Category: My Rants and Ramblings

A Few Words About –

On By myunfablifeIn My Rants and RamblingsLeave a comment

Magnesium Chloride liquid de-icer …..

 

 

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Those of you who live in Colorado , especially in the Denver Metro area are very familiar with this stuff. It’s been around for years and the Colorado Department of Transportation is especially generous in spewing this crap around every time the temps drop. 

While I’m sure that this keeps us all safe from turning our roads into maxi-luge runs, my little blue VW Bug Gretta hates it.  From about mid October until way into April I can’t keep her clean.  No matter how hard I try it’s like she’s been dipped into honey and every single piece of dirt/grime on the road gets stuck to her.  No amount of washing can get this stuff off.  Just when you think you’re safe, some idiot in front of you will try to text/eat/put on lipstick/shave/etc. and veer off the dry pavement onto the shoulder where it’s still wet and now i’m stuck looking through a windshield that’s almost black with grime and a blue car that is now some un-godly shade of post-modern gray.

I almost give up trying to get the shite off my car , but then one of those beautiful days come along in CO ( you know the ones i’m talking about , early February  , 70 degrees , t-shirt/jeans ) and i’ll think ” today is a great day to wash the car ! ” Then two days later the weather forcasters come out and say that maybe it will snow& here come the trucks dumping the Mag all over the streets again….  it’s a losing battle.

And don’t get me started on sand/gravel & cracked windshields …..

 

Today in (my) History –

On By myunfablifeIn My Rants and RamblingsLeave a comment

50th-birthday-gift-t-shirt-experience-400

 

seeing as today is my birthday, some fun ( and some squeamish facts ) :

Cost Of Living 1963

How Much things cost in 1963
Yearly Inflation Rate USA 1.24% 
Yearly Inflation Rate UK 1.8% 
Year End Close Dow Jones Industrial Average 762 Average Cost of new house $12,650.00 Average Income per year $5,807.00 Gas per Gallon 29 cents Average Cost of a new car $3,233.00 Loaf of bread 22 centsBedroom Air Conditioner $149.95
Below are some Prices for UK guides in Pounds Sterling
Average House Price 3,160 New Ford Cortina 675

 From Our 1963 Page Part of our 1960s Toys Selection of 250 Sixties Toys
Price: $29.25 
Troll Dolls From The 1960s

What Events Happened In 1963

U.S.

  • Indiana State Fair Coliseum Explosion kills 74
Kennedy Assassination

  • President John F Kennedy assassinated in the United States

More Information and Timeline For Kennedy Assassination
1. John F. Kennedy assassinated on Friday, November 22, 1963, in Dealey Plaza, Dallas, Texas
1a. 1:00 PM CST the 35th President of The United States John Fitzgerald Kennedy is declared dead at Parkland Hospital’s Trauma Room
2. Suspects description is given to Dallas Police
3. 13:35 CST Dallas police officer, J. D. Tippit called Lee Harvey Oswald ( Matches Suspects description ) over to the patrol car.
4. Lee Harvey Oswald shot and killed Dallas police officer, J. D. Tippit
5. 13:37 CST Oswald enters a nearby movie theater without buying a ticket
6. 13:40 CST Oswald is arrested by police officer, M.N. McDonald
7. Oswald is charged later that evening with the murder of President John F. Kennedy and Officer J. D. Tippit
8. Jack Ruby murders John F. Kennedy’s suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald During the transportation of Oswald from Dallas Police Headquarters to the Dallas County Jail on November 24th live on television.
9.President Lyndon Baines Johnson sworn in as President on Air Force One at Love Field Airport in Dallas just over two hours after President Kennedy assassinated
The ten-month investigation by the commission set up by President Lyndon Baines Johnson, The Warren Commission, 1963–1964, concluded that the President was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald acting alone and that Jack Ruby acted alone when he killed Oswald before he could stand trial Conspiracy theories are still expounded and discussed in books and the media nearly 50 years after the Kennedy Assassination and range from the The Soviet KGB to the United States CIA, 

World

  • World Religions status: 890 million Christians, 200 million Buddhists, 365 million Hindus, 13 million Jews
Beatlemania The Early Years

  • Beatles Release I Want To Hold Your Hand/I Saw Her Standing There and Meet the Beatles

