January 22, 2016

Dancing In The Street: New Orleans Throws A Memorial Parade For David Bowie

Mardi Gras was still close to three weeks away. But on Saturday afternoon, Jan. 16, the French Quarter was gridlocked with costumed frolickers, a massive, glittery throng radiating out through the narrow streets from the historic traditional-jazz venue Preservation Hall. The occasion? A parade in memory of David Bowie, led by the Preservation Hall Jazz Band.

It's not a stretch to imagine that Bowie fandom would be rampant in a city for which flamboyant, gender-ambivalent dressing up, not to mention music, is a way of life. That, combined with a perfectly warm and sunny afternoon, the beginning of the Carnival season and, certainly, interest in the parade's co-hosts Win Butler and Regine Chassagne of Arcade Fire, who have lived in New Orleans for about two years, drew multiple thousands of fans downtown — so many that the blocks outside the hall and the parade's end point, the rock club One Eyed Jacks, were almost impassable. The band, led by Butler, who sang through a small red megaphone, and Chassagne, who played a keytar, left Preservation Hall and gamely shoved its way through the mass toward the Mississippi River and then back, along a route about a half-dozen blocks long, playing Bowie songs arranged for parading brass.

Bowie was an ardent fan of Arcade Fire. In 2005, they recorded a live EP together; eight years later, he contributed backing vocals to the band's album Reflektor. Standing on Preservation Hall's balcony with Chassagne and Ben Jaffe, the hall's creative director, Butler spoke briefly about the shock of his friend's death. "It felt like a planet exploded," he said. He opened a bottle of wine and poured a splash onto the crowd.

http://www.npr.org/sections/therecord/2016/01/19/463578959/dancing-in-the-street-new-orleans-throws-a-memorial-parade-for-david-bowie?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr&utm_term=nprnews&utm_content=20160119

January 22, 2016

Why Wall Street Gives Millions to Hillary (As a Former Goldman Sachs Banker,

I Say Bernie Has It Right)

Raghuram Rajan, now the head of India's central bank, once wrote an academic paper blaming the financial crisis on poor people. Just yesterday, Bill Clinton placed blame for the crisis on our government. Anyone who has seen the Oscar-winning documentary Inside Job knows full well that the crisis was caused by our banks.

Banks lent trillions of dollars to home buyers on too loose of terms knowing that they could turn the resulting junk mortgages into AAA securities through the alchemy of CDOs and securitization and thus generate hundreds of billions of profit and leave the resulting mortgage mess to their investing clients.

But the financial crisis is behind us, right? Why would Wall Street shower Hillary Clinton with millions of dollars in speaking fees and tens of millions in campaign contributions?

I think it is an insurance policy. Wall Street wants a friend in the White House to protect the status quo, and if they can't get a Republican elected, Hillary is the next best thing. I think they need a friend in government because the industry could not survive an investigation into how they actually make their profits.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-r-talbott/why-wall-street-gives-mil_b_9049992.html

January 22, 2016

Kyo wa watashi no tanjobi desuyo (II)

My Birthday is today too.

Got a wonderful birthday present, was interviewed on TV for the movie I directed.

Plus I got a present from my new girlfriend. First time I have gotten a present from anyone in almost 13 years. Was a very nice Birthday for a change.

January 21, 2016

Wish me luck! I am off to do a TV interview on WGNO New Orleans about my movie

My first feature film that I have directed. Lots of commercials and music videos prior.

Never been interviewed before.

Very Nervous.

January 19, 2016

GARY COLEMAN ENDOURSES DONALD TRUMP!

Doesn't matter if he's Dead...GAME OVER MAN GAME OVER!

January 18, 2016

Oregon militants LaVoy Finicum and Ryan Bundy travel to Utah to plot another armed showdown

Two of the Oregon militants have been traveling out of state to meet with other groups who want the federal government to hand over public land to their control.

LaVoy Finicum said he left the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge last week and drove to Utah with one of the other armed militants, reported OPB.

He later identified his travel companion as Ryan Bundy, and he claimed they met with county officials eager to engage in a similar standoff with federal authorities over public land ownership.

