Trump fails to fill Richmond Coliseum for Friday campaign rally

Pictures and reports show that the Donald Trump rally in Richmond, Virginia, Friday night failed to fill the 12,000-seat Coliseum. This is a campaign that is used to turning people away at the door.

Here are Tweets with photos leading up to and after the rally began (see PHOTOS: Donald Trump’s Richmond rally draws unusually small crowd).

The Hill reported, ” ‘This arena is 25 percent full at best. No line outside either,’ the tweet said, with 30 minutes until the scheduled start time”  (see Trump’s Virginia rally draws smaller crowd).

Some reports said the crowd filled one-quarter to one-half of the venue, far below its maximum seating. The Washington Post wrote, “A half-full coli­seum erupted into Indian war whoops as Donald Trump called a U.S. senator ‘Pocahontas’ on Friday at a rally here, where the mogul-candidate was back to his teleprompter-free ways” (see Trump apologizes for Pocahontas remark — to Pocahontas).

There will surely be more on this as pundits speculate on the reasons Trump was off his mark in Virginia’s capital city.

Remembering singer-songwriter John Denver on his New Year’s Eve birthday

By Lynn R. Mitchell

“I would not be the man I am, nor would I sing the way I do, nor would I have written the songs I have written without the influence and inspiration you have been to me. I want you to know that today there are hundreds, if not thousands, who join me in saying, ‘God bless the day that you were born.’ ” – John Denver’s birthday letter to his mother, two months before his death

Today is John Denver’s birthday, born on New Year’s Eve in 1943.  John Denver — forever in our minds as the youthful, blonde-headed, wire-rimmed granny glasses-wearing troubadour — would now be a 71-year-old grandpa if he had lived. His daughter Anna Kate, 38, who lives in New Zealand with her husband Jaime Hutter, gave birth to a daughter, Daisy Eloise, on December 21, 2011.