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Saturday Open Thread

By Jeralyn, Section Blog Related
Posted on Sat Feb 25, 2012 at 03:22:26 PM EST
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It's 65 degrees in Denver today, way too nice to stay at a computer. For those of you not as fortunate, here's an open thread, all topics welcome.

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    Saturday Open Thread | 23 comments (23 topical)

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    It's okay (5.00 / 2) (#14)
    by Jeralyn on Sun Feb 26, 2012 at 01:04:02 AM EST
    to check a gun in your luggage (as opposed to carryon) so long as you tell the airline person about it. I had a client who didn't know he had to tell them and got charged. Ultimately, the case was dismissed and they even shipped his gun back to him. I can't remember if it was loaded, it was back in 2005.)

    Here's the rule and info about it.

    I can see someone forgetting to check if the gun is loaded when it's in luggage. Forgetting you have a loaded gun in your carry-on seems a bit of a stretch

    Lazy FL Cop Tases Woman Now Brain Dead (5.00 / 0) (#26)
    by Mr Natural on Sun Feb 26, 2012 at 11:08:33 AM EST
    Plays Officer safety card, wins approval from Pig Hierarchy and Whitewash Commissions.

    Question (none / 0) (#2)
    by CoralGables on Sat Feb 25, 2012 at 05:36:44 PM EST
    Is MT donning her grass skirt and puka shells tonight and headed for the BJCC Arena in Birmingham?

    What's happenin in Birmingham? (none / 0) (#17)
    by Militarytracy on Sun Feb 26, 2012 at 07:02:14 AM EST
    Bill Maher will be in Huntsville on March 17th, but we will be back in Atlanta for Joshua's halo traction.  I hope they are able to come up with something that will allow him some brief out on the town.  That helps when I must keep his spirits up.

    Parent
    You missed (none / 0) (#23)
    by CoralGables on Sun Feb 26, 2012 at 09:02:05 AM EST
    Jimmy Buffett

    Parent
    Oh (none / 0) (#28)
    by Militarytracy on Mon Feb 27, 2012 at 07:45:37 AM EST


    Parent
    Perfect warm weather (none / 0) (#4)
    by brodie on Sat Feb 25, 2012 at 07:42:55 PM EST
    here in CA, where many of us are commemorating the peculiar event 70 years ago today, Feb 25, 1942 -- some sort of "alien attack" or something in SoCal in the middle of the night which caused the west coast defense authorities to go ballistic.  Half dozen fatalities on the ground, from falling ordnance and heart attacks.  The Battle of Los Angeles it's called officially, only a few months after Pearl Harbor.  Until recently and some segments on various cable shows, it was a very weird part of CA and US history which had gone down a black hole.  Yet it happened, and the official explanations are mostly the usual nonsense.  You can guess what I think.

    As for FHTE, a good to very good flawed film by a great director.  Great extended action scene with the Japanese attack, consistently great performances by Lancaster, Borgnine and Sinatra.  I thought I caught both Monty Clift and Donna Reed reacting in scenes with Sinatra as they would with Frank himself rather than in his and their screen characters.  Deborah Kerr's natural beauty was diminished with a frumpy hairstyle.

    A good film set in Hawaii I saw on the big screen in a John Ford film fest years ago was Donovan's Reef which is a brawling drinking flick tempered by the civilizing presence of the female lead, whose name escapes me.  Basically it was just a luscious feast for the eyes with all the beautiful island scenery and probably amounted to a fun work-vacation for the director and cast.

    One other film of roughly the same mid sixties period I wish I'd seen on the big screen was Hawaii based on the Michener book, starring Julie Andrews and Max Von Sydow, which seemed kind of a lengthy blah film when I saw it on cable tv.

    Wayne should have been publicly (5.00 / 0) (#22)
    by brodie on Sun Feb 26, 2012 at 07:35:30 AM EST
    exposed and disgraced for his draft dodging and war avoidance during WW2, but afaik this wasn't brought up in print until many decades later after his passing.  Supposedly his good friend John Ford was livid with the Duke for not even accepting an assignment in the Signal Corps unit Ford had  joined which was where many Hollywood types ended up.  Wayne's excuse to Poppy Ford was that he didn't want to interrupt a promising acting career that was just beginning to be successful.

    Wayne never was publicly called out during his lifetime to my knowledge while liberals were carefully scrutinized for any suspected insufficiently patriotic activities in wartime.  One of the earliest examples of IOKIYAR.

    Parent

    Perhaps (none / 0) (#5)
    by CoralGables on Sat Feb 25, 2012 at 07:53:57 PM EST
    Elizabeth Allen?

