Equality

I hope some of the fine listeners and followers of Bob Dorr’s great rock and roll history show came here from the plug he allowed me as I guested today. I have some disagreements with IPR viewpoints but none of us are actually bad, just misguided. Our mutual interests should help us learn and get along and make things better, right?

I’d guess a lot of you find a mutual interest in this incredible band and T-Bone Walker. We took our son and his friend, both high school trumpet players to Iowa City to see Dizzy not too long before he perished. He’d seen better days but the band was mesmerizingly talented and together.

Check out this ultimate crossover collaboration with Walker having a blast and the boys in the band grooving along with history:

Norman Granz “Jazz at the Philharmonic” Poplar Town Hall, UK Weds 30th November 1966 – BBC TV “Woman, You Must Be Crazy” (Aaron Walker) “Goin’ To Chicago Blues” (Aaron Walker) w/ Dizzy Gillespie, Teddy Wilson, Louis Bellson, Clark Terry, Coleman Hawkins, Zoot Sims, Jimmy Moody, Benny Carter and Bob Cranshaw.

Are you under your desk? As a child of the Cold War years I distinctly remember huddling under my desk at school when the siren went off. I wondered at the time if the kids in Hiroshima were under theirs when we supposedly couldn’t end World War II without the atomic bombs.

How silly to believe such a thing would protect us from that awesome power. And how silly was it to believe that a country with a Second Amendment could be overrun and and dominated by Japan. Military power is an amazing thing; a guy thing where we marvel at the technology and efficiency such as the ramping-up of our industrial capacity in answer to the Axis threat.

It is interesting to note that as we decimated Japan and Germany it wasn’t long until I saw my first Toyota Corona (hmm). Economic signals of a trend toward economy and usefulness were overshadowed by the devastation of two industrial competitors, and Detroit let down her guard.

Intervention in nature, whether financial or organic, always leads to unnecessary setbacks. The human body has faced constant change in viruses as evidenced by the failure to produce an effective flu vaccine or any vaccine for the common cold. Think of the goldmine that would exist for drug companies if these vaccines were developed. It has been tried.

That failure has lead to a generally accepted idea of mandatory vaccinations. When business fails in this country they always seem to beg for government to rip off the people to produce profit. Of course this was inevitable in light of the dependence that has developed on government as a convenient replacement for honest and natural human interaction.

As a diversion from reality, face masks are being touted as a viable obstacle to the spread of corona virus. In the case of face masks, extensive randomized controlled trial studies have shown that the particles of corona virus are too small to be stopped by paper masks, much less bandannas. The masks mostly serve the same purpose as a bumper sticker. They say, “I’m good,” that’s about it. It’s the same with random crowd size limits or social distancing guidelines.

None of these efforts can compete with one of God’s great gifts, natural evolution of our body’s complex interaction with the world around it. Stick a mask on, stay isolated, chant prayers all you want, we can’t outguess Mother Nature.

As we wage this war against the virus in May, Military Appreciation Month, it is good to look at the big picture. Politicians have been using our military to intervene where it benefits donors, not the general welfare of the people. We see this new war, the one against the virus, and it is looking like a vaccine promotion program and a campaign fundraiser. The governor of New York included in his order to stop forcing nursing homes to take infected patients a provision giving immunity to executives who make bad decisions in medical facilities. The association representing those executives have given Andrew Cuomo’s campaign for governor over $1 million.

Over the past Memorial Day weekend Martha MacCallum asked a 95-year old Marine veteran of World War II what he thought he was fighting for. He said something about freedom and the privilege of living in a free country, “except for the last two months.”

Our military would do us a great favor if they seriously considered what freedom is and looked at our own country.

I’ll take a leisurely ride up a gravel road or even some carving of timbered woods anyday. But these guys are Danny Macaskill with a death wish:

It’s kinda weird to find comfort in hearing somebody burst into tears because they are laid off, getting unemployment and have lots of time to do nothing. But that’s what happened to me. On the other side of the coin is the universal basic income crowd. Really, is self esteem only a meaningless catch phrase now? Can one really be happy with their hand out and glad for the pandemic? I’ve heard it’s true. If so, it’s the end of a great experiment and a sign of failure. But then it was a beautiful day today.