No land inherently belongs to anyone.  Land belongs to whichever group can take & hold it.  This has been the rule since civilizations began 10,000 years ago.  Virtually all areas of the globe have had some “indigenous” tribe come into it & settle the area, then have been displaced by a political faction within it or by another tribe or army from elsewhere. Virtually all of our modern countries are now occupied by governments, tribes, political groups or armies that took control at some point from a previous government/army.

English settlers took land in America from the American Indians, then took the land from England & called themselves Americans, then took (or bought) land from more Indians & also Spain & France to create the contiguous USA 48 states.  We Americans own this land & we’re not giving it back up to people who were here before us. However, this is what Palestinians want in the Middle East, but with a major caveat — they’ve never owned or controlled it ever.

The various tribes that lorded over Europe, Asia & Africa all had the same fights & struggles to acquire & hold land.  Those lands now belong to the countries which currently hold & defend them.  Right now, Ukraine is fighting Russia to keep them from taking their land.  Whoever wins that fight will hold the land.  Ukraine has no inherent right to their land.

The Palestinians have the same problem with the facts.  They believe that because they’ve lived in the area once called Palestine (now mostly called Israel as much of it was called 3,000 years ago) from about 600 A.D. (when they took it from those who had prevously taken it from the Jews) that they now inherently own it, which is a fallacy.  Various Arabs, Jews, Romans, and even Alexander the Great controlled the area called Palestine throughout its existence, and Arabs were not the original inhabitants or controllers of the land.

The name Palestine was legally conferred upon the area by the British Mandate in 1920 after WW1. The origin of that name comes from the name “Syria Palestinia” given to the area by the Roman emperor Hadrian as a punishment against the Jews who lived there & who had called it the Judea (the remnant of the earlier Kingdom of Judah). The word “Palestine” is alleged to derive from the Philistines who temporarily lived in the area for a time, but that etymology is disputed. Interestingly, everyone who lived in Palestine between 1925 & 1948 were issued passports that called them Palestinians whether they were Arabs, Jews or Chrisitians or anything in-between. It was from only 1948 that being Palestinian meant being an Arab only.

The area has been controlled by various factions for thousands of years, most recently by the Ottoman Empire (the Turks) who controlled all of the Arabian Peninsula & Middle East as of the end of WW1 in 1918. The countries of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine & Iraq were created by the Allies after WW1 by breaking up the Ottoman Empire in retaliation for their support of the Germans in WW1. Jews have lived in the region and had their own states/kingdoms (Israel & Judah ) long before any Arabs controlled the area. The Jewish kingdoms were destroyed in 720 B.C. & 587 B.C. respectfully, but the Jews continued to live there until they were mostly displaced over the succeeding centuries.

At what point do we say that all the lands of the world should be free from takeover by an indigenous faction or invasion by foreign forces, that whoever is in power now should stay in power forever, and should the United Nations defend all borders?  There would be no USA if that were the rule 250 years ago.  Political takeovers, invasions & land acquisition has been occurring for centuries.  Virtually every country is currently held by a group who took it from another, even if it’s indigenous tribes who have been fighting politically rather than foreign invaders.  It’s up to the current governments to control their countries from other political factions and to hold their land to keep other countries from taking it.  Should we give back all lands & their wealth to indigenous people who first ruled the land?

When America should get involved is when our interests are being compromised, not simply to protect another country’s land or government when it has no effect on America.  The ownership of Ukraine’s pipeline that ferries Russian oil and the natural resources Ukraine has is what that war is really all about.  Does it matter to America if Russia owns the entire length of the pipeline? Or that we & our allies benefit from it regardless of ownership? Arab states own the lion’s share of oil, and we have no problem with them owing the land under their pipelines.

World Peace is a nice idea, but not practical. Humans have always fought to acquire more land & wealth than they have or for power & control of an area & its people, and that will continue as long as there are humans, and after that, the various species of plants & animals remaining (if any) will do the same. Survival of the fittest is the true rule of law.

I saw a video where singer/songwriter Steve Earle was being honored on the floor of the Tennessee State House. It’s usually always good when performers & their music are honored by a state’s representatives, and I’m a fan of some of Steve Earle’s music, though not of the man or the life he’s led by his own poor choices, but I’m wondering if the politicians who voted for his song ‘Copperhead Road” to be the 10th State Song of Tennessee (they have a lot of State Songs obviously) have read the lyrics of the song or know anything about Steve Earle’s past that could easily be found on his Wikipedia page . . .

I like the song and have no personal qualms over the content at all, as i view it as just a fictional song. Besides, there are worse crimes that people have sang or rapped about, but I’m not a public figure or politician who has to watch what he endorses. Songs are typically a work of fiction, as this one is. One Nashville artist once said “I won’t write or sing a song I didn’t live”, which is a ludicrous statement to make as it condemns any and all works of fiction anywhere, including this song.

There are a lot of songs I like of which I have no personal affection for the lyrics and even disdain them. Anything about religion or mentioning a supernatural higher being is a ridiculous concept to me being that I’m highly anti-religious (the opposite of “religious” isn’t “evil”; it’s actually “intelligence” in not believing unproven fairy tales), but there are good songs about religion that I’ll probably always like such as “My Sweet Lord”, “Day By Day”, “Let It Be”, etc, but I just sing the lyrics much like an actor reads lines — you don’t have to believe in or approve of the character in order to play a part anymore than I have to believe in the lyrics in order to sing them or appreciate the song.

