In my Chicago days, the soulful pianist John Wright, who never broke through as a natonal star despite four or five albums on Prestige, was a club mainstay, worth a drive or a train ride anytime he played.
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Christ Stopped at Ramallah
"Like all forms of tribalism, Identity replaces shared truths with private property. The Politics of Identity are therefore ideal expressions of capitalist economics. They also serve, quite directly, to kill mass numbers of our fellow human beings. All in the name of my pain trumping your pain. The embrace of the Holocaust as the defining act of inhumanity to which nothing else can ever be compared blinds those embracing its sonorities to other kinds of oppression and carnage, creating a deep perversity of meaning: making the condemnation of this towering act of evil the reason to ignore the rest, or to derogate them as inferior to the full-on nightmare of Nazi genocide. Merry Christmas, Palestinians." --- Joan Clams Bodenheim
حبيبتي ، بيبي ، تقود سيارتي.
Palestinian cellist Naseem Alatrash and Syrian singer Nano Raies produced this rendition of the Beatles’ 1965 song “Drive My Car” to celebrate of the lifting of the Saudi women’s driving ban. Alatrash arranged the piece, arabizing it both lyrically and vocally, while Raies provided the vocal. ref
Youth is irrepressible
Palestinian youth performing the Palestinian Dabkeh on the border under the close watch of Israeli snipers.
Song
Fill your heart with love today
Don’t play the game of time Things that happened in the past Just happened in your Mind Only in your Mind-Forget your Mind Then you’ll be free
The writing’s on the wall Free-yea’. And you can know it all If you choose. Lovers never lose ‘Cause they are Free of thoughts unpure And of thoughts unkind Gentleness clears the soul Love cleans the mind Makes it Free.
Happiness is happening The dragons have been bled loveliness everywhere Fear’s just in your Head The feels in your Head Only in your Head The feels in your Head So Forget your Head Then you’ll be free
The writing’s on the wall Free-yea’. And you can know it all Baby know it all If you choose. Just remember Lovers never lose ‘Cause they are free of thoughts unpure And of thoughts unkind Gentleness can clear the soul Love cleans the mind Then makes it Free!!
copyright 1968 Biff Rose & Paul Williams
At the gym
Amazon Prime streaming just delivered, in sequence, R. Stevie Moore, Delbert McClinton, Ben Webster, Eden Atwood, the Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet, Jim Hall, Bessie Smith, Johnny Hodges, Horace Tapscott, Tommy Dorsey, Alan Holdsworth, Hoagy Carmichael, the MGs, Glenn Miller, Don Byas, Bach's Mein Herze, Casey Bill Weldon, Billy Eckstein, Anita O'Day, Ida Cox with Papa Charlie Jackson, and Isaac Hayes.
On the road again,
Driving across the country, for hundreds of miles at a stretch with no company but country music stations and christian broadcasting, a question occurs:
Why is it that no one can write a country song in which righteous Yankee soldiers kick the ass of traitorous Confederate militia?
A night to remember on Playboy After Dark
Accompanied by the Count Basie Septet, Annie Ross sings "Twisted," with her lyrics set to a Wardell Gray tune. Then Ross, Dave Lambert & Jon Hendricks draw the great Joe Williams into a definitive version of the classic "Everyday I Have The Blues."
The best of many great recordings by Lambert, Hendricks & Ross: The Hottest New Group in Jazz (Columbia/Legacy 1996; remastered).
Also unbeatable: Count Basie Swings, Joe Williams Sings (Verve 1956).
Just Do It
Devo "inspired us by demonstrating that art is all about conception, execution comes last." - Bob Lefsetz
Musical Interlude:
Passing through Lexington, Massachusetts today caused me to remark to my traveling companion that Lady Gaga is not the only thing happening in pop music. There is, for example, Lexington-born Amanda Palmer, former lead singer, pianist, and songwriter of the "Brechtian punk cabaret" Dresden Dolls duo, presently half of the conceptual music act Evelyn Evelyn, and the perpetrator of the essential solo album Who Killed Amanda Palmer.
Passing through Lexington, Massachusetts today caused me to remark to my traveling companion that Lady Gaga is not the only thing happening in pop music. There is, for example, Lexington-born Amanda Palmer, former lead singer, pianist, and songwriter of the "Brechtian punk cabaret" Dresden Dolls duo, presently half of the conceptual music act Evelyn Evelyn, and the perpetrator of the essential solo album Who Killed Amanda Palmer.
Saturday Catchup 2010-05-22
Nicole Belle on CrooksAndLiars.com: Many people "...didn't think things could get worse than jingoism and dishonesty of the Bush/Cheney years....that more than a year into the Obama presidency that things like the 1964 Civil Rights Act and 1968 Fair Housing Act would be considered less than settled matters....that thinking that the world's superpower should be able to offer health care to its citizens would make one a Maoist/Stalinist/Communist, despite the fact that most Americans want it too...Or that suddenly the existence of undocumented workers has become so intolerable that we must address them with huge fences, detention camps, moats and all other matter of law enforcement, despite the fact that there have always been an underclass of undocumented workers and not one person has proposed focusing energy on reducing demand by going after the employers of said workers. What I came away with from all these conversations is that the dialogue in this country is fundamentally dishonest, just as these members of the People's Front of Judea are. I mean, honestly, apart from the sanitation, medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, the fresh water system and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us? Change PFJ to 'Tea Party' and change Romans to 'government' and you've got an idea of the intellectual dishonesty rampant:
An OA meeting. The setting is a dingy meeting room in a church basement. Seated in a circle on rickety folding chairs are LP Record, VHS Tape, 8-Track, Cassette Tape, Compact Disc, Video Rental Store, SLR Camera, Instant Camera, TV Antenna, Dot Matrix Printer, Copy Machine, Fold-Out Map, Typewriter, others.
