Golfingboy Posted December 27, 2021 Share Posted December 27, 2021 2 minutes ago, Glasseye said: Yep.... It all started in the late 50's (around the time many of us in here were born). Folks like Fats Domino, Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Bill Haley, Jerry Lee Lewis etc. Then blossomed in the sixties and ran through until about the early 90's. Been pretty much downhill since then. And I reckon ain't never coming back. Regardless of how things are as I get older one of the biggest things I am thankful for is being able to be living during those times, in respect to the music and the enjoyment it brought. Not much compares IMO. Yup, as much as the whole world loves Apple, Google, AMZN, Walmart, UBER etc….there is a huge number of individuals who have become casualties of these giants and don’t earn the comfortable livings they once did. But hey, the consumer is #1, and competition is good(allegedly) 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stillearly Posted December 27, 2021 Share Posted December 27, 2021 ^ bands have always made the bulk of their money through touring and merchandise , even back when people were buying records , the majority of that money went to to retailers and the record company Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glasseye Posted December 27, 2021 Author Share Posted December 27, 2021 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
coxyhog Posted December 27, 2021 Share Posted December 27, 2021 In the UK tv on BBC-2 we had the OGWT,Old Grey Whistle Test which ran from 1971 to 1988 and featured live music from some of the best known and some virtually unknown bands & artists. I've got 4 DVD's and two double albums(on my iPod in the car) and the music is absolutely wonderful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Grey_Whistle_Test 1 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
forcebwithu Posted December 29, 2021 Share Posted December 29, 2021 One more for the 2021 list of celebrities and athletes who have passed. Legendary NFL coach and broadcaster John Madden has died at age 85 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Smooth Posted December 29, 2021 Share Posted December 29, 2021 John Madden, the former head coach of the Oakland Raiders, and later a broadcaster color commentator for 30 years for all 4 major American sports networks, has died at 85. I was born and raised in the East Bay of the SF Bay Area, and a Raider fan from as far back as I can remember. And this huge, wildly gyrating guy on the sidelines, was the great John Madden, who never shied away from giving the officials an earful when a call went against his team. Those great Raider teams of the 70's were a huge part of my growing up years and that magical 1976 season when after so many heartbreaking losses in the playoffs, they finally broke through and won the first of three Super Bowl Championships in January 1977. And no one deserved a championship more than Madden. In the pro football landscape over the last half century, there was no one who had a bigger influence on the game than John Madden. As with so many on here who mourn the loss of their childhood sports heroes from their own countries, so do I with his passing. RIP Coach Madden. 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glasseye Posted December 29, 2021 Author Share Posted December 29, 2021 On 12/27/2021 at 2:33 PM, coxyhog said: In the UK tv on BBC-2 we had the OGWT,Old Grey Whistle Test which ran from 1971 to 1988 and featured live music from some of the best known and some virtually unknown bands & artists. I've got 4 DVD's and two double albums(on my iPod in the car) and the music is absolutely wonderful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Grey_Whistle_Test Cool...I'm gonna have to check that one out. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Golfingboy Posted December 29, 2021 Share Posted December 29, 2021 (edited) 7 hours ago, Mr. Smooth said: John Madden, the former head coach of the Oakland Raiders, and later a broadcaster color commentator for 30 years for all 4 major American sports networks, has died at 85. I was born and raised in the East Bay of the SF Bay Area, and a Raider fan from as far back as I can remember. And this huge, wildly gyrating guy on the sidelines, was the great John Madden, who never shied away from giving the officials an earful when a call went against his team. Those great Raider teams of the 70's were a huge part of my growing up years and that magical 1976 season when after so many heartbreaking losses in the playoffs, they finally broke through and won the first of three Super Bowl Championships in January 1977. And no one deserved a championship more than Madden. In the pro football landscape over the last half century, there was no one who had a bigger influence on the game than John Madden. As with so many on here who mourn the loss of their childhood sports heroes from their own countries, so do I with his passing. RIP Coach Madden. Was always thinking the last few years, “damn he’s lived a long life with all the weight he carries on that frame”. I’m way too young to remember his coaching days, but as a commentator alongside Pat Summerall, just legendary. Was usually CBS and mostly NFC games, Cowboys and Vikings often. Really likeable fella too, knew his football well but I don’t recall him having any controversies or saying stupid stuff on air. And his commercials…..” hey Ace is the place for me”….. RIP John, a true NFL legend and a real gentleman, the All-Madden team in heaven has a new member…. Edited December 29, 2021 by Golfingboy 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
forcebwithu Posted December 29, 2021 Share Posted December 29, 2021 I also remember John Madden had a fear of flying and traveled to games and appearances in his custom made bus. RIP John Madden The 1 Reason Why John Madden Logged 80,000 Miles Each Year on the ‘Madden Cruiser’ 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lazarus Posted December 29, 2021 Share Posted December 29, 2021 1 hour ago, Golfingboy said: RIP John, a true NFL legend and a real gentleman, the All-Madden team in heaven has a new member…. I grew up in Daly City, played ball at Marchbank Park, went to the same HS as Madden (20 years after), etc. He was a local legend. 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glasseye Posted December 29, 2021 Author Share Posted December 29, 2021 1 hour ago, Golfingboy said: Was always thinking the last few years, “damn he’s lived a long life with all the weight he carries on that frame”. I’m way too young to remember his coaching days, but as a commentator alongside Pat Summerall, just legendary. Was usually CBS and mostly NFC games, Cowboys and Vikings often. Really likeable fella too, knew his football well but I don’t recall him having any controversies or saying stupid stuff on air. And his commercials…..” hey Ace is the place for me”….. RIP John, a true NFL legend and a real gentleman, the All-Madden team in heaven has a new member…. We had a special detail assigned to him when he did a game at Memorial Stadium the year the Bears were rebuilding Soldier Field in Chicago. Back in the day, he was a household name. Now..... 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pumpuynarak Posted December 29, 2021 Share Posted December 29, 2021 On 12/27/2021 at 7:33 PM, coxyhog said: In the UK tv on BBC-2 we had the OGWT,Old Grey Whistle Test which ran from 1971 to 1988 and featured live music from some of the best known and some virtually unknown bands & artists. I've got 4 DVD's and two double albums(on my iPod in the car) and the music is absolutely wonderful. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Old_Grey_Whistle_Test Whistling Bob Harris ? 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glasseye Posted December 29, 2021 Author Share Posted December 29, 2021 A really good obit piece on John Madden.... for those who care. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/28/sports/football/john-madden-dead.html John Madden, Face and Voice of the N.F.L. on the Field and in the Broadcast Booth, Dies at 85 Mr. Madden coached the Oakland Raiders to a Super Bowl title before becoming one of football’s best-known broadcasters and a video game entrepreneur. 335 John Madden in 1974, when he was the coach of the Oakland Raiders.Credit...Associated Press By Ben Shpigel Published Dec. 28, 2021Updated Dec. 29, 2021, 11:18 a.m. ET John Madden, the Hall of Fame coach who became one of America’s most recognizable ambassadors of professional football, reaching millions, and generations, from the broadcast booth and through the popular video game that bears his name, died on Tuesday. He was 85. The National Football League announced his death in a statement that didn’t include the cause. He died at his home in Pleasanton, Calif., his agent, Sandy Montag, said. In his irrepressible way, and with his distinctive voice, Madden left an imprint on the sport on par with titans like George Halas, Paul Brown and his coaching idol, Vince Lombardi. Madden’s influence, steeped in Everyman sensibilities and studded with wild gesticulations and paroxysms of onomatopoeia — wham! doink! whoosh! — made the N.F.L. more interesting, more relevant and more fun for over 40 years. Image Madden with his broadcast partner Al Michaels on ABC in 2002. Working with Madden, Michaels said, was like “singing a song, and we had the musical notes in front of us. Away we went.”Credit...Craig Sjodin/ABC via Getty Images “John Madden is as important as anybody in the history of football,” Al Michaels, his broadcast partner from 2002 through 2008 with ABC and NBC, said in an interview in 2013. “Tell me somebody who did all of the things that John did, and did them over this long a period of time.” ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story Madden retired from coaching the Oakland Raiders in 1979, at age 42 and with a Super Bowl victory to his credit, but he turned the second act of his life into an encore, a Rabelaisian emissary sent from the corner bar to demystify the mysteries of football for the common fan and, in the process, revolutionize sports broadcasting. Rising to prominence in an era of football commentating that hewed mostly toward a conservative, fairly straightforward approach, Madden’s accessible parsing of X’s and O’s added nuance and depth, and also a degree of sophistication that delighted an audience that in some cases tuned in just for him. Fastidious in his preparation, Madden introduced what is now a standard exercise in the craft — observing practices, studying game film and interviewing coaches and players on Fridays and Saturdays. Come Sundays, he would distill that information into bursts of animated, cogent and often prescient analysis, diagraming plays with a Telestrator, an electronic stylus (whose scribbles and squiggles reflected its handler’s often rumpled appearance) that showed why which players went where. Image Madden