Otherwise I’d probably have very few songs that I’d be able to listen to, as most of the musical landscape I grew up in glorifies random sex (KISS, Van Halen & most of 80’s Hair Metal), slavery (“Brown Sugar” by The Stones), machismo (Heavy Metal in general), drug use (Steely Dan, Pink Floyd, etc), objectification of girls & women (lots of songs including “I Saw Her Standing There” by the Beatles & “My Sharona” by The Knack, just a couple written about an obsession with a teenager), sex trafficking (Lady Marmalade), alcoholism (lots of “party” songs), hedonism (almost anything by The Eagles or Jimmy Buffett), witchcraft (Stevie Nicks & a host of Metal artists), devil worshipping & the dark side (Metal again), self-loathing (90’s bands), whining (2000’s bands) & a host of other issues I don’t agree with — but I still like much of the music that delves into these topics as did millions of others. I love the music of the Beatles, Stevie Nicks, Jimmy Buffett, Eagles, Steely Dan, Pink Floyd, Stones, Van Halen, a little KISS, Ozzy & the song Lady Marmalade, but I don’t have to believe in the lyrics to sing & like the songs anymore than Anthony Hopkins had to support serial killing in order to play Hannibal Lecter.

The song is sung in a fictional protagonist’s POV about his daddy’s exploits as a moonshiner when the protagonist was a kid. Earle sings as the character/protagonist “John Lee Pettimore”; the song isn’t autobiographical. Moonshine was the latter-day equivalent of being a modern-day drug dealer. Both are illegal in Tennessee then & now, but many of its residents support them by purchasing the products. To be fair, this happens in a lot of states where both are illegal, and even in states where pot is legal, as it’s cheaper to buy the illegal untaxed stuff. Moonshining didn’t bring the harsh sentences drug dealing does now and still doesn’t, even though both are a Federal & state crime.

The last verse is about the song’s protagonist coming home from Vietnam & deciding to grow pot illegally; it’s still illegal to grow pot in TN as of 2023 & this song came out 35 years earlier when it was illegal everywhere to do anything. It doesn’t explicitly state that the man intends to sell the pot, but you can infer that’s the case as he wasn’t growing it in a few planters on his porch, but instead in a “holler” (hillbilly speak for a “hollow”, or small/narrow valley), which would presumabily be a large garden or even a decent-sized field of pot. He also says DEA choppers are in the air, so this isn’t just some guy growing a few plants if the DEA is involved enough to send in air surveillance.

So we’ve got a lot of TN state politicians voting for a song written & sung by Steve Earle, which glorifies him as well. Steve Earle was a convicted drug addict (including weapons possession), who’s been married 7 times to 6 different women, is a high-school dropout, and looks like a homeless bum, which he admittedly was for a few years. Steve Earle is also an unabashed Liberal Socialist Democrat, which is not a popular thing to be in Tennessee or anywhere in the Red states.

“Copperhead Road”, the song they voted for, is about the illegal manufacturing & distribution of moonshine whiskey, which combined is a felony virtually anywhere, in a state where they recently passed a law that you can’t call a whiskey Tennessee Whiskey if it isn’t made in TN, surely because of the popularity of the song “Tennessee Whiskey”, and this same song also glorifies the illegal manufacturing & distribution of drugs, i.e. pot, which isn’t as big a deal anymore, but it’s still a felony crime in Tennessee. It also makes the people of Tennessee look even more redneck than they are. It’s not a song I’d want associated with my state, or any state.

My point is that I’m surprised that any politician would associate themselves with this song and its content, or Steve Earle himself by voting for his song to be a State Song considering the content & considering the character & background of Earle. This makes you wonder not so much about what their values are, but whether or not they read the text of these bills they sign. I know it’s a work of fiction, just a song, but if Earle had instead been praised for a song about shooting cops and politicians, would it have received the same number of votes, much less having the bill proposed in the 1st place? Is it OK to honor some forms of criminality that we personally approve of, or should we not honor any criminality? Would they have approved of a rap song by a black rapper that had the same criminality of selling drugs & killing people or cops in it? Why honor Steve Earle considering his background & his political learnings?

Why didn’t they pick another Steve Earle song to honor? In my opinion, “Guitar Town” is a better song than “Copperhead Road”, and just about anyone will tell you that title refers to Nashville. Keep in mind that Earle wasn’t born or raised in Tennessee, so it isn’t like he’s Tennessee’s favorite son & needs a TN honor. He’s spent a lot of time in Nashville as an artist, but a lot of out-of-towners do/have & they’re usually not honored as such as only 9 other songs have been honored in this manner. “Copperhead Road” is the name of an actual road in Tennessee, and the song lists a number of Tennessee locales in it, but that’s the only connection, and it’s a dubious and infamous connection at best considering what’s it all about.

I don’t have a problem with me liking Steve Earle’s music apart from the man, and I don’t have a problem with you or the Tennessee State House politicians liking it either, but I do have a problem with honoring him personally, which is essentially what they were doing along with the song being honored, and I’m amazed that song was honored considering the behavior being sung about & who they are & the values & people they represent.

I would equate this to New Jersey honoring The Sopranos by making them the Official State Family. I’ll bet you this will happen eventually in this dystopian society.

A lot of talk has been going on about the death of Rock as it becomes further fractured into subtypes that fracture into further subtypes, while Rap & Hip Hop are winning the popularity war. This shouldn’t be so shocking considering that the dumbing-down of popular music started many decades ago.

Before I discuss zombie bands, what’s the difference between a zombie band & a tribute band? A zombie band is a band that is officially legally recognized as the band allowed to use the band name, but typically has zero to 2 original members. Like a zombie, they keep replacing members and never die as a band. A tribute band isn’t allowed to use the official band name and typically has no members who were ever in the official band, and they exist simply as a tribute to an official band. In many cases, they even look like the original band in its heyday, but some tribute acts don’t go for the visuals & instead opt to recreate the music faithfully. There are also acts like Black Jacket Symphony who recreate music of dozen of artists in concert who don’t use visuals in their act, although BJS has used singers who looked very much like the original & who perform in an tribute act to that singer.

In the 1940’s, you had to know how to read music and be proficient on your instrument. Even singers had to know how to sing and also understand harmony, tempo, meter, etc. Fracturing in music began way back then as black Blues musicians were experimenting with a new style of music called Jump Blues which evolved into early Rock & Roll. By the 1950’s, the white musicians who had been listening to to this music jumped on the bandwagon & in many cases simply took the songs the black artists were playing & covered them & made big hits. The white group Bill Haley & His Comets took “Shake, Rattle & Roll” originally released by the black singer Big Joe Turner in April 1954, which hit #1 on the R&B chart and made a mainstream white (today’s Billboard Hot 100 chart) hit of it just 4 months later.

It didn’t take much talent to learn to play early Rock & Roll. You didn’t need to read music; much of it was improvisation within a 12-bar Blues framework. The lyrics were usually repetitive, at least in the 1st few lines of a verse, and choruses were usually the same line repeated 2 or more times.

When The Beatles hit in the early 60’s, it changed everything, and when they released the Rubber Soul, Revolver & Sgt Pepper albums, popular music required more talent to play & sing. You still didn’t need to read music, but you had to be somewhat proficient on your instrument & vocal. Virtually every musician born in the 1940s onward who plays Rock was infuenced by the Beatles whether they know it or not. With the exception of Blues-based Rock, you can trace virtually every Rock style back through them, even though the Beatles did their share of Blues-based rock, just not as much as the Stones or the Yardbirds, the latter of which evolved into Led Zeppelin by 1968. It’s still fair to say that the Beatles were influenced by musicians who came before them like Buddy Holly & the Everly Bros.

In the late 60s & early 70s, a new form of Rock initially called Art Rock and later called Prog Rock appeared which has its roots in Psychedelia, Classical & Jazz along with Rock. Groups like Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, Emerson Lake & Palmer & others led the way. This music didn’t necessarily require formal music training, but it didn’t hurt, and the most proficient of these musicians were indeed Classically-trained. Even the more proficient Pop artists of the day such as Elton John, Billy Joel & Eric Carmen all had Classical training to some extent.

Music in the 70s became even more progressive until Disco hit in the late 70s, then the advent of the affordable digital synthesizer in the early 80s made it even more accessible to musicians who had lesser talent. The early 80s band added synthesizers to their Prog-Pop sound and controlled the early 80s in bands such as Journey, Styx & Foreigner, and some of the 70s Hard Rock bands reformed doing this style such as Deep Purple, Rainbow, Uriah Heep, and Ozzy went solo & melded into this genre to some degree. Image was an important issue then as MTV began in 1981.

By the mid 80s, popular music started its downhill slide, but slowly. Bands who had been influenced by Led Zep, Cream, Jimi Hendrix, Black Sabbath, Van Halen, Ozzy, The Who, KISS & others took the concept of the power trio & Hard Rock into a new direction that has been derisively called Hair Metal. The concept came from the early Hard Rock bands that had a single guitar, bassist, drummer & lead singer and played a more Blues-based music with lyrics centered on baser images such as drinking, sex, drugs & even Rock & Roll itself. The musicians were talented, but in a different manner that didn’t require the finesse of a Prog band.

While Hair Metal was rolling along, Rap started coming alive by the mid-80s, and it appealed to the mainstream with its repetitive baser backbeat & its rebellious & even more baser lyrics. It was still mainly a black audience, but just like Rock-n-Roll’s early days, that wouldn’t last long.

In the early 90s, like most fads, Hair Metal received a backlash from musicians who didn’t look good enough to be in a Hair Metal band, and whose outlook on life & lyrics was less about partying and more about personal angst. They preferred Punk & heavier Heavy Metal & didn’t like short Pop songs, proficient guitar solos or anything very proficient at all, or the coiffed look. Grunge destroyed Hair Metal quickly in 1991 as Pearl Jam & Nirvana released their albums that year, and Rock took a long drive downhill from a talent perspective. Some 90s artists were playing what was called Alternative Rock, which simply meant that it was more rootsy & didn’t fit into the definition of Rock or Pop as it was known then & was typically more Pop than Grunge. Grunge & Alt Rock were in the same plane & some bands switched back & forth between the styles.

Rap also moved forward in leaps & bounds in the 90s in tandem with Hip Hop, and so did Electronic Pop. Grunge & Alt Rock starting taking a back seat to them by the mid 90’s & so did Post-Grunge by the 2000s. Most of Pop music now is permeated with electronic instruments that are programmed rather than played, and even vocals are “cleaned up” using computer programs such as Auto Tune. The need for talent & proficiency has now flown out the window.

Now to the point — By the 90s & 2000s, many Classic Rock acts from previous decades are no longer selling or even making records, but are selling out concert tours in record numbers, selling more tickets than the hottest current acts of the day. Turns out the older segment of the public still wanted to hear music proficiency & the sounds of their own heyday from bands like Pink Floyd, Bruce Springsteen, U2, REM, Aerosmith, Styx, Chicago, Def Leppard, Boston, Eagles and a number of other 70s & 80s acts who sold out concert tours regularly. Even some 50s & 60s acts are getting in the nostalgia craze and selling out smaller venues & playing casinos & themed cruises.

The problem is, as of the 2020s, these Classic Rock musicians from the 1960s & 1970s are in their 70s & 80s, and even those from the 1980s are in their 60s & 70s, and many of the 1950s & 1960s musicians have either long passed away or are dying off ever year as a new hero fades away.

