Black Mob Violence in Rochester: Get Used To It

Posted By Colin Flaherty On January 9, 2014 @ 12:09 am In Daily Mailer,FrontPage | 9 Comments

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Photo credit: Davy V. (@DavyVara)


Rochester does not have a problem with black mob violence.  Or black on white crime. The city does, however, have a problem with white people who are not used to it.

So says a Rochester city councilman.

The latest example is a “disturbing” video of a group of black people laughing and dancing as they talk about how they are going wait for an “old lady” to leave a convenience story, then smash her in the face with a snow ball. And a fist.

Which they did. Thanks to the efforts of local activist Davy V., police have a copy of the video and know who the culprits are. And they will talk to them eventually. But police told the local paper it looks more like harassment than assault.

Which should make Rochester councilman Adam McFadden a happy man. McFadden schooled white people about their finicky sensibilities toward crime in 2011. The occasion was an episode of large-scale black mob violence at a city-sponsored Memorial Day party featuring barbecue ribs.

More than 200 black people showed up, ate, rioted, then left. Police arrested 13 black people, including one for assaulting an officer. If anyone in Rochester was surprised or upset, they did a good job hiding it. The local paper explained that several public holiday gatherings had been cancelled the year before because of violence, and “the city has an ongoing issue with crowds of youth at the Liberty Pole downtown.”

Which continue today — the Liberty Pole is the site of regular and frequent black mob violence, especially when students ride the bus there after school. Sometimes accompanied by gunfire. The paper does not talk about the black part.

McFadden explained the 2011 black mob violence, thusly: “I think what you saw at the [Memorial Day barbecue] is what we’ve been seeing in many of our neighborhoods for two decades,” said  McFadden. “It’s just that you had a lot of people there who are not used to that culture and got to witness it personally.”

In the two years since,  McFadden has been proven correct over and over again — with many of the episodes documented in White Girl Bleed a Lot: The Return of Racial Violence to America and How the Media Ignore It.

The city’s Lilac Festival was once a national showcase of horticultural excellence. Today, the annual flower show is just another excuse for frequent episodes of black mob violence.

By the time it was over last year, 200 people were arrested and four people were stabbed. A man with a shotgun escaped and two police officers were hurt.

Two months prior to the festival, the Rochester police chief sent potential criminals a letter, saying he was watching them and they’d better start behaving. They did not.

Local reporters do not – or will not – report what many readers know: “Let’s face it, this is a racial problem,” said Ann Marie Cummings in the comment section of the Democrat and Chronicle. “Whether it is the Puerto Rican fest, last year at the rib fest, or problems at sea breeze with gangs. It’s obvious these street thugs pick arenas … large amount of people attending.”

In September of 2013 in the Rochester suburb of Irondequoit, police had to close down a movie theater after 400 to 500 black people started fighting inside and outside a showing of the movie Insidious, Chapter 2.

Most of the fighters were from Rochester.

“I saw police officers chasing kids, as we were pulling out of the parking lot to leave we saw police officer knock kids to the ground and one police officer was batoning kids,” said Alton Johnson to Rochester YNN.

Lt. Jonna Izzo explained it all to News 8: “They have pent up energy from being scared in the movie theater and they come out and they don’t know what to do with that energy.”

Some residents said it was strange that anyone could blame a large scale act of violence and mayhem on a movie. Others said it had nothing to with the movie: That mall and others in Irondequoit have been plagued by black mob violence for years:

“So it’s not the first time and won’t be the last !!,” said David Sevor at the web site for WHAM TV news. “It’s sad these young teenagers don’t know how to behave out in public.”

Mike Alpaha was more explicit: “It’s been a problem that has been escalating for a long time. White people are the real problem! Your all too scared to speak up and talk about the real problem!”

“These young black kids are out of control and have no discipline in the home. They have no respect for anyone (especially white people). But everyone is scared of being called a racist for telling it how it is.I’m not a racist, but I can say that the inner city black youth are out of control and only getting worse!”

Four police departments from neighboring jurisdictions assisted. City officials called the bus company, which returned the rioters to Rochester. No one was arrested.

Meanwhile, police are looking for the “old lady” who was struck with a snow ball and a fist.

But the activist who discovered the tape and recorded it before it could be removed is not holding his breath. Davy V. is a filmmaker and blogger who writes in Rochester. He describes some of the actors and actions:

Sunday evening, a Rochester, NY youth who goes by the Facebook name “True Goon Tocool Sneekey” posted a :53 second video titled “Just doin shit watch the smack cam”. 

The video starts with the youth laughing and talking into the camera. 

“I’m bout to smack the old lady with the snowball when she come out the store,” he says. 

A few seconds later, as more laughter is heard in the background, an older woman is seen coming out of a corner store located at the intersection of Jay and Child Streets, on the city’s west side. 

The youth in the video then hits the woman in the side of the head. 

The youths then run off as one of them is heard yelling “Smack cam! Smack cam!” 

