Ack - find the original with Elliot Randall. We loves Skunk Baxter but he butchers the solos on this.Hey, your wish is my command:That's a raw clip. Here's studio:
And the song's Wikipedia entry has this:
Led Zeppelin guitarist Jimmy Page has reportedly said that Elliott Randall's guitar solo on "Reelin' In the Years" is his favorite solo of all time.I can dig it.
Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa had some profane, combative words for Republicans while warming up the crowd for President Obama in Detroit, Michigan on Monday.Commentary at Pat Austin's, "Hoffa: "Let's take these son of bitches out...!"
"We got to keep an eye on the battle that we face: The war on workers. And you see it everywhere, it is the Tea Party. And you know, there is only one way to beat and win that war. The one thing about working people is we like a good fight. And you know what? They've got a war, they got a war with us and there's only going to be one winner. It's going to be the workers of Michigan, and America. We're going to win that war," Jimmy Hoffa Jr. said to a heavily union crowd.
"President Obama, this is your army. We are ready to march. Let's take these son of bitches out and give America back to an America where we belong," Hoffa added.
That was on of the better fireworks shows I can recall. A full video is here. The show was twenty minutes long and the finale was just spectacular.
And check out this essay from E.J. Dionne at the Washington Post, "What our Declaration really said":Our nation confronts a challenge this Fourth of July that we face but rarely: We are at odds over the meaning of our history and why, to quote our Declaration of Independence, “governments are instituted.”Dionne so badly misses the point on the tea parties, to say nothing of the Declaration of Independence, that I feel bad for him. Keep reading at the link. Anyone can cherry pick the founding documents to find passages and quotations to fit their agenda. Progressives like Dionne are depressed that it's been conservatives and libertarians who've been much more successful in capturing and representing the spirit of individual liberty animating our political culture. I keep seeing progressives argue that the founding documents called for the expansion of government. I mean, c'mon: Dionne is arguing that opposition to taxation is not an element of the Declaration of Independence. But history disproves it, for the ability to tax is the ability to destroy, so to understand opposition to taxation is to realize that government extraction from the people destroys liberty. But again, I feel sad for people like Dionne, because they're getting worried that Americans have awoken from the slumber of affluence and industry, and taken a closer look at how the political class is destroying our very foundations.
Only divisions this deep can explain why we are taking risks with our country’s future that we’re usually wise enough to avoid. Arguments over how much government should tax and spend are the very stuff of democracy’s give-and-take. Now, the debate is shadowed by worries that if a willful faction does not get what it wants, it might bring the nation to default.
This is, well, crazy. It makes sense only if politicians believe — or have convinced themselves — that they are fighting over matters of principle so profound that any means to defeat their opponents is defensible.
We are closer to that point than we think, and our friends in the Tea Party have offered a helpful clue by naming their movement in honor of the 1773 revolt against tea taxes on that momentous night in Boston Harbor.
Whether they intend it or not, their name suggests they believe that the current elected government in Washington is as illegitimate as was a distant, unelected monarchy. It implies something fundamentally wrong with taxes themselves or, at the least, that current levels of taxation (the lowest in decades) are dangerously oppressive. And it hints that methods outside the normal political channels are justified in confronting such oppression.
We need to recognize the deep flaws in this vision of our present and our past. A reading of the Declaration of Independence makes clear that our forebears were not revolting against taxes as such — and most certainly not against government as such.
In lieu of our weekly multimedia production, we felt it appropriate to honor our fallen shipmates. We remember their sacrifice this and every day.
I'm traveling to Temecula for barbecue with old friends. I should be online late this afternoon for blogging ...
Meanwhile, grab a beer and log on to The Sound L.A. for some classic album rock. It's kickin'.
And at Gallup, "U.S. Military Personnel, Veterans Give Obama Lower Marks." (Via Memeorandum.)
Spare parts were collecting dust in warehouses in Bell, Downey and Palmdale when the urgent call came from NASA: the nation needed another space shuttle.RELATED: "After Columbia: why we must still boldly go" [from 2003].
It was the unusual beginning of the orbiter Endeavour, which will streak across the California coastline at hypersonic velocity one last time Wednesday, carrying its six astronauts and two decades of the nation's human space flight history.
When it was christened in Palmdale in 1991, it was the newest and most capable of the fleet, fawned over by astronauts for its advanced flight electronics, sinuous skins and, eventually, the first toilet that actually worked.
"It was a real clean bird," said Robert "Hoot" Gibson, the Navy aviator who flew Endeavour the year it entered service in 1992. "We didn't have any issues with that machine."
But it began its life amid a political scheme to circumvent opponents by squirreling away spare parts in the hope they would someday amount to a real spacecraft.
When the Challenger was lost in an explosion in 1986, the spare-parts plan was vindicated and they suddenly became the starting point for keeping the shuttle program alive.
And now the ship will come back home a museum piece in the county where it was built, destined for a display at the California Science Center in Los Angeles. The last shuttle flight is scheduled to launch July 8, after decisions by the Bush and Obama administrations to end the program.
More at the link above.
Seems weird the program's winding down and America's got nothing big planned to replace it.
You should be!
Lovely blogging over there:
* "Bedtime Totty ..."
* "Pic Dump ..."
* "Video: Bentley Supersports Convertible Ice Speed Record 2011 - 205.48 mph"
* "Lest we forget - Memorial Day 2011 ... from Rico."
* "Happy Memorial Day (Alan Caruba)."
BONUS: At Maggie's Farm, "Bruce’s Eye-Openers (Yawn)."
PREVIOUSLY: "The Sound L.A., 'Top 100 Rock Albums of All Time' — J.T.'s 'Sweet Baby James' at No. 83," and "More From 'The Top 100 Albums of All Time' — David Bowie 'Ziggy Stardust' at No. 79."
And at New York Times, "Adding Thrills When Flying Upside Down Just Isn’t Enough."
BONUS: Also at Theo's, a really inspired "pic dump" over there as well this morning.
My kid really liked the Komodo dragon. We got all the way to the end the facility, to the "ship wreck" shark tank, and he wanted to go back up to see the Komodo! And he made sure to justify it, since we somehow missed the python exhibit, which we then noticed was right next to the dragon. Hanging with my kid's a riot:
He liked the piranhas too. Big suckers:
Everybody loves sharks:
But the sawfish was another one of my son's favorites. This shot's blurry because the sawfish swims up over the top of the glass after skimming along the bottom. He surprises you, unlike the sharks, who just kinda hover around:
There's a tram that takes you back to the Excalibur Hotel, and then a skywalk leads back over to New York New York, and then MGM Grande. A view of the interesection:
