A Champion Passes On

One of the greatest race car drivers of all time has passed away. Niki Lauda died at the age of 70 in Berlin. The Austrian came to prominence in the 1970's and won the Formula 1 Championship in 1975, 1977 and 1984, the latter two coming after a horrific crash during the 1976 German Grand Prix that left him badly burned. He was in his burning car for 50 seconds and suffered lung damage and serious skin damage. He made a comeback in just six weeks after being in a coma and suffering through painful skin grafts. The story of his rivalry with English racer James Hunt and the crash & recovery is told in a Ron Howard film called “Rush”. I highly recommend it even if you don't like car racing. It really is the story of two men and what a human will do when he confronts death every day as part of his job. When I did my semester abroad in 1976 I remember some of the ladies on the trip got invited to a party at Lauda's mansion in Austria. I'm sure a Formula One party in 1976, even with the less than flamboyant Lauda, was something to experience.

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HBO has dropped the trailer for the 3rd season of Westworld…not coming until next year

I finished up Game Of Thrones yesterday and I'm wondering what all the fuss is about. Fans of the show have slagged the final episode. I wasn't upset or appalled despite a couple of major plot holes. After all the death and destruction of the the two prior episodes it's not surprising that they played it more subdued in this one. And they wrapped up some of the stories well and even injected a little humor in this one. I get why some fans were not happy with the final season and the producers deserve some criticism for not taking their time and cramming alot of story into too small a hole. HBO would have given them more episodes but they didnt want them. Remember, they outpaced the book material a few seasons ago, so they were making it all up as they go. It will be interesting to see how close George Martin's final books in the saga hew to the story that Weiss and Benioff put on the screen.

This is the anniversery of Charles Lindbergh arriving in Paris in 1927. We can only imagine what that was like. The frenzy surrounding his feat made him legendary and 80 years later Al Stewart wrote a song about it juxtaposing it with the impending stock market crash. From a tasty little LP of historically themed songs called “Life Between The Wars” featuring the stellar acoustic guitar of Lawrence Juber.

Things to piss you off today:

Trump gave Ford over $700 million in tax breaks. Ford gave their CEO $18 million last year. Ford just announced they are laying off 7000 people. The Trump?GOP tax plan was a fraud.

Education Dept Secretary Betsy DeVos used personal e-mail accounts for work and violated regulations on their preservation.

Administration and Congressional hawks like John Bolton and Tom Cotton continue banging the drum for war with Iran citing intelligence information. Rep Ruben Gallego from Arizona, who served as a Marine in Iraq says slow down the march to war. He said this week that he sees the same intelligence as a member of the Armed Services committee and says its being manipulated by people who want a war with Iran. Gallego says the intel doesnt show existential threats from Iran and doesnt even show threats to American interests. Let's be clear, this push for armed conflict with Iran is posturing by the Trump administration for consumption by his base come election time next year. It's always been appalling and obnoxious to send American troops into harms way for political purposes. It was wrong when LBJ and Bill Clinton did it. It was wrong when George W Bush did it. And it will be wrong when Donald Trump does it.

John Bolton is just one of the clear and present dangers to the United States in this adminstration even as he postures that he's a great patriot

Image result for John Cole cartoons

Quotes of the Day

“Impeachment, which is a special form of indictment, does not even require probable cause that a crime (e.g. obstruction of justice) has been committed; it simply requires that an official has engaged in careless, abusive, corrupt, or otherwise dishonorable conduct.”- Republican Rep. Justin Amash

“A woman gets pregnant out of wedlock,She is judged. A woman decides not to have kids, she is judged. A woman has an abortion, she is judged. A woman decides to give birth out of wedlock, she is judged. Maybe its time we judge the men who are judging these women.”-Ed Krassenstein

“In Alabama, Ohio and Georgia you can't harvest organs from someone who died without their consent–but you can force an 11 year old rape victim to have her rapists child without her consent. In short, even a corpse in those states have more rights over its body than do women and girls.”-Qasim Rashid

“Our parents and grandparents lived through the stock market crash and Gret Depression. They voted to enact regulatory reforms that reigned in the banks, raised taxes and creatd the social insurance programs that ensured all citizens would have a safety net. Today, Republicans are undoing a century of progress while the people who will suffer the most are cheering them on.”-Patti Emerson

Songs Of The Day (Happy Birthday to Ron Isley who turns 78. )

Also discovered this…Devon Allman (son of Gregg) and Duane Betts (son of Dickey) have put together a band that can bring it. I saw and heard Devon at Riverfront Rendevous in Stevens Point a few years ago…really good!

And, for some reason, this came up in conversation yesterday. Flo & Eddie were the 1970's incarnation of Howard Kaylan and Mark Volman from the Turtles. They worked with Zappa and put out a couple of anarchistic records lampooning the record industry and the rest of society as well. Here is the title track from one of them…

A Champion Passes On

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