live, wide -awake place for aviators and St. Petersburg is the best town for that purpose…”

Tony Jannus, 1914.

Monday Music "Safety Dance" from Men without Hats

I am posting another "Monday Music" on Monday!!!!!  Yay go me.....won't last though...Next week I will be up to my armpits in scouts and school and rec activities for my son and I will try to sleep and post in between this time.  So next week, my Monday Music will prolly show up on Tuesday......as usual.
     I decided to go with "Safety Dance" from Men wothout hats.....It was a quirky song but it was somehow very popular in the mid 80's where it got a lot of playtime on MTV.

    
"The Safety Dance" is a song written and recorded by Canadian new wave band Men Without Hats, and to date, it remains their biggest hit. It was initially released in Canada in January 1983 as the 2nd single from the band's first full-length album, Rhythm of Youth. The song was written by Ivan Doroschuk after he had been kicked out of a club for pogoing.
The song entered the Canadian top 50 in February 1983, peaking at #11 on 14 May. In the meantime, "The Safety Dance" was released in the US on March 16, but did not enter the US charts for a few months. When it finally did, the record became a bigger hit than it had been in Canada, peaking at #3 in September 1983.^[4] It also reached #1 on Cash Box, as well as #1 on the Billboard Dance Chart. "The Safety Dance" similarly found success in other parts of the world, entering the UK charts in August and peaking at #6 in early November, and entering the New Zealand charts in November, eventually peaking at #2 in early 1984.

    
The writer/performer, Ivan Doroschuk, has explained that "The Safety Dance" is a protest against bouncers stopping dancers pogoing to 1980s new wave music in clubs when disco was dying and new wave was up and coming. New wave dancing, especially pogoing, was different from disco dancing, because it was done individually instead of with partners and involved holding the torso rigid and thrashing about. To uninformed bystanders this could look dangerous, especially if pogoers accidentally bounced into one another (the more deliberately violent evolution of pogoing is slam dancing). The bouncers did not like pogoing so they would tell pogoers to stop or be kicked out of the club. Thus, the song is a protest and a call for freedom of expression. Other lyrics in the song include references to the way pogoing looked to bouncers, especially "And you can act real rude and totally removed/And I can act like an imbecile".
Doroschuk responded to two common interpretations of the song. Firstly, he notes it is not a call for safe sex. Doroschuk says that is reading too much into the lyrics. Secondly, he explained that it is not an anti-nuclear protest song per se despite the nuclear imagery at the end of the video. Doroschuk stated that "it wasn't a question of just being anti-nuclear, it was a question of being anti-establishment.

     
The music video for the song, directed by Tim Pope, is notable for its English folk revival imagery, notably Morris men, Mummers, Punch and Judy and a Maypole. It was filmed in the village of West Kington, near Chippenham, in South West England. Ivan Doroschuk is the only member of the band to actually perform in the video. Doroschuk, and others in the video, can be seen repeatedly forming an "S" sign by jerking both arms into a stiff pose, one arm in an upward curve and the other in a downward curve, apparently referring to the first letter in 'safety'. The Morris Dance side in the video was Chippenham Town Morris from Wiltshire, performing Monkton Park. The dwarf actor is Mike Edmonds. His T-shirt in the video shows the "Rhythm of Youth" album cover.
After many years of speculation about the identity of the female dancer in the video, on February 25, 2013 the fan club for the girl in safety dance on facebook revealed her to be Louise Court, however it is still unconfirmed who went on to become a journalist and since 2007, UK editor of Cosmopolitan.

Some Winter Humor..

This is a quick post, I have been real busy the past few days and have had little time to get on the computer.  I have a few minutes before I have to go to woek so I figured I would post something.  I will post some stuff either Monday or Tuesday with some details on my weekend.

    Now some winter humor...

Civilian Conservation Corp.....and modern times.