Just since 2015, among many other artists, we’ve lost some whose loss has impacted current or recently touring bands or their own solo touring career, such as Glenn Frey of the Eagles, David Bowie, Eddie Van Halen, Neil Peart of Rush, Walter Becker of Steely Dan, Michael Nesmith of The Monkees, Lemmy Kilmister of Motorhead, Chris Squire of Yes, Cory Wells of Three Dog Night, Robbie Steinhardt of Kansas, Chris Cornell of Soundgarden/Audioslave, Vinnie Paul of Pantera, Dusty Hill of ZZ Top, Gary Rossington & Ed King of Lynyrd Skynyrd, Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac, Dolores O’Riordan of the Cranberries, Frankie Banali of Quiet Riot, Taylor Hawkins of Foo Fighters, and Brian Wilson, the mastermind of The Beach Boys. Although no longer touring, we also lost key members of Classic Rock/Pop such as Ozzy Osbourne, Ric Ocasek of The Cars, Rick Derringer, Peter Yarrow of Peter Paul & Mary, Garth Hudson who was the last surviving member of The Band, and Joey Molland who was the last surviving member of Badfinger.

We’ve lost solo acts whose music will never be represented again by themselves in concert, such as Tom Petty, Prince, Meat Loaf, Eddie Money, Gregg Allman, Jeff Beck, Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bill Withers, Olivia Newton-John, Burt Bacharach, David Crosby (can’t have CSN or CSNY without the C), composer Jim Steinman (Meat Loaf’s writer/producer, among others), and Jimmy Buffett. But the demand for their music continues.

Many of these acts have strong hits catalogs and people still want to see them in concert. As a result, the bands who’ve lost members have had to bring in new members who had nothing to do with their hit-making days, but can faithfully fill in and recreate those parts just like the original.

Many of these Classic Rock bands have only 1 or 2 original members, and some have none. Even worse, some of the bands who still tour are legally fighting the original members who made the band name popular in the first place as they come back & try to reclaim their audience after selling out their stakes in the band to others who in many cases had nothing to do with the original band, but legally own the name.

Cases in point:

• CCR is actually now Creedence Clearwater REVISITED, not Revival. That because John Fogerty left the band in the 70s and has never looked back, but the original bassist & drummer saw an opportunity to move forward & make a living by refurbishing the band name, hiring somewhat-soundalike musicians & continue touring even though John still tours solo & is the de facto CCR concert to see.
• Boston is simply Tom Scholz, which coincidentally played virtually all the instruments in the first place in the studio. The original “band” before they got their record deal with Jim Masdea on drums, Brad Delp doing all vocals, and Tom Scholz playing everything else & producing & engineering it. He put together a band simply out of necessity. To this day, he’s the only one left, and the new singer not only sounds very close to Brad Delp, he even looks like him. Tom found the singer Tommy DeCarlo when Tommy was working at Home Depot in NC & posting his vocals on My Space.
• Foreigner is a true zombie band as it currently has NO original members left who played on any of the recordings in the 70s or 80s. The band is owned by the man who started it, original guitarist Mick Jones, and he quit playing full-time with them in 2012 following heart surgery. He now does one-off appearances with the band. They’ve recently announced their farewell tour, but we’ve seen more than once that the term “farewell tour” is just a fraudulent marketing ploy to sell more tickets.
• Styx is led by James “JY” Young, who is the only original member, though Styx really took off when Tommy Shaw was added in 1975 and who has been in the band now for 48 years (as of 2023). The originial bassist Chuck Panozzo left the band in 1999 & sits in with them from time to time at certain gigs, though he’s listed as a current member who shares bass duties with the other bassist Ricky Phillips who is essentially the “first chair” bassist.
• Blood Sweat & Tears is a true zombie band as well. The band name is owned by the original drummer Bobby Colomby, and well over 100 musicians have played in the band to-date. American Idol runner-up Bo Bice toured with them as lead singer for about 5 years in their best incarnation since the 60s.
• Chicago managed to retain 4 original members for 50 years until the recent retiring of Walt Parazaider on sax in 2018. However, latter-day members Bill Champlin (28 years) & Jason Scheff (31 years) managed to hang there quite a long time & appeared on their 80s hits (Scheff took over for Peter Cetera in 1985). They’re now a 9-piece act with 3 original members, and that’s great compared to the others on this list.
• The Grass Roots still exists with all new members after the death of singer Rob Grill in 2011, but in many cases it’s just 2 of the 4 current guys and they perform with the Happy Together tour band backing them up from time to time. However, they were a zombie band from way back as the entire band was changed out for new members right before their heyday in the late 60s.
• Lynyrd Skynyrd had 1 original member left in Gary Rossington for the longest time & he’s recently died here in 2023. At least they have the brother of the original singer, but they’ve stopped touring and just do the occasional gig, but why? Just keep the band going with new members as it’s a cash cow, which we know since the original singer’s wife has been fighting with the band over money & performing rights issues for 35 years now including a dispute over a film about the band as recently as 2016. The band pays her & the wife of another band member who died in the plane crash when they earn revenue, so why stop that ATM from working?
• The Little River Band is one of the more litigious zombie bands out there. In the latter days of their recording history, they brought in Wayne Nelson on bass (who sang “Night Owls”) and guitarist Stephen Housden, who is a smart man to at least some degree. As the band fell apart and lost its record deal, the grind of touring was too much and the reminaing original members sold their stakes to Housden in what was a shrew business move, thinking the name & group would mean nothing in the future, but the band continues to tour to this day with a lineup that consists of hired musicians including Nelson on bass, who is also a hired member actually by Housden. The 3 main singers/members (as “BSG” – Birtles, Shorrock & Goble) have tried suing Housden & getting court orders against him to no avail, and they can’t seem to keep their own newer act together probably due to logistics since Birtles has lived in the USA for 30 years now and maybe other problems older musicians tend to have. 1970s band Player singer/guitarist Barry Beckett is a former “hired gun” as well for them at times.
• The Guess Who is technically not a zombie band, but close enough when all that’s left is your drummer who sang none of the hit songs. In 1972, original bassist Jim Kale was even smarter than Housden (see above) and found out that the band name had never even been trademarked, which he did promptly thereafter at very little cost, and for 50 years he’s been the sole owner of the band name. Everybody has quit the band at one point or another including Kale himself before he trademarked the name, but Kale hired all new musicians & hit the road as The Guess Who and has done so for the last 50 years to this day. Kale got back together with original drummer Garry Peterson in 1987, and now that Kale himself has retired as of 2016, only Garry Peterson is left, but Kale still owns the name & the band still tours. They got back together with Bachman & Cummings for a short while, then went back out as the zombie band, which screwed up the value of the reunion band, which had to stop playing together as Kale made the band’s value too small. You can’t ask $50,000+ if you’re playing $5,000 to $10,000 gigs elsewhere under the same name. UPDATE: In 2024, Burton Cummings figured out a way to stop the zombie band by withdrawing the performing rights of his songs. He lost quite a bit of revenue for a few months, but it forced the zombie band to stop doing his songs, which means they couldn’t play concerts, which meant they had to break up. Cummings was able to purchase the rights back relatively cheaply after that. This is a tactic that the former members of the Little River Band may employ soon.
  