    Parent
    There you go. (none / 0) (#6)
    by brodie on Sat Feb 25, 2012 at 08:19:43 PM EST
    Been nearly forty years since I saw the movie at that festival around the time of Ford's passing.  One of my favorite directors, definitely for westerns, but man he did have a lot of drinking in his films.

    Parent
    that peculiar event (none / 0) (#8)
    by fishcamp on Sat Feb 25, 2012 at 08:49:51 PM EST
    over Los Angeles 70 years ago could have been some of the thousands of incendiary balloons the Japanese floated across the Pacific.  Their plan was to start forest fires, which they did.  My mother was a block warden dragging me with her to double check her four block area to make sure all the lights were out.  I was three years old and we were in Portland, Oregon.  I kind of remember mom telling one man to turn off his basement lights.  He was making soap in a cake pan out of bacon fat and lye.  Years later we would get out of school to plant trees in the burned areas along the coast and inland too.  The farthest balloon floated to Rapid City, SD.  Strangely I don't remember ever studying about that event in school.

    Parent
    One of those balloons started a fire (none / 0) (#13)
    by caseyOR on Sun Feb 26, 2012 at 12:14:06 AM EST
    by Brookings on the southern Oregon coast. This happened in Sept. 1942.

    A floatplane was launched from a Japanese submarine to drop the balloons into the forest. Quick work by look-outs kept the damage to a minimum that time.


    Parent

    Very unlikely to (none / 0) (#20)
    by brodie on Sun Feb 26, 2012 at 07:18:20 AM EST
    have been a balloon, either our meteorological or a Japanese incendiary.  Our military trained numerous powerful spotlights on it and shot 1,400 rounds of antiaircraft shells at it, but Army eyewitnesses reported the shells seemed to have no effect.  That's either one very heavily protected weather balloon or an embarrassing exhibition of shooting by our military in a crisis situation lasting at least one hour.

    After the war the Japanese said they had no incendiary balloon operations in that time period.

    The official US wartime report was all over the place wrt possible explanations, none of them however making much sense.  There were also complaints from the West Coast Defense Command and some newspapers that Washington seemed to be intent on making the local Defense group look incompetent and amateurish while some media alleged a high-level govt coverup appeared to have been undertaken to silence further reporting and bury the story.

    That appears to have been what happened, as the story itself was rarely mentioned for decades afterward in the media.  And the Air Force's last official report -- forty years after the fact -- is about as convincing with its weather balloon explanation as the AF's later silly, and constantly changing, explanations for Roswell.

    Parent

    yes it definitely (none / 0) (#9)
    by fishcamp on Sat Feb 25, 2012 at 08:55:51 PM EST
    was a mistake for him because he will be on the terrorist list now...forever.  

    Take a look (none / 0) (#10)
    by Edger on Sat Feb 25, 2012 at 09:20:58 PM EST
    at the US Military Star Insignia on this thing. You can see the star near the end of the 1 minute clip.

    Here are some more stars for comparison (look at star # 2 after you watch the clip)
    Star wars: Evolution of U.S. military insignia


    Whatever it is... (5.00 / 1) (#11)
    by desertswine on Sat Feb 25, 2012 at 10:50:34 PM EST
    I want one.

    Parent
    Call Boeing maybe? (none / 0) (#16)
    by Edger on Sun Feb 26, 2012 at 05:02:38 AM EST
    Lockeed Martin?

    Parent
    I'll show it to my husband when he gets up (5.00 / 1) (#18)
    by Militarytracy on Sun Feb 26, 2012 at 07:07:48 AM EST
    He is so good at visual identification of items.  Pretty good at spotting doctoring too.

    Parent
    Here's an enlarged (none / 0) (#25)
    by Edger on Sun Feb 26, 2012 at 09:21:05 AM EST
    still image of it...

    Parent
    Watching J. Edgar this morning (none / 0) (#19)
    by Militarytracy on Sun Feb 26, 2012 at 07:10:08 AM EST


    I expect I'll watch it (none / 0) (#21)
    by brodie on Sun Feb 26, 2012 at 07:23:53 AM EST
    on DVD at some point, but the reviews I've read said director Eastwood went much too easy on Edgar.

    Parent
    Forget the movie, read James Ellroy... (none / 0) (#27)
    by Mr Natural on Sun Feb 26, 2012 at 11:14:25 AM EST
    The Cold Six Thousand, American Tabloid, etc

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    Hey, I'm glad the temperature has (none / 0) (#24)
    by observed on Sun Feb 26, 2012 at 09:13:31 AM EST
    been above 0F during most days, recently.
    That beats the heck out of -50C.
    One thing about our location in this time zone---it's already light at 6:30 p.m. This is compensated by a later sunrise, but looking forward, I can see that we will have light in the sky quite late during the summer.
    Saturday Open Thread | 23 comments (23 topical)

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