I had posted an article about the Bonus Army on a prior posting and in it they had talked about the Civilian Conservation Corp or the CCC.  I decided to read up on this a bit more partly when I did a Patriot Guard Mission to Pine Mountain on Veterans day, we spent a bit of time at the Roosevelt State part near Pine Mountain GA and there was a plaque to the CCC dedicated there.  Apparently the CCC did a lot of work to build this park and preserve it.  I added some information that I had picked up from several different websites.  The CCC did a lot of good things and they kept a lot of people employed productively.  I wonder if a modern version of the CCC would work, to handle the multitudes of underemployed young people and have them doing the same kind of thing.  I after a lot of thought, believe that the CCC worked back then because of the people back then, the mindset vs today.  Back them almost everybody wanted "honorable work".  It was part of the DNA of Americans
to work, to be a slacker and freeload off somebody else was a great social stigma, unlike today where there are "Youtube,Video's" on how to play the system.   I would like to believe that such a program would work, but with todays Obama's America with the labor laws, the environmental laws, and the attitude, I believe that the CCC would not work today with today's Americans.   It would be just another program like food stamps, where it started off with good intent and has morphed into a trillion dollar boondoggle with no end in sight. 

    
The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a public work relief program that operated from 1933 to 1942 in the United States for unemployed, unmarried men from relief families, ages 18–25 as part of Roosevelt's New Deal. Robert Fechner was the head of the agency. A part of the New Deal of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who provided unskilled manual labor jobs related to the conservation and development of natural resources in rural lands owned by federal, state and local governments. The CCC was designed to provide jobs for young men, to relieve families who had difficulty finding jobs during the Great Depression in the United States while at the same time implementing a general natural resource conservation program in every state and territory. Maximum enrollment at any one time was 300,000; in nine years 3 million young men participated in the CCC, which provided them with shelter, clothing, and food, together with a small wage of $30 a month ($25 of which had to be sent home to their families).
The American public made the CCC the most popular of all the New Deal programs. Principal benefits of an individual's enrollment in the CCC included improved physical condition, heightened morale, and increased employability. Of their pay of $30 a month, $25 went to their parents. Implicitly, the CCC also led to a greater public awareness and appreciation of the outdoors and the nation's natural resources; and the continued need for a carefully planned, comprehensive national program for the protection and development of natural resources.
During the time of the CCC, volunteers planted nearly 3 billion trees to help reforest America, constructed more than 800 parks nationwide and upgraded most state parks, updated forest fire fighting methods, and built a network of service buildings and public roadways in remote areas.

CCC workers constructing a road, 1933.

The CCC operated separate programs for veterans and Native Americans.
Despite its popular support, the CCC was never a permanent agency. It depended on emergency and temporary Congressional legislation for its existence. By 1942, with World War II and the draft in operation, need for work relief declined and Congress voted to close the program.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt built the Little White House in 1932 while governor of New York, prior to being inaugurated as president in 1933. He first came to Warm Springs in 1924 hoping to find a cure for the infantile paralysis (polio) that had struck him in 1921. Swimming in the 88-degree, buoyant spring waters brought him no miracle cure, but it did bring improvement. During FDR’s presidency and the Great Depression, he developed many New Deal Programs (such as the Rural Electrification Administration) based upon his experiences in this small town.

While posing for a portrait on April 12, 1945, FDR suffered a stroke and died a short while later.

At 9,049 acres, Georgia’s largest state park is a hiker’s and backpacker’s haven.  More than 40 miles of trails, including the popular 23-mile Pine Mountain Trail, wind through hardwood and pines, over creeks and past small waterfalls.  Many visitors are surprised to find rolling mountains 80 miles southwest of Atlanta.  Above King’s Gap is Dowdell’s Knob where President Franklin D. Roosevelt sometimes picnicked and pondered world affairs.  A life-size sculpture of the president now welcomes visitors to the overlook.

FDR's favorite retreat was Dowdell's Knob in what is now F.D. Roosevelt State Park. On this rocky outcropping, FDR entertained his closest friends using a grill that remains on the site. He also came here alone to grapple with issues like World War II and the Depression. Dowdell's Knob is where FDR felt most at home and is one of the few places where he felt no need to hide his disability.

     Several park amenities were built by the Civilian Conservation Corps during the Great Depression, including cottages and the Liberty Bell Swimming Pool fed by cool springs. A wooded campground sits near the edge of a small fishing lake, and privately operated stables offer guided horseback rides.  In 1924, FDR came to this part of Georgia to swim in naturally warm springs that offered relief from polio.