Then one of the youths is heard saying “I’m gonna get the fuck up outta here before she calls the cops!”, obviously referring to the woman they just assaulted.

Davy V. says police are not taking the crime seriously.

“I wonder if the woman who came out of that store, and was attacked by some young punk who blinded sided her, hitting her on the side of her head, if that woman had been RPD Sgt. Elena Correia’s mother, or grandmother, would she brush it off as ‘harassment’, which is nothing more than a violation,” said Davy V.

Maybe Councilman McFadden would know. But he is not returning calls or emails.

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Alec Reid, Irish Peacemaker

NOTES FROM THE GLOBAL CHURCH

An Irish peacemaker

Jan 08, 2014 by Philip Jenkins

http://www.christiancentury.org

Fr Reid beside the body of one of two British soldiers killed by the IRA at a republican funeral in Belfast.

The Catholic priest was carrying an ultra-secret document that could mark a breakthrough in one of the world’s bloodiest conflicts. En route to deliver it, though, a humanitarian crisis forced him to stop: he tried, unsuccessfully, to prevent a mob from murdering an unarmed soldier. After giving the soldier last rites, he continued to carry his potent message—although he had to change the envelope, which had become soaked with blood.

Such a heroic story sounds almost as if it comes from a Catholic suspense novel, but it really did happen—in Belfast in 1988. The priest in question was Alec Reid of the Redemptorist Order, who died in November at the age of 82.

Although little known in North America, in Ireland itself he is lauded for his critical role in ending the decades-long struggle be­tween the (Catho­lic) Pro­visional Irish Repub­lican Army and the British government. His mighty example of Christian peacemaking cries out to be remembered.

Alec Reid grew up in the Irish Republic, although later he moved to the north to live in a Belfast monastery. He never lost a sense of the profound structural injustices imposed on Northern Ire­land’s Cath­olics. In 1968, he sympathized with the surging civil rights movement, in­spired by the example of Martin Luther King Jr. Peaceful protest, though, degenerated into violent ethnic and religious confrontations and savage rioting, as the Provisionals launched their terrorist campaign. (Homicidal Protestant militias added their share of carnage.) Some 1,750 perished between 1971 and 1976, in­cluding a thousand civilians. Hugely destructive bomb attacks occurred both on the Brit­ish mainland and in the Irish Republic.

By the time the struggle ended (more or less) in 1998, it had claimed 3,500 lives and devastated a whole generation. It had seemed like the war would never end. It is hard to overstate the deep polarization of the two main players, the British government and the Provisionals, each officially pledged to an absolute refusal to negotiate. In the 1980s, British media were even prohibited from broadcasting the voices of Republican leaders—not just the IRA but also the Sinn Féin party, which is generally regarded as the movement’s political wing. In turn, the IRA refused to contemplate any agreement that fell short of total victory.

At a time when the gulf between the sides seemed unbridgeable, Alec Reid be­came the bridge. Through­out, he preached peace and also followed up with practical initiatives. In 1982, he ap­proached Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams in an attempt to free a captive soldier. That effort failed, but he kept those channels open.

In the late 1980s, he established contacts between North­ern Ireland’s major Catholic parties, the revolutionary Sinn Féin and the peaceful and constitutional-minded Social Democratic and Labour Party. He urged the two to form a common front to work for peaceful change. It was while carrying messages between the two parties that Reid faced the deadly interruption of the soldier’s killing. Still, contacts continued and were extended to include the leaders of the Irish Republic. Reid’s negotiations effectively ended Sinn Féin’s isolation.

Reid claimed no magical powers to halt violence. Rather, he took advantage of the mounting pressures that the paramilitaries faced in sustaining their campaign. For one thing, strong evidence pointed to British penetration of the IRA leadership at very high levels. Time and again, IRA attempts to launch violent spectaculars collapsed bloodily in ways that suggested the British had advance knowledge of their most secret plans. After 1989, moreover, the fall of communism in Europe dried up IRA hopes for major arms supplies, as British intelligence was exercising surveillance over their international networks.

Surely, there had to be some way out of the spiral of killing? The Republicans ac­cepted Reid as a negotiator because of his absolute in­tegrity, his indomitable personal courage and his impeccable credentials as a Cath­olic priest. Everyone could trust him—even when he maintained, against major evidence to the contrary, that Sinn Féin really did want to renounce violence.

The peace process was lengthy, and an early truce in 1994 collapsed. But the mo­men­tum was irresistible, leading to the celebrated Good Friday Agreement of 1998.

Although stubborn Re­pub­lican extremists still operate, the worst of the war is long over, and Northern Ire­land is rebuilding. Sinn Féin today pursues its goals though the ballot box.

In alliance with some Prot­estant clergy, Reid took on another task that was ex­tremely difficult but much more hopeful—ensuring that the different militias genuinely had decommissioned their weapons so they could never be reused. The process was completed in 2005. He then sought still further challenges as a mediator between the Basque extremist movement and the Spanish government.

