Return Of The Magic Bus

 

Back in 2017, THC did a post on the memorable trip he took with the future Mrs THC on the Magic Bus in September 1978, traveling from Athens to Paris.  The post has drawn more comments than anything else on Things Have Changed.  As wild as our adventure was, many of the comments have matched or exceeded our experience for sheer weirdness.  The Magic Bus remains prominent in the memories of many of its passengers forty and more years later.

 Last month THC was contacted by Spiros Vasiliou, a writer for the popular Greek online newspaper, Reader.gr, who was working on an article on the Magic Bus and had come across my 2017 post, which I gave him permission to use.  I learned that the Magic Bus, which began as a transport on the Hippie Trail in the early 70s, going all the way to Nepal originally, also had a place in Greek culture and memory.

You can find the lengthy article here, including photos and excerpts from my post, but you'll have to do the translating yourself! 

Spiros also told me that the Magic Bus inspired a very popular rock song in the 1980s by one of the pioneering Greek new wave bands (it's got 2.4 million views on YouTube).  The band was Tripes and the closest translation of the song title is Psyche Taxicab.

These are the translated lyrics:

London, Amsterdam, or Berlin

You've forgotten exactly where you want to go

No matter how much I borrow, I won't let you

Go for rides on the Magic Bus anymore

 

Traveling soul 

And if I want to be by your side, it's hard to stay

It's time to see my own life

On this trip I won't wait for you

 

I'll go shopping and one night

What I have inside of me for you I'll erase

The road you've taken is a one-way street

And I don't see you turning back 

Take a listen.  It's pretty good.

 

 

Translation of the section on our trip:

American Mark Stoller is one of the thousands of passengers who traveled to Greece in the late 1970s on the Magic Bus. Several years ago, he decided to record that experience on his blog. What followed was something he never imagined. Dozens of responses to his text, from people who had similar experiences! “I am still amazed that my post on the Magic Bus has received more comments than anything else I have written on my blog since I started it in 2012,” he tells us. “So many years later, my wife and I still have such enjoyable memories of our month in Greece and the Magic Bus,” he adds, and kindly provides us with the itinerary of the trip, as it was distributed to passengers in the summer of 1978!

The article then goes on to include a long quote from my 2017 post.

 

Files

The release of tens of thousands of pages from the JFK assassination investigation will not clarify anything or end the conspiracy theories for those so heavily invested in such theories.  By its nature an investigation of this sort collects all pieces of evidence without regards to its credibility, so I expect we will see a lot of wacky claims regarding conspiracies and individuals and groups, like the Illuminati!, and a lot of people on social media republishing random and unsubstantiated documents as proof that their particular conspiracy theory is thus proved.  For those who can't find the document(s) they were confident existed, absence alone will provide definitive proof that the conspiracy existed.

Here is what I think happened:

On President Kennedy

Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone assassin and not part of a conspiracy.  The Warren Commission got its overall conclusion correct, but made major mistakes in its analysis, in part because the real scandal was the CIA and FBI covering up the evidence they had gathered enough information, in the three months prior to November 1963, that if acted upon properly, could likely have prevented the assassination. It was a bureaucracy protecting itself. And Lyndon Johnson was convinced Castro was behind the deed, and he did not want that to be the public conclusion because he thought it would lead to war with the Soviet Union.

For my prior analysis read A Cruel And Shocking Act. 

On Robert Kennedy

RFK was the target of Sirhan Sirhan, a Palestinian upset by Kennedy's support for Israel.  There is a small possibility that the fatal shot came from a guard or law enforcement officer in the chaos after Sirhan began shooting. 

On Martin Luther King

James Earl Ray was the lone assassin though it is possible that someone else encouraged his action.  Of the three events, this is the one I know the least about, and am least confident of my conclusions.

Taj

I've heard Taj Mahal since the late 1960s, but had never seen him perform until last night at the 300-seat theater at the Musical Instruments Museum where he and his ban (bass, drums, pedal steel) were playing four shows.

Over the years he's played with everyone from the old blues artists to Eric Clapton, The Rolling Stones, Joe Walsh, Cyndi Lauper, and Bonnie Raitt.  Taj (real name Henry St Clair Fredericks Jr, but known as Taj since 1960) is now almost 82 and moving a lot slower than he used to but his voice and playing is as strong as ever.  He played electric acoustic and steel guitar, ukelele, banjo, and keyboards.  At a Taj concert you'll hear an eclectic mix of country blues, roots music, reggae and Hawaiian music. What a fun, relaxing, and upbeat show! 

You can listen to some of his music in the linked post above; this is Take A Giant Step, the first song I ever heard from Taj and what he closed last night's show with, and below are a couple of more recent sessions:

Revenge Or Justice?