More Information and Timeline For The Early Years of Beatlemania
1a. October 5th 1962 Beatles release first single in UK “Love Me Do” reached Number 17 in UK charts
1b. April 27th 1964 Beatles release single in U.S.A. “Love Me Do” reached Number 1 in US charts
2a. January 11th 1963 Beatles release second single in UK “Please Please Me” reached Number 1 in UK New Musical Express Chart
2b. February 25th 1963 Beatles release second single in U.S.A. “Please Please Me” with “Ask Me Why” on the B-side, no impact on US Charts
2c. January 3rd 1964 Beatles re-released single in U.S.A. “Please Please Me” with “From Me to You” on the B-side, reached number 3 in the US Hot 100
3a. November 29th 1963 Beatles release single “I Want to Hold Your Hand” with “This Boy” on the B-side which charts at Number 1 in UK
3b. November 29th 1963 Beatles release single “I Want to Hold Your Hand” with “I Saw Her Standing There” on the B-side which charts at Number 1 in the US Hot 100
4. Following TV shows, press interviews, and a weekly radio show in the UK the term Beatlemania is born
5. Beatlemania took hold in the United States after The Beatles performed live on The Ed Sullivan Show on Sunday February 9th, 16th and 23rd 1964
The Beatles could do no wrong from 1963 to when they split in late 1969 with fans accepting and embracing each change in music style, I was lucky enough to be a teenager in those years and looking back now 50 years later it was a great time in popular culture to be a teenager. 

Bangladesh

  • A hurricane and resulting Tsunami cause Flooding in East Pakistan Bangladesh kills 22,000
The Profumo Scandal

  • The Profumo Crisis in the UK causing resignations from the cabinet caused by war minister John Profumo having an affair with Christina Wheeler who was also involved with a Soviet Navy officer

More Information and Timeline For The Profumo Affair
1. 1961 John Profumo meets Christine Keeler, a London call girl at a house party at Cliveden, the Buckinghamshire mansion owned by Lord Astor.
2. July 1961 John Profumo begins affair with Christine Keeler
3. 1961 Christine Keeler is also sleeping with drug dealer Johnny Edgecombe
4. 1961 Christine Keeler is also having an affair with Yevgeni Ivanov, a naval attaché at the embassy of the Soviet Union
5. August 1961 Sir Roger Hollis head of MI5 asks Cabinet Secretary, Sir Norman Brook to talk to John Profumo to end relationship with Christine Keeler
6. 1962 Affair becomes public when press releases story
7. March 1963 John Profumo stated to the House of Commons that there was “no impropriety whatever” in his relationship with Keeler
8. June 5th 1963, John Profumo resigns following his admission that he had lied to the House re: relationship with Christine Keeler
Reading through this now seems pretty tame compared with many other scandals over the years but because of Soviet Connection, his role as Secretary of State for War and Christine Keeler’s other affairs with gangland figures and drug dealers it was a major news story. 

Haiti

  • Hurricane Flora a massive storm kills 6,000 in Haiti, Cuba, Trinidad, and Tobago, Grenada,
Studebaker Ends Production 

  • Studebaker the US Car Maker goes out of business and Ends production

More Information and Timeline For Studebaker
1. 1852 Studebaker Founded in South Bend, Indiana to produce wagons for farmers, miners, and the military
2. 1857 Studebaker begins making horse drawn wagons for the US Army
3. 1902 Studebaker begins making Electric vehicles
4. 1904 Studebaker began making gasoline-engined five-passenger touring cars in partnership with Garford
5. 1920’s Annual production capacity was 180,000 cars employing 23,000 staff
6. 1920’s multiple plants in Detroit, South Bend and Walkerville Canada
7. Great Depression Studebaker like many other car makers struggled following the Wall Street Crash of 1929 till the later 30’s
8. World War II Studebaker produced the Studebaker US6 truck and the M29 Weasel cargo and personnel carrier
9. World War II Studebaker produced the Studebaker US6 truck and the M29 Weasel cargo and personnel carrier
10. Early 1950’s Industry price war between Ford and General Motors leaves smaller manufacturers like Studebaker struggling to compete
11. 1954 Packard takes over Studebaker
12. 1963 December 20th South Bend plant produced its last Studebaker car in the United States
13. 1963 December 20th South Bend plant produced its last Studebaker car in the United States
12. 1966 the last Studebaker plant in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada ends production
Following the dominance of Ford and GM with aggressive pricing, streamlined production and lower labor costs few independent car makers survived and Studebaker is one of many who were swallowed up or ended car production. 