The Christian tradition calls peacemakers blessed. Doubly blessed are those who work to end a conflict that seems so utterly resistant to human intervention.

Related:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/father-alec-reid-reveals-how-he-tried-to-save-two-british-soldiers-killed-in-one-of-the-most-shocking-episodes-of-the-troubles-8528308.html

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-25051304 (Obituary)

Liberalism by Gesture

By George F. Will, Published: January 8 E-mail the writer

http://www.washingtonpost.com

The era of Gesture Liberalism is at hand. It may be more amusing than consequential.

Americans who exercise consumer sovereignty wherever Barack Obama still tolerates it are constantly disappointing him. For generations they persisted in buying what he calls“substandard” policies from what he calls “bad apple” health insurers. They stopped only when he forced them to stop — when he rescued them from their ignorance by banning their benighted preferences.

Have consumers thanked him for trying to wean them from their desire to drive large, useful, comfortable, safe vehicles that he thinks threaten their habitat, Earth? The 2013 numbers tell the tale of their ingratitude. In 2013, for the 32nd consecutive year, the best-selling vehiclewas Ford’s F-Series pickups. This supremacy began, fittingly, in the first year of Ronald Reagan’s deregulatory presidency.

Today’s consumers, who cannot get it through their thick heads that they are supposed to want wee vehicles such as Chevrolet’s Volt, bought 763,402 F-Series trucks. That is 740,308 more than the number of Volts General Motors sold.

In 2010, a GM official carefully said “more than 120,000 potential Volt customers have already signaled interest in the car.”Signaled? How? Not by buying. At the 2013 rate of sales, by 2046 GM will have sold as many Volts as Ford sold F-Series trucks this year. Obama, our Nostradamus, prophesied a million electric cars on U.S. roads by 2015. If so, they will have to outsell F-Series trucks this year.

The sort-of-electric Volt — it is a hybrid — probably is one of those great ideas Joe Biden celebrated in 2010: “Every single great idea that has marked the 21st century, the 20th century and the 19th century has required government vision and government incentive.” Government’s incentive for Volt buyers is a tax credit up to $7,500. A 2011 study showed that taxpayer-subsidized Volt or Nissan Leaf buyers had average annual incomes of $150,000, and more than half of them owned at least two other vehicles.

In 2009, the Obama administrationdisapprovingly said: “GM earns a large share of its profits from high-margin trucks and SUVs, which are vulnerable to a continuing shift in consumer preferences to smaller vehicles.” Continuing? A 2011 Wall Street Journal headline: “Americans Embrace SUVs Again.” A Wall Street Journal subhead last week: “U.S. Sales Cruise Back to 2007 Levels, Driven by Fondness for Pickups, SUVs.”

Building the Volt was bankrupt-and-bailed-out GM’s gesture of obeisance to its Washington masters. And causing the Volt to be built was a gesture by those masters to demonstrate how much they worry about the climate. The climate may not understand the importance of gestures.

Today, Little Sisters of the Poor Home for the Aged v. Sebelius may be the second-most serendipitously named court case in U.S. history, second to Loving v. Virginia (wherein Richard Loving, who was white, and his wife Mildred, who was black, in 1967 overturned Virginia’s law against interracial marriages). The Little Sisters are challenging the Obamacare mandate that makes them complicit in providing, through their health insurance, contraception, something that offends their faith.

This mandate illustrates Gesture Liberalism: It is unimportant to the structure of Obamacare. It has nothing to do with real insurance, which protects against unexpected developments — car insurance does not pay for oil changes. The mandate covers a minor expense: Target sells a month of birth control pills for $9 . The mandate is, however, a gesture affirming liberalism’s belief that any institution of civil society can be properly broken to the saddle of the state.

The next item on Gesture Liberalism’s agenda is to raise the minimum wage for the 23rd time. Less than 3 percent of the workforce earns the minimum; more than 60 percent of those who do earn it get a raise within a year; more than half of minimum-wage earners are students or other part-time workers from households with average incomes of $53,000. Never mind. Raising the minimum is a gesture of devotion to “equality.”

As is Obama’s support for universal preschool, the centerpiece of the agenda of New York City’s new mayor, Bill de Blasio. When, in Obama’s first inaugural address, he vowed to “restore science to its rightful place,” he evidently meant to exclude social science: There is much discouraging data about the efficacy of universal preschool.

It will, however, mean billions for hiring more members of teachers unions, whose dues will help elect the likes of Obama and de Blasio. So this component of Gesture Liberalism is more than just a gesture.

Read more from George F. Will’s archive or follow him on Facebook.

Read more about this topic:

Jennifer Rubin: ‘Cruddy’ plans are actually the health-care solution

Dana Milbank: Where is the left’s voice?

Robert J. Samuelson: The minimum-wage muddle

The Post’s View: A rush to bump the minimum wage in Montgomery County

Millennial Communists

To the young and idealistic, this time is always different. 

