Indian Lady

The Don Ellis Orchestra

Alone

The Don Ellis Orchestra

Blue Horizon

Sidney Bechet

HEY! ANYBODY MISS ME YET?

Apologies for my enforced absence folks.

Sandy roared through Reading/Berks Monday, Monday night and into Tuesday. And while we made out far better than places like Atlantic City and Staten Island it was not without incident.

We still have a ton of folks without power, trees down, lines down across streets and back roads etc.

More locally very late Monday night when the wind was building to a great crescendo there was a loud crack and thud followed by loss of the TeeVee and internet. Moments later the power was out all over the neighborhood.

And remained out for about 15 hours.

Now, that is nothing more than a trifle, a nuisance and annoying in the grand scheme of things. Get out the flashlights and candles. UNTIL one has to be at work 5:30 the next morning and the coffeepot just will not work no matter how much you cuss at and threaten it.

Fortunately the nearest Wawa is on a different grid section than us and they had hot coffee, lots of it. So any further violence was averted.

But back to the crack and thud.

Twas our neighbors tree falling into our yard taking down the cable (and therefore internet) lines, leaving the phone line lying on the ground but still working, and did a dandy number or our power lines. Ripped out the neutral/ground and left it hanging there. The rest of it barely hanging there.

When the power came back on to the neighborhood we found we still had enough connection that we could shower, keep the food from spoiling, cook meals

and make COFFEE

This did not ease the communication woes, however. Internet and TeeVee was still down. Cell phone service was spotty at best. And local radio isn't worth shit for getting and real unbiased news. Plus their playlist is stuck somewhere in the 90's (they play it at work, it's the only station they get. I told my boss you know a station needs updating when you realize it isn't deja vu after all you really WERE listening to this very same song when you were unloading boxes at Spencer gifts in 1985).

So from Monday until late yesterday I was completely out of the news loop. And because of my crazy schedule at the Big Box Retailer I didn't have a chance to get anywhere else to watch the news or read the internet.

Meanwhile the tree remain perched on our electric wires.

Halloween night the neighborhood decided despite the problems we were going to proceed with the annual Halloween fire. Got the candy and s'mores makin's for the trick or treaters. Beer for their parents.

Plenty for us as well.

Held it at the neighbors this year since I had an early work start the next morning. So I left a note on our door

HALLOWEENERS!

The goods are across the street at the Halloween Fire!

C'mon over!

Our first customer was the lady from the electric company who was looking for us and followed the sign.

She and her partner had been sent by HQ in Ohio to sort stuff out, working their way east through Pennsylvania and on into Jersey.

We're from the electric company, we're here to help.

They took a look at our situation and declared both ours and our neighbors yard danger zones, off limits to people, children and small animals (look, if the squirrels can't read the friggin' signs and get zapped it's their own damned fault. Just means the neighborhood redtail will get a hot meal for a change) until the tree is removed because it could snap the wires at any minute and send them discharging into the standing water. Said hopefully will be there sometime next week.

We thanked her and offered her and her partner a beer even though they were "on duty".

They were sorely tempted I'm here to say.

So back to the fire. Had a good number of Halloweeners including one group from a number of blocks away whose kids were insisting they had to find the house that had the fire and s'mores last year.

Back to work Thursday Big Box Retailer continued to be busy with people buying stuff for the NEXT storm (just in case) and replacing the perishables they bought Sunday and lost when their power went out.

Why would you buy frozen foods and perishables when you know a storm is coming that will likely knock out your power destroy the food and keep you from being able to cook it anyway? And batteries, we were selling out of D batteries faster than we could restock them.

Friday morning the chain saws started at 6:00. No kidding they so startled our neighbor up 2 doors up he thought something ne'er-do-well in the Texas chainsaw vein was going on and was about to call the cops.

By 8:00 the tree was off the lines.

By 4:00 we had TeeVee and internet back.

I turned on the TeeVee and was startled to see how bad things were in Staten Island. Eerily similar to Katrina (with less loss of life) but back then they wanted to lynch the President for the federal response. Obama, of course, is getting a pass on it.

And the Benghazi morass continues to deepen.

And Obama gets a pass on it.

Unemployment ticks up (yeah, we'll leave all the numbers shenanigans out of it), higher now than when Obama took office.

And he gets a pass on it.

