On Roy Orbison, Synchronicity and the Theater Row Diner

Roy and Barbara Orbison

I blogged last week about Roy Orbison but haven't blogged since because I visited my 96-year-old dad in Deerfield Beach, Florida (which is just south of Boca) and left my car at home. He's still driving his Ford Crown Victoria.  The weather in Florida was ok but not great.  Returning back to LaGuardia Airport in Queens, the plane from West Palm Beach arrived at 8 pm and I had to catch a 9:30 bus to Kingston, NY.  As luck would have it there was a traffic jam at the Queens Midtown Tunnel and  I missed the Kingston bus.  I thought I'd find a diner until the last Kingston bus, the 11:30, but all of the eating places near Port Authority were a bit chichi or fast food, and I wanted a Greek salad.  So I wandered around the bus depot, walking west along a desolate super-block.  No one seemed to know where a diner might be.  Then I walked north on Dyer Avenue, which is west of 9th Avenue, and right as I came to 42nd Street and Dyer, there was the cozy Theater Row Diner.

I sat down at the counter and noticed a "reserved" sign at the leftmost counter stool.  I sat two stools away from the sign.  Nothing is cooler than a Manhattan diner at 10:30 pm, and a "reserved" sign at the counter gave the Theater Row just enough idiosyncrasy. I ordered the Greek salad.  As I was enjoying it, a fiftyish guy sat down at the seat with the reserved sign.  He and the owner started talking about the Yankees. Then the subject turned to Roy Orbison.  He talked for a few minutes about how great Roy Orbison was and all his great songs like "Only the Lonely", "Dream Baby" and all the others.  I chimed in "Yeah, like 'Blue Bayou'".  We got into a conversation. He told me that Orbison started in Sun Records in Memphis and that he also was a big Elvis Presley fan.  The guy is a FedEx driver who grew up in Long Island City, and I come from Long Island City and my parents' apartment is still there (I stayed there last Sunday night on the way to LaGuardia).  Then he told me the owner lives in neighboring Astoria and we got into a conversation about it, and the owner's friend works in the development next to where I live.

Previously, Tanja Crouch of Roy Orbison music had e-mailed to send me a thank you for blogging about the great rockabilly star. When I arrived home after catching the last bus out of Port Authority,  a package from Barbara Orbison Productions containing a four CD set "Roy Orbison: The Soul of Rock and Roll" was waiting for me.

Roy Orbison Toasts Rick Lazio: "It's Over"

Roy Orbison released "It's Over" in 1963, the year after the Cuban missile crisis.  America was robust; the gold standard was still in effect internationally, and I am told that JFK was considering bringing it back domestically as well.  Jimmy Hoffa was making money for the Teamsters and the Kennedys were after him.  Orbison died 25 years later, in 1988, the year he made a comeback with the Traveling Wilburys. 

Bless Rick Lazio's heart for saying that he would drop out of the race. "It's Over" is a toast to him. In fact I'll make it two toasts with "Blue Bayou":

Paladino Campaign: Andrew Cuomo Took Payoffs from Slumlord--Cuomo a True Leftist

I just received the following press release from Mike Caputo, Carl Paladino's campaign manager:

PALADINO: "ANDREW CUOMO TOOK A PAYOFF"
Cuomo has a cozy, big money relationship with a "con artist"

(BUFFALO, NY) - Carl Paladino, the Republican and Taxpayers candidate for Governor, today charged Andrew Cuomo with taking payoffs from notorious slumlord Andrew Farkas. In return, Cuomo allowed Farkas to avoid prosecution for kickbacks in HUD programs and permitted Farkas to go on milking taxpayer dollars while Cuomo was Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

"When HUD official Cuomo first visited the Sierra Nevada Arms housing project managed by Farkas' company Insignia Financial Services, he called the conditions "horrendous," Paladino said. "It was later revealed that Insignia had paid $7.6 million in kickbacks to the pockets of the owners of several abysmal housing projects, using money that HUD had earmarked for maintenance of these projects - as Cuomo put it, providing "lives of luxury for con artists stealing from our programs."

Cuomo called the case against Farkas "the largest ever brought by HUD" and denounced "the abysmal conditions" that he said tenants were forced to live with in the "poorly maintained" projects then managed by Farkas.

