19 Trips to Take In Your 60's

Above, the end of U.S. Highway 1 in Key West. Photo by Armand Vaquer.

The following doesn't apply to me anymore as I am two years out of my 60s. It is a list of 19 trips to take while one is in their 60s.

The suggestions range from cruises, balloon rides, train rides, ancient Egypt and others at Newsbreak.

They start off with:

While health and finances may present some concerns, the majority of people hope to spend plenty of time traveling in their 60s. There are many destinations and experiences out there for people of all budgets and levels of fitness. Even if you aren’t fully retired yet, there are options for shorter trips too. Let’s take a look at some of the best trips you can take in your 60s.

To read more, go here. 

When One Is In Egypt...

 His mind was changed quite quickly:

Asya In Egypt

This morning, after delivering the Jeep to the mechanic's shop in Gallup, I headed to the Tee Pee Trading Post in Lupton, Arizona on a cigar run.

While there, I received some photos from Asya who is in Cairo, Egypt (I think until tomorrow). They included some at the Egyptian Museum of Cairo and one at the Pyramids of Giza.

When she told me she was going to be in Cairo last week, I gave her an "assignment" to have a picture taken of herself at the Pyramids or the Sphinx. She was at the Museum and Pyramids today and sent the photos.

Here's a couple:

Above, today at the Pyramids of Giza.

Above, today at the Egyptian Museum of Cairo.

I should have asked her to get some tana leaves, but I didn't think of it until now. 😉

The Return of Kharis (70 Years Later)

Above, Lon Chaney Jr. as Kharis in The Mummy's Curse (1944). Universal Pictures.

It has been since 1944 when we last saw the mummy Kharis, in The Mummy's Curse. 

Here's the plot according to Wikipedia:

The Southern Engineering Company is trying to drain the local swamp for the public good. However, the efforts are being hampered by the superstitions of the workers, who believe the area to be haunted by the mummy and his bride.

Two representatives of the Scripps Museum, Dr. James Halsey and Dr. Ilzor Zandaab, arrive on the scene and present their credentials to the head of the project, Pat Walsh. They have come to search for the missing mummies, buried in the swamp years earlier. Their conversation is interrupted by the news that a workman has been murdered in the swamps. Evidence at the scene convinces Halsey that the murderer has found the mummy of Kharis.

Later that evening, Zandaab sneaks into the swamp and meets Ragheb. Ragheb is a disciple of the Arkam sect, and Zandaab is secretly a High Priest. The follower killed the worker that unearthed Kharis, and has taken the immobile monster to a deserted monastery.

Zandaab explains the legend of Kharis and Ananka to Ragheb as he brews the tana leaves, giving instructions on their use. The old sacristan of the monastery intrudes on their ritual, and is promptly executed by a risen Kharis.

Meanwhile, the mummy of Ananka rises from the swamp after being partially uncovered by a bulldozer during the excavation. She immerses herself in a pond and the mud is washed away, revealing an attractive young woman.

Cajun Joe finds the girl wandering listlessly in the swamps, calling out the name "Kharis". He takes her to Tante Berthe, the owner of the local pub, who aids the girl. Later, Kharis finds her there and murders Berthe, as Ananka flees into the night.

Ananka is soon found lying unconscious beside the road by Halsey and Betty Walsh, the niece of Pat Walsh. While in their care, and although apparently suffering from amnesia, the girl displays an incredible knowledge of ancient Egypt. Her stay at Halsey's camp is again interrupted by the appearance of Kharis, and the kindly physician, Dr. Cooper, is killed. She again takes flight, and Halsey and the others go in search of her.

Fleeing the monster after he attacks and kills Cajun Joe, she comes to Betty's tent seeking refuge. However, Kharis is not far behind. He enters the tent and whisks away his Princess, leaving the horrified Betty unhurt.

Betty asks Ragheb for his help in finding Dr. Halsey. The treacherous disciple has other ideas, and takes her to the monastery instead. Zandaab, having already administered the tana fluid to the young Ananka, is angered to find Ragheb making advances on Betty. He orders her death, but Ragheb kills him instead. Halsey arrives, tracking them from the camp after finding Betty's tent destroyed. A struggle ensues between Ragheb and Halsey, until Kharis intervenes. The creature, sensing Ragheb's betrayal, advances on his former ally.