ANY OTHER PRESIDENT, REPUBLICAN OR DEMOCRAT, wouldn't show his face nn public with these kind of events, let alone be able to keep an election as close as this one seems to be.

So don't forget to vote on Tuesday.

And I'm voting as revenge. Revenge on the man who has so badly damaged this Country We Love. Throw his lazy ignorant incompetent ass out, and all his sycophantic cronies in the administration and Congress.

Let that fucker's name be added to the unemployment rolls, like so many of ours have been for so long.

And let's set things right.

Runnin' through this business of life
Rarely time if I'm needed to
Ain't so funny when things ain't feelin' right
Then daddy's hand helps to see me through
Sweet as sugar, love won't wash away
Rain or shine, it's always here to stay
All these years you and I've spent together
All this, we just couldn't stand the weather

Like a train that stops at every station
We all deal with trials and tribulations
Fear hangs the fellow that ties up his years
Entangled in yellow and cries all his tears
Changes come before we can grow
Learn to see them before we're too old
Don't just take me for tryin' to be heavy
Understand, it's time to get ready for the storm

(oh yeah, the yard made out just fine. No long term psychological trauma from being declared a danger zone for three days)


EPASEZ: We figgered by now you had Jeremiah Johnson'd ur way to Idaho

Vote For Love of Country

This is a beautiful ad:

White House Honored Radical Islamist As “Champion Of Change”

From the Investigative Project on Terrorism:

An Islamist activist honored by the White House last December as a “Champion of Change” called Zionism “racism” this week and said “nothing is creepier” than the belief in a Jewish homeland. 

Linda Sarsour also posted two links on her Twitter feed to a rabidly anti-Israel video by a New York poet that accuses Israel of ethnic cleansing and mocks interfaith dialogue as selling out. 

Sarsour has been invited to at least seven White House meetings since April 2010, records show. All but one were with Paul Monteiro, associate director of the White House Office of Public Engagement. The most recent meeting took place seven months ago. Last week, the Investigative Project on Terrorism reported on hundreds of White House meetings involving radical Islamists like Sarsour. 

Sarsour, director of the Arab American Association of New York, is on record defending terror suspects, casting skepticism over law enforcement investigations and advancing conspiracy theories. Despite her access to the administration, Sarsourdescribes support for President Obama as a “lesser of two evils” proposition for Muslim voters.

Keep reading…

Santa Muerte: Patron Saint of the Drug War

Need help killing someone? Or cementing a drug deal? This may be the saint for you.

From the Houston Press:

Sunny Flea Market on Airline Drive is as full of raw life as any place in the state of Texas, especially on this hot Sunday afternoon in August. Fifty thousand weekly visitors stroll its long rows of covered market stalls, where more than 1,000 vendors offer a cradle-to-grave bonanza of blue-collar Mexican-American life.

There's birth, childhood and school: Parents can find used car-seats, cribs and blankets for their infants, while their older brothers and sisters can be fitted for school uniforms or beg for secondhand video games, or ride live ponies, or frolic on carousels and a merry-go-round — all the while listening to the hypnotic high-hat hiss of cumbias to beery oompah banda sounds to romantic ranchero ballads.

One stall is piled high with wire cages in which fuzzy Chihuahua pups tremble and with their limpid brown eyes implore children for a forever home, while parrots, macaws and parakeets squawk and iguanas flick their tongues in others nearby. A vendor allows a ring-tailed lemur to clamber up his arm and down his back, its piercing stare encapsulating a journey to a primordial Madagascar jungle.

"The figure of the saint often holds a scythe, which represents Justice, and a globe, which represents dominion over the whole world.

And if you know where to look, everywhere there is death — more specifically, the Grim Reaper-like visage of Santa Muerte ("Saint Death" or "Holy Death"). The increasingly popular, scythe-wielding folk saint, miracle worker and unofficial patron of many of Mexico's narcos, prostitutes, prisoners, poor, gays, transvestites and others on the margins of Mexico's Drug War-ravaged, poverty-stricken society is all around. She is found on clothing: A twentysomething man sports her on a T-shirt, on which rests the head of his sleeping infant, nestled in a front-slung harness. Another man honors the veiled skeleton with a chunky gold pendant around his bull-neck.