South Korea

  • Korea returns to Civilian Rule

UK

  • American Express introduces Credit Cards Into The UK

Libya

  • An earthquake in Libya destroys the village of Barce – 500 dead

Yugoslavia

  • An Earthquake Strikes Skopje, Yugoslavia destroying 80% of the city

Greece

  • Bloodless Military coup deposes President George Papadopoulos

Saipan

  • Typhoon Olive with 110MPH Winds destroyed most of the homes on the Island of Saipan

U.S.

  • Alcatraz federal penitentiary known as “The Rock” closes

Germany

  • Berlin Wall Opened For 1 Day Passes

UK

  • 1st Beeching Report suggests closing 25% of British Rail

U.S.

  • The Sabin oral Polio Vaccine which is taken with a lump of sugar is given nationwide in US and UK

Kenya

  • Kenya Gains Independence from Britain

U.S.

  • In the Supreme Court case of Gideon v. Wainwright rules that a fair trial “cannot be realized if the poor man charged with [the] crime has to face his accusers without a lawyer to assist him.”

U.S.

  • Members of Ku Klux Klan dynamite Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama killing 4 young girls causing US Wide public outrage and Condemnation for the action.

U.S.

  • Nuclear-powered attack submarine USS Thresher sinks in the Atlantic Ocean

Venezuela

  • Student riots break out all over Coro and Valencia, Venezuela.

Vatican

  • Pope John XXIII dies

Vatican

  • Pope Paul VI is elected by College of Cardinals.

Russia

  • The United States and the Soviet Union agree to establish a “hot line” direct communication system between the two nations to prevent a possible Nuclear War.

UK

  • The Great Train Robbery takes place in Buckinghamshire, England

U.S.

  • First US State Lottery in New Hampshire

Yugoslavia

  • Yugoslavia declares President Tito President for Life

U.S.

  • Martin Luther King, Jr. delivers his “I have a dream” speech

U.S.

  • James Meredith becomes the first African American to graduate from the University of Mississippi

Technology

  • AT&T introduces touch tone phones
  • Flymo Sells first Hover Mower
  • The first prototype Learjet takes off
  • Zip codes implemented in US
  • Lava Lamp or The Astro Lamp Launched by Edward Craven Walker

Inventions Invented by Inventors and Country ( or attributed to First Use )
Tape Cassette Netherlands ( Philips ) used to record and play audio
Pull Tab Can As Used For Soda U.S.A. Alcoa Company

Popular Culture 1963

This was the year an Insurance firm State Mutual Life Insurance invented the Smiley Face found on anything and everything around the world including T Shirts , it’s popularity was at it’s peak in the 1960’s

  • The Beatles release their first album Please Please Me.
  • The first episode of the BBC television series Doctor Who is broadcast
  • Bob Dylan walks off the Ed Sullivan show
  • Beatles Release I Want To Hold Your Hand/I Saw Her Standing There and Meet the Beatles which is the beginning of Beatlemania.
  • Beatle’s Release “She Loves You” in UK which goes to Number 1 for 4 weeks August 23rd

Popular Films

  • Cleopatra
  • The Longest Day
  • Lawrence of Arabia
  • Mutiny on the Bounty
  • To Kill a Mockingbird

Check out our Television Programmes From The 60s whenever possible we have included a trailer to jog your memory.Series trailers and more information are found on the decade they started.

Popular Musicians

  • The Beatles
  • Roy Orbison
  • Buddy Holly
  • The Drifters
  • Jim Reeves

Popular TV Programmes

  • Coronation Street
  • The Andy Griffith Show
  • The Flintstones
  • Mister Ed
  • The Avengers
  • The Dick Van Dyke Show

Born This Year

Big Kenny ( Big & Rich ) This Day In History November 1st 
Tatum O’Neal News And Events From November 5th 
Michael Jordan This Day In History February 17th 
Johnny Depp News And Events From June 6th

Major World Political Leaders

Australia Prime Minister Sir Robert Menzies Brazil President João Goulart Canada Prime Minister John Diefenbaker till April 22,
Canada Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson from April 22,
China Chairman of the People’s Republic of China Liu Shaoqi

France President Charles de Gaulle

Germany Chancellor Konrad Adenauer Till 16 October
Germany Chancellor Ludwig Erhard From 16 October
India Prime Minister Jawahar Lal Nehru