using a Telestrator for the Super Bowl broadcast on CBS in 1982. He won 16 Sports Emmy Awards, including 15 for top analyst.Credit...Associated Press ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story Madden spent his first 15 years in broadcasting at CBS, starting in 1979. There he introduced his Thanksgiving tradition of bestowing a turducken — a turkey stuffed with duck stuffed with chicken — to the winning team. But the three other major networks all came to employ him because, at one point or another, they all needed him. Fox snagged him in the mid-1990s to establish credibility for its fledgling sports division. ABC followed in 2002, to boost the sagging fortunes of “Monday Night Football.” NBC hired him when it regained football in 2006 — because, as Dick Ebersol, then the chairman of NBC Universal Sports, said: “He’s the best analyst in the history of sports. He’s able to cut through from people my age, who remembered him as a coach, all the way to 12-year-olds.” Madden received 16 Sports Emmy Awards, including 15 for top analyst. He parlayed his appeal into a series of career incarnations — commercial pitchman, successful author, video-game entrepreneur — and embraced them all with zest. He produced three New York Times best-sellers. He peddled “Boom! Tough Actin’” Tinactin as an athlete’s foot remedy and broke through reams of paper (and the odd door) in advertisements for Miller Lite. His Electronic Arts video game evolved into a cultural phenomenon with annual midnight releases and widespread tournaments after its inception in 1988, selling tens of millions of copies with revenue in the billions. John Madden, America’s Broadcasting Gourmand, Ate Football Up Dec. 29, 2021 At his core, though, Madden was a coach and by extension a teacher; as he proudly noted in interviews, he graduated with a master’s degree in physical education, a few credits short of a doctorate, from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo. His unscripted manner translated as well in the Raiders’ locker room — where he guided a cast of self-styled outlaws and misfits to eight playoff appearances in 10 seasons as head coach — as it did in living rooms, man caves and bookstores. “He was who you saw on TV,” said Ted Hendricks, a Hall of Fame linebacker who played for Madden from 1975 through 1978. “He gave us freedom, but he always had complete control of his players.” ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story A Fear of Flying As inclusive as he was beloved, Madden embodied a rare breed of sports personality. He could relate to the plumber in Pennsylvania or the custodian in Kentucky — or the cameramen on his broadcast crew — because he viewed himself, at bottom, as an ordinary guy who just happened to know a lot about football. Grounded by an incapacitating fear of flying, he met many of his fans while crisscrossing the country, first in Amtrak trains and then in his Madden Cruiser, a decked-out motor coach that was a rare luxurious concession for a man whose idea of a big night out, as detailed in his book “One Size Doesn’t Fit All” (1988), was wearing “a sweatsuit and sneakers to a real Mexican restaurant for nachos and a chile Colorado.” Image Roger Goodell, N.F.L. commissioner, left, and Madden riding in Madden’s bus from the Baltimore Ravens’ camp to the Washington Redskins’ camp in 2010.Credit...Rob Carr/Associated Press For more than 20 years, that bus shepherded Madden to and from his assignments, a fulfillment of sorts of a favorite book, “Travels with Charley,” by John Steinbeck, who had driven around America in a camper with his poodle. When Madden greeted family members and friends on the flight he had chartered for them to attend his induction ceremony at the Pro Football Hall of Fame in Canton, Ohio, in August 2006, it was his first time in an airplane in 27 years. “When you pulled up somewhere in that bus, it was like Air Force One had arrived,” said Fred Gaudelli, who as Madden’s producer at ABC and NBC traveled with him for seven years. “It was amazing the way people would react to that thing.” Catching Up With John Madden A 2013 interview. If contemporaries like Bud Grant and Tom Landry epitomized the archetype of coach as sideline stoic, Madden served as their counterweight. He imparted an iconoclastic, demonstrative presence, one that echoed the spirit of the 1970s and the countercultural nexus of Northern California and that also suited his team of so-called renegades. The enduring image of Madden was of his oversize frame bounding onto the field, flouting the tenets of sideline decorum with arms flailing, mouth racing and red hair flopping against a pink face. Madden ditched the dress code and encouraged individual expression, tolerating his players’ penchant for wild nights and carousing because, he knew, they would always give him their full effort — especially on Sundays. Unlike the disciplinarians of his day, he imposed few rules, asking them only to listen, to be on time and to play hard when he demanded it. Madden told The New York Times in 1969 that “there has to be an honesty that you be yourself”; for him, that meant treating his players as “intelligent human beings.” ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story Madden, at age 32, inherited a team in 1969 that had gone a combined 25-3 the previous two seasons, and he maintained the Raiders’ standard of excellence. Perhaps his greatest accomplishment was working as long as 12 years for Al Davis, the Raiders’ irascible and Machiavellian owner — and staying close friends with him until Davis’s death in 2011. But when Madden retired, having been pummeled by ulcers and panic attacks and what is now regarded as burnout, he could boast of a résumé that included a Super Bowl XI demolition of the Minnesota Vikings in 1977; a .759 regular-season winning percentage (103-32-7), best among coaches who have worked at least 100 games; and an on-field view of some of the most controversial and memorable moments in football history: the notorious “Heidi” game (1968), the Immaculate Reception (1972) and the infamous Holy Roller play in 1978, his final season. The thought of overseeing another minicamp, another round of draft preparation, bedeviled him. Lombardi coached for 10 years, and so would Madden. “You traveled around but you never saw anything,” Madden told The Washington Post in 1984. “Everything was an airplane, a bus, a hotel, a stadium, a bus, an airplane and back home. One day I said, ‘There has to be more to life than this.’” Image Credit...From left: Mark Rucker/Transcendental Graphics, via Getty Images; Jens Schwarz/laif, via Redux; Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times Notable Deaths 2021 Remembering Hank Aaron, Colin Powell, Stephen Sondheim, Beverly Cleary, DMX, Cicely Tyson, Larry King, Olympia Dukakis, Chuck Close, Michael K. Williams, Bob Dole, Janet Malcolm and many others who died this year. Bam! And there was. Working-Class Beginnings John Earl Madden was born in Austin, Minn., on April 10, 1936, the oldest of three children, and the only son, of Earl and Mary (Flaherty) Madden. His father was a mechanic. When John was 6, his family moved to Daly City, Calif., a working-class suburb of San Francisco whose proximity to the city offered adventurous escapes for sports-crazed boys. With his close friend John Robinson, who would become the head coach at Southern California and of the Los Angeles Rams, Madden hitched trolley rides into town and then sneaked into Kezar Stadium and Seals Stadium to watch football and baseball games. His family was of modest means, but Madden was resourceful. He scrounged for gear in rummage bins and fashioned his baseball bats by taping together pieces found at semipro games. Opportunities for minor-league baseball beckoned — the Red Sox and the Yankees expressed interest — but Madden, from his time caddying for the well-heeled at the San Francisco Golf Club, had come to equate success with a college education. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story He book-ended an unfulfilling year at the University of Oregon with stays at two community colleges, the College of San Mateo in California and Grays Harbor College in Aberdeen, Wash., before transferring to Cal Poly, where he would meet his future wife, Virginia Fields. There his prowess on the offensive line attracted the Philadelphia Eagles, who selected him in the 21st round of the 1958 draft. Image Madden, as a tackle for the Philadelphia Eagles, in 1959.Credit...Associated Press Madden never played for the Eagles; a serious knee injury quashed his pro prospects. But while rehabilitating in Philadelphia he began transitioning to the next phase of his life. Reviewing game film with the Hall of Fame quarterback Norm Van Brocklin, Madden was encouraged to start thinking like a coach. He pursued that calling back in California, where he worked for four years at Allan Hancock College, two as head coach, and for three years at San Diego State, as an assistant. It was at San Diego, in November 1966, that Madden first encountered Davis, a meeting that would change the course of football history. For an hour they talked strategy and schemes. Only much later — long after Davis had hired him in 1967 to oversee the Raiders’ linebackers and then promoted him to head coach two years later — did Madden realize that he had in effect sat for an interview. Their relationship was complicated. At times it was fraught with tension and pressure, with Madden navigating the whims of his demanding boss while combating the perception that Davis, not he, deserved credit for the team’s success. But Davis valued Madden’s ability to manage his players’ diverse personalities and mold them into a cohesive — and winning — team. In 2006, Davis introduced Madden at the Hall of Fame. Partners in the Booth It seems difficult to imagine, but when Madden first experimented with broadcasting to satisfy his football cravings, he was stiff and uncertain, far from the polished professional who would set the standard for future analysts; reacting to his popularity, networks searched for the next Madden. He expected members of his production team to know their football, and if they did not, he was known to glance at the heavens and apologize to Lombardi and Halas for the indiscretion. At CBS and Fox, his frenetic style meshed smoothly with the minimalism of Pat Summerall, his broadcast partner of 21 years. Al Michaels later complemented him in a different way, with an opinionated style, though not overbearingly so, and a knack for leading Madden into stimulating discussions. Working with Madden, Michaels said, was like “singing a song, and we had the musical notes in front of us. Away we went.” ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story Their last game together was Super Bowl XLIII, in February 2009. Two months later, Madden left the broadcast booth, citing a desire to spend more time with his family. Madden and his wife had two sons, Joseph and Michael, and a number of grandchildren. Complete information on his survivors was not immediately available. Even in retirement, Madden remained active in football, serving as a consultant to the N.F.L. commissioner, Roger Goodell, and on committees for player safety and competition. For all of his celebrity, Madden was perhaps most closely identified with his video game franchise, which connected him to younger generations. He was fond of saying that when many younger people met him, it became apparent to him that they knew him from the video game, not as a Hall of Fame coach or perhaps even as an innovative broadcaster. Not that he was complaining, necessarily: He had fulfilled his father’s wishes. Image Madden at his induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2006.Credit...Mark Duncan/Associated Press “Once you start work, you’re going to have to work the rest of your life,” Madden said, recounting Earl’s advice, in his 2006 induction speech at the Hall of Fame. Then he added: “I have never worked a day in my life. I went from player to coach to a broadcaster, and I am the luckiest guy in the world.” 2 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glasseye Posted December 29, 2021 Author Share Posted December 29, 2021 Senator Harry Reid. :Like him or not, an interesting story... https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/28/us/politics/harry-reid-dead.html arry M. Reid, Senate Majority Leader Behind Landmark Democratic Victories, Dies at 82 Mr. Reid, who was from Nevada, displayed his pugilistic instincts as he steered an economic stimulus package and the Affordable Care Act to passage. 253 Senator Harry Reid in 2014. In his three-decade Senate tenure he oversaw the passage of landmark legislation, including a sweeping economic stimulus, a new set of rules for Wall Street and the Affordable Care Act.Credit...Stephen Crowley/The New York Times By Jonathan Martin Dec. 28, 2021 Harry M. Reid, the Democrat who rose from childhood poverty in the rural Nevada desert to the heights of power in Washington, where he steered the Affordable Care Act to passage as Senate majority leader, died on Tuesday in Henderson, Nev. He was 82. Mr. Reid had been treated for pancreatic cancer, which was diagnosed in 2018, but lived to see the Las Vegas airport renamed for him earlier this month. His death was confirmed in statements from Gov. Steve Sisolak of Nevada and Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader. Even by the standards of the political profession, where against-the-odds biographies are common and modest roots an asset, what Mr. Reid overcame was extraordinary. He was raised in almost Dickensian circumstances in tiny Searchlight, Nev.: His home had no indoor plumbing, his father was an alcoholic miner who eventually died by suicide, and his mother helped the family survive by taking in laundry from local brothels. After two decades of campaigns in Nevada marked by success, setback and recovery, Mr. Reid was elected to the Senate in 1986. He became the chamber’s Democratic leader after the 2004 election. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story But it was not until his colleague Barack Obama was elected president four years later that Mr. Reid was able to meld his deep knowledge of congressional rules, his facility with horse-trading and his cussed determination to unify his 60-seat majority and pass landmark legislation. “If Harry said he would do something, he did it,” President Biden, who served as Mr. Obama’s vice president, said in a statement Tuesday evening. “If he gave you his word, you could bank on it. That’s how he got things done for the good of the country for decades.” Pushing through a sweeping economic stimulus after the Great Recession, a new set of rules governing Wall Street and the most significant expansion of health care coverage since the Great Society of the 1960s, all with scant Republican support, Mr. Reid became, along with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, one of the indispensable lawmakers of the Obama era. “The records will be written about the eight years of Obama and Reid,” Mr. Reid boasted shortly after he announced in 2015 that he would not seek re-election the following year. Yet the three-decade Senate tenure of this soft-spoken yet ferociously combative Nevadan, a middleweight boxer in his youth, also traced the chamber’s evolution from a collegial and consensus-oriented institution to the partisan and fractured body it has become. Republicans placed some of the blame on Mr. Reid for this change, pointing to his 2013 decision to upend Senate rules by doing away with the filibuster on most nominations by a president. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story Mr. Reid, though, reflected the broader leftward shift of his party and his state. First elected to the House of Representatives in 1982, when Nevada finally grew large enough to require a second seat, he arrived in the capital as a moderate western Democrat: opposed to abortion rights, largely supportive of gun rights and uneasy about immigration. Image Mr. Reid was sworn in to the House of Representatives by Speaker Tip O’Neill in January 1983. He would be elected to the Senate in 1986, where he served for most of his career.Credit...Las Vegas Review-Journal But as Nevada grew from an overwhelmingly rural, white redoubt of ranches and mines to a polyglot gambling mecca in which 70 percent of voters live in the Las Vegas area, Mr. Reid adapted as a matter of necessity. He won his final re-election in 2010, a dismal year for Democrats nationally, thanks in part to an outpouring of support from his state’s rapidly growing Hispanic and Asian communities after his popularity among many other Nevadans had plummeted in the economic collapse. “I may have won without them, but I doubt it,” Mr. Reid said in a later interview about his support among immigrants in his 2010 campaign. But after Democrats lost the Senate majority in 2014, and after he had lost nearly all his sight in his right eye the next year in a serious accident in his home during a workout, Mr. Reid decided not to run for a sixth term. He said he did not want to be one of those senators who served well into old age. While he was willing to adjust with the times politically, he remained a stylistic throwback. A Mormon who neither drank nor smoked, he also shunned his state’s principal industry, claiming with his characteristic bluntness that “the only people who make money from gambling are the joints and government.” Prone to ‘Reidisms’ Mr. Reid was a meandering and awkward public speaker, far more comfortable plotting strategy beneath the imposing portrait of Mark Twain in his Capitol office than he was making the case for his party on a Sunday news show, much less at a political rally. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story In private, he wielded an irreverent sense of humor, but could be brusque, often not even saying goodbye to colleagues at the end of a phone call. When he did speak publicly or to the press, he was often given to verbal miscues that came to be known as “Reidisms.” He deemed President George W. Bush “a loser” while addressing a group of high school juniors in Nevada in 2005, mused about the body odor of Washington’s tourists a few years later and, when Mr. Obama first ran for president, in 2008, said the country’s first Black president could be elected because he spoke “with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” (Mr. Reid telephoned Mr. Obama to apologize after the comments were made public; Mr. Obama issued a statement calling the remarks “unfortunate,” but added, “I know what’s in his heart.”) It was Mr. Reid who saw Mr. Obama’s potential for a successful run at the White House when many Democrats were rallying behind Hillary Clinton. Recognizing that the young Illinois senator had little affection for the Senate’s byzantine ways, Mr. Reid in 2006 privately urged him to mount a bid for the Democratic nomination. “I am one of the reasons he’s president,” Mr. Reid told The Washington Post after announcing his retirement. Mr. Obama confirmed as much Tuesday evening, when he posted on Twitter a letter he had recently written to Mr. Reid. “I wouldn’t have been president had it not been for your encouragement and support, and I wouldn’t have got most of what I got done without your skill and determination,” Mr. Obama wrote. Image Mr. Reid with President Barack Obama in 2010. Mr. Reid became one of the indispensable lawmakers of the Obama era.Credit...Doug Mills/The New York Times Mr. Reid was as shrewd a tactician as he was poor a communicator, and nowhere was that more evident than in Nevada, where he became the state’s dominant political figure for the final two decades of his life — “a Machiavelli with malaprops,” as the Las Vegas-based journalist Jon Ralston called him. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story Mr. Reid used his position on the Senate Appropriations Committee and his eventual majority leadership to block nuclear waste from being deposited in Nevada’s Yucca Mountain, a decades-long fight, while relentlessly earmarking spending for his state, where 85 percent of the land was federally owned when he left office. He also helped create Nevada’s Great Basin National Park, ensured that millions of acres in the state were protected as national parks or monuments, and made sure that federal funds were directed to cleaning and preserving Lake Tahoe, which straddles Nevada’s border with California. Mr. Reid ran Nevada’s Democratic Party in the manner of an old-style political boss, determining which candidates would run up and down the ballot, arranging his own succession and even remaining in charge after his cancer diagnosis and through the 2018 midterm elections, nearly two years after his retirement from the Senate. He also used his clout to elevate his state’s role in the presidential nominating process, moving Nevada’s caucuses up to become one of the early voting states in the Democratic primaries, and in 2016 he quietly helped Mrs. Clinton salvage her nomination there. A Difficult Start Harry Mason Reid Jr. was born on Dec. 2, 1939, in Searchlight, a mining outpost that had about 200 residents in his youth. One of four sons of Harry Sr. and Inez (Jaynes Reid), he grew up in privation. His father suffered from depression and was often unemployed. Harry worked at a gas station in high school, earning enough money to purchase his mother a new set of false teeth. Boxing metaphors about Mr. Reid would eventually become clichéd — he even named his memoir “The Good Fight” — but he was quite the pugilist. He got into physical altercations with his father (when his father would become violent toward his mother) and with his future father-in-law (who was uneasy about his daughter marrying Mr. Reid). To attend high school, he would hitchhike 40 miles to Henderson, near Las Vegas, where he had relatives. And it was there that his political career effectively began. He had a teacher and boxing coach named Mike O’Callaghan, who would be elected governor in 1970 with Mr. Reid as his running mate. With financial assistance from Nevada businessmen, Mr. Reid graduated from Utah State University, where he converted to Mormonism. He then attended law school at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., moonlighting as a Capitol Police officer to pay his way through. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story With his law degree, he returned to Nevada and became the local prosecutor in Henderson. He was elected to the Nevada State Assembly in 1968. Two years later, he and Mr. O’Callaghan were elected statewide. Then, unexpectedly, Senator Alan Bible, a Democrat, announced in 1974 that he would not run for re-election. Mr. Reid won his party’s nomination but lost in the general election to Paul Laxalt, a popular former Republican governor, by fewer than 700 votes. It was the only Democratic Senate seat in the country that year that Republicans picked up. In an early demonstration of his political pugnacity, Mr. Reid had demanded during the campaign that Mr. Laxalt release his family’s financial interests. Image Credit...From left: Mark Rucker/Transcendental Graphics, via Getty Images; Jens Schwarz/laif, via Redux; Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times Notable Deaths 2021 Remembering Hank Aaron, Colin Powell, Stephen Sondheim, Beverly Cleary, DMX, Cicely Tyson, Larry King, Olympia Dukakis, Chuck Close, Michael K. Williams, Bob Dole, Janet Malcolm and many others who died this year. “One problem,” Mr. Reid recalled with a chuckle years later. “His sister was a nun. I got killed on that.” After an ill-fated bid for the Las Vegas mayoralty in 1975, Mr. Reid’s career was floundering. But Mr. O’Callaghan again came to his aid, making Mr. Reid chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission at a moment when state officials were trying to root out the mob from Las Vegas’s casinos. It was only then that Mr. Reid realized how entrenched the mob still was on the city’s famous Strip. “That was a real eye-opener for me,” he said later, “because I thought I knew the state very well, but I didn’t.” As gaming commissioner, he was offered bribes and participated in F.B.I. stings. Near the end of his tenure, his wife, Landra Reid, came out of their house one day to find a bomb attached to the family’s station wagon. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story Ms. Reid, who was his closest adviser, survives him, as do his children, Rory, Lana Reid Barringer, Leif, Josh and Key, and 19 grandchildren. Following the 1980 census, Nevada, for the first time in its history, had a large enough population to merit a second House seat, representing the Las Vegas area. Mr. Reid won the new district, but after two terms a Senate seat again opened up, thanks to Mr. Laxalt’s retirement. Mr. Reid again benefited from running in a good Democratic year, in 1986, and this time his bare-knuckled tactics paid off as he handily defeated Mr. Laxalt’s handpicked successor, former Representative Jim Santini. He won a coveted seat on the Appropriations Committee in his first term and spent much of the first part of his career looking out for the needs of Nevada, which was beginning to boom as a global hospitality capital. After another agonizingly close race in 1998 — he won by fewer than 500 votes following a recount — Mr. Reid was elected minority whip, the second-ranking Senate Democrat. Though still not a prominent figure in Washington, he was pivotal in wooing Senator Jim Jeffords of Vermont to leave the Republican Party in 2001 and caucus with the Democrats, a move that gave Mr. Reid’s party control of the narrowly divided Senate. After Senator Tom Daschle, the Democratic leader, was defeated in 2004, Mr. Reid effectively secured the commitments he needed to take over the caucus by the next day. ADVERTISEMENT Continue reading the main story The Majority Leader A fierce critic of President Bush — he called him “a liar” as well as a loser — Mr. Reid became a beneficiary of the president’s unpopularity in 2006, when Democrats took back control of the Senate and Mr. Reid became majority leader. He played a key role in passing the bank bailout after the stock market collapsed in the fall of 2008. Later that year, when Mr. Obama was elected, Democrats made even more gains, giving Mr. Reid a filibuster-proof majority. Image Mr. Reid, second from left, watched with other members of Congress as President Barack Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Act into law in 2010. The law imposed new restrictions on the finance industry.Credit...Charles Dharapak/Associated Press But the Democratic caucus included senators across the ideological spectrum and, with few moderate Republicans left, it took all of Mr. Reid’s legislative acumen, doggedness and even shamelessness to win some close votes. On the health law, for example, he offered Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska a generous expansion of Medicaid funding in his state, a deal that critics called “the Cornhusker Kickback.” Mr. Reid’s hard-nosed tactics handed Democrats a series of major achievements, but he enraged Republicans and was vulnerable to defeat entering what would be his final re-election campaign in 2010. He overcame his own unpopularity by meddling in the Republican primary, as his allies undermined a potentially strong candidate and helped lift a far-right conservative, Sharron