And then there's the jackpot: an entire stall given over to Santa Muerte devotion. Here, devotees of (as she is variously known) "La Madrina" ("the Godmother"), "La Flaka" (a slang spelling for "the Skinny Woman") or "La Niña Blanca" ("the White Lady") can buy candles, statues, posters and amulets for her veneration.

The stallholders — Jonathan Mejia and Eduardo Mora, two men who look no older than 20 — say she grants many wishes, in many different areas of life. All you have to do is ask, light the right color of candle to her and then make a sacrifice. (You also need to make sure Santa Muerte is wearing a matching-color robe, though adherents say this is less important than the correct color of candle.)

"I don't know all the colors, but red is for love. You give her wine, money, food," says Mora. "Gold is for money, green is for health."

Asked about the supposedly death-dealing black candle, the one that can be used to wreak vengeance and downfall on your enemies, Mora shrugs. "I don't know about that. We do run out of them fast." (Police say that black candles are found far more often in the private shrines of drug dealers and assassins than they are at Santa Muerte's increasingly common public altars.)

And it's not just enemies from whom Santa Muerte can extract a heavy toll, even the ultimate price.

"There's a downside," Mejia says. "When you ask her for something, you have to promise her something. If you don't make that promise, um...many people say she takes away one of your loved ones."

In the last ten years, this harshest of all mistresses has come gliding inexorably from the shadows of Mexican folk religion, far from what scholars believe was her birthplace on or near Mexico's central Gulf Coast. As recently as 12 years ago, most Mexicans had never heard of her, but now her cult is spreading beyond the borders of that country, both south to Central America and north to the United States, where one expert tells us that some of her adherents today are white and black Anglos.

In spite of official rejection by the highest levels of the Roman Catholic Church in Mexico, Santa Muerte's followers only increase in number and devotion, carrying her all the way onto the fringes of the American pop-culture mainstream. She made a cameo on Breaking Bad — Tuco's terrifying cousins light candles to her, petitioning her for success on the way to Albuquerque on their mission of murderous revenge.

The faithful adore her publicly at shrines all over Mexico. People pray to her on her Facebook page, and there are drives afoot in several cities, Houston included, to raise funds to build permanent public chapels in her honor. Houstonians can buy her votive candles not just at barrio yerberíasand botánicas, but also at their friendly neighborhood Fiesta supermarket or Dollar Tree store.

Mexican bishops have said her veneration is akin to Satanism, and Mexican prosecutors claim that Santa Muerte has been linked to ­cartel-related human sacrifices.

Others say her scythe is not just a weapon but also a shield: They see her as a bringer of comfort in dark times, a beacon of peace in dark times.

One thing is for sure: Santa Muerte is here to stay. Some concerned Catholics even believe that she is at war with Our Lady of Guadalupe herself for status as unofficial queen of Mexican souls.
_____________________

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THIS IS PERHAPS OF INTEREST AS WELL:

WARNING!

The views expressed in FMSO publications and reports are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official policy or position of the Department of the Army, Department of Defense, or the U.S. Government.

---

The Death Cult of the Drug Lords Mexico’s Patron Saint of Crime, Criminals, and the Dispossessed

by Kevin Freese,
Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth, KS.

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Table of Contents          
Introduction
Executive Summary
Sources
Terms and Concepts
Death in Mexican Culture
Epithets and Aliases
The Power of Color
Iconography
Common Offerings
Death’s Collects
Objectives of Prayer
The Origin and Spread of the Cult
The Goddess of Tepito
The Lord of the Rings
Santa Muerte Witnesses Violent Crimes
Prisoners Pray to Santa Muerte
The Skeleton in the Family Closet Was Santa Muerte
Criminals Carry Accoutrements of Santa Muerte
Santa Muerte Has Following in Major Criminal Organizations
Santa Muerte on the U.S. Border
The Patron Saint of Crime
Conclusion

Why Was There No October Surprise? Because Every Freakin’ Day for the Last Four Years Has Been an October Surprise

From Zombie:

Where was the October Surprise?

Almost everyone anticipated this year’s “October Surprise” — some last-minute, unexpected, shocking scandal to rock the presidential election and derail one of the candidates. But it never appeared. In an era of everything-but-the-kitchen-sink gutterball politics, this mysterious absence of any major scandal was itself noteworthy. How could nothing have happened?