Moderator: Welcome to Obsoletes Anonymous! I've gathered you all here to welcome our latest member, the Print Industry.
Print Industry: Hello, everyone. But there's been a mistake. I don't belong here.
(chuckles all around)
Print Industry (continues): I'm serious. I'm not obsolete. I'm relevant. Print books have been around for hundreds of years. They're never going to be replaced.
VHS Tape: Yeah, we all thought like that once.
LP Record: It's called denial. It's tough to deal with at first. -- Is Print Dead? by J.A. Konrath (Huffington Post 2010-05-21).
R.I.P.: Martin Gardner, 1914-2010 (Discover 2010/05/22)
The Nature of Things / Martin Gardner from Wagner Brenner on Vimeo.
All of the survivors feel hatred toward the United States. It is a real problem,this rising hatred: "People who have seen an air strike live on a monitor described it as both awe-inspiring and horrifying. 'You could see these little figures scurrying, and the explosion going off, and when the smoke cleared there was just rubble and charred stuff,' a former CIA officer who was based in Afghanistan after September 11th says of one attack....Human beings running for cover are such a common sight that they have inspired a slang term: 'squirters.'" -- Drones and Democracy by Kathy Kelly and Joshua Brollier (truthout 2010-05-20).
WalMart isn't the only American organization to have brought something home from China: With rendition, suspension of habeas corpus, and other Bush-era human rights violations continuing and worsening under Obama, the report by Think Progress, Why Bush’s ‘Enhanced Interrogation’ Program Failed, has taken on new relevance and urgency.
Oops!: Arizona seems about to say it's sorry.
Watch on YouTube.
We have a dream, too, and it's nothing like Dr. King's: "To understand Rand Paul's agonized contortions over America's civil rights consensus, let's review the tainted pedigree of the movement that reared him. Specifically, both the Kentucky Republican Senate nominee and his father, Ron Paul, have been closely associated over the past two decades with a faction that described itself as 'paleolibertarian,' led by former Ron Paul aide Lew Rockwell and the late writer Murray Rothbard. They eagerly forged an alliance with the 'paleoconservatives' behind Patrick Buchanan, the columnist and former presidential candidate whose trademarks are nativism, racism and anti-Semitism." -- The roots of Rand Paul's civil rights resentment by Joe Conason (Salon 2010-05-21). Or as Bill Maher put it the other night: "The shit doesn't fall far from the bat."
Change Watch: "Over the past couple years, I've written numerous times about the serious left-right coalition that had emerged in Britain -- between the Tories and Liberal Democrats -- in opposition to the Labour Government's civil liberties abuses, many (thought not all) of which were justified by Terrorism. In June of 2008, David Davis, a leading Tory MP, resigned from Parliament in protest of the Government's efforts to expand its power of preventive detention to 42 days (and was then overwhelmingly re-elected on a general platform of opposing growing surveillance and detention authorities). Numerous leading figures from both the Right and Left defied their party's establishment to speak out in support of Davis and against the Government's growing powers. Back then, the Liberal Democrats' Leader, Nick Clegg, notably praised the right-wing Davis' resignation, and to show his support for Davis' positions, Clegg even refused to run a LibDem candidate for that seat because, as he put it, "some issues 'go beyond party politics'." Now that this left-right, Tory/Lib-Dem alliance has removed the Labour Party from power and is governing Britain, these commitments to restoring core liberties -- Actual Change -- show no sign of retreating. Rather than cynically tossing these promises of restrained government power onto the trash pile of insincere campaign rhetoric, they are implementing them into actual policy. Clegg, now the Deputy Prime Minister, gave an extraordinary speech last week in which he vowed "the biggest shake-up of our democracy since 1832." -- The Tory/Lib-Dem Government endorses actual change by Glenn Greenwald (Salon 2010-05-21).
Time saver: Eclectic Method remixes all of Phish’s list of "99 Albums":
Eclectic Method Goes Phish :: 99 Albums in 4:20 from Eclectic Method on Vimeo.
"It's alive!" As a non-believer educated by Jesuits and likeminded cultivators of inquiring minds, I've never understood the objection to "playing god." Why would a higher being be irked by his creatures' clumsy efforts to figure out what he had in mind? So I don't see it as a moral or ethical dilemma that researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute have created a new organism by injecting man-made genetic material into the empty body of a cell. Artificial organisms almost certainly will provide solutions to many serious health and environmental difficulties, from cancer to oil spills. The only real question, just as it is with other scientific developments such as nuclear power and genetically modified food and life-prolonging drugs and technology, is whether "synthetic life" is worth the risks as a matter of public safety.
