http://www.cnn.com/2015/01/25/us/joe-franklin-obit/index.html

(CNN)Longtime New York City radio and television personality Joe Franklin has died. He was 88.

"Joe went unexpectedly and passed away Saturday night," friend and former producer Steve Garrin said.

Franklin was a fixture on late-night radio and TV in New York, working at WJZ and WOR, and recently at the Bloomberg Radio Network.

"The last two weeks were the first time he ever missed a broadcast in over 60 years" Garrin said.

Though he never broke onto the national scene, Franklin was "in many ways, the pioneer of the modern TV talk show format," according to his website, which says he interviewed more than 300,000 guests.
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Franklin's guests included (sometimes on the same panel) Charlie Chaplin, John Wayne, Marilyn Monroe (with whom Franklin co-authored "The Marilyn Monroe Story" in 1953), Jayne Mansfield, Cary Grant, Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali, Rudy Vallee, Jimmy Durante, Madonna, John Lennon and Yoko Ono, Bing Crosby, The Ramones, Captain Lou Albano, and five U.S. Presidents juxtaposed with countless unknown local performers, fringe bands, balloon-folders, self-published authors, celebrity impersonators and lounge singers, all of whom gave the show a surreal atmosphere.

Franklin never employed a co-host however his producer, Richie Ornstein, worked side-by-side with Franklin for decades and was a standard feature on the Joe Franklin Show to interact with guests and to discuss trivia.

Many well known talents such as Woody Allen, Andy Kaufman, Liza Minnelli, Barbra Streisand, Julia Roberts, Bruce Springsteen, Robin Williams, John Belushi and Richard Pryor got their first television exposure on The Joe Franklin Show. Others, notoriously shy of live interviews, made frequent appearances on Franklin's programs: Frank Sinatra, for instance, appeared four times.

In 1999, Joe Franklin partnered with Riese Restaurants to open "Joe Franklin's Memory Lane Restaurant" in Manhattan's Theater District, where Franklin appeared frequently and even conducted live, in-person interviews with entertainers such as Billy Crystal, who famously impersonated Franklin on Saturday Night Live.

http://gcaptain.com/senator-john-mccain-launches-new-attack-on-jones-act/

Senator John McCain (R-AZ) has once again launched an attack on the Jones Act, announcing Tuesday that he has filed an amendment to a bill to approve the Keystone XL Pipeline that would repeal the Merchant Marine Act of 1920, aka the Jones Act, requiring that all goods shipped between ports of the United States be carried by vessels built in the United States and owned and operated by Americans.

“I have long advocated for a full repeal of The Jones Act, an antiquated law that has for too long hindered free trade, made U.S. industry less competitive and raised prices for American consumers,” said Senator John McCain in a press release issued Tuesday. “The amendment I am introducing again today would eliminate this unnecessary, protectionist restriction.

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Responding to Senator McCain’s new attack, the American Maritime Partnership, representing the voice of the U.S. domestic maritime, has issued the following statement obviously opposing McCain’s latest actions:

WASHINGTON, DC – American Maritime Partnership (AMP), the voice of the domestic maritime industry, today released the following statement on Senator John McCain’s recent measure to eliminate the U.S. shipbuilding industry, which is critical to supporting America’s military power and defense needs, employs hundreds of thousands of Americans, and pumps tens of billions of dollars into the U.S. economy.

“The McCain amendment would gut the nation’s shipbuilding capacity, outsource our U.S. Naval shipbuilding to foreign builders, and cost hundreds of thousands of family-wage jobs across this country,” said AMP Chairman Tom Allegretti. “The shipbuilding requirement, which Senator McCain seeks to eliminate, is in place to ensure that the United States maintains the industrial capacity to build its own ships, so as to protect and defend the American homeland. It is hard to believe that the Congress would endorse a change to the law that would outsource U.S. jobs and reduce national security by effectively creating dependence on foreign countries to build our ships.”

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