Finicum said the occupied visitors center, which the militants have renamed the Harney County Resource Center, was a symbolic victory and inspiration to other anti-government extremists.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/01/oregon-militants-lavoy-finicum-and-ryan-bundy-travel-to-utah-to-plot-another-armed-showdown/

January 18, 2016

A poisonous corrosive man’: Watch this British MP bring the hammer down on Trump’s ‘violent ideology

British Member of Parliament Tulip Siddiq urged her colleagues on Monday to support a ban on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, arguing that he would put Britons at risk by importing “violent ideology.”

The British Parliament on Monday debated banning Trump over his anti-Muslim rhetoric after more than 570,000 Britons signed a petition calling for him to be barred from entering the U.K.

Although MPs who spoke all agreed that Trump’s vitriol against immigrants had been out of bounds, most argued that banning him was not the best way to deal with the issue.

Siddiq, however, insisted that Trump would be endangering British Muslims if he was allowed into the country.

http://www.rawstory.com/2016/01/a-poisonous-corrosive-man-watch-this-british-mp-bring-the-hammer-down-on-trumps-violent-ideology/

January 17, 2016

Hillary’s health and our right to know

We the people feel entitled to a president of the United States who is in good enough health so that he or she can endure the pressures of the job without suffering a heart attack, stroke or sudden death.

Of course, any good physician will tell you that she can’t be entirely sure of health risks, and our presidential candidates shouldn’t be gauged entirely by physical criteria alone. Still, full health disclosure must be a prerequisite for running for the highest office in the land.

This was why the disparity between the political parties was glaring when it came to disclosing health history back in 2008. I traveled to Phoenix and joined other members of the news media poring through thousands of pages of Sen. John McCain’s health records. At the same time, Sen. Barack Obama was releasing only a single page of health affirmation from his personal physician. True, Mr. McCain had a history of a melanoma requiring extensive facial surgery for a cure, but Mr. Obama was a longtime smoker.

I am expecting more of the same kind of disparity in the 2016 election. Full disclosure has never been a strong suit of newly announced candidate Hillary Clinton. From Benghazi to the email scandal to reported money-making schemes rocking the Clinton Foundation, secrecy has been the operative term rather than transparency. I can easily imagine deleted emails that referred to the heart valve or heart arrhythmia problem mentioned in Ed Klein’s 2014 book, “Blood Feud.”
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/apr/28/marc-siegel-hillary-clintons-health-and-our-right-/

January 17, 2016

Hillary is dealing with mounting health issues, new book claims

Hillary Clinton faces “mounting health issues” — and she’s secretly worried that she’s too sick to run for president, according to a new book.

The 67-year-old Democratic front-runner has been “frequently plagued” by “blinding headaches” and a series of strokes over the course of the campaign which have left her second-guessing her chances of winning in 2016, says the upcoming book “Unlikeable — The Problem with Hillary.”

Excerpts were published Tuesday by Radar Online.

“For the first time I’ve known her, she’s showing self-doubt about her strength and vitality,” a friend of Clinton’s told author Edward Klein, who has written about the Obamas and Kennedys in the past.

http://nypost.com/2015/09/22/hillary-is-dealing-with-mounting-health-issues-new-book-claims/

January 15, 2016

Conservative commentator: GOP voters just want a dominant personality — facts don’t matter

Conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt said Friday that facts didn’t matter to Republicans — they would vote for the candidate with the most dominant “aura.”

Speaking to CNN host Alisyn Camerota about the latest GOP presidential debate, Hewitt remarked that Trump was leading the field among his Republican rivals because of his personality.


“Fact-checking doesn’t matter in these things,” he explained in a clip published by Media Matters. “What matters is personality and aura and your command presence and of all those two, the best command presence last night was Donald Trump and Marco Rubio. And I keep marveling at how Donald Trump can dominate a television screen. He reaches through the screen sometimes and you know you’re back on Celebrity Apprentice.”

“It’s an amazing skill set,” Hewitt continued. “And so whether or not [Trump said he would impose a 45 percent tariff] or not, or whether or not Chris Christie said, ‘I like Alisyn Sotomayor,’ I would vote for her, or whether or not Ted Cruz said this or that on H1B visas, none of that stuff matters when you go to vote.”
http://www.rawstory.com/2016/01/conservative-commentator-gop-voters-just-want-a-dominant-personality-facts-dont-matter/