Locking himself inside a cell-like room, Ragheb is powerless to do anything but watch as Kharis literally brings down the walls on the two of them. Halsey, Betty and the rest find the mummified remains of Ananka in the adjoining room.

As stated above, the monastery walls, where high priest Zandaab and his henchman Ragheb were hiding in, collapsed on Kharis when he was going after Ragheb in a cell-like room.

The last bit of dialog after the old monastery walls collapsed on Kharis (from the script):

Halsey: This mummy is the girl we brought to the camp. She's the Princess Ananka.

We'll put a crew of men together digging Kharis out of the rubble, then send them both back to the Scripps Museum.

The end.

Well, maybe not. Frankly, Kharis is too tough for collapsed stone walls to kill him.

Suppose Universal Pictures decides to produce a movie picking up where The Mummy's Curse left off? A screenwriter who is also a fan of the Mummy movies could tackle the script (Donald Glut, are you listening?). That would be interesting and not difficult. It could be a money-maker, especially with baby boomers and fans of classic Universal horror movies. Besides being a sequel, it can also correct the goof of locations (and other plot holes), when the movie substituted Massachusetts with Louisiana. 

It can go like this:

The bodies of Kharis and Ananka were taken to the Scripps Museum where they had been on display for 70 years. Another high priest of the sect, who were the guardians of Ananka's and Kharis's tombs, arrives in America around 2014. Perhaps he's the youngest son or grandson of Kandaab and his desire is to complete the mission to bring Ananka and Kharis back to Egypt. With him, he brings a satchel of tana leaves to revive Kharis, which he does. Kharis is revived and runs amok in modern-day San Diego (where the museum is located). Of course, nobody believes a living mummy is out killing people. With the help of Kharis, the high priest manages to remove Ananka's body from the museum and takes it to Lindbergh Field. 

A chartered plane (Egypt Air?) manages to take off before authorities catch wind of this and can stop them. (Coffee, tea or tana fluid, sir?) They reach modern-day Egypt, where they have a different set of problems in getting Kharis and Ananka back to their tombs. However, Universal Pictures, being the crafty company it is, saves what happens next for another sequel.

The possibilities are endless. 

United Nations Climate Change Conference Hypocrisy

Almost immediately after winning re-election, New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham took a junket to Egypt to attend the United Nations Climate Change Conference. She wasn't alone.

What is interesting, if the following is correct, 800 others went to the conference in private jets or aboard an airliner. Just think of the carbon footprints all those planes left!

Typical of elitists. The old saying, "Do as I say, not as I do!" certainly does apply to them.

The following pretty much sums it all up:

 

Lujan Grisham Celebrates Re-Election With An Egyptian Junket

Now that Gov. "Malevolent Michelle" Lujan Grisham has won re-election, she's back to her old ways of junketing on the taxpayers' dime.

A year ago, she junketed to Scotland for "climate change" conference. This time it is Egypt she's headed off to for the same thing. Nice of her to leave a nice big carbon footprint while traveling by jet.

According to the Piñon Post:

One day after winning a second term as governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham was reported to be leaving the state to go to an eco-leftist climate conference in Egypt.

The Santa Fe New Mexican’s Daniel Chacón reported, “New Mexico @GovMLG is traveling to Egypt on Friday to attend the second week of the 27th United Nations Climate Change Conference.” 

To read more, go here. 

Mummy Burial Chamber Found In Egypt

Above, Boris Karloff in The Mummy (1932). Universal Pictures.

Almost as if the gods wanted to help revive Egypt's tourism industry, a burial chamber of mummies has been found.

According to The Japan News (Yomiuri Shimbun):

MINYA, Egypt (Reuters) — Egypt has unearthed an ancient burial site replete with at least 17 mummies, most fully intact, the latest in a string of discoveries that the country’s antiquities minister described as a helping hand from the crypt for its struggling tourism sector. 

The funerary site, uncovered eight meters below ground in Minya, a province about 250 km, south of Cairo, contained limestone and clay sarcophagi, animal coffins, and papyrus inscribed with Demotic script. 

The burial chamber was first detected last year by a team of Cairo University students using radar.

To read more, go here. 

TSA To Tighten Security In Aftermath of Russian Plane Crash

The downing of the Russian passenger jet over the Sinai Peninsula last week is leading the TSA to tighten up security measures in the U.S.

According to the Washington Post:

As investigators search for the cause of a plane crash that killed 224 people over the Sinai Peninsula on Saturday and Russia suspends all flights to Egypt, U.S. officials said they are taking unspecified precautionary measures to enhance the security of flights from the Middle East.