Paladino said Cuomo's behavior raises serious questions. "When faced with this rampant corruption, why did Cuomo authorize an out-of-court settlement allowing Farkas to pay back $7.4 million - less than he stole? Why did Cuomo authorize a settlement in which Farkas didn't admit any wrongdoing or pay any penalties for stealing from taxpayers?" Paladino asked. "Why was Farkas' company not blacklisted by HUD, while others who participated in the kickback scam were barred from doing business with HUD?"

"More disturbing, why did Andrew Cuomo take $1.2 million from Farkas after leaving as HUD secretary?" asked Paladino. "Why has Andrew Cuomo accepted at least $800,000 in campaign contributions from a man he called a "con-artist?"

"By allowing slum lord Andrew Farkas to avoid prosecution, Cuomo's decision permitted Farkas' companies to sell their entire rental residential portfolio for $910 million. In 2003, after flaming out in his first run for governor, Andrew Cuomo "went to work" for Andrew Farkas, collecting more than $1.2 million in compensation, and even more in undisclosed payments for consulting to Abu Dhabi's version of Fannie Mae, helping them make their mortgage business Sharia Law-compliant, an arrangement set up by Farkas," Paladino said.

"How much was Andrew Cuomo paid for his alleged work in Dubai?" asked Paladino. "Why won't he answer the question?"

"In this campaign, Farkas has personally given $50,000 to Cuomo and currently serves as Cuomo's campaign Finance Chairman. Why would Andrew Cuomo have such a cozy relationship with a man he once said was "using HUD like a personal ATM?" asked Paladino. "There is a clear quid pro quo at play here, the worst kind of insider politics and exactly what we've come to expect from Andrew Cuomo."

RAW VIDEO FEED FOR TELEVISION MEDIA:
www.paladinoforthepeople.com/cuomoforsale.

Carl Paladino, a successful Western New York real estate developer and attorney, is a Republican candidate for Governor of New York. He petitioned his way into the Republican Primary and canvassed to create a new Taxpayers ballot line. On September 14th, Paladino beat his Republican Primary opponent by a record 62 to 38 in one of the highest-turnout primaries in New York history.

For more information on where Carl Paladino stands on the issues, please visit www.PaladinoForThePeople.com

Federal Fascism in Minnesota

Glenda McGee just sent me a link to Twin Cities.com's Mara Gottfried's coverage of FBI raids of political activists' homes in Minneapolis.  According to the article, the FBI forcibly searched the home of left wing activists Mike Kelly, Jessica Sundin and Meredith Aby, all of whom have organized a past anti-war protest and are planning a new one.  The three have traveled to the Middle East. The FBI confiscated Kelly's cell phone. No charges have been brought against them.  According to an FBI spokesman, Steve Warfield, the FBI was executing warrants that a federal judge had reviewed under a 1996 anti-terrorism law.  According to the article Warfield offered no public explanation of what the FBI was seeking.  According to Gottfried:

>Kelly, Sundin and Aby were organizers of a mass march on the first day of the Republican National Convention in St. Paul two years ago. They recently appeared at a news conference to announce plans for another protest if Minneapolis is selected to hold the 2012 Democratic National Convention.

Conservatives ought to be as concerned about this as libertarians are. The FBI is as likely to use overly aggressive laws against Tea Party protestors as against left-wing anti-war protestors. 

The action prior to the DNC makes one wonder whether the Obama administration had input to it. Republican Theodore Roosevelt founded the FBI under the name "Bureau of Investigation"  during the Progressive era a century ago to regulate interstate commerce under the Interstate Commerce Act.  Thus, the FBI is a classic illustration of Milton Friedman's thesis in Capitalism and Freedom that economic regulation leads to incursions on civil liberties.  Although the Bureau has performed stellar service in many areas, it abused Martin Luther King and other Americans involved in peaceful protest. As early as 1919, J. Edgar Hoover lead the then-called Bureau of Investigation in the Palmer Raids, targeting the Union of Russian Workers and labor activists in 1919 and 1920, eventually deporting a small percentage of the individuals investigated.  The methods used then involved a shotgun approach with little regard for ethics or constitutionality.  As well, Palmer and Hoover advocated a new Alien and Sedition Act.

America has gone through these suppressive outbursts during big government administrations. The first was the Federalists' passage of the Alien and Sedition Act.  The Republican administration of Lincoln also passed various suppressive laws such as the legal tender law and the draft.  Then, the Progressives engaged in the Red Scare.  Since then there have been intermittant applications of Federalist/Whig/Progressive suppression of individual liberty, including McCarthyism and Michael Bloomberg's recent claim that the Tea Party was responsible for a car bomb left in New York City.