By Jonah Goldberg

http://www.nationalreview.com/

January 8, 2014

By Sergey Ponomarev, AP

A Communist party supporter holds a portrait of the Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin during a rally to mark May Day in Moscow.

"In America,” Oscar Wilde quipped, “the young are always ready to give to those who are older than themselves the full benefits of their inexperience.” And they often do it in the pages of Rolling Stone.

Last week, the magazine posted a mini-manifesto titled “Five Economic Reforms Millennials Should Be Fighting For.” After confirming that it wasn’t a parody, conservative critics launched a brutal assault on its author, Jesse A. Myerson.

Myerson’s essay captures nearly everything the unconverted despise about left-wing youth culture, starting with the assumption that being authentically young requires being theatrically left-wing.

Writing with unearned familiarity and embarrassingly glib confidence in the rightness of his positions, Myerson prattles on about how “unemployment blows” and therefore we need “guaranteed work for everybody.” He proceeds to report that jobs “blow” too, so we need guaranteed universal income. He has the same disdain for landlords, who “don’t really do anything to earn their money.” Which is why, Myerson writes, we need communal ownership of land, or something.

One wonders why he bothered to single out landlords, since he calls for the state appropriation of, well, everything. Why? Because “hoarders blow,” and he doesn’t mean folks who refuse to throw away their Kentucky Fried Chicken buckets and old Sharper Image catalogs. He means successful people who “hoard” the wealth that rightly belongs to all of us.

Apparently “blowing” is an open warrant to undo the entire constitutional order. If only someone had told the Founders.

In the ensuing kerfuffle, Myerson, whose Twitter hashtag is “#FULLCOMMUNISM,” seemed shocked that any of his ideas sounded Soviet to his critics. Andrew McCoy, a conservative blogger, offered the specific citations for Myerson’s proposals in the Soviet constitution. I suspect this was news to Myerson, but even if not, I bet he doesn’t care. It is a permanent trope of the Left that its ideas failed because we didn’t try hard enough. This time is always different.

Obviously, this is the sort of fleeting controversy that pops up daily on the Internet like fireflies on a summer night. But that’s what I find so interesting about it.

Sometimes it is hard for people to accept that there really aren’t many new ideas. Sure, there are new policy innovations and new possibilities created by technology. But the really big ideas about how we should organize society vary between being merely antique and downright ancient. Plato argued for collective ownership of property on the grounds that it would erase social divisions. Aristotle disagreed, insisting that, “when everyone has a distinct interest, men will not complain of one another, and they will make more progress, because everyone will be attending to his own business.”

Interestingly, there were times when private-property rights were distinctly leftish (populist is probably the better label) because they were seen as a bulwark against tyranny. Even the French revolutionaries included it in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen (1789). What really changes is our concept of freedom.

One of the wonderful things about America is that both the Left and Right are champions of freedom. The difference lies in what we mean by freedom. The Left emphasizes freedom as a material good, and the Right sees freedom as primarily a right rooted in individual sovereignty. For the Left, freedom means “freedom from want.” If you don’t have money, health care, homes, cars, etc., you’re not free. Or as FDR put it when pitching his failed “Economic Bill of Rights”: “Necessitous men are not free men.”

The relevance of the Soviets’ effort to provide every goody imaginable isn’t to suggest they came up with the idea; it’s to demonstrate that when such ideas are put into practice and allowed to run their course, they fail — and often crush both kinds of freedom in the process.

Regardless, the failure of Communism didn’t put the debate to rest because the debate is eternal. Like those summer fireflies, it is a permanent fixture of the human condition, particularly among the affluent and fashionably rebellious young who are always eager to explain why this time is different.

— Jonah Goldberg is the author of The Tyranny of Clichés, now on sale in paperback. You can write to him by e-mail at goldbergcolumn@gmail.com, or via Twitter @JonahNRO. © 2014 Tribune Media Services, Inc.

Appreciation: Phil Everly, half of a duo with unearthly sound

By Terence McArdle, Published: January 4 E-mail the writer

http://www.washingtonpost.com

The Everly Brothers (Phil and Don Everly) perform on "Johnny Cash presents the Everly Brothers Show" on July 8, 1970 in Nashville, Tenn.

(Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)

Phil Everly, who died Jan. 3, and his older brother, Don, used their harmonies to capture the sorrows and drama of adolescence for a generation. In doing so, the duo known as the Everly Brothers paved the way for the Beatles, the Byrds, the Hollies, and Simon and Garfunkel.

While it is sometimes argued that much early rock-and-roll — particularly the music of Elvis Presley and Bill Haley — was simply watered-down rhythm and blues, the music of the Everly Brothers stands as a rebuttal to this claim.

The two could — and did — cover songs by Little Richard and Ray Charles with authority, but their roots were in a long tradition of country-music fraternal duos that included the Delmore Brothers, the Louvin Brothers and the Blue Sky Boys. When brothers harmonize, their genetically close voices often produce a distinctive, ethereal sound, and the Everlys exemplified that.

In their case, though, the sound was rendered almost spooky by the fact that Don, the baritone, and Phil, the tenor, hardly ever sang more than a diatonic third apart. Listen to an Everlys song such as “When Will I Be Loved.” Hum Phil’s part, then hum Don’s. Either vocal part can stand alone as a melody. But taken together, the two melodies, rendered by two nearly identical voices, formed what was called a “ghost harmonic” by Graham Nash of the Hollies and Crosby, Stills and Nash.

Phil and Don turned professional before their teens while working with their father, the country guitarist Ike Everly, on the radio in Shenandoah, Iowa. In 1956, they recorded a country record that went nowhere. Their success came a year later, when they applied their old-fashioned “hillbilly” harmonies to pop music with “Bye Bye Love,” the first in a long series of songs written for them by Nashville tunesmiths Felice and Boudleaux Bryant.

The Bryants’ songs chronicled teenage angst without trivializing it. Each song had a specific scenario that teens could relate to. A young couple fears the girl’s parents, who are waiting up for her in “Wake Up Little Susie.” The class clown makes a play for his best friend’s girl in “Bird Dog.” And the slow ballad “All I Have to Do Is Dream” distilled the fantasy and longing behind every high school crush.

The brothers also were prolific songwriters, Phil most notably with “When Will I Be Loved,” later covered in a slick but less soulful fashion by Linda Ronstadt, and Don with “(’Til) I Kissed You.” The latter had the memorable hook of a snare drum imitating a rapid heartbeat.

Perhaps the brothers’ closest kindred spirit was Buddy Holly, the bespectacled Texan with whom they toured in 1957 and ’58. Holly also had sung in a close-harmony hillbilly music duo with Bob Montgomery before he plunged into a rock-and-roll solo career.

The Everlys and Holly shared ideas about songwriting, and Holly pitched several songs to the brothers. Phil served as a pallbearer at Holly’s funeral in 1959. On a BBC show from 1961, Holly’s original rhythm section, the Crickets, appeared as the Everly Brothers’ backup band.

Simon and Garfunkel first recorded in 1957 as Tom and Jerry, in direct imitation of the Everly Brothers, and covered “Bye Bye Love” on their 1970 album, “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

The Everlys’ influence crossed the Atlantic and can be heard on the Beatles’ first single, “Love Me Do.” Like Phil and Don, Paul McCartney and George Harrison often sang into the same microphone with their instruments pressed forward. Although the Beatles never covered an Everly Brothers number as part of their official studio recordings, they performed a 1960 Everlys song, “So How Come (No One Loves Me),” written by the Bryants, on the BBC. As if proving the extent of their admiration, the Beatles chose a song that was an album track, but not a hit single, for the Everlys.

For nearly four decades, the two brothers knew no life beyond touring together, a fact that only magnified the normal rivalries and resentments of siblings. Phil, the less gregarious of the two, first joined his family onstage at age 5. The brothers endured long periods where they sang together but wouldn’t talk to each other. It all came to a head during a 1973 concert when Phil threw his guitar down and told the stunned audience that they were finished as a group.

In the decade that followed, Phil and Don pursued solo projects. Phil stayed busy as a harmony singer, recording behind Emmylou Harris and J.D. Souther.

However, in 1983, the brothers reunited for a recorded concert at London’s Royal Albert Hall. Perhaps music and time served to heal old wounds. A tour followed, and they recorded two albums, “EB 84” and “Born Yesterday,” for producer and longtime Everlys admirer Dave Edmunds.

“Born Yesterday,” the title song written by Phil, captured divorce and middle-age disappointment with as much insight as their earlier songs captured adolescence:

He lost his mind today

She threw his clothes away

The love they thought would last

Just flew away

And perhaps to show how things go in circles, the Everly Brothers toured with Simon and Garfunkel in 2003, a reunion for both groups.

“It’s amazing, because they hadn’t seen each other in about three years,” Paul Simon told Rolling Stone. “They met in the parking lot before the first gig.

“They unpacked their guitars — those famous black guitars — and they opened their mouths and started to sing,” he said.

“And after all these years, it was still that sound I fell in love with as a kid. It was still perfect.”

Today's Tune: The Everly Brothers Reunion Concert (Live at Royal Albert Hall, 1983)

An appreciation: Phil Everly, voice of desperate teenage love

By Randall Roberts Los Angeles Times Pop Music Critic

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music

January 4, 2014, 11:50 a.m.

Phil and Don Everly in 1960 PHOTO BY HARRY HAMMOND/V&A IMAGES/GETTY IMAGES

Love hurts, and few American pop singers have conveyed the teenage depths of that despair as well as Phil Everly, who died Friday at age 74.

Teamed with his older sibling Don as the Everly Brothers, Phil's tenor injected the pair's repertoire -- among the best known are "Bye Bye Love," "Wake Up Little Susie" and "All I Have to Do Is Dream" -- with quivering harmony, embodying the roller-coaster confusion of young desire. 

The pair, in communion on many of their classic hits with husband-wife songwriting team Boudleaux and Felice Bryant, examined the fear, the danger and the worst-case scenario stories of a young American middle-class generation so insulated from real world problems that accidentally falling asleep during a drive-in movie as in "Wake Up, Little Susie" could offer ample drama to drive a hit. 

They did so with a mellifluous directness that would make Raymond Carver blush: "The movie wasn't so hot. It didn't have much of a plot. We fell asleep. Our goose is cooked. Our reputation is shot."

PHOTOS: The Everly Brothers through the years

Through an essential half decade the Everlys ruled the charts. Along with Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, the Coasters, Buddy Holly and others, their three-minute wonders during that pre-Beatles period helped to both define the era and codify a musical form. And though Presley's hips are often cited as the rock 'n' roll culture-shocker of the time, and Chuck Berry's raucous way with narrative drive added R&B fuel, Don and Phil's sense of countrified melody and harmony sent heads spinning in another direction. 

Elvis expressed of love making him "all shook up" with feeling. The Everlys seemed to forever live with a looming panic, singing of nights alone, sleepless, obsessed and "wondering who is kissing you" in their classic version of "Sleepless Nights." (Later perfected by Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris.)

Their version of rock used oft-spritely melodies to accompany lyrical journeys into darkness. "Cathy's Clown" explores the cuckold's humiliation: "I die each time I hear this sound. Here he comes -- that's Cathy's clown." 

In offering voice to the also-rans, the Everlys were musical Charlie Browns to Presley's Lucy, documenting souls whose anonymous lives and loves carried equal intensity. The message of "Bye Bye Love," is pretty simple: Love is gone, life is terrible but the world can still be thrilling when driven by a few major chords and a backbeat.

PHOTOS: Notable deaths 2013

These songs weren't delivered by two bumpkins with a backwoods band. The early hits, many chosen with the help of Wesley Rose of country publishing powerhouse Acuff-Rose, featured Nashville guitarist and production master Chet Atkins and the brilliant session man Floyd Cramer on piano. Deep listening reveals so many amazing musical textures and micro-moments that you realize that the Everlys were a perfectly honed meeting of hit making and song craft -- and the embodiment of a notion that Nashville had been driving toward through much of the 1950s.

Listening to those songs now, you can't help but imagine teenaged Liverpudlians Paul McCartney and John Lennon absorbing the Everly way around a phrase, or George Harrison practicing Atkins' and Sonny Curtis' subtle runs.

Their recordings offer a portal to avowed super-fans Simon & Garfunkel rehearsing the close harmonies of "Susie" in Queens. Robert Zimmerman of northern Minnesota has acknowledged that before changing his name to Dylan and moving east, he was Everly-educated in how a line pared to the bone and delivered with tenor-high longing could upend hearts and minds. 

Phil’s voice in particular delivered words with a desire just this side of innocence. Love was an exciting, mysterious emotion, but dangerous. Like Phil's magnificently coiffed pompadour, the Everlys thrived within this precisely contained structure, impressively built but likely to collapse with a single misguided beat.

Perhaps most important, the Everlys suggested that softening the rhetoric didn't automatically result in treacle. Though Phil wasn't immune to emotional oversaturation during his career, he and Don helped prove that rock 'n' roll could be a big enough tent to contain both Little Richard and the Everlys' renditions of "Rip It Up," and could express soul without being sapped of spirit a la Pat Boone.

INTERACTIVE: Discover songs of L.A.

Though Phil was a better stylist than he was a songwriter, he penned one of the brothers' most enduring hits, "When Will I Be Loved?" A simple song that asks an overwhelming, universal question, it presents a  man ruined by cheaters and mistreaters, but still harboring hope. Linda Ronstadt also turned it into a hit in the 1970s, serving as reminder of the Everlys' timelessness.

The popular narrative of the Everly Brothers often ends when the British Invasion remade the pop landscape, but the pair continued to record, and within that period are enough gems to awe even the most snobby musical know-it-all. 

In particular, the Everlys' post-Beatles double-whammy of "Beat & Soul" and "Rock & Soul" injected a more driving and amplified sound to accompany their harmonies -- and some twisted electric guitar runs. Their updated, more rocking version of "Love Hurts" is particularly thrilling.

The Brothers' unsung country-rock 1968 gem "Roots" found Phil and Don returning to their thematic home to record an album that stands as pure an examination of country rock (and wah-wah pedals) as similarly timed efforts by the Byrds, the Flying Burrito Brothers and the Rolling Stones. 

Volumes could be spent honoring Phil and Don's harmonies. Digging through their collected works isn't just a journey into a thick discography. It's revisiting an America on the verge of a grand shift, embodied, and emboldened, by two brothers genetically designed to deliver music together with a reassuring beauty.  