Over at National Review Online, Andrew McCarthy argues that President Trump's Executive Order suspending security clearances, contracting, and access to federal buildings to the law firm of Perkins Coie is an unconstitutional and deeply wrong act.  I agree, though with a partial dissent as discussed below.

Two senior Perkins Coie lawyers, Marc Elias and Michael Sussman, are deeply implicated in the Clinton campaign conspiracy regarding Russia Collusion, a conspiracy designed to improperly influence a presidential election.  Both Elias and Sussman are long gone from the firm, which employs 3,700 people.

It was through Elias and Sussman that the Clinton Campaign and the DNC hired FusionGPS to fabricate the phony Steele Dossier, and Sussmann used his direct influence to move its allegations through the Federal bureaucracy.  They then prepared the false submissions to the Federal Election Commission (FEC) by both entities, claiming the more than $1 million paid to FusionGPS was for legal services.  The FEC found this statement to be in violation of Federal law, fining the campaign and the DNC a total of $135,000.  You may recollect that it was the alleged violation of the same FEC rules by the Trump campaign regarding the $250,000 payment to Stormy Daniels, that led Manhattan District Attorney Bragg, with the assistance of the Biden Justice Department and a bizarre legal theory converting a federal misdemeanor matter into 34 felony counts under New York law, to bring criminal charges against Donald Trump.  It's fair to say that Elias and Sussmann are scumbags whose activities undermined American democracy.  The question is what is to be done about the partnership of Perkins Coie?

McCarthy's point, apart from the constitutional argument is:

Trump is stubbornly wrong, however, in refusing to accept that the payback he gets — extraordinary payback, but the only legitimate payback — is his stunning political comeback. The Democrats suffered thunderous defeat, in large part because the public saw these and other lawfare abuses as scandalous. That has to be enough. Trump’s retribution is that he won the presidency; it is not turning the presidency into lawfare on steroids.

I agree with McCarthy in so far as this argument applies to Perkins Coie.  However, I part ways with him on his next assertion:

Participants in the Russiagate farce have been disciplined. The government officials, particularly at the FBI, were the subject of scathing inspector general reports and either fired or pushed out of office. Hillary Clinton is irrevocably damaged political goods.

Whether it is petty or prudent to do so, Trump has all the authority the Constitution gives a president to remove government officials he blames for the lawfare tactics, and he has done that.

Here, McCarthy is wrong.  There has not been personal responsibility and accountability for the greatest political scandal of my lifetime, and arguably in American history.  I support any efforts by DOJ to investigate and, if appropriate, bring criminal charges against those involved in the conspiracy.  Unfortunately, with the passage of time, the statute of limitations may have expired regarding many potential offenses. 

McCarthy admits "I’d prefer to ignore the EO because the Democrats and their base supporters now expressing outrage over it are hypocrites", pointing out the efforts to disbar any attorney who worked on supporting Trump's claim that the 2020 election was stolen, adding:

So it’s hard to take sides with these people: progressive ideologues who can’t spew enough bile about pardons for participants in a three-hour riot at the Capitol, including hundreds who viciously assaulted police officers (and they’re right about that)(1), but who turned a blind eye to — or even marched in lockstep with — left-wing radicals who engaged in months of lethal rioting, looting, and arson triggered by the death in police custody of a black man with a substantial criminal record, who had started the fateful confrontation by assaulting the cops. This includes progressive ideologues now trying to turn a Hamas-supporting activist into a free-speech martyr, but who have not a word to say about Hamas’s brutal killing, maiming, and raping of hundreds of people on October 7, or about Edan Alexander, the American citizen who is among the two dozen living hostages the jihadists are still holding in their dungeons after 17 months.

And, I'll add the same progressives who reveled when the Trump White House was under assault on May 31-June 1, 2020, gleefully pointing out that the president was in the basement below for security purposes, while sixty law enforcement personnel were injured, eleven seriously enough to go to the hospital. 

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(1) I disagreed with President Trump's pardon of those convicted of violent offenses on January 6, while agreeing with his decision to pardon non-violent offenders.  There was clearly a two-tier legal system created by the Biden Justice Department in which red-coded defendants were treated much more harshly than those blue-coded.  The deluded non-violent protestors (the bulk of those convicted of J6 offenses) drawn to DC by Trump's ridiculous Stop the Steal claims, deserved pardons, particularly after Trump went on to raise more than $100 million for his personal kitty, while leaving his arrested supporters bereft of legal counsel and, in some cases, to rot in jail awaiting trial.

Nobody's Fault But Mine

From Otis Redding's last Stax recording session just before his death in a plane crash at Madison, Wisconsin in December 1967.  Composed by Otis and Steve Cropper.  What a talent lost!

Funny Stories

 Kevin Pollak tells great stories about Don Rickles and Walter Matthau.