Constructing artificial creatures "has unimaginable potential risks," naysays Oxford ethics professor Julian Savulescu, since by "engineering organisms that could never naturally exist," we expose ourselves to possible calamities — from bio-weapon terrorism to environmental catastrophes — so destructive they could wipe out life as we know it. Such an outcome is certainly undesired, but, counters Ken MacLeod in the Guardian, worries about blowback from playing god are entirely "misguided:" our "biosphere comes up with natural resistance to entirely new organisms every day;" and while the threat of bio-terrorism "may be great," it's "not in principle greater than those posed by natural organisms" that already exist; besides, the potential upsides are so phenomenal, practical benefits ought to trump whatever squeamishness anyone may have over theoretical disasters. One can more easily imagine a bacterium that sucks carbon from the air than one that leeches poison into our water supply. I'm with David Ropeik, author of How Risky Is It, Really?: Why Our Fears Don't Always Match the Facts, that the "almost unimaginable promise" of being able to create life "to our specifications" shouldn't be sacrificed just because we've seen too many movies about Dr. Frankenstein, although his caution is well taken that "far less of that promise will be realized if the people doing this work" treat it, as Venter seems to, simply as a race to fame and fortune, and "fail to recognize and address [the public's concerns] about what they are doing."
Editorial: The debt that the public owes to police officers for taking the risks that they take can never be repaid. -- Growing risk for the police -- Extreme views behind the West Memphis tragedy: Two officers are dead after a shootout with a delusional conspiracy theorist (The Commercial Appeal, Memphis TN 2010-05-22).
Resource: The earliest gangs of New York were not criminal groups. Many street gang members were employed, mostly as common laborers. Some were bouncers in saloons and dance halls, as well as longshoremen. A few were apprentice butchers, carpenters, sailmakers, and shipbuilders. “They engaged in violence, but violence was a normal part of their always-contested environment; turf warfare was a condition of the neighborhood." Gangs formed the “basic unit of social life among the young males in New York in the nineteenth century.” More dangerous street gangs than previously seen emerged around 1820 from the persistent disorder that gripped the city slums, tenements, saloons, and dance halls. The Forty Thieves gang was characterized as “the first important and decisively dangerous gang of the quarter century.” It and other new groups of gangs that emerged in this period were centered in criminal enterprises as much as in territorial disputes. “It is axiomatic that the more sophisticated the gangs became, the more violent they grew as well.” -- History of Street Gangs in the United States (pdf) by James C. Howell and John P. Moore (National Gang Center Bulletin 2010-04).
Cartoon Beatles do the Dead Kennedys' California über alles:
The truth is out there: The only way to debunk an enshrined falsehood is with maximum reportorial firepower. Toting big guns and an itchy trigger-finger is American University professor W. Joseph Campbell, whose new book, Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism, flattens established myths that you were brought up to believe were true: that Orson Welles sparked a national panic with his 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast; that the New York Times suppressed news of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba at the request of the White House; that Edward R. Murrow destroyed Sen. Joseph McCarthy; that publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst told an illustrator, "You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war," before the Spanish-American war started; and more. -- The Master of Debunk: W. Joseph Campbell corrects the record on 10 important misreported stories by Jack Shafer (Slate 2010-05-21).
Here comes the sun: One year ago this Friday, U.S. chief information officer Vivek Kundra launched an ambitious website called Data.gov to make the government’s vast stores of data available to the public. The thinking behind the site then, as now, was to give app developers access to these rich, comprehensive datasets on all sorts of topics — health care, education, energy, the environment and so on — in the hope that they would create useful tools for analyzing a range of information, from air quality by county to crime statistics by neighborhood and foreign aid by nation. To make good on incoming president Barack Obama's promise of transparency and open government, Data.gov launched with 47 datasets. By its first anniversary on Friday, Data.gov had ballooned to more than 250,000 datasets and racked up 97.6 million hits — not bad for a website whose main attractions are massive databases and wonky graphs. However, the sailing has not been entirely smooth. Federal Computer Week complained that Data.gov was a demonstration of “how not to do open government” because it didn’t pass “the ‘mom test.’” By that, FCW meant it was too hard for the average person to figure out what to do on the site and where everything was. Kundra’s team redesigned the entire Data.gov with that sort of feedback in mind, and the new homepage is markedly more intuitive and user-friendly. -- Sneak Peek: Obama Administration’s Redesigned Data.gov by Eliot Van Buskirk (Epicenter 2010-05-19).
This is about all you need to know about Lost:
An OA meeting. The setting is a dingy meeting room in a church basement. Seated in a circle on rickety folding chairs are LP Record, VHS Tape, 8-Track, Cassette Tape, Compact Disc, Video Rental Store, SLR Camera, Instant Camera, TV Antenna, Dot Matrix Printer, Copy Machine, Fold-Out Map, Typewriter, others.
Moderator: Welcome to Obsoletes Anonymous! I've gathered you all here to welcome our latest member, the Print Industry.
Print Industry: Hello, everyone. But there's been a mistake. I don't belong here.
(chuckles all around)
Print Industry (continues): I'm serious. I'm not obsolete. I'm relevant. Print books have been around for hundreds of years. They're never going to be replaced.
VHS Tape: Yeah, we all thought like that once.