  Imagine a future where every band is like Foreigner, Blood Sweat & Tears or Little River Band and lives forever with all new members. Essentially official tribute bands. What about bands where the original members are all dead or have no interest in touring?:
  
• The Cars tried to revive themselves without their 2 main singers, you know, the 2 guys who had been friends since high school who started the band together. At the time, bassist Ben Orr had been dead for a few years from cancer, and Ric Ocasek & drummer David Robinson had no interest in touring, so guitarist Elliot Easton & keyboardist Greg Hawkes brought in Todd Rundgren on vocals & guitar, plus his musical often-partner Kasim Sultan on vocals & bass who was in Utopia with Todd, and The Tubes drummer Prairie Prince, and they called it The New Cars. It only lasted 1 year. Why couldn’t they simply get some nobody guys who sound like Ocasek & Orr & go on tour again? Lots of people want to hear The Cars.
• The Knack is another act that could go forward if they would replace Doug Fieger & Bruce Gary who both died. Who doesn’t like My Sharona?
• Badfinger still exists as Joey Molland’s Badfinger, but why not keep the band moving forward with new blood as Joey’s getting long in the tooth? The other 3 orignal members are long gone, so who’s going to complain?
  
  This list could go on & on & on . . .

Notice how people grab onto fads in order to feel like they’re part of the crowd? Like they’re as smart as the rest of those others who started & participate in the fad, and smarter than you. They also want to feel like they’re part of the group, and they want everybody else to know they are. Fads happen because of narcissism & groupthink.

One big fad going around is how when a family member dies, 3 things will be said:

1. “He died surrounded by loved ones”, or “friends and family”.
2. “The cause of death was not disclosed”
3. “The family requests privacy at this time”

What does all of this really mean? It’s basically parroting of what they’ve heard others say, like they have an obligation to say them also, but there’s more to it than just that.

What they’re really saying is . . .

1) This person was special because he had family & friends who were there when he died, so people who don’t die with family & friends present is a total loser. So if you die of a heart attack or stroke by yourself, or a car accident, you’re a loser. Also, if you chose not to have kids, or they died before you, or you’re not married, and you die alone in a hospital or under hospice care, again, you’re a loser. At least that’s what they’re conveying by codespeak. There are people who were very successful in life who chose not to have kids or chose not to marry or get remarried, and they don’t have anyone present when they died except caregivers. Doesn’t make them losers. Having friends and family doesn’t make you a winner in life.

2) Typically, when the cause of death is not disclosed, it’s usually something embarassing. Suicide, drugs, alcohol, misadventure (like auto-erotic asphyxiation), or AIDS – that’s the top 5. For instance, Jimmy Buffett just died a day before I wrote this, and it turns out that the guy who was known for being the #1 beach dude of all time died from a rare form of skin cancer called Merkel Cell Carcinoma that invaded his lymphatic system. You typically get skin cancer from sun exposure, like . . . at the beach. I don’t think the overwhelmingly ignorant majority of Americans or his mostly-ignorant hedonistic fans would’ve put 2 & 2 together on that as they probably wouldn’t have figured out that MCC is skin cancer, but the family apparently thought they would & that it would be an embarrassment & kept it a secret, but as much fun as the beach is, hanging around outside in the tropical weather of Florida especially without sunscreen is a very bad idea, as is drinking alcohol while doing so, but hey, you only live once — until you die.

3) The family requesting privacy actually means the opposite — they want you to keep talking about the person who died as they’re connected to them & that makes them feel important, and saying they want privacy is their way of saying they’re part of this particular inner circle, and you aren’t, so you’re not as important as them.

People are so full of crap.

First off, I’m not a crazy Democrat who wore a mask during the COVID years except when I had to in order to enter a business, and I don’t believe they worked at all unless they were N95 and worn properly. The problem with that is the people who wore those took them off just long enough to get infected, usually by a friend or family member. 99.99% of the masks worn by people did not work properly as needed to contain the spread of the virus.

I also knew that the odds of catching a typical airborne virus like the common cold or the flu via a contaminated surface were infantessimal, almost non-existant unless an infected person coughed into their hand, rubbed something, then you lick that surface almost immediately thereafter. The common cold, the flu and COVID are all airborne transmitted 99.99% of the time.