Sure, there was Hurricane Sandy. But that doesn’t count. Sandy was a natural disaster that dominated the headlines for a few days, but it wasn’t a scandal. And yes, there was Benghazi. But that happened in early September, and it wasn’t so much a political scandal uncovered by partisan operatives as it was the umpteenth example of Obama’s incompetence. Whatever Benghazi blowback he’s gotten damaging his election chances are entirely his own responsibility for bungling an international crisis. So, no, neither one of those counted as an October Surprise.

Which left many people scratching their heads. Why wasn’tthere one? For either candidate?

In Mitt Romney’s case, the answer is pretty obvious: He’s squeaky clean. His entire adult life has been like a boring treatise on Mormon moral rectitude. His political career has long been an open book — moderate, bipartisan, essentially uneventful. The Democrats have tried to squeeze some droplets of outrage over Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital, but those attacks came earlier in the summer and turned out to be extremely slim pickin’s. There are no skeletons in Romney’s closet, otherwise we would have heard about them.

But in Barack Obama’s case, the situation is reversed: Everything he’s ever done is scandalous. The reason there was no October Surprise for Obama is that we’re all scandaled out. Anyone’s who been paying attention since 2008 has literally been in paralytic shock every single day. We spent October 2012 exactly as we’ve spent every month of the last four years: Our jaws on the floor, aghast, stupefied, unable to breathe. Almost every single thing Obama has done since he’s been in the national spotlight could have been and should have been a career-ending October Surprise. But the mainstream media, as we all know, has devoted itself to protecting him.

Not a day has gone by since Obama took office when I didn’t learn of some fresh outrage and say Oh. My. God. But we’ve been traumatized so often that over time the scandals have all blurred together and fused into a single red-hot thought: Please let this nightmare end.

A complete recounting of Obama’s shoulda-been October Surprises would fill a book, an encyclopedia, an entire library. But I think this is a good time to initiate a crowd-sourced list of everything Obama has done since 2008 (and every fact about his earlier life that emerged since 2008) which you thought was scandalous, shocking or outrageous. Just for the record, let’s remind the world that every freakin’ day for the last four years has been an October Surprise.

I’ll get the ball rolling with a few scandalous deeds and facts which occur to me at the moment, but this list will primarily come from you, the readers. In the comments section below, mention anything and everything that you believe should have ruined Obama politically (if the media had been doing its job). From the big to the small, from the recent to the distant, dig deep in your memory and just let it all out, like political primal scream therapy.

I’ll continuously update the list as best as I can to include whatever gets mentioned by the commenters.

Ready? Let the collective scream begin!

---

 

The Complete List of Barack Obama’s Scandals, Misdeeds, Crimes and Blunders

• $6 trillion in new national debt under Obama…after he promised to decrease the deficit.

• Obamacare — A massive and incredibly convoluted bill which exponentially increases the federal government’s control over our personal lives…which neither Obama nor a single Democrat even read before passing, and which will likely bankrupt the nation.

• In both the 2008 and 2012 presidential elections, the Obama campaign purposely disabled the credit card verification system for its Web site donations, allowing anyone from any foreign country to donate with no limit and no proof of identity; in both elections it was demonstrated that people overseas and people with obviously false identities were able to donate to Obama campaign, in direct violation of several laws. To this day it is not known what percentage of Obama’s campaign funds are illegally obtained, since there is no documentation.

• Billions of taxpayer dollars gambled on “green” companies like Solyndra, NextEra, Ener1, Solar Trust and many others — all of which went bankrupt.

• An intentional refusal to enforce federal immigration laws.

• Unemployment at or above 8% for almost his entire term in office (which was actually closer to 15% actual unemployment).

• Operation Fast & Furious — a government-sponsored illegal gun-running scheme designed to purposely go awry so as to induce public outcry for gun control.

• Spent 20 years listening to a racist anti-American pastor (Rev. Jeremiah Wright), whom Obama desribed as a mentor. On March 18, 2008, Obama gave a speech in which he said “I could no more disown Jeremiah Wright than I could disown my own grandmother” and “[Wright's church, Trinity United] embodies the black community in its entirety.” Now Obama tries to pretend that Jeremiah Wright doesn’t exist, and that his extremist anti-white philosophy didn’t influence Obama’s worldview.

• Increased the percentage of Americans dependent on food stamps to unprecedented levels (now over 15% of the nation’s population).