LP Record: It's called denial. It's tough to deal with at first. -- Is Print Dead? by J.A. Konrath (Huffington Post 2010-05-21).
R.I.P.: Martin Gardner, 1914-2010 (Discover 2010/05/22)
The Nature of Things / Martin Gardner from Wagner Brenner on Vimeo.
All of the survivors feel hatred toward the United States. It is a real problem,this rising hatred: "People who have seen an air strike live on a monitor described it as both awe-inspiring and horrifying. 'You could see these little figures scurrying, and the explosion going off, and when the smoke cleared there was just rubble and charred stuff,' a former CIA officer who was based in Afghanistan after September 11th says of one attack....Human beings running for cover are such a common sight that they have inspired a slang term: 'squirters.'" -- Drones and Democracy by Kathy Kelly and Joshua Brollier (truthout 2010-05-20).
WalMart isn't the only American organization to have brought something home from China: With rendition, suspension of habeas corpus, and other Bush-era human rights violations continuing and worsening under Obama, the report by Think Progress, Why Bush’s ‘Enhanced Interrogation’ Program Failed, has taken on new relevance and urgency.
Oops!: Arizona seems about to say it's sorry.
Watch on YouTube.
We have a dream, too, and it's nothing like Dr. King's: "To understand Rand Paul's agonized contortions over America's civil rights consensus, let's review the tainted pedigree of the movement that reared him. Specifically, both the Kentucky Republican Senate nominee and his father, Ron Paul, have been closely associated over the past two decades with a faction that described itself as 'paleolibertarian,' led by former Ron Paul aide Lew Rockwell and the late writer Murray Rothbard. They eagerly forged an alliance with the 'paleoconservatives' behind Patrick Buchanan, the columnist and former presidential candidate whose trademarks are nativism, racism and anti-Semitism." -- The roots of Rand Paul's civil rights resentment by Joe Conason (Salon 2010-05-21). Or as Bill Maher put it the other night: "The shit doesn't fall far from the bat."
Change Watch: "Over the past couple years, I've written numerous times about the serious left-right coalition that had emerged in Britain -- between the Tories and Liberal Democrats -- in opposition to the Labour Government's civil liberties abuses, many (thought not all) of which were justified by Terrorism. In June of 2008, David Davis, a leading Tory MP, resigned from Parliament in protest of the Government's efforts to expand its power of preventive detention to 42 days (and was then overwhelmingly re-elected on a general platform of opposing growing surveillance and detention authorities). Numerous leading figures from both the Right and Left defied their party's establishment to speak out in support of Davis and against the Government's growing powers. Back then, the Liberal Democrats' Leader, Nick Clegg, notably praised the right-wing Davis' resignation, and to show his support for Davis' positions, Clegg even refused to run a LibDem candidate for that seat because, as he put it, "some issues 'go beyond party politics'." Now that this left-right, Tory/Lib-Dem alliance has removed the Labour Party from power and is governing Britain, these commitments to restoring core liberties -- Actual Change -- show no sign of retreating. Rather than cynically tossing these promises of restrained government power onto the trash pile of insincere campaign rhetoric, they are implementing them into actual policy. Clegg, now the Deputy Prime Minister, gave an extraordinary speech last week in which he vowed "the biggest shake-up of our democracy since 1832." -- The Tory/Lib-Dem Government endorses actual change by Glenn Greenwald (Salon 2010-05-21).
Time saver: Eclectic Method remixes all of Phish’s list of "99 Albums":
Eclectic Method Goes Phish :: 99 Albums in 4:20 from Eclectic Method on Vimeo.
"It's alive!" As a non-believer educated by Jesuits and likeminded cultivators of inquiring minds, I've never understood the objection to "playing god." Why would a higher being be irked by his creatures' clumsy efforts to figure out what he had in mind? So I don't see it as a moral or ethical dilemma that researchers at the J. Craig Venter Institute have created a new organism by injecting man-made genetic material into the empty body of a cell. Artificial organisms almost certainly will provide solutions to many serious health and environmental difficulties, from cancer to oil spills. The only real question, just as it is with other scientific developments such as nuclear power and genetically modified food and life-prolonging drugs and technology, is whether "synthetic life" is worth the risks as a matter of public safety.
Constructing artificial creatures "has unimaginable potential risks," naysays Oxford ethics professor Julian Savulescu, since by "engineering organisms that could never naturally exist," we expose ourselves to possible calamities — from bio-weapon terrorism to environmental catastrophes — so destructive they could wipe out life as we know it. Such an outcome is certainly undesired, but, counters Ken MacLeod in the Guardian, worries about blowback from playing god are entirely "misguided:" our "biosphere comes up with natural resistance to entirely new organisms every day;" and while the threat of bio-terrorism "may be great," it's "not in principle greater than those posed by natural organisms" that already exist; besides, the potential upsides are so phenomenal, practical benefits ought to trump whatever squeamishness anyone may have over theoretical disasters. One can more easily imagine a bacterium that sucks carbon from the air than one that leeches poison into our water supply. I'm with David Ropeik, author of How Risky Is It, Really?: Why Our Fears Don't Always Match the Facts, that the "almost unimaginable promise" of being able to create life "to our specifications" shouldn't be sacrificed just because we've seen too many movies about Dr. Frankenstein, although his caution is well taken that "far less of that promise will be realized if the people doing this work" treat it, as Venter seems to, simply as a race to fame and fortune, and "fail to recognize and address [the public's concerns] about what they are doing." Editorial: The debt that the public owes to police officers for taking the risks that they take can never be repaid. -- Growing risk for the police -- Extreme views behind the West Memphis tragedy: Two officers are dead after a shootout with a delusional conspiracy theorist (The Commercial Appeal, Memphis TN 2010-05-22).