Shutting down any businesses over COVID was a tremendous mistake that will be borne out by history in the long run. They tried that with the Spanish Flu in the 1920s & again with Polio for 50 years thru the 1950s & it didn’t work with them either. Look at all the gyms & theaters & entertainment businesses that were destroyed by the shutdowns and the lives of the people connected to them that were shattered, and most of it was done for political purposes & borne of ignorance.

Look at all the money wasted by the gov’t through COVID handouts. We’re talking trillions of dollars. Look at all the inflation & supply chain problems caused by it. Our response to COVID is something I hope is never repeated by any society ever.

Now that I’ve established my position on COVID, which is thouroughly Republican & Libertarian, there is something that some of my bretheren on this side of the fence need to know & believe, and I’ll prove it with 1 stat that can’t be argued against . . .

COVID was real, and it killed a lot of people that otherwise wouldn’t have died. I’ll tell you why, but let me first discuss the facts about COVID deaths.

It’s true that many people who died from a COVID infection didn’t die from the infection itself, but from the fatal side effects of having the infection. That;’s why a lot of people who died where old, overweight, diabetic or sickly, as in cancer patients and those with compromised immune systems, many times from the drugs they were using to combat another illness. Some drugs that combat illnesses also lower your immune response and leave you vulnerable to illness from other sources. I had a friend who was taking a med for a toenail infection and got a staph infection because the med lowered his immune response & he almost died.

However, just because they died from the side effects doesn’t mean that COVID didn’t kill them. These are people who wouldn’t have died had they not contracted COVID, so COVID is at least the underlying cause of death, if not the main cause, and it’s still a COVID death. If you’re a hemophiliac, you might die if you are injured and bleed to death, but it’s not the hemophilia that killed you — it’s the injury that killed you, as you can live with hemophilia if you don’t get injured. What killed you was the injury, not the hemophilia.

Here’s the proof — let’s start In 2010. That year, 2.468 million people died, and it was expected as that’s the number of people who died the previous year plus a small expected percentage increase caused by an increase in population and/or an increase in flu-related deaths, which fluctuate pretty wildly from year to year. Some years the flu deaths are maybe 20,000 and then expand to 80,000 the next year. The US death toll increased every year from 2010 onward as it did before that. The increases are typically an average of 42,000 per year, and range from a low of 15,000 to as much as 86,000, which are flu-related.

In 2019, 2.854 million died. In 2020, the death rate increased 535,000 over the 2019 total to 3.390 million. Those extra deaths had to be caused by something, and it was COVID. In 2021, the increase was 552,000 more than 2019 to 3.417 million. In 2022, COVID incidence declined greatly and it was 3.271 million that year, which is an increase of 417,000 from 2019, but if you realive that we had increases in deaths of as much as 69,000 in 2017 & 86,000 in 2015, it seems that a bad flu year would be maybe add 70,000 more deaths over the normal increase of 15,000 per year (the low annual increase in 2019), so deducting that figure from the pre-COVID increase of 417,000, then adjusting for population increases means that the COVID-related 2022 deaths were probably closer to a 100,000 excess vs average 475,000 excess in 2020 & 2021. Keep in mind that 2022 total deaths were appx 120,000 less than 2021, and net population increased appx 2 million per year in non-COVID years.

COVID is & was real. There is no other logical explanation to account for the death rates experienced during the COVID years.

Will we have another global pandemic soon? I don’t think so as we’ve learned how to contain them better, and these global infections are pretty rare. We had them in 1958, 1968 & 2009 as flu outbreaks, the worst was the 1918 outbreak. I don’t think we’ll see something on the magnitude of COVID ever again with what we’ve learned, and nothing will come close for probably another 100 years.

Currently there is a big issue regarding Bud Light that have led a large segment of Americans to stop drinking it because of politics and fear. It’s absurd at best and misguided & incorrect at worst.

Let me preface this by saying I don’t agree with transgenderism. If you’re a gay man, you should simply be a gay man and not try to look like a woman or have surgery to effect that. If you’re trying to attract a man, that means your market is gay men, and they like men, not women, and straight males will not want you as it’s usually quite clear that you used to be a man as the surgery & transformation typically isn’t that good, although I admit I’ve seen some transgendered men-to-women that were pretty convincing as women, but presumably only until they open their mouth, or their legs.

Bud LIght gave a commemorative can to a guy who is living his life as a transgendered woman. The can had his picture on it. 1 can. There was no pronouncement or announcement of this by Bud Light, just a comporation trying to make an extra buck by finding a new market in which to sell their product. They did not endorse transgenderism nor come out against it — they’re just trying to sell beer to more people.

Thousands of companies target ads & products to the LGBT community. Are we to boycott them as well? And why are we boycotting them? What’s wrong with selling goods & services to the LGBT community? They’re buying what they need from tens of thousands of companies daily.

Whay don’t we boycott Dollar General & Walmart? Have you seen the trash that shops there? Granted, I shop at Walmart, but I’m not their core market. Does this mean that Walmart & Dollar General support trailer-trash, welfare mamas & other losers simply because they market to & sell goods to them? Of course, not. They’re just out to make a buck off that core group of Americans.

What does it even mean to support or not support the LGBT community? What does it matter to you if someone is LGBT? It’s not a learned trait, you know. You’re born LGBT whether you recognize it early on or not. It’s not a birth defect; it’s no different than being born with red hair or green eyes or being left-handed, all of which are in the minority in our society. It means nothing in and of itself unless you use religion to make a big deal of it to oppose it, but what are you opposing? You can’t turn someone gay anymore than you can turn someone straight. LGBT people are no more deviant in behavior that the straight population. Being different isn’t deviant.

Buy a Bud Light, or a Miller Lite, or shop at Target, or do whatever is you did prior to all this anti-LGBT boycott crap. You’ll be boycotting thousands of companies in the long run, including your favorite grocery store, and your own goverment, which pays out Social Security & Medicare/Medicaid benefits to tens of thousands of LGBT members, and your local government services which protect them just as they do you.

