Free Republic

As those of you here may know, The Pat Metheny Group has been a big part of my music listening life for over 40 years now. So when I heard the news this morning that he had passed on, to say I was devastated by the news, would be an understatement. What he and Pat Metheny created together over the years was pure magic and cannot be duplicated. Pat has played with other Pianists, but it's just not the same. See you "On the Way Up!" Lyle.

February 12 2020 Wednesday of the Fifth Week in Ordinary Time Reading 1 1 Kgs 10:1-10 The queen of Sheba, having heard of Solomon’s fame, came to test him with subtle questions. She arrived in Jerusalem with a very numerous retinue, and with camels bearing spices, a large amount of gold, and precious stones. She came to Solomon and questioned him on every subject in which she was interested. King Solomon explained everything she asked about, and there remained nothing hidden from him that he could not explain to her.When the queen of Sheba witnessed Solomon’s great wisdom, the...

Lyle Mays, a keyboardist, composer and orchestrator who helped carve a new channel for contemporary jazz with The Pat Metheny Group, died on Monday in Los Angeles. He was 66. His niece, jazz vocalist Aubrey Johnson, announced his death on social media, noting that he passed away “surrounded by loved ones, after a long battle with a recurring illness.” [excerpt]

His stepfather, Carsten Jensen, said on Facebook that Coleman “collapsed without prior health problems” during a trip. Coleman was born in London and appeared in several movies as a child, including “The Fourth Kind” and “It’s Alive.” He was best known for playing Eric Brown, aged 11, in the 2005 British comedy movie “Nanny McPhee,” alongside Emma Thompson, Colin Firth and Angela Lansbury. His former castmate, Eliza Bennett, said she was “heartbroken” at the news. “After we worked on Nanny McPhee, he dedicated his life to protecting wildlife and fighting climate change,” she wrote. He became an active member of...

Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has won the New Hampshire primary, Fox News projects, catapulting the 78-year-old self-described democratic socialist to the front of the still-crowded Democratic presidential primary field.

Several days ago, I proposed that China's big lie regarding the Coronavirus wasn't downplaying its contagiousness or deadliness, but the opposite: because the Coronavirus had run rampant through Hubei before they acknowledged it, they were under-reporting cases, and therefore the death rate looked so much worse. And because they had failed to distinguish the Coronavirus from the flu, many cases where people got the Coronavirus despite strong preventitive measures were actually cases where they had been exposed much earlier to "flu." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_the_2019%E2%80%9320_Wuhan_coronavirus_outbreak Whatever the reasons, I identified the Coronavirus as in decline, despite the hysterics of the media... at least...

Tesla is getting more aggressive in revoking paid software features on used cars, raising the stakes in a battle over what used Teslas can do that has raged for years. ... The entire Autopilot package, which the car had when the dealer bought it, costs an extra $8,000. Then, Tesla remotely removed the software because “Full-Self Driving was not a feature that you had paid for.” Tesla said if the customer wanted Autopilot back, he’d have to fork over the $8,000. The Model X performance package costs $20,000 more than the standard version, so, in effect, Tesla remotely disabled a...

Mike Bloomberg defended stop and frisk: "I think we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little. It's exactly the reverse of what they're saying. I don't know where they went to school but they certainly didn't take a math course or a logic course." ...

It should be obvious by now, even for the semi-attentive, that USG elections are fixed. This arrangement failed stupendously in 2016 and the establishment has spent the last three years trying to unseat an elected president they revile and want to be removed from office, even if the interloper must be assassinated. Now that the dysfunctional efforts by Democrats to remove Trump by way of impeachment have failed, the president may indeed have an unfortunate accident or be offed by a “lone wolf” patsy if it looks like he will be reelected. The establishment desperately needs to insert one of...