ALSO:

Best albums of 2013 | Randall Roberts

Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers dies at 74 

It's the music that moves 'Inside Llewyn Davis'

Twitter: @liledit

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The 'Trickle-Down' Lie

By Thomas Sowell

Investor's Business Daily

January 7, 2014

New York's new mayor, Bill de Blasio, in his inaugural speech, denounced people "on the far right" who "continue to preach the virtue of trickle-down economics." According to Mayor de Blasio, "They believe that the way to move forward is to give more to the most fortunate, and that somehow the benefits will work their way down to everyone else."

If there is ever a contest for the biggest lie in politics, this one should be a top contender.

While there have been all too many lies told in politics, most have some little tiny fraction of truth in them, to make them seem plausible. But the "trickle-down" lie is 100 percent lie.

It should win the contest both because of its purity -- no contaminating speck of truth -- and because of how many people have repeated it over the years, without any evidence being asked for or given.

Years ago, this column challenged anybody to quote any economist outside of an insane asylum who had ever advocated this "trickle-down" theory. Some readers said that somebody said that somebody else had advocated a "trickle-down" policy. But they could never name that somebody else and quote them.

Mayor de Blasio is by no means the first politician to denounce this non-existent theory. Back in 2008, presidential candidate Barack Obama attacked what he called "an economic philosophy" which "says we should give more and more to those with the most and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else."

Let's do something completely unexpected: Let's stop and think. Why would anyone advocate that we "give" something to A in hopes that it would trickle down to B? Why in the world would any sane person not give it to B and cut out the middleman? But all this is moot, because there was no trickle-down theory about giving something to anybody in the first place.

The "trickle-down" theory cannot be found in even the most voluminous scholarly studies of economic theories -- including J.A. Schumpeter's monumental "History of Economic Analysis," more than a thousand pages long and printed in very small type.

It is not just in politics that the non-existent "trickle-down" theory is found. It has been attacked in the New York Times, in the Washington Post and by professors at prestigious American universities -- and even as far away as India. Yet none of those who denounce a "trickle-down" theory can quote anybody who actually advocated it.

The book "Winner-Take-All Politics" refers to "the 'trickle-down' scenario that advocates of helping the have-it-alls with tax cuts and other goodies constantly trot out." But no one who actually trotted out any such scenario was cited, much less quoted.

One of the things that provoke the left into bringing out the "trickle-down" bogeyman is any suggestion that there are limits to how high they can push tax rates on people with high incomes, without causing repercussions that hurt the economy as a whole.

But, contrary to Mayor de Blasio, this is not a view confined to people on the "far right." Such liberal icons as Presidents John F. Kennedy and Woodrow Wilson likewise argued that tax rates can be so high that they have an adverse effect on the economy.

In his 1919 address to Congress, Woodrow Wilson warned that, at some point, "high rates of income and profits taxes discourage energy, remove the incentive to new enterprise, encourage extravagant expenditures, and produce industrial stagnation with consequent unemployment and other attendant evils."

In a 1962 address to Congress, John F. Kennedy said, "it is a paradoxical truth that tax rates are too high today and tax revenues are too low and the soundest way to raise the revenues in the long run is to cut the rates now."

This was not a new idea. John Maynard Keynes said, back in 1933, that "taxation may be so high as to defeat its object," that in the long run, a reduction of the tax rate "will run a better chance, than an increase, of balancing the budget." And Keynes was not on "the far right" either.

The time is long overdue for people to ask themselves why it is necessary for those on the left to make up a lie if what they believe in is true.

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Jerry Coleman, Yankees legend, war hero and Hall of Fame broadcaster, dies at 89

A four-time World Series champion who spent his entire career with the Yankees, Coleman served tours of duty in World War II and Korea. He made the transition from player to broadcaster, first with the Yankees, before becoming the radio voice of the San Diego Padres.

By Bill Madden / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

http://www.nydailynews.com
January 5, 2014

Jerry Coleman, truly a man for all seasons — a decorated war hero, Yankee World Series MVP and Hall of Fame San Diego Padres broadcaster — died Sunday at age 89 after a career of more than 70 years in baseball, the Padres announced.

Coleman died in Scripps Hospital in San Diego from complications from a head injury sustained in a fall at his home in December as well as pneumonia.

“It’s hard to put into words what Jerry meant to this franchise,” Padres president Mike Dee.

Coleman, a baseball treaure, signed with the Yankees out of the San Francisco sandlots in 1942 only to spend the next three years as a Marine bomber pilot in the Pacific theater of World War II, flying 57 combat missions over the Solomon Islands. Upon returning from the service in 1946, Coleman worked his way through the Yankees’ system, joining the big club in 1949 when he hit .275 and led American League second basemen in fielding (.980).

Coleman was named Sporting News AL Rookie of the Year in 1949 and finished third in the baseball writers’ balloting. He got perhaps the most important hit that season for the Yankees in their final game in which they completed a two-game weekend sweep of the Red Sox to win the pennant. In the eighth inning, with the Yankees clinging to a 1-0 lead, Red Sox manager Joe McCarthy made the mistake of removing his ace, Ellis Kinder, who’d been dominating to that point, for a pinch-hitter. After Tommy Henrich made it 2-0 with a home run off Kinder’s successor, Mel Parnell, to start the eighth, Coleman came to the plate with the bases loaded later in the inning and sliced a sinking liner into right field that drove in all three runners and put the game away.