Resource: The earliest gangs of New York were not criminal groups. Many street gang members were employed, mostly as common laborers. Some were bouncers in saloons and dance halls, as well as longshoremen. A few were apprentice butchers, carpenters, sailmakers, and shipbuilders. “They engaged in violence, but violence was a normal part of their always-contested environment; turf warfare was a condition of the neighborhood." Gangs formed the “basic unit of social life among the young males in New York in the nineteenth century.” More dangerous street gangs than previously seen emerged around 1820 from the persistent disorder that gripped the city slums, tenements, saloons, and dance halls. The Forty Thieves gang was characterized as “the first important and decisively dangerous gang of the quarter century.” It and other new groups of gangs that emerged in this period were centered in criminal enterprises as much as in territorial disputes. “It is axiomatic that the more sophisticated the gangs became, the more violent they grew as well.” -- History of Street Gangs in the United States (pdf) by James C. Howell and John P. Moore (National Gang Center Bulletin 2010-04).
Cartoon Beatles do the Dead Kennedys' California über alles:
The truth is out there: The only way to debunk an enshrined falsehood is with maximum reportorial firepower. Toting big guns and an itchy trigger-finger is American University professor W. Joseph Campbell, whose new book, Getting It Wrong: Ten of the Greatest Misreported Stories in American Journalism, flattens established myths that you were brought up to believe were true: that Orson Welles sparked a national panic with his 1938 War of the Worlds broadcast; that the New York Times suppressed news of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba at the request of the White House; that Edward R. Murrow destroyed Sen. Joseph McCarthy; that publishing magnate William Randolph Hearst told an illustrator, "You furnish the pictures, I'll furnish the war," before the Spanish-American war started; and more. -- The Master of Debunk: W. Joseph Campbell corrects the record on 10 important misreported stories by Jack Shafer (Slate 2010-05-21).
Here comes the sun: One year ago this Friday, U.S. chief information officer Vivek Kundra launched an ambitious website called Data.gov to make the government’s vast stores of data available to the public. The thinking behind the site then, as now, was to give app developers access to these rich, comprehensive datasets on all sorts of topics — health care, education, energy, the environment and so on — in the hope that they would create useful tools for analyzing a range of information, from air quality by county to crime statistics by neighborhood and foreign aid by nation. To make good on incoming president Barack Obama's promise of transparency and open government, Data.gov launched with 47 datasets. By its first anniversary on Friday, Data.gov had ballooned to more than 250,000 datasets and racked up 97.6 million hits — not bad for a website whose main attractions are massive databases and wonky graphs. However, the sailing has not been entirely smooth. Federal Computer Week complained that Data.gov was a demonstration of “how not to do open government” because it didn’t pass “the ‘mom test.’” By that, FCW meant it was too hard for the average person to figure out what to do on the site and where everything was. Kundra’s team redesigned the entire Data.gov with that sort of feedback in mind, and the new homepage is markedly more intuitive and user-friendly. -- Sneak Peek: Obama Administration’s Redesigned Data.gov by Eliot Van Buskirk (Epicenter 2010-05-19).
This is about all you need to know about Lost:
Saturday Catchup: Some stuff you may have missed
The 'Obama doctrine': Don't detain; kill! by Asim Qureshi (Guardian UK 2010-04-11). George Bush left a big problem in the shape of Guantánamo. The solution? Don't capture bad guys; use drones to assassinate them.
As David Swanson put it, murder is the new torture.
Prompt Global Strike: World Military Superiority Without Nuclear Weapons by Rick Rozoff (StopNATO 2010-04-10). Only one country has the military and scientific capacity and has openly proclaimed its intention to be the world’s sole military superpower. One that aspires to remain the only state in history to wield full spectrum military dominance on land, in the air, on the seas and in space. To maintain and extend military bases and troops, aircraft carrier battle groups, jet fighters and strategic bombers on and to most every latitude and longitude. To do so with a post-World War II record war budget of $708 billion for next year.
“Looting Main Street” – Matt Taibbi on How the Nation’s Biggest Banks Are Ripping Off American Cities with Predatory Deals. (Democracy Now! 2010-04-12). The Rolling Stone writer looks at the experience of one small Alabama town and its disastrous dealings with Wall Street: “The destruction of Jefferson County reveals the basic battle plan of these modern barbarians, the way that banks like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs have systematically set out to pillage towns and cities from Pittsburgh to Athens.”Matt Taibbi is political reporter for Rolling Stone magazine. His latest article is Looting Main Street.
“Job Creation” – Stupid Is as Stupid Does by Richard C. Cook (RichardCCook.com 2010-04-06). Many commentators have said, as a joke, that it would have been cheaper if the government had just printed the money and given it away. But such an approach would not be a joke at all. Compared to what actually happened, it would be enlightened public policy.