• Before he entered politics, Obama worked as a lawyer suing banks in landmark cases, forcing them to give home loans to unqualified minority borrowers — a practice now understood as one of the primary initial causes of the eventual housing bubble and market collapse.

GO READ THE WHOLE THING.

Pastorius' Prediction

POPULAR VOTE
ROMNEY 51% 
OBAMA 47.5%

ELECTORAL COLLEGE
ROMNEY 295
OBAMA 243

Esbjorn Svensson Trio

Jazzwoche Burghausen Live

1. Seven Days Of Falling
2. Elevation Of Love
3. Definition of a Dog
4. Why She Couldn't Come
5. Mingle In The Mincing-Machine
6. When God Created The Coffeebreak
7. Behind The Yashmak

A MUSLIM STATE IN BELGIUM? ISLAMISTS VOW SHARIA STATE AFTER ELECTION WIN

CBS News: Obama Did Not Convene Counterterrorism Task Force During Benghazi Terror Attack

Mission Accomplished

This is the group that knows what resources are at the President's disposal, and understands how they can coordinate together to field a response to a terror attack.

And, Obama did not call on them for help. AT ALL.

In other words, Obama did not call on the very group of people who would know the local CIA resources, NSC resources, Navy Seal resources, Naval Resources, Army ground forces, or any other Special Forces who might have been in the area.

And that would be because, OBAMA NEVER WANTED TO RESPOND IN THE FIRST PLACE.

He fully intended to allow these people to die like pigs.

Why that is, we do not know. But, it is now without a doubt that he did not intend for them to live. If he did, he would have at least attempted to understand how to help them, but he did not.

From CBS News:

CBS News has learned that during the Sept. 11 attack on the U.S. Mission in Benghazi, the Obama Administration did not convene its top interagency counterterrorism resource: the Counterterrorism Security Group, (CSG). 

"The CSG is the one group that's supposed to know what resources every agency has. They know of multiple options and have the ability to coordinate counterterrorism assets across all the agencies," a high-ranking government official told CBS News. "They were not allowed to do their job. They were not called upon." 

Information shared with CBS News from top counterterrorism sources in the government and military reveal keen frustration over the U.S. response on Sept. 11, the night Ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans were killed in a coordinated attack on the U.S. Consulate in Libya. 

The circumstances of the attack, including the intelligence and security situation there, will be the subject of a Senate Intelligence Committee closed hearing on Nov. 15, with additional hearings to follow. 

Counterterrorism sources and internal emails reviewed by CBS News express frustration that key responders were ready to deploy, but were not called upon to help in the attack.

Arafat's deputy who deserved to die

It's been revealed that Khalil al-Wazir, the deputy of Yasser Arafat who was killed in 1988 was taken down by Israeli secret service:

Lifting a nearly 25-year veil of secrecy, Israel is admitting that it killed the deputy of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in a 1988 raid in Tunis.

Israel has long been suspected of assassinating Khalil al-Wazir, who was better known by his nom de guerre Abu Jihad. But only Thursday did the country’s military censor clear the Yediot Ahronot daily to publish the information, including an interview with the commando who killed him.

Dozens of brazen operations have been attributed to Israel over the decades. But Israel rarely takes responsibility. The acknowledgement gives a rare glimpse into the country’s covert operations.

Abu Jihad founded the Palestinian Liberation Organization with Mr. Arafat and was blamed for a series of attacks against Israelis.

Oh, he was equally responsible alright, and it's something for which he deserved to die. I hope the AP Wire comprehends that.

Landslide

Mother murdered son for ‘failing to learn the Koran’

The Telegraph:

 A mother murdered her seven-year old son and set his body on fire when he struggled to learn the Koran off by heart, a court heard today.

Yaseen was pulled from the fire and initially given CPR in the hope that his life could be saved Photo: WALES NEWS SERVICE

3:43PM GMT 01 Nov 2012

Sara Ege, 32, used a stick to beat her son Yaseen “like a dog” if he couldn’t recite passages from the religious text, it is alleged.

A court has heard the beatings were so brutal that Yaseen died from his injuries, and his mother tried to burn the body to destroy the evidence.

Yaseen was originally thought to have died in a tragic accident in the house fire.

But a post mortem examination showed Ege had been beating and abusing her son in the months leading up to his murder, the court was told.

In a video recording of her interview with police Ege said: “I was trying to teach him the Koran.

Click to continue: