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. 

Stanleys Baby.........The real life equivelent of "Rosemary's baby"

I am working on a post involving the CCC or the Civilian Conservation Corp and it ain't done yet so I am posing this missive I ran across from "GOC" and I figured I would post it while I am working on another post.  The picture is one I ran across on the internet and save to my pic file that I add to any post that I run.

December 1960 was not a good time for the United States. Among the tragic events of that month were the New York Air Disaster, in which 136 people were killed when UA Flight 826 collided over Staten Island with TWA Flight 226, and the raging fire on the USS Constellation in the Brooklyn Navy Yard in which 50 were killed and 150 injured.
Of course bad things happen every month in a country as large as the United States. In fact, bad things happen every day, so many sometimes that we tend to forget about them in light of the next spectacular event.
One item that happened in December 1960, for example, attracted no attention, made no headlines, caused no animated conversation in the coffee shops and pubs across America. It was, in brief, the union of misdirected evil and misguided naïveté which resulted in the birth of a hybrid species on 4 August 1961.
Barack Hussein Obama, an abusive, alcoholic Kenyan agitator acting on orders from his master الشيطان (or Iblis in Arabic), planted the unholy seed of Ash-Shaytan in the womb of the clueless flower child Stanley Ann Dunham.
As the seed was not human, it did not contain the DNA imprint which would promote development of the routine human traits of morality, ethics, and personal accountability. And as the host was in the low-normal stratum of human potential, the zygote received only minimal-strength coding for a number of traits including purpose, self-discipline, and honesty.
After nine months of parasitic development, the embryo was ejected by the body of Dunham, who then began a pattern of rejecting and abandoning the monster she had co-created until her death 34 years later when she realized, too late, the profound catastrophe of which she had been an integral part.
As the mongrel grew, it was nourished by minions of the eternal Evil One, such as the mother’s completely deluded parents along with an even more delusional surrogate father named Frank Marshall Davis, who taught the misbegotten mistake the tricks of suspicion, anger, accusation, and whining to get what he wanted.
Later his education was completed by an embittered false prophet masquerading as a Christian minister, who taught him race-baiting and fact-skewing; a rabble-rousing domestic terrorist, who taught him how to become famous and wealthy by publishing manufactured stories with manipulated data and massaged dates; and total immersion in a well-established thugocracy, which taught him political extortion and ethnic intimidation.
No, December 1960 was not a good time for America. I was a lowly E-3 in the USN at the time and blissfully unaware of the destructive force being created in Paradise. As for those limousine liberalistas and ethnic loyalistas who elevated the hellish puppet to ultimate power, we told you so, you morons.
The lesson to be learned here is, of course, that naïve young girls who have been captivated by liberal-arts professors should not have sexual relationships with specimen from outside their own species.

Merry Christmas to everybody in Internetland

Merry Christmas to everybody in internet land, Right now people are recovering from the early morning wakeups after going to bed late to make things were squared away for Christmas.  This is a day to hang with family and relax...eat more then you are supposed to despite what any government health nazi is saying to the contrary.  Again Merry Christmas to everybody especially to those people that are twisted enough to visit my little corner of the internet.

                       Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!!!!

I will go back to my regularly scheduled programming stuff tomorrow.

Monday Music "Do they know it is Christmas" and the Westjet Christmas Miracle.

I decided to go with one of my favorite songs for Christmas for my Monday Music posting.  I decided to go with "Band-Aid"  Do they know it is Christmas?.  I remembered doing an posting last year on this so it is a duplicate post.  I don't normally do a music repeat except for this song.  I was in High School in my senior yeart and this was all over MTV and the news back then.  It was a totally new idea to do a charity this way.  I believe in giving...as long as it is people doing it...It is proper..and a Christian thing to do.  Not government  which I consider it wealth transference and it is wrong. for the force of government is used to take money by force from people to give to other people in the name of "giving". I call it "legal theft".  Giving is supposed to be voluntary, that is the nature and the magic of it.