ISIS is claiming responsibility for the downing of the jet, but the exact cause of the crash is either not determined or the Russian aren't disclosing it.

To read more, go here. 

5,600-Year-Old Tomb and Mummy Found In Egypt

Above, Karloff the Uncanny in The Mummy (1932). Universal Pictures.

After all these years, more mummies are being found in Egypt.

Jiji Press reported:

Archaeologists in southern Egypt have discovered a 5,600-year-old preserved tomb and mummy predating the First Dynasty of the pharaohs, the antiquities ministry said Wednesday. 

The tomb was built before the rule of king Narmer, the founder of the First Dynasty who unified Upper and Lower Egypt in the 31th century BC, the ministry said in a statement. 

The tomb was discovered in the Kom al-Ahmar region, between Luxor and Aswan, on the site of Hierakonpolis, the city of the falcon, which was the dominant pre-dynastic urban centre and the capital of the Kingdom of Upper Egypt.

To read more, go here.

Egyptian City Named After The Son of Godzilla?

Did you know that Godzilla fans in Egypt named their city after Godzilla's son?

Yes, there's a city in Egypt named Minya.

Here's a map:

Actually, the town isn't named after the "son of Godzilla," here's what Wikipedia says about it:

Minya is the capital of Minya Governorate in Upper Egypt. It is located approximately 245 km south of Cairo on the western bank of the Nile River, which flows north through the city. 

"Minya" isn't the official spelling of the character anyway, it is actually "Minilla."

German Paper: "Obama's Middle East Policy In Ruins"

While the U.S. Obama lapdog media focused on Mitt Romney's alleged gaffe (he said nothing wrong and had every right to say it), the international media has their focus on the failure of Obama's Middle East policies.

The Washington Free Beacon posted a snippet from the German newspaper Der Spiegel:

“US President Barack Obama’s Middle East policy is in ruins. Like no president before him, he tried to win over the Arab world. After some initial hesitation, he came out clearly on the side of the democratic revolutions. … In this context, he must accept the fact that he has snubbed old close allies such as Israel, Saudi Arabia and the Egyptian military. And now parts of the freed societies are turning against the country which helped bring them into being. Anti-Americanism in the Arab world has even increased to levels greater than in the Bush era. It’s a bitter outcome for Obama.”

To read the full article, go here.

Michelle Malkin Shreds Obama Administration Response To Murder of Ambassador Stevens

Ambassador John Christopher Stevens's blood is on Obama's hands!

News From TravelPulse.com

 There's a couple of items that caught my attention when I read TravelPulse.com's newsletter:

Tour operators are keeping a close watch on unfolding events after attacks on U.S. embassies took place Tuesday in both Libya and Egypt. American intelligence looked for links between the attacks, but from the standpoint of tourism, the two were very different. 

In Libya, attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Benghazi led to the killings of four American diplomats. The killings took place in the aftermath of a harsh war in which the U.S. was a major participant. Only a few American tour programs have been offered to Libya in the last decade, and those were offered at rare moments when relations between the U.S. and Libya seemed to be warming. But those periods were all short-lived and were soon interrupted by diplomatic tensions of one sort or another. 

Egypt, on the other hand, is historically one of the all-time favorite destinations of American tourists, and as a result a favorite market for tour operators. Egypt’s economy is acutely dependent on tourism. The country recently endured a tourism drought of a year and a half following the Arab Spring uprising and the pro-democracy demonstrations that led to an overthrow of the government and the establishment of a new democratically chosen government.

To read the full article, go here.

******

With the earthquake of March 2011 behind it, Japan should be welcoming a healthy surge in tourists from the United States, but a strong yen has made Japan a destination limited to American business travelers and high-end luxury travelers. At the Japan National Tourism Organization (JNTO), they prefer dealing with the old and familiar problem of a super currency to that of natural disasters. “Our biggest concern now is an old concern -- the price of the yen,” said Yuki Yamagishi, director of the JNTO’s New York Office,

To read the full story, go here.

Libya and Egypt: Jimmy Carter All Over Again

The attacks on the embassies in Egypt and Libya on the eleventh anniversary of 9/11 is a sad reminder that there are people out there who hate Americans.  They are egged on by the weak leadership out of Washington whose embassy in Cairo issued a mealy-mouthed statement reeking of appeasement.

