Here's a speech you'll never hear from the Democrats:
If you elect us and throw out the criminals who have infested our government, we will put the rich on notice.
We'll say to them, "Get out your checkbook, we want our money back! We may never get it all back from you, but you've had your hands in our pockets long enough! Your gravy train is over!
"We're replacing the boys you bought to run the government, the one's who sent you truckloads of our money, and then borrowed more money from the Chinese and all the others all over the world who saw a good deal…and gave THAT to you, too.
"Not did your boys give you the tax cuts, which let you off the hook while we kept on paying more and more, but they threw you money that they told us was to 'fight terrorism.' We know you have profited from the deaths of our sons and daughters and we're holding you to account.
"They made it possible for you to run the price of gas so high that it's breaking our personal banks. Oh, I know the price has come down lately, but we understand you did that because an election is coming up. We know the price will go over $3 again in December.
"Your boys filled your bank accounts on our medical miseries. Not only ours, but those of our most vulnerable, the old who can't fight back.
"This is going to stop, guys. We're taking back our money."
That's right, my fellow Americans, when we take office, the rich who have stolen our money are going to give it back. Yes, we're going to raise taxes. Not on you and me, but on THEM. We're going to get our money back and they're going to suffer for it.
They'll tell you all kinds of shit about it, but you know by now that they will lie, cheat and steal twenty-four hours a day to keep taking our money.
It's OUR MONEY. We PAID them for the gas. We PAID them for the health insurance. We even paid them to despoil our beautiful country. They don't care. They live in gated communities. They're not like us. They're greedy bastards and their time is up.
If you throw these un-American slime out of office and elect us, we promise to put real American values back on the table: fairness, that all-for-one'ness that made American great. There will be no former Haliburton CEO's