Today's News June 29, 2016: Say goodnight, terrorists

The big story today is the terrorist attack on the Istanbul airport which left somewhere from 36 people dead to 41 people dead. Your mileage may vary, depending on your news source.

As you can tell from my last comment, I am not taking this attack seriously. To the people directly affected by this act, your grief is an appropriate response. However, you need to remember that terrorism is about scaring far more people than just the ones killed. For those unaffected, such as myself, grieving for people I don't know is exactly what the terrorists want. I am not giving in to that any more. It is time to give the terrorists as little mileage for their murder as possible.

We need to move on, immediately.

However, if you wish to ruminate on this topic, ask yourself why we are still involved militarily in Islamic nations?

On to other news...

CNN:
Poll: Clinton and Trump run neck-and-neck

A new Quinnipiac University poll shows Hillary Clinton leading Trump by just two points, 42% to 40%, a much closer race than other recent surveys have shown. 

With third-party candidates included, Clinton leads 39% to 37%, with Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson at 8% and Green Party candidate Jill Stein at 4%.

A thought for you Libertarians out there: If Gary Johnson gets 8% of the vote in November, will you nominate him again in 2020, just because he did better than any Libertarian ever?

New York Times:
Could This Be the End of Paul Simon’s Rhymin’?

Paul Simon says he is ready to give up making and playing music, 61 years after he started as a 13-year-old. “You’re coming towards the end,” he said in an interview this week, discussing the mysterious epiphanies that delivered some of his greatest songs, the toxic qualities of fame, and his yearning to explore questions of spirituality and neuroscience. 

“Showbiz doesn’t hold any interest for me,” Mr. Simon said. “None.”

I was saddened to read this, because I consider Simon to be one of the greatest songwriters and performers of the 20th century.

His song Wristband from his latest album Stranger to Stranger shows that he still has the gift:



The story behind Wristband:

“I was having dinner with Paul Muldoon, the poet, and I said, I had this title I don’t know whether I want to keep it, ‘Wristband,’” Mr. Simon said. “He said, ‘It’s a good title. You could go a lot of places with that title, you should keep it.’”

Sometime later, he got stuck while working on a lyric that involved a musician who steps into an alley behind a club and finds himself locked out, unable to regain entry without a wristband. He wasn’t sure what would happen in the song.

“From out of nowhere, I said, wristband, it’s just a metaphor for, ‘You can’t get in. You don’t have what’s required,’” Mr. Simon said. “And that’s what’s going on. That battle is being fought right now, the haves and have-nots. “

It sounds a lot like Buffalo Springfield's For What It's Worth, although that song is a bit more of a period piece from the 1960's, whereas Wristband is far more contemporary, which is pretty impressive coming from a guy who got his start in 1957.