Brief musical interlude:
A Banana Republic With No Bananas by George Washington (Washington's Blog 2010-04-12). Experts on third world banana republics from the IMF and the Federal Reserve have said the U.S. has become a third world banana republic. Are they right?
How Financial Reporters Create Illusion to Cover Up Wall Street's Scams by Scott Thill (AlterNet 2010-04-13). The corporate media's job is to sell confidence on Wall Street's numbers, rather than tempered or even depressed expectations, no matter how realistic they may be.
The financial crisis: Story Pirates explain it all for you
In Defense of Public School Teachers in a Time of Crisis by Henry A. Giroux (truthout 2010-04-14) | Crucial to a functioning democracy, though "seldom accorded the status of intellectuals that they deserved, they remain the most important component in the learning process for students, while serving as a moral compass to gauge how seriously a society invests in its youth and in the future. Yet, teachers are being deskilled, unceremoniously removed from the process of school governance, largely reduced to technicians or subordinated to the authority of security guards."
How the FCC Can Protect the Internet from Pro-Corporate Judges and Greedy Telecoms (AlterNet 2010-04-15). Net neutrality ensures a fair Internet. The telecom industry has the money and power to make sure that doesn't happen -- but the people (and the FCC) can fight back.
"While the rest of the world spirals into economic degradation, environmental pestilence and complete systems failure of all of the old world models, Lady Gaga reigns above the flames. Pay attention to the lesson. Lady Gaga is the only person prospering in this cultural climate. Therefore she has done something right. She is the necessary evolutionary adaptation to our times and this is why she disturbs people: This is what we must all become. Indestructibly vacant." -- Jason Louv, Lady Gaga & the Dead Planet Grotesque (H+ 2010-03-16).
Here's a story about a remarkable farmer's market in Norfolk, Virginia that offers a blueprint for creating jobs and boosting a local economy:
Cow Tunnels and Manhattan by Nicola (Edible Geography 2010-04-12): Lost infrastructure or urban myth? Plus, I love this graphic:
Image: Subterranean New York City, as diagrammed by National Geographic (where a scale version and bibliography are also available).
Reclaiming Our Hope by Paul Rogat Loeb (The Nation 2010-04-06). "It's been a frustrating time since November 2008, but our challenge is to spend less time bemoaning our disappointments and more energy engaging with ordinary citizens the way so many of us did a year and a half ago. If we give people enough ways to act on our present crises, we never know how history might turn."
I know I keep saying we have to reach out to the Tea Partiers because some of them, at least, are right about the problems we face if completely at a loss about solutions. Any thoughts of a possible alliance between rational people and the TPs goes out the window, however, when you witness what actually goes on at the parties:
Btw, fake teabaggers (sane/normal people) have begun infiltrating tea parties with their own signs. Here are the best signs from a rally on Boston Common.
To clear your head, here's Type O Negative doing Black No 1, their only hit, offered as an antidote to the loony Williams and, also, sadly, a farewell to Type O Neg's frontman Peter Steele who died of heart failure this week at 48.
As David Swanson put it, murder is the new torture.Prompt Global Strike: World Military Superiority Without Nuclear Weapons by Rick Rozoff (StopNATO 2010-04-10). Only one country has the military and scientific capacity and has openly proclaimed its intention to be the world’s sole military superpower. One that aspires to remain the only state in history to wield full spectrum military dominance on land, in the air, on the seas and in space. To maintain and extend military bases and troops, aircraft carrier battle groups, jet fighters and strategic bombers on and to most every latitude and longitude. To do so with a post-World War II record war budget of $708 billion for next year.
“Looting Main Street” – Matt Taibbi on How the Nation’s Biggest Banks Are Ripping Off American Cities with Predatory Deals. (Democracy Now! 2010-04-12). The Rolling Stone writer looks at the experience of one small Alabama town and its disastrous dealings with Wall Street: “The destruction of Jefferson County reveals the basic battle plan of these modern barbarians, the way that banks like JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs have systematically set out to pillage towns and cities from Pittsburgh to Athens.”Matt Taibbi is political reporter for Rolling Stone magazine. His latest article is Looting Main Street.
“Job Creation” – Stupid Is as Stupid Does by Richard C. Cook (RichardCCook.com 2010-04-06). Many commentators have said, as a joke, that it would have been cheaper if the government had just printed the money and given it away. But such an approach would not be a joke at all. Compared to what actually happened, it would be enlightened public policy.
Brief musical interlude:
A Banana Republic With No Bananas by George Washington (Washington's Blog 2010-04-12). Experts on third world banana republics from the IMF and the Federal Reserve have said the U.S. has become a third world banana republic. Are they right?
How Financial Reporters Create Illusion to Cover Up Wall Street's Scams by Scott Thill (AlterNet 2010-04-13). The corporate media's job is to sell confidence on Wall Street's numbers, rather than tempered or even depressed expectations, no matter how realistic they may be.
The financial crisis: Story Pirates explain it all for you
In Defense of Public School Teachers in a Time of Crisis by Henry A. Giroux (truthout 2010-04-14) | Crucial to a functioning democracy, though "seldom accorded the status of intellectuals that they deserved, they remain the most important component in the learning process for students, while serving as a moral compass to gauge how seriously a society invests in its youth and in the future. Yet, teachers are being deskilled, unceremoniously removed from the process of school governance, largely reduced to technicians or subordinated to the authority of security guards."
