A long look back: Who created ISIS? That question has suddenly became a campaign issue for Jeb Bush. But it is also an American issue–a question that should be answered with some thorough facts. NEW YORK attempts to begin putting the puzzle together–though it neglects to talk about weapons that the United States, under Obama, was pouring into to the ‘freedom fighters’ in Syria and Libya. The world has played chess for quite some time in the Middle East..
I feature some telling headlines from my hometown now and then, today’s offers more compelling information that the dream of the coal region, once filled with hope and coal in veins, is slowly becoming a relic of a past generation..
The tragic news of the the day has garnered national wall to wall news coverage.. It’s a big deal. Train crashes rarely happen.. and this crash, at least for some, has led to head scratching about how it occurred and why..
The latest information may only lead to further head scratching tonight..
SEPTA spokeswoman Jerri Williams says they don’t know what the projectile was. It broke the engineer’s window around 9:25 p.m. Tuesday near SEPTA’s North Philadelphia station. No injuries were reported. Williams says the Trenton-bound commuter train was stopped and the incident was being investigated when the Amtrak derailment happened about 3½ miles away.
There is no indication, we are told in reports, that this projectile had anything to do with the Amtrak crash in Philadelphia.. But that may not be enough to quell the numerous questions that will arise as this situation develops..
Meanwhile the situation continues in its tragic nature.. The number of deaths have risen from 6 to 7.. And the number of injured stands near 200..
Wall to wall news coverage has been dominant on the cable TV stations.. The world seems glued to the Philadelphia region and Mayor Michael Nutter as people attempt to figure out what exactly caused the crash of this New York bound train in the City of Brotherly Love..
The Vatican downplayed the significance of the alleged plot.
“From what it appears, this concerns a hypothesis that dates from 2010 which didn’t occur. It has therefore no relevance today and no reason for particular concern,” said the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the Vatican spokesman.
But what does exist is also evident in recent news accounts from the Holy capitol of the Catholic world..
There is no doubt that Popes have always been global targets for terror and threats.. but this Pope seemingly has captured the imagination of the faithful but also the hated of others..
The 2010 Vatican threat now released to the public is only a reminder of the threats which exist–threats that have been openly discussed for months as the Pope continues to speak out about the atrocities committed by ISIS ..
There are rumors online that Vladimir Putin is either sick, or even dead!
The NYT says,
The last confirmed public sighting was at a meeting with Prime Minister Matteo Renzi of Italy on March 5 — although the Kremlin would have citizens think otherwise.
Given that the Kremlin borrows all manner of items from the Soviet playbook these days, there appeared to be an attempt to doctor the president’s timetable to show that all was well.
Astronomers have found the most conclusive evidence yet that a large watery ocean lies beneath the surface of Jupiter’s moon Ganymede.
SET SAIL FOR Ganymede!
Take a deep breath.. read the headline a few times until the true power of it sinks in. Jupiter’s moon.. a salty ocean..
Though it may seem like eons for my, it wasn’t too long ago that I learned in school how Earth was the only planet with life and water. And there were only 9. Boom. Done.
Now there’s trillions with untoldillions to be discovered. And maybe multiverses.. and Pluto is NOT a planet. But CERES has glowing balls of light emitting from it. And we are landing on asteroids.. and there’s a ROVER on MARS watching the sunset from the distant planet.. and TITAN may have water.. And MARS may have HAD water..
And we are stardust.
And there may be aliens..
And we are not alone.
This is an amazing time to be alive. It also makes me ponder if ‘disclosure’ is going to drip out slowly .. with each new story about water on some distant body in space, are we being primed for the ultimate: Not only water is abundant, but life is too?
From the LA TIMES STORY, a money quote:
“The solar system is now looking like a pretty soggy place,” said Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA. “The more we look at individual moons, the more we see that water is really in enormous abundance.”
A soggy place.
Much different than those 1980s and 90s grade school textbooks in science. And even much more different than those 2013 textbooks.
Whether you find a deeper meaning in this story or just scratch your head at the strangeness of it, it is making the rounds online today and into the pop culture lexicon. When President Barack Obama was in India three weeks ago, he had a photo op at the at the New Delhi memorial to Indian independence leader Mohandas K. Gandhi. He planted a tree..
Now three weeks later, passersby are amazed at just how dead the tree looks–lifeless and droopy, no leaves and sad..
Last night, I dropped a link on this site and espoused some of my beliefs that the current generation growing up will drop out of the TV scene much prior to the next one. . the link on the ‘cord cutting’ actually came from TIME magazine.. However, a reader comment on the situation offered a very different and good perspective on the potential other side of the coin.. Since it was buried at the bottom of the site and few may have seen it, I’d like to share it in full, as it offers up a counter argument to the believe that Millennials are ready to abandon their TV sets altogether:
It’s important to put this in perspective. The industry does a really good job of hyping reports and headlines based on a single, biased view. If we were to describe “millenials” as the age group of 18-34 from the inception of cable TV in the early 80s, things really don’t look that different. People don’t make primary choices about TV services until they have their own homes. The median age of first-time home buyers has gone up considerably just in the last 10 years alone. Until you are making a primary decision about TV service (not living with mom and dad, in a dorm or with several roommates), you are just making do (i.e., watching video online). SNL is not irrelevant. People are just choosing to record it and watch it later, not live. Nielsen, the author of this report, does not have the capacity to measure this.
Since the inception of the VCR, live TV viewing has declined. When operators introduced DVRs into consumer homes, live TV viewing declined even more. A couple of years ago, DVR penetration among pay-TV subscribers was only about 40%. Throughout 2013 and 2014, due to much lower manufacturing costs and a hefty drop in the global price of chip sets and memory, operators have been able to put a lot more DVR set-top boxes in homes at a much lower price to subscribers. So what happens? Again, live TV viewing declines even more. This is not to say that people are watching less TV, they are just watching it on demand from their DVR. The popularity of broadcast TV programming has never been higher. People are just not watching it “live”.
And that all makes sense.
It does not shake my perspective though that SNL is irrelevant..I base that a bit simply on the humor or lack thereof that often comes from the show. But there may be other shows that are quite relevant, perhaps being recorded later.. Which changes the game altogether for Neilson and advertisers.
No matter how you look at it, the pop culture world has changed.
An amazing—and scary—piece of news is being reported very close to the HORROR REPORT home base..
Americans in New York, Ohio, Michigan and Pennsylvania reported seeing a fiery, 500-pound meteor soar through the sky this week before the space rock apparently broke up somewhere over the Keystone State, according to scientists.
NASA said on Tuesday this week that the meteor entered the Earth’s atmosphere in the sky above western Pennsylvania earlier that morning and was reportedly witnessed by spectators stretching for hundreds of miles across the United States from the Mid-Atlantic to the Midwest.
Remnants of the meteor ended up on the ground in Pennsylvania—my home state as well. I didn’t see this, however, it seemed more confined to the Western part of the state..