Italy Prime Minister Amintore Fanfani Till 21 June
Italy Prime Minister Giovanni Leone From 21 June
Italy Prime Minister Giovanni Leone Till 4 December
Italy Prime Minister Aldo Moro From 4 December
Japan Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda Mexico President Adolfo López Mateos Russia / Soviet Union
First Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Nikita Khrushchev South AfricaPrime Minister Hendrik Frensch Verwoerd United States President John F. Kennedy Till November 22,
United States President Lyndon B. Johnson From November 22,
United Kingdom Prime Minister Harold Macmillan Till 19 October
United Kingdom Prime Minister Sir Alec Douglas-Home From 19 October

Political Elections

Canadian Federal Election 1963 Lester B. Pearson ( Liberal ) defeats John Diefenbaker ( Progressive Conservatives )

Sequester and the GOP brand of Crisis, Part 1

On By myunfablifeIn My Rants and Ramblings, PoliticalLeave a comment

gawd i love the Rude Pundit :

Sequester and the GOP Brand of Crisis, Part 1:
The Rude Pundit hasn’t written much about the sequester-mageddon torching the nation on Friday because there’s a part of his whiskey-addled brain that doesn’t believe it will happen; there’s another part that thinks it won’t be nearly as bad as the Chicken Littles on all sides, defense and non-defense, believe it will be; and there’s yet a third part that thinks, “Are you fucking serious? Are we really fucking doing this catastrophe dance again? Oh, fuck me with a rake.”

Allow for a moment of dime store psychological and historical synthesis here: Republicans crave crisis – it is their water, their air, their food. It used to be that we were in a state of perpetual crisis in our endless (mostly) Cold War with the Soviet Union. Look at who led us during the later years of it: Nixon, Ford, Reagan, with a brief detour with Jimmy Carter, who was attacked for, among other reasons, not honoring the crisis mentality enough (hence his idiotic, politically-driven boycotting of the 1980 Olympics in Moscow because the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, for fuck’s sake).

When the Soviet Union crumbled, the driving force behind American foreign policy, and, to a large degree, the Republican brand crumbled, too. Republicans needed crisis, goddamnit, threats domestic and foreign because without crises that required immediate action, people would realize, “Oh, hey, howzabout we spend some money on education or roads or some shit we need?” And that would be the end of the GOP. So we got Grenada. Central America. The Persian Gulf War. (You could throw crime in cities and welfare recipients onto the the threat pile.)

But it wasn’t enough. When Bill Clinton got elected, he was able to shift, at least a bit, the conscience of the country away from the GOP’s “Holy shit, we gotta do everything to protect you from communists” to “Why not see what we can do to make life a little better?” That doesn’t mean Clinton got it right (he certainly fucked up on a lot of things, like health care, welfare, and GLBT issues), but it was a change in the way that citizens and the government interacted. It wasn’t about constantly bugging out at world-ending nuclear nightmares, but, in a very general sense, it was a move to governing in the sense of running the country at a smooth pace, not acting like the whole thing was on the verge of collapse. So, of course, of course, Republicans had to create crisis after crisis, -gate after -gate, to bring down the President, yes, but also to keep the anxiety level of a large part of the population high.

Does it even need to be said that the Bush years, post-9/11, were one prolonged crisis? That terrorism was manna from heaven for Republicans? That war was the coolest thing the GOP could ask for?

Now, under Obama, with terrorism pretty much under control (even though, yes, yes, we have to remain ever-vigilant against threats, as we always fucking have, as every fucking nation has to), the GOP has needed to have another crisis in order to extend its brand of politics, so we have the debt, and with it the debt ceiling, budget cuts, intransigence against tax hikes, and more.

The point is this: since the Cold War, and for a large part of that even, and except for 9/11, nearly every crisis this country has faced in the last generation, has been manufactured by the Republican Party as a means of promoting its brand of conservatism, whatever that conservatism has been at the time – anti-Communist, family values, fiscal, whatever. And the current sequester and upcoming debt ceiling fight are part and parcel of that. No, Democrats are not immune to such manipulations (Gulf of Tonkin, anyone?), but since Nixon, that has been the way Republicans govern. If Democrats could make infrastructure repair into a threat to the lives of Americans (which they easily could), you would see the nation demanding something be done to fix roads and bridges. The GOP knows how to hold a knife to the throat of the country.

Which is what they are doing now, again, again, again.

The worst punditry going on right now ascribes blame to both parties. That is a lie. That is believing in the GOP’s version of crisis. If someone sets a fire, are you going to complain if the firefighters are yelling too loudly while they try to put it out?

The country needs to chill the fuck out. Republicans won’t allow that.