The Obama Administration and their toadies in the MSM are trying to deflect this into a smear on Mitt Romney.  That dog won't hunt, especially once all the details come out.  And they WILL come out!

According to Rush Limbaugh, who went through the timeline of the Cairo statement apologizing for a film, through the killing of our ambassador in Libya (yes, I know Libtards will dismiss Rush, but the truth is the truth, nonetheless):

Tell the Democrats that during the war in Iraq. Politics ends at the water's edge? Except, see, that's not what happened. Cairo puts out this statement that I just read to you, and once the media gets hold of that and starts reporting it, somebody has to speak up. It is outrageous. It's disgraceful. It's exactly what Romney said. So, to review: On 9/11, our embassy is attacked. A press release is issued before the attack apologizing for a private citizen exercising his free speech in our own country. 

After the embassy is attacked, the State Department spokeswoman essentially endorsed the earlier release but they disavowed it first. They said it stands. Actually what happened was Embassy Cairo issues that statement; Washington disavows it. Embassy Cairo tweets: No, it still stands. (The operative part of our statement being about embarrassed over what Americans are doing to hurt the feelings of Muslims, that still stands.) Throughout all of yesterday and last night -- throughout all of it -- Obama has said nothing.

Until about eleven o'clock this morning.

While the MSM is spending its time trying to smear Romney, they are avoiding the obvious questions:

Why weren't the Marines at the embassy in Libya?   (According to reports, there were NO Marines stationed there.)

Why weren't the embassies on heightened alert on the anniversary of 9/11?

How did the mob find out where Ambassador Stevens was located?  Who tipped them off?

Rush raised this as well:

They were able to get to the flag, rip it down, try to set it on fire, and raise the Al-Qaeda flag. That just doesn't happen. Now, if you move over to Libya, when that happens, there is a procedure in place to transfer the ambassador and his high-level aides to a different location for his safety and security, which happened. CBS (no less than CBS) is reporting the following. Brace yourselves. "Libyan officials moved our ambassador to a secure location and then told the mob where they took him," and that's how the mob knew where he was. 

That's how the mob knew where to go to kill our ambassador, because the Libyan officials who moved him to the secure place (according to CBS), then told the mob where he was. Then to add insult to injury, we have to listen this morning -- honest to God folks -- to Mrs. Clinton and Obama praise the Libyans for trying to save our ambassador. These pictures that you've seen with the ambassador upside-down, half naked, being carried over somebody's shoulder?

Ambassador Stevens's body wasn't found until twelve hours later according to reports.

This is a massive foreign policy failure of the Obama Administration.  Two embassies are attacked.  American diplomats are killed, including the U.S. ambassador to Libya.  Yet Obama feels he can go to  Las Vegas to campaign.  He is a disgrace!

This is Jimmy Carter all over again.

Obama: Another Jimmy Carter

The current events in Egypt exposed to the world the ineptness of the Obama Administration.

Case in point:

The term Muslim Brotherhood is an umbrella term for a variety of movements. In the case of Egypt, a very heterogeneous group, largely secular, which has eschewed violence and has decried al-Qaeda as a perversion of Islam.

This was said by Director of National Intelligence James Clapper at a congressional hearing yesterday.

This guy is totally out to lunch! Secular? Eschewed violence? This would be funny if it weren't such a serious matter.

Also, CIA Director Leon Panetta raised more eyebrows at a Capitol Hill hearing when he told lawmakers yesterday there was "a strong likelihood that Mubarak may step down this evening." Panetta stepped into it further when he said he was basing this on press reports. Press reports?! What did his intelligence people in Egypt tell him, if anything?

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak stepped down today in what amounts to a military coup. The Obama Administration has shown during the Egyptian crisis that friends can't rely on the support of the American government while in the hands of liberal Democrats. Just ask the Shah of Iran!

Like Jimmy Carter, Obama greased the skids for the downfall of a U.S. ally. In 1979, Carter greased the skids for the Shah's downfall and look at what took over. We continue to pay a heavy price over Carter's Iran debacle. Now we see a repeat of this involving Mubarak.

What will eventually take over power in Egypt? Will the new government be friendly to the U.S. and Israel? Or will it be hostile? This is a question that is of most concern.

During the 2008 presidential campaign, one of the arguments against the election of Barack Obama was that he would amount to being "Jimmy Carter's second term." It appears that this prediction is coming true.

Obama: just another Jimmy Carter.