Former Vice President Joe Biden brushed off lackluster early returns in the New Hampshire presidential primary on Tuesday, saying that it was time to look at more diverse states such as Nevada and South Carolina for guidance in the Democratic nominating contest. “It is important that Iowa and Nevada have spoken, but, look, we need to hear from Nevada and South Carolina and Super Tuesday and beyond,” Biden told a crowd of supporters at a rally in Columbia, S.C. Biden’s speech came as votes in New Hampshire’s Democratic primary were still being counted. He left the Granite State earlier on...

The Pannenjet 737 Max continues to create a depressed mood at Boeing. According to the official website of the US aviation giant, the group did not receive a single aircraft order in January. The last time sales were so bleak was in 1962. At Boeing, deliveries looked poor at the beginning of the year: only 13 aircraft were delivered to customers handed over, including six 787 Dreamliners, The European archrival Airbus, on the other hand, has already received 274 orders for new transport jets and is therefore continuing to pull away. In 2019, Boeing even lost its bottom line for...

Shaniqua Davis, it’s not McDonald’s fault that you chose to become an unmarried, teenage mother Recently, McDonald’s employees have been going on strike to try to get paid $15 an hour. Associated Press reports:Shaniqua Davis, 20, lives in the Bronx with her boyfriend, who is unemployed, and their 1-year-old daughter. Davis has worked at a McDonald’s a few blocks from her apartment for the past three months, earning $7.25 an hour. Her schedule varies, but she never gets close to 40 hours a week. “Forty? Never. They refuse to let you get to that (many) hours.”Her weekly paycheck is $150 or...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ru4SVUlNfMY

Elizabeth Warren admitted defeat in New Hampshire Tuesday night. She claimed to be still plotting a path forward for her presidential campaign, but, at this point, it has nowhere left to go. With results still coming in, MSNBC has projected that Warren will come out of the primary with zero delegates. At best, she'll be in a distant fourth, well behind Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, and Amy Klobuchar. This was a disastrous night for Warren on top of an already lackluster showing in Iowa last week.

SAN DIEGO (KGTV) — An evacuee who tested positive for the coronavirus in San Diego was mistakenly released back into quarantine because their test sample was mislabeled. Four evacuees were brought from MCAS Miramar to UC San Diego Medical Center and provided samples for testing within the last week. Three of those four samples were not labeled in compliance with the same regulations between UC San Diego Health and the CDC, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention spokesperson. Because of this, when the samples were brought to the CDC in Atlanta, three of them were not immediately...

In 1969, the height of the Sixties’ cultural revolution, Pew found that only 12 percent of Americans supported the legalization of pot. Fifty years later, 67 percent of voters support it. Virtually every candidate on the Democratic presidential slate backs some form of marijuana legalization. Even the Trump administration has left states to manage their own business on the matter. This year, at least one candidate supports going further and decriminalizing all drugs. On Sunday, Fox News’ Chris Wallace pushed Iowa caucus winner Pete Buttigieg to explain his support for the “decriminalization” of all narcotics. First, he asked Buttigieg whether...

Last summer I posted about my prostate cancer predicament. Opted for radical prostatectomy (robotic) and found a good surgeon in the North Dallas/Irving area. Three month follow up PSA: 0.04, just below “undetectable” Six month follow up PSA: >0.02, lower limit of “undetectable” Praise God! I was really having a hard year because of this. Now almost completely continent, and “It” is coming back :) Thanks to FReepers who’ve been praying and counseling me on this trial.

President Trump said Tuesday he didn’t speak to the Justice Department about the sentencing of longtime confidante Roger Stone after department officials took the unusual step of reconsidering his recommended punishment and all four federal prosecutors withdrew from the case. The president said the federal prosecutors’ initial recommendation of a prison term of seven to nine years for Stone was “ridiculous” and “an insult to our country.” “I thought the whole prosecution was ridiculous,” Mr. Trump told reporters. “It shouldn’t happen.” The Justice Department said Tuesday it will take the extraordinary step of lowering the amount of prison time it...

The sameness of the words conservative and conservation shows where the future of environmentalism lies.