Angle, who was herself as gaffe-prone as Mr. Reid. He won the general election comfortably even as the rise of the Tea Party movement propelled Republicans to victory across the country. That same single-mindedness and indifference to criticism, however, even embarrassed some of his allies two years later when he sought to undermine Mitt Romney’s presidential candidacy in 2012 by repeatedly, and without evidence, claiming that Mr. Romney had gone a decade without paying income tax. Mr. Reid was even more contemptuous of former President Donald J. Trump, calling him “a racist” and “sexual predator” who achieved prominence only because of the fortune he had inherited. Being born into wealth was, of course, alien to Mr. Reid. At the end of his career — after great financial and political success and raising five children, one of whom became an elected official in Las Vegas — he relished showing visitors his dusty hometown. But he recalled that it was not until he saw Alex Haley give a talk about his book “Roots” that he stopped feeling ashamed by his impoverished background. “He said be proud of who you are, you can’t escape who you are,” Mr. Reid said in his Senate farewell speech, adding that at that point he proudly became “Harry Reid, the guy from Searchlight.” Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stillearly Posted December 31, 2021 Share Posted December 31, 2021 Betty White dies just 11 days before her 100th Birthday .. 😞 RIP https://www.tmz.com/2021/12/31/betty-white-dead-dies-golden-girls/ Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fforest Posted December 31, 2021 Share Posted December 31, 2021 Hey links are useful because then you don't have to post everything..... 1 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glasseye Posted December 31, 2021 Author Share Posted December 31, 2021 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Stillearly Posted December 31, 2021 Share Posted December 31, 2021 20 minutes ago, Glasseye said: Just watching a documentary about her on Netflix Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glasseye Posted December 31, 2021 Author Share Posted December 31, 2021 7 minutes ago, Stillearly said: Just watching a documentary about her on Netflix She reminds me of my aunt, who died last year from Covid. She was 98. Her name was also Betty. They both had remarkable, full lives. And they were both deeply loved and admired by all generations. People who were born during that time seem to share a positive view of things. They were born in the 20's (before the Great Depression). So they had a relatively stable upbringing which carried them through the difficult depression and WWII. Although I suppose it helps that they were both very talented and beautiful (doesn't hurt - lol). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Golfingboy Posted January 1, 2022 Share Posted January 1, 2022 6 hours ago, fforest said: Hey links are useful because then you don't have to post everything..... Agreed Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Golfingboy Posted January 1, 2022 Share Posted January 1, 2022 3 hours ago, Stillearly said: Just watching a documentary about her on Netflix It’s funny, my IPhone sent me the notice about 5 hours ago. Besides the daily news alert about 5 PM local time, it is a much rarer occurrence when Apple sends an obituary. The only ones I remember getting recently were Kobe, Christopher Plummer, and now Betty. I’m sure there have been more, but that’s the 3 that stick out, i.e Apple has to deem you very famous to send an alert to all their customers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Golfingboy Posted January 1, 2022 Share Posted January 1, 2022 Damn another great man gone from the NFL 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Horizondave Posted January 1, 2022 Share Posted January 1, 2022 On 12/31/2021 at 7:23 PM, Stillearly said: Betty White dies just 11 days before her 100th Birthday .. 😞 RIP https://www.tmz.com/2021/12/31/betty-white-dead-dies-golden-girls/ I was very sad when I read this news, really loved her work, such a great charisma around her. RIP. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glasseye Posted January 4, 2022 Author Share Posted January 4, 2022 On 1/1/2022 at 2:27 PM, Horizondave said: I was very sad when I read this news, really loved her work, such a great charisma around her. RIP. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Glasseye Posted January 6, 2022 Author Share Posted January 6, 2022 (edited) This is old, but it was so good I thought I would post it here. Billy Crystal at Muhammad Ali's Memorial. I will never forget one day many years ago when I was awaiting a flight at O'hare Airport (ORD). I was reading something and not paying attention to anything around me. Suddenly I heard the beep beep beep of those annoying carts that take elderly and disabled folks. The cart whizzed past me and then turned into the waiting where I was and stopped just a few feet away. It was Ali. Now that caught my attention - big time. He slowly got up (he was with his wife). I looked in awe, he looked at me and nodded (as if to say hello). I was in awe. Things went quickly and I don't remember much following that, as everyone was busy boarding. It was a short few minutes, but a memory I will never forget, and very thankful to have had. Edited January 6, 2022 by Glasseye Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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