Perhaps you recall the 80’s movie Ghostbusters and the catchphrase from the movie’s theme song that I used as the title of this entry. More concisely put, I’m not afraid of ghosts for one reason — they do not exist, never have & never will.

That’s because there is no such thing as the afterlife for those who die. No heaven, no hell, nothing. All religion is total hogwash if they’re preaching belief in a god or an afterlife or anything spiritual. The only afterlife that occurs is the people who go on living after the life of someone else ends.

Did you know that there are no writings abourt Jesus during his lifetime, and the first of which did appear were some 25 years after his alleged life/death by someone who had never met him? Did you know that there were many religions that came before Christianity that made the same claims as it, such as the messiah, the rise of the dead, the son of a god-like being, etc? One count I read was that there were soms 27 different long-dead religions that had the same messiah story before Christianity.

There are writings about Jesus outside of the Gospels, but the one thing Chrstians can’t honestly answer in the affirmative is why there are no writings about Jesus during or immedately after his lifetime. If he were so well-known, surely these contemporary writings would exist. There are none anywhere near it, and I mean none within 2, 5, 10 years of it either in the Gospels or secularly. If Paul was a follower very close Jesus’ time of death, surely he would have written about it long before he did. Wouldn’t you? Wouldn’t somebody?

What does it mean to not have any writings about Jesus during his lifetime? It’s a big deal, and it goes a long way toward disproving the idea of Jesus existing at all. These are called “contemporary writings”, meaning the writing about the subject happened while the subject existed. i.e, the writings occurred before, or at least just after the alleged Jesus’ death. When I say “just after”, I mean within a few months of it on the outside. Giving the leeway of 25 years after his alleged life ended is ridiculous as we’re probably dealing with second & third-hand accounts at best. People back then didn’t live very long, many dying in the 20’s & 30’s if they lived that long. Modern medicine wasn’t there to save them, and a common ailment today could easily kill you if we didn’t have drugs & vaccines & sterilization procedures for them.

Keep in mind that there are tons of writings about people who lived in Judah during Jesus’s time, and of people and places that existing thousands of years earlier & thereafter. The Hebrew Torah was written that long before the Jesus tale allegedly happened, and the 1st 5 books of the 24 books of the Torah is the 1st 5 books of the Christian bible. Yes, the Jewish “Bible” is part of the Christian bible, which Christians know as the Old Testament — Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers & Deuteronomy. By the way, Judisam is just as full of crap as the other religions are — and you thought Jews were highly-intelligent people?!? Truly intelligent people don’t believe in religion.

We have evidence of writings by The Sumerians who occupied part of Iraq 3,400 years before the Christ story was invented. Did you study Mesopotamia in grade school? That’s what George W. Bush started blowing up in 2003 — Mesopotamia was in what we call Iraq today, and it was developed by the Sumerians & Akkadians. It was the first evidence of a modern civilization between the Tigris & Euphrates rivers. Writing has been around for over millenniums before the Christ saga was written, so this wasn’t a new concept.

It’s true that many writings have been lost to time, such as those of Plato & Socrates, but we know they exised because they were written about by their students during their lifetimes & immediately thereafter. As I said earlier, the 1st person to write about Jesus was Paul some 25 years after Jesus’ alleged death. Adding to that fact that the Jesus story is simply a plagiarism of many other preceeding religions make the whole story completely untrustworthy.

In Christ’s alleged lifetime, there are plenty of writings about King Herod The Great & his son, also known King Herod, the latter of which was in control of Judah during Jesus’ lifetime, which is how we know Herod The Great. The bible mentions him as do plenty of secular writings from the time when the Herods were alive. There are plenty of writings about Julius Caesar while he was alive that exist.

If Jesus existed and was a major player in a religious movement during his lifetime or immediately preceding his death , there would suriving secular writtings of this alleged fact, but none exist. I rest my case and conclude that the Jesus story, and therefore the entirty of Christianity, is a complete lie & the greatest B.S. story ever told and believed. The Jesus Mythology is what it is.

Alabama Governor Kay Ivey has recently made a purely political move in ordering that State offices/agencies are not to follow the Federal vaccine mandates handed down by President Biden.

I agree that people should in theory have the liberty to accept or deny the vaccine, but in practice, it doesn’t work, and there are many instances where our government and numerous others have required vaccines by government mandate, and they are all a good idea.

The rationale used by the Republicans who refuse the vaccine is the doctrine of personal liberty, which is a fallacy if you believe you have this liberty 100% of the time. I can prove it that you don’t have 100% personal liberty here or anywhere in the world.

You can’t stand up in a crowded theater and yell “fire”. You also can’t send your kids to school without the mandated vaccines. There are many countries (including ours) that won’t let you in and/or out if you don’t have certain vaccines.

The Covid vaccine has been given to appx 3 Billion people worldwide as of Oct 2021. That’s 38% of the planet, and this vaccine has been in use for 2 years now. It’s safer and more effective than many other vaccines given. The flu vaccine is only about 40% to 60% effective in stopping the flu, but we encourage it because it’s the best tool we have to control the flu, and if you get the shot & get the flu anyway, its symptoms are not life-threatening.

What’s happened is that the Covid vaccine has simply gotten tribalized/politicized. 58% of Americans have been vaccinated as of Oct 2021. People who show up at hospitals with Covid symptoms are typically either those who haven’t been vaccinated, or who are old or frail/sickly. Anybody who hasn’t gotten a vaccine is making a choice not rooted in the facts and evidence and simply made for political reasons or fear.

As for Gov. Ivey, asking the state to not obey a Federal order may be tantamount to treason in my opinion and at the very least is probably unlawful, but what is the law is determined by judges who have a policital bent. Politics is the problem everywhere with everything. It’s strictly a political move and will surely not work.