How the FCC Can Protect the Internet from Pro-Corporate Judges and Greedy Telecoms (AlterNet 2010-04-15). Net neutrality ensures a fair Internet. The telecom industry has the money and power to make sure that doesn't happen -- but the people (and the FCC) can fight back.
"While the rest of the world spirals into economic degradation, environmental pestilence and complete systems failure of all of the old world models, Lady Gaga reigns above the flames. Pay attention to the lesson. Lady Gaga is the only person prospering in this cultural climate. Therefore she has done something right. She is the necessary evolutionary adaptation to our times and this is why she disturbs people: This is what we must all become. Indestructibly vacant." -- Jason Louv, Lady Gaga & the Dead Planet Grotesque (H+ 2010-03-16).Here's a story about a remarkable farmer's market in Norfolk, Virginia that offers a blueprint for creating jobs and boosting a local economy:
Cow Tunnels and Manhattan by Nicola (Edible Geography 2010-04-12): Lost infrastructure or urban myth? Plus, I love this graphic:
Image: Subterranean New York City, as diagrammed by National Geographic (where a scale version and bibliography are also available).
Reclaiming Our Hope by Paul Rogat Loeb (The Nation 2010-04-06). "It's been a frustrating time since November 2008, but our challenge is to spend less time bemoaning our disappointments and more energy engaging with ordinary citizens the way so many of us did a year and a half ago. If we give people enough ways to act on our present crises, we never know how history might turn."
I know I keep saying we have to reach out to the Tea Partiers because some of them, at least, are right about the problems we face if completely at a loss about solutions. Any thoughts of a possible alliance between rational people and the TPs goes out the window, however, when you witness what actually goes on at the parties:
Btw, fake teabaggers (sane/normal people) have begun infiltrating tea parties with their own signs. Here are the best signs from a rally on Boston Common.
To clear your head, here's Type O Negative doing Black No 1, their only hit, offered as an antidote to the loony Williams and, also, sadly, a farewell to Type O Neg's frontman Peter Steele who died of heart failure this week at 48.
Slacker: Holly's Buddies
I've been listening this morning to one of my Slacker concoctions, the rockabilly-centric Holly's Buddies -- with the likes of Gene Vincent, Dale Hawkins, Boyd Bennett, Eddie Cochran, Wanda Jackson, Carl Perkins, 
Johnny Horton, Bobby Helms, Billy Lee Riley, Ersel Hickey, Bob Luman, Bobby Fuller, Jack Scott, Roy Loney, Lee Rocker, and the genuinely from-another-planet Hasil Adkins -- now playing Sleepy LaBeef's take on the great Gene Thomas tune, Sometimes. Go: Holly's Buddies. Enjoy.
Johnny Horton, Bobby Helms, Billy Lee Riley, Ersel Hickey, Bob Luman, Bobby Fuller, Jack Scott, Roy Loney, Lee Rocker, and the genuinely from-another-planet Hasil Adkins -- now playing Sleepy LaBeef's take on the great Gene Thomas tune, Sometimes. Go: Holly's Buddies. Enjoy.
Action: Move on, MoveOn -- Activist/Troubador James McMurtry has his own video contest
Singer-songwriter and reluctant activist James McMurtry (see, Impractical Proposals, 2007-08-05), and Lightning Rod Records are having a contest so fans can create their own music videos to the protest song, “Cheney’s Toy.” From the entries, McMurtry will choose the best videos and post them on his MySpace page and website. If needed, fans can create videos using slideshow applications at RockYou.com. Creators of each of the top five videos will receive t-shirts and autographed copies of McMurtry’s new album, Just Us Kids, and the best video will also receive an 8 Gb Apple iPod Nano with video capabilities. Here's an entry in the contest:
And another:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKUE0RTuw24
Contest info:
http://jamesmcmurtry.com/4contest.html
And another:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v
Contest info:
http://jamesmcmurtry.com
Music: My latest Slacker station
Slacker is an online music service that allows you to program your own stations for listening online for free or for downloading to an iPod-like device of their devising. My latest channel, The Golden Pals (I started building the line up from the Golden Palominos), is a pretty mixed bag of mostly outsiders, including the likes of Frank Zappa, Nico, Mike Oldfield, Bill Frisell, Björk, The Deviants, Steely Dan, John Cale, Brian Eno, Bryan Ferry, Captain Beefheart, Colosseum, David Bowie, Pearls Before Swine, Bill Laswell, Eugene Chadbourne, The Fugs, The Godz, Sun Ra, Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce, Soft Machine, The Holy Modal Rounders, etc., to which, now that I think of it, I'll add Alex Chilton and Scott Walker. The Golden Pals on Slacker.
More:
Alvin and the Hip Monks: Dave Alvin, Beat Farmers, Carrie Rodriguez, Chip Taylor, Chris Whitley, Freedy Johnston, Greg Brown, John Doe, John Hiatt...
Angel's Band: Al Green, Curtis Mayfield, Candi Staton, Eric Benet, James Carr, Latimore, Jill Scott, Will Downing, Johnny Adams, The Dells...
Bob's Mob: Bob Dorough, Bill Henderson, Helen Merrill, Jon Hendricks, Lee Wiley, Dave Frishberg, Betty Carter, Andy Bey, King Pleasure, Bobby Troup, Ernie Andrews, Little Jimmy Scott, Johnny Mercer, Johnny Hartman, Nat King Cole, Mose Allison...
Charted Territory: Larger jazz aggregations from Fletcher Henderson and Don Redman to 8 Bold Souls and Alexander von Schlippenbach...
Fats' Cats: Building from Fats Waller, an eclectic mix extending from Tiny Grimes and Leroy Carr to Big Joe Williams and Jay McShann...
The Harmoniacs: Doo Wop and related styles, from the Ink Spots to the Impalas, Robert & Johnny, The Orioles, The Dubs, The Harptones, The Jive Five, and Lee Andrews and the Hearts...
More:
Alvin and the Hip Monks: Dave Alvin, Beat Farmers, Carrie Rodriguez, Chip Taylor, Chris Whitley, Freedy Johnston, Greg Brown, John Doe, John Hiatt...
Angel's Band: Al Green, Curtis Mayfield, Candi Staton, Eric Benet, James Carr, Latimore, Jill Scott, Will Downing, Johnny Adams, The Dells...
Bob's Mob: Bob Dorough, Bill Henderson, Helen Merrill, Jon Hendricks, Lee Wiley, Dave Frishberg, Betty Carter, Andy Bey, King Pleasure, Bobby Troup, Ernie Andrews, Little Jimmy Scott, Johnny Mercer, Johnny Hartman, Nat King Cole, Mose Allison...
Charted Territory: Larger jazz aggregations from Fletcher Henderson and Don Redman to 8 Bold Souls and Alexander von Schlippenbach...
Fats' Cats: Building from Fats Waller, an eclectic mix extending from Tiny Grimes and Leroy Carr to Big Joe Williams and Jay McShann...
The Harmoniacs: Doo Wop and related styles, from the Ink Spots to the Impalas, Robert & Johnny, The Orioles, The Dubs, The Harptones, The Jive Five, and Lee Andrews and the Hearts...
Activism: Singer-songwriter James McMurtry
James McMurtry's We Can’t Make It Here turned the reclusive Texan into a political activist. On his blog, the singer-songwriter posts on topics that range from airport security and the current administration to the 2008 race for the White House: "Will the Democrats please stop running for president and begin the work we elected them to do."
We Can’t Make It Here was downloadable for free from his website during the 2004 campaign, and you can still listen to it on line at MySpace. In Entertainment Weekly,
Stephen King called it “stark and wrenchingly direct," concluding that "this may be the best American protest song since Masters of War" (he also called the artist "the truest, fiercest songwriter of his generation"). Then Congressman Bernie Sanders used the song last year during his successful campaign for the U.S. Senate. McMurtry's most recent album, Childish Things, includes We Can’t Make It Here in a version without any of the lyrics bleeped to protect the sensitive ears of the FCC (the equally righteous follow-up, God Bless America, is the download that's currently available on the artist's site).
McMurtry takes his politics on the road -- he's played the national convention of Veterans for Peace, Farm Aid, political rallies, and the like; at Cindy Sheehan’s vigil outside Bush's spread in Crawford, Texas, he joined Steve Earle for a free concert (hilariously, James McMurtry is one of the artists the White House confirms is on the president’s iPod). In April, he received Esquire Magazine's 2007 Esky Award for "Biggest Agitator."
"I've always been a little put off by activists," he says, "so you know it's a dire situation when I have to become one myself."
James McMurtry: <http://myspace.com/jamesmcmurtry/>
[McMurtry's label, Compadre Records, also has releases by Townes Van Zandt, Suzy Bogguss, Flaco Jimenez, and the great Billy Joe Shaver, among others.]
We Can’t Make It Here was downloadable for free from his website during the 2004 campaign, and you can still listen to it on line at MySpace. In Entertainment Weekly,
Stephen King called it “stark and wrenchingly direct," concluding that "this may be the best American protest song since Masters of War" (he also called the artist "the truest, fiercest songwriter of his generation"). Then Congressman Bernie Sanders used the song last year during his successful campaign for the U.S. Senate. McMurtry's most recent album, Childish Things, includes We Can’t Make It Here in a version without any of the lyrics bleeped to protect the sensitive ears of the FCC (the equally righteous follow-up, God Bless America, is the download that's currently available on the artist's site).McMurtry takes his politics on the road -- he's played the national convention of Veterans for Peace, Farm Aid, political rallies, and the like; at Cindy Sheehan’s vigil outside Bush's spread in Crawford, Texas, he joined Steve Earle for a free concert (hilariously, James McMurtry is one of the artists the White House confirms is on the president’s iPod). In April, he received Esquire Magazine's 2007 Esky Award for "Biggest Agitator."
"I've always been a little put off by activists," he says, "so you know it's a dire situation when I have to become one myself."
James McMurtry: <http://myspace.com/jamesmcmurtry/>
[McMurtry's label, Compadre Records, also has releases by Townes Van Zandt, Suzy Bogguss, Flaco Jimenez, and the great Billy Joe Shaver, among others.]
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