The original 1984 Feed the world logo was designed by Phil Smee of Waldo's Design, who designed all the Ads prior to the event being announced. Geldof was so moved by the plight of starving children that he decided to try to raise money using his contacts in pop music. Geldof enlisted the help of Midge Ure, from the group Ultravox, to help produce a charity record. Ure took Geldof's lyrics, and created the melody and backing track for the record. Geldof called many of the most popular British and Irish performers of the time (Kool & The Gang and Jody Watley were the only Americans present at the original recording), persuading them to give their time free. His one criterion for selection was how famous they were, in order to maximise sales of the record. He then kept an appointment to appear on a show on BBC Radio 1, with Richard Skinner, but instead of promoting the new Boomtown Rats material as planned, he announced the plan for Band Aid. The recording studio gave Band Aid no more than 24 free hours to record and mix the record, on 25 November 1984. The recording took place at SARM Studios in Notting Hill between 11am and 7pm, and was filmed by director Nigel Dick to be released as the pop video though some basic tracks had been recorded the day before at Midge Ure's home studio. The first tracks to be recorded were the group / choir choruses which were filmed by the international press. The footage was rushed to newsrooms where it aired while the remainder of the recording process continued. Later, drums by Phil Collins were recorded. The introduction of the song features a slowed down sample from a Tears for Fears' track called "The Hurting", released in 1983. Tony Hadley, of Spandau Ballet, was the first to record his vocal, while a section sung by Status Quo was deemed unusable, and replaced with section comprising Paul Weller, Sting, and Glenn Gregory, from Heaven 17. Simon Le Bon from Duran Duran sang between contributions from George Michael and Sting. Paul Young has since admitted, in a documentary, that he knew his opening lines were written for David Bowie, who was not able to make the recording but made a contribution to the B-side (Bowie performed his lines at the Live Aid concert the following year). Boy George arrived last at 6pm, after Geldof woke him up by 'phone to have him flown over from New York on Concorde to record his solo part. (At the time, Culture Club was in the middle of a US tour.)

Feed The World logo designed by Markus Newman

The following morning, Geldof appeared on the Radio 1 breakfast show with Mike Read, to promote the record further and promise that every penny would go to the cause. This led to a stand-off with the British Government, who refused to waive the VAT on the sales of the single. Geldof made the headlines by publicly standing up to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and, sensing the strength of public feeling, the government backed down and donated the tax back to the charity.
The record was released on November 29, 1984, and went straight to No. 1 in the UK singles chart, outselling all the other records in the chart put together. It became the fastest- selling single of all time in the UK, selling a million copies in the first week alone. It stayed at No. 1 for five weeks, selling over three million copies and becoming easily the biggest-selling single of all time in the UK, thus beating the seven-year record held by Mull of Kintyre. It has since been surpassed by Elton John's "Candle in the Wind 1997" (his tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales) but it is likely to keep selling in different versions for many years to come. In 1986 the original music video from "Do They Know It's Christmas?" received Band Aid a Grammy Award nomination for Best Music Video, Short Form.
After Live Aid, "Do They Know It's Christmas?" was re-released in late 1985 in a set that included a special-edition 'picture disc' version, modelled after the Live Aid logo with 'Band' in place of 'Live'. An added bonus, "One Year On" (a statement from Geldof and Ure on the telephone) was available as a b-side. "One Year On" can also be found in transcript form in a booklet which was included in the DVD set of Live Aid, the first disc of which features the BBC news report, as well as the Band Aid video.

Participants

The original Band Aid ensemble consisted of (in sleeve order):

• Adam Clayton (U2)
• Phil Collins (Genesis, solo)
• Bob Geldof (The Boomtown Rats)
• Steve Norman (Spandau Ballet)
• Chris Cross (Ultravox)
• John Taylor (Duran Duran)
• Paul Young
• Tony Hadley (Spandau Ballet)
• Glenn Gregory (Heaven 17)
• Simon Le Bon (Duran Duran)
• Simon Crowe (The Boomtown Rats)
• Marilyn
• Keren (Bananarama)
• Martin Kemp (Spandau Ballet)
• Jody Watley (Shalamar)
• Bono (U2)
• Paul Weller (The Style Council)
• James "J.T." Taylor (Kool & The Gang)
• George Michael (Wham!)
• Midge Ure (Ultravox)
• Martyn Ware (Heaven 17)
• John Keeble (Spandau Ballet)
• Gary Kemp (Spandau Ballet)
• Roger Taylor (Duran Duran)
• Sara (Bananarama)
• Siobhan (Bananarama)
• Pete Briquette (The Boomtown Rats)
• Francis Rossi (Status Quo)
• Robert 'Kool' Bell (Kool & the Gang)
• Dennis Thomas (Kool & the Gang)
• Andy Taylor (Duran Duran)
• Jon Moss (Culture Club)
• Sting (The Police)
• Rick Parfitt (Status Quo)
• Nick Rhodes (Duran Duran)
• Johnny Fingers (The Boomtown Rats)