There is no evidence that any human beings’ beginnings were here in the USA. The evidence so far has concluded that the so-called Native Americans were actually migratory people who came here from other lands, typically via the ancient Alaska-Russia land bridge, and by boat from South America, Africa, Europe, Nordic Countries, and even from South Pacific islands. They discovered the land first, but that doesn’t mean they have an inherent right to it.

This is my argument:

1. Since all human beings who came here were from somewhere else, no one is truly indigenous, and therefore, nobody has a sacred indigenous right to America by virtue of being FROM here vs ARRIVING here first, assuming you believe that indigenous people have an inherent right to land ownership, which they don’t.

2. The ownership of land has different tenets depending on who’s promulgating them. Native Americans typically went the socialist route where all land was controlled by the tribe and there was no fee simple ownership of real estate by any member of the tribe, but each had a leasehold estate in the spot where their teepee was placed, and they owned their own personal belongings, wagons & horses. The tribe had a non-elected council with a council-elected chief who controlled the tribe, and they decided that the tribal council owns the land. Keep in mind they didn’t mean every person had a mutual interest; it meant that the tribal members could use the land under the supervision & at the pleasure of the tribal council. This is a basis of our current city government except that in our government, the people are the government, but we elect officials to run it, and those officials have to abide by laws set by other legislators. They have limits as to what powers they have and what that can tell you to do. The tribe councils had no checks & balances & could decree anything they wanted, even those that would violate what we call now our civil rights. The Native Americans practiced a true form of Socialism, where as we limit the power of goverment for obvious reasons.

3. History (and equity) have shown us that the true ownership of land belongs to those who can take it & hold it. Europena settlers came to America & took the land they wanted typically by force (though some land was procured by treaties). British armies took lands in many countries to become part of their empire a few hundred years ago as did the Romans & Mongols & Babalonians & many others centuries earlier. Around 600 to 750 BC, the current area known as Israel & the West Bank were controlled by Hebrews, then overrun by Arabs, and also Greeks & Romans & others have controlled the area at different times. Lately, the Arabs claim the land is inherently theirs, although currently it’s all controlled by the Jews, as they’ve been able to take & hold the land just as other countries have done the same in their own history. Besides that, the people calling themselves “Palestinians” have never been in control of that area ever, be it the current state of Israel or Gaza Strip or The West Bank, so where’s the “inherent right” there?

All of this furthers my opinion that “Native” Americans are not actually native to this continent and have no right to own this land any more than any other people in the world. Land rightfully belongs to any group that can take & hold it, as history has proven every time. There is no “inherent” right to land ownership.

The unvaccinated Americans are now overwhelmingly Republican, which is unusual for a number of reasons. For one, they claim to be smarter than the average bear, and if that’s true, smart people believe in & go with science. But then again, these same Repiublicans believe there’s bearded old white man in the sky that controls life as we know it, so i don’t lend any stock to them being smarter.

The vaccine was created under a Republican president. Trump was our leader when the vaccine was developed & first rolled out to front-line workers in the war on Covid. The plan to get America vaccinated began on Trump’s watch, and the methodology behind getting the vaccine out was a Trump-era plan. Biden has little or nothing to do with getting Americans vaccinated even though the plan didn’t kick in until after he was inaugerated. It simply took that long to get the plan in gear.

But what’s really appalling are the number of Republican politicians who have been vaccinated, but are creating an undercurrent of non-compliance to the vaccine in the Republican fan base. I call it a “fan base” because they’re loaded with fanatics — watch the January 6, 2021 Capital videos on YouTube if you dispute that. The GOP pols are telling people that they have the right to deny the vaccine, which paints the vaccine in a negative light, even though the is currently no effort to mandate vaccines, which would not be unique as we currently require kids who enter public schools to have been vaccinated against certain diseases.

To date (July 25, 2021), Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, Steve Scalise, Tommy Tuberville, and Fox owner Rupert Murdoch have all gotten the Covid vaccine, as have many other GOP pols. These are the leaders of the party & some of the most conservative members of it, yet they continue to muddy the waters and tell people “it’s your choice”. Sure, it’s also your choice if you want to jump off a tall building, but that doesn’t make it a good idea. Instead of gving people reasons to not take the vaccine, they should be telling people to not make excuses & to believe what the CDC & WHO are telling you to do becuase they use science to come to conclusions and they’re smarter than you about this, and probably most everything else you think you know.

One big issue is the pseudoscience behind antibodies after infection. The majority of the ignorant Republican fan base (and many of its GOP pols) believe that the antibodies acquired via Covid infection are enough to protect you against a 2nd bout, and the science behind this opinion is that it’s 100% not true and completely against it. Sen Rand Paul has said he would not get the vaccine due to his bout with Covid. But many people have gotten Covid twice, as quickly as appx 2 months later, and the antibodies from infection typically decay quickly, whereas the antibodies from vaccination are long-lasting — the CDC says we may not even need a booster shot anytime soon.

Here’s another irony I haven’t seen mentioned yet, but the Republican’s want the government to mandate a woman’s right to do what she wants with her body, in that case abortion, but they don’t want the government mandating a vaccine that has been proven safe & will save them from a Covid death. ignoring that science and facts is not an intelligent decision. Keep in mind this is the party that’s tough & fearless & wants to go to war with anybody & everybody, but they’re afraid of a vaccine. We’d still have polio & smallpox ravaging us if these same people had been in charge years ago. Smallpox was eradicated & polio hasn’t been a problem for the USA since the 50s.

This virus will never be contained if we fail to believe in science and ignore the call to get a Covid vaccine. Just like the business closures, this issue should never have been politicized.