When someone commits mass murder in the United States and is tied, however significantly, to a foreign terrorist group, there remains a section of the U.S. population willing to recognize and point out that no ideology, fit of hatred, or mental derangement can do the same damage without high-tech weaponry that it does with it. Why does this understanding vanish into the ether of ignorance and apathy at the water's edge?

ISIS videos display U.S. guns, U.S. Humvees, U.S. weaponry of all sorts. The profits and political corruption that bring those weapons into existence are the same as those that litter the United States with guns. Shouldn't we be bothered by both?

The most likely way to die in a U.S. war, by far, is to live in the country that the United States is attacking. But the most likely way in which a U.S. participant in a war will die is by suicide.

There are a couple of widely observed top causes of hundreds of thousands of U.S. troops returning from recent wars deeply disturbed in their minds. One is having been near an explosion. Another, which has been around longer than explosions have, is having killed, having nearly died, having seen blood and gore and suffering, having imposed death and suffering on innocents, having seen comrades die in agony, exacerbated in many cases by having lost faith in the sales pitch that launched the war -- in other words, the horror of war making.

On June 6th at the weekly City Council meeting they granted yet another multimillion dollar tax abatement to another major corporation with gross profits over a billion dollars. This time it was to UPS. Council member Elizabeth Brown, who chairs the Economic Development Committee, did her best to try and justify this tax abatement. In my comments to City Council, I suggested that UPS is not in danger of bankruptcy and her reply to that was she wants to make sure that companies like UPS do not fall into bankruptcy.

Really?

She then tried to tout her extensive experience in Economic Development since she used to be the Downtown Development Manager for the Department of Development.

Her duties?

You guessed it, to focus on helping companies to expand into sites in Downtown and the surrounding area (Short North) through income tax incentives and other tax giveaways. The perfect go to person for a handout. She also claimed that our surrounding suburbs give away much more in terms of tax incentives and we could have lost UPS.

Bulls#%t!

Study a picture of Jesse Hughes, my fellow old-timers. The lead singer and funny man of Eagles of Death Metal reminds you of who?

To this loving son of the '70s, I see in him:

--first and foremost, one or two members of Foghat, the quaalude boogie band spin-off of England's venerable blues-jazz band, Savoy Brown. A little bit 'Lonesome Dave' Peverett and a whole lot of Tone Earl, drummer. Unreconstructed long-hairs who couldn't hide their musicianly machismo if they tried, while at the same time being, you know, being skinny, unaggressive musicians.

--Diamond Jim Dandy of Black Oak Arkansas, the first of the flamboyant talent-less southern American home-grown boogie bone-heads. More on that in a bit.

--'Diamond' David Lee Roth, the king of such entities, and the greatest of the ass-less chaps set. Without peer. And yet a true original.

In concert at the Newport May 28, the EODM with the third great 'Diamond,' namely Hughes, put on a show of insouciant '70s-esque cock-rock the likes of which makes you realize the cliche 'everything old is new again' is an evergreen phrase of eternal usefulness.