“I was almost ashamed,” Coleman said in a 2002 interview with the Daily News. “I mean, I came in afterward, and everybody was patting me on the back and congratulating me for what I felt was just a lucky hit. As long as I live my greatest thrill in baseball will always be (Red Sox catcher) Birdie Tebbetts popping up to Henrich at first base to end that game. We were picked everywhere from fourth to eighth that year and nobody thought we had a chance to win.”

In 1950, Coleman hit a career-high .287 and set a Yankee record for double plays by a second baseman with 137. He was named to the All-Star team and then played a pivotal role in the four-game sweep of the Phillies in the World Series. After losing the first two games, 1-0 and 2-1, the Phillies took their only lead in the Series when they scored two runs in the seventh to go ahead 2-1 in Game 3. But in the Yankee eighth, Coleman started the tying rally by drawing a two-out walk, and in the ninth, singled home the winning run. His .286 average, two runs scored and Series-high three RBI earned him the Babe Ruth Award as the World Series Most Valuable Player.

“The best second baseman I ever saw on the double play,” said Yankee manager Casey Stengel.

It looked as if Coleman was on his way to being a Yankee mainstay. But injuries and another call to duty diminished his career. He missed 25 games in 1951 with injuries and after the season was recalled into the service for the Korean conflict. Coleman flew another 120 missions in Korea and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. He had a brush with death on one of his last missions when the engine on his Corsair fighter jet failed on takeoff about 100 feet from the ground. Coleman was carrying three 1,000-pound bombs, which were heavier than the plane itself, and he didn’t dare jettison them. Instead, he made a crash landing and, as the Corsair flipped over, the bombs broke loose and miraculously failed to detonate. Coleman, however, was pinned inside his plane, his crash helmet tilted forward with the straps around his neck, choking him. Only the quick thinking of a Navy corpsman, reaching inside the cockpit and cutting the straps, saved his life.

“Nothing is as desperate as your life,” Coleman said in that 2002 interview, summing up his war service in which he received a multitude of honors including two Distinguished Flying Crosses. “We were scared just like everyone. We weren’t heroes. The only heroes I know are dead.”

Upon being discharged from Korea in September 1953, Coleman returned to the Yankees, who had a day for him at Yankee Stadium, Sept. 13, in which a crowd of 48,492 came out to pay tribute. But, as Coleman later conceded, the second tour of duty had taken its toll and he wasn’t the same player. “My depth perception was gone,” he said. Then, in 1955, he missed 3½ months after breaking his collarbone on April 22, and also suffering a concussion from being beaned by Chicago White Sox pitcher Harry Byrd on July 20.

Despite Stengel’s affection for him, Coleman never regained the regular second base starting job with the Yankees. He finished out his career as a utility infielder in ’56 and ’57, his final bow coming when he hit .364 in the ’57 World Series against the Milwaukee Braves. Though he was only 33, Yankee owner Dan Topping came to him after the season and offered him a job in the front office as assistant farm director. The Yankees were turning second base over to Bobby Richardson. So Coleman retired with a .263 average over seven full seasons with the Yankees.

Coleman spent five years in the Yankee front office, then entered the last phase of his baseball career — broadcasting — when Topping hired him to handle the play-by-play duties in the Yankee TV booth. He left the Yankees in 1969 and spent 22 seasons calling CBS Radio’s “Game of the Week” as well as the Padre games since 1972. There was one brief interruption when he went back on the field to serve as Padres manager in 1980 — by his own admission an ill-conceived idea as they finished last in the NL West at 73-89, and he was openly criticized by a number of his players.

Back in the booth in 1981, Coleman became one of the most beloved figures in San Diego — he was known for calls of “Oh, Doctor!” and “You can hang a star on that!” after big plays — as well as achieving some unwanted notoriety for his hilarious unintentional “Colemanisms” malapropos such as: “Rich Folkers is throwing up in the bullpen,” “Grubb goes back, back. He’s under the warning track” and “There’s a deep drive to right. Winfield goes back to the wall. He hits his head against the wall. It’s rolling back toward the infield.” Coleman is survived by his wife, Maggie, and two daughters.

In 2005, Coleman received the Ford C. Frick Award for the broadcasters’ wing of the Hall of Fame. At the unveiling of a 7-foot, 5-inch bronze statue in his honor outside of the Padres’ Petco Park on Sept. 15, 2012, in which four F-18 jets from the same Marine squadron as his did a flyover, Coleman said: “I start getting tears in my eyes when I start thinking about the past. I couldn’t find a better place to spend my final days than in San Diego.”  

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/yankees/yankees-legend-war-hero-coleman-dies-89-article-1.1567084#ixzz2pdaQdfXE