Thriller - Vincent Price

Cedar Posts is no fan of Michael Jackson, however "Thriller" remains one of the best Music Videos of all time. Beyond Jackson's dancing and John Landis' direction, the short is still rather thrilling due in part to Vincent Price and his voice over "rap" Thriller.


What better way to kick of a Friday edition of All Hallows Eve.


Darkness falls across the land
The midnight hour is close at hand
Creatures crawl in search of blood
To terrorize y’all’s neighborhood


And whosoever shall be found
Without the soul for getting down
Must stand and face the hounds of hell
And rot inside a corpse’s shell


The foulest stench is in the air
The funk of forty thousand years
And grizzly ghouls from every tomb
Are closing in to seal your doom


And though you fight to stay alive
Your body starts to shiver
For no mere mortal can resist
The evil of the thriller

Additional details at Wikipedia here  

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Ghost Fleet Of Mallows Bay

A little Halloween Tale without the macabre horror.

There’s a small bay on the Maryland side of the Potomac River, 30 miles south of Washington, D.C., that is an eerie final resting place for hundreds of ships. More than 230 were scuttled here, and most of them were never put into service.

In 1917, President Woodrow Wilson rallied the nation to join World War I. Germany’s submarine offensive was fearsome, and the United States was woefully unprepared.

To counter the Kaiser’s forces, the nation would have to launch the greatest shipbuilding program in history; 1,000 wooden steamships would need to be built within 18 months. Each vessel in the fleet would be 240 to 300 feet, the total built from 1.5 million board feet of yellow pine or Douglas fir.

On Dec. 1, 1917, the first ship was launched in the Pacific. Almost a year later, only 134 wooden steamships had been built and 263 were less than half-finished. When Germany surrendered, a grand total of zero had crossed the Atlantic.

A congressional inquiry soon followed. Vessels were alleged to have been poorly designed, the construction was shoddy and the boats leaked. Years of debate followed about what to do with the obsolete armada. After many twists and turns, the wooden fleet was towed to Mallows Bay and torched.

You can visit Mallows Bay today by kayak and see the eerie remains of the largest shipwrecked fleet in the Western Hemisphere. It has been nominated to become a National Marine Sanctuary.

For much more on this spooky story, read Ghost Fleet of Mallows Bay and Other Tales of the Lost Chesapeake by Donald G. Shomette.

A search of Mallows Bay on Google Earth might also be in order.

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Tina McCard Fraudster Thief Convicted Felon - Spotted In Charleston and Still on the Loose

BOLO - Tina McCard

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CMPD Stingray - Beyond The Constitutional Issue

A lot of chatter over the Charlotte Observer story concerning the use of Stingray, a super tech spy gadget that LE is using across the nation to track and ease drop on thugs and ghetto rats.


Of course the story line is all about constitutional rights and the ever increasing scope of government in the "big brother" age.


But the back story is rather interesting:


As with much of CMPD the budget and expense approval process is all smoke and mirrors.


From the Observer:


"Charlotte City Council voted unanimously without debate in 2012 to spend about $357,000 to update the equipment for CMPD. Some members now say they don’t remember the vote and do not know much about the surveillance."


Well no surprise there, these folks are actually paid to at least read the motion that is put before them and hopefully understand the facts. But more often than not they approve budget requests without discussion.


Autry said he plans to meet with city attorneys. "I am a Fourth Amendment kind of guy,” Autry said, referring to constitutional protections. “I have some pertinent questions that will spark some discussion.”


Council member LaWana Mayfield said she would also talk with city attorneys. Mayfield said she did not know about the surveillance technology before she was contacted by a reporter Monday.


The issue is concerning, she said, because since the Sept. 11 attacks “rights that have been taken for granted are being slowly eradicated.”


Senior Assistant City Attorney Judith Emken did not respond to questions on Monday. City Manager Ron Carlee said he could not talk because he was in a meeting.


Cellphones send signals to nearby towers whether they are in use or not. A device city officials call a cell site simulator tricks phones into electronically identifying themselves and transmitting data to police instead of the closest cell tower.


Privacy groups say the equipment is powerful enough to collect cellphone information from an entire apartment building. They claim it gives law enforcement the ability to gather voice, text and other data from phones.


Charlotte officials have refused to divulge details about the city’s equipment but did defend how CMPD uses its cellphone tracker. CMPD does not capture the voice contents of phone calls, Emken has said. She said officers do not store data that is retrieved.

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Observer Bill Scam Tied To Charlotte Biz Journal

GDid you get one of these bogus bills for The Charlotte Observer last week?

Of course it is a scam, but the interesting twist is they got my name from the Business Journal!

Seems the CBJ sold this this scammer my name! 

You see my CBJ subscription has this odd little typo unique only to that once a week bit of USPS Mail! 

Which prompts me to say WTF ( well that's funny)!

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On Patrick Cannon Cedar's Take:

Later this morning former Mayor Patrick Cannon will be sentenced by Federal Judge Frank Whittney. He'll get probation and here's why.

Cannon was targeted by someone in the Obama administration because it was concluded that His-honor was just the tip of the iceberg and that corruption ran deep all the way down to the cellar of the government center. 

Turns out Cannon was a big mouth talker who believed his own hubris lies, an amateur targeted by professionals.

Cannon was all talk and no action, all take and no give he had nothing to offer and apparently caused nothing to happen. 

If there is any wrong doing it is the waste of untold amounts of money to target an idiot with no connections, whose only incentive was to reduce a pile of debt he had accumulated.

Cannon was no angel but to send him to prison does nothing to remove the stain of this unproductive adventure sponsored by the Feds.

Judge Whittney will, I suspect, see this for what it was; a fishing expedition that returned to the docks with not Moby Dick but with Mr. Impotent Dick.

Five years suspended, three years probation, community service and restitution. For Charlotte to move, on this is the only answer.

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Gay Marriage Why It Is Not A Win For The LGBT Community

The Supreme Court's Refusal to review the lower court's ruling and subsequent North Carolina court decision opens the door to same sex marrige in North Carolina. But this is not a win for the LGBT faction any more than proabition was a victory for the Bible Belt crowd.

North Carolina was and still is opposed to gay marriage, most of us in the metropolitan areas are just tired of hearing about it, and just as many don't really care. It's a perversion, an anomaly that effects about 10 percent of the population and so we'll just shake our heads or look the other way.

A court ruling won't change adittudes, and the next series of battles with not be as simple. Let's face it, the homosexual community is up against serious discrimation in this country, whether on not we care to admint it.

Heath Insurnace has long been impossible with a majority of insurance carriers for certian occupations, ACA has changed that somewhat but try being Gay and getting approval for disability insurance. 

The idea that one judge can turn away the will of the people because of his own agenda should be troubling to all Americans. Notice the same courts that provided shelter to gay marriage supporters, smashed the ranks of those enjoying the benifts of same day voter registration. In other words allowing the courts to overturn laws enacted by voters means your vote is meaningless.

The thinking is that the public is too stupid to have any real say in the laws of this country. This thinking seems to be pretty common lately.

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