Also including:

• Micheal "El Senior" Monaghan
• Boy George (Culture Club)
• Paul McCartney
• Holly (Frankie Goes to Hollywood)
• David Bowie
• Stuart Adamson (Big Country)
• Bruce Watson (Big Country)
• Tony Butler (Big Country)
• Mark Brzezicki (Big Country)

    TO continue the Christmas video theme I am doing, I also included a video from Westjet, I saw this in Church and I thought it was brilliant.  A Canadian Airline called "WestJet" did a Christmas Miracle video and it did show the power of giving the goodness of people.  I being of an aviation background found it fascinating.

      I also found the "blooper reel" for it.

The Bonus Army, historical precidents for future actions?

I remembered something I had read a long time ago when I was reading on Douglas MacArthur and some of the other senior officers that served in WWII that during the time of the great depression, the U.S. Army was used to evict an army of veterans from WWI that was demanding their bonus payout from service in WWI, it was called the Bonus Army.  I saw a video of this that was sent to me and I figured it would go well with the debate if the Military would move against the American people.  One thing I did take from this video was the fact that many of the military used the *Dienst ist Dienst* defense, the same thing that was argued by the Senior German officers at Nuremburg.  The term basically means that it is my job or my duty to carry out the orders of those appointed over me.   I am not comparing the U.S. Military to the Nazi's...but there are those in the military ranks that would blindly follow orders even though they may be illegal or immoral orders that are against the U.S. Constitution and the UCMJ.  Remember the sudden removal of officers for malfeasance that seemed to be cropping up like weeds lately...Are there soo many officers that have issues with their moral compass  which says something about the class and caliber of officers holding jobs.  Or are they being removed to place more politically reliable officers in positions of authority.  I remember when I was in the service, we were told to obey the orders of those appointed over us except if was an illegal or an immoral order that conflicted against the UCMJ, The rules of Land Warfare or against our moral code.  I wonder if this is still stressed or has it been removed due to the political climate.  I don't know.   This and several other videos are available on "Youtube".  It is something to consider.  I do know this incident was considered a "black" eye to the U.S. Army and the officers involved.

The Bonus Army was the popular name of an assemblage of some 43,000 marchers—17,000 World War I veterans, their families, and affiliated groups—who gathered in Washington, D.C., in the spring and summer of 1932 to demand cash-payment redemption of their service certificates. Its organizers called it the Bonus Expeditionary Force to echo the name of World War I's American Expeditionary Force, while the media called it the Bonus March. It was led by Walter W. Waters, a former Army sergeant.
Many of the war veterans had been out of work since the beginning of the Great Depression. The World War Adjusted Compensation Act of 1924 had awarded them bonuses in the form of certificates they could not redeem until 1945. Each service certificate, issued to a qualified veteran soldier, bore a face value equal to the soldier's promised payment plus compound interest. The principal demand of the Bonus Army was the immediate cash payment of their certificates.
Retired Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler, one of the most popular military figures of the time, visited their camp to back the effort and encourage them. On July 28, U.S. Attorney General William D. Mitchell ordered the veterans removed from all government property. Washington police met with resistance, shots were fired and two veterans were wounded and later died. Veterans were also shot dead at other locations during the demonstration. President Herbert Hoover then ordered the army to clear the veterans' campsite. Army Chief of Staff General Douglas MacArthur commanded the infantry and cavalry supported by six tanks. The Bonus Army marchers with their wives and children were driven out, and their shelters and belongings burned.
A second, smaller Bonus March in 1933 at the start of the Roosevelt Administration was defused in May with an offer of jobs for the Civilian Conservation Corps at Fort Hunt, Virginia, which most of the group accepted. Those who chose not to work for the CCC by the May 22 deadline were given transportation home. In 1936, Congress overrode President Franklin D. Roosevelt's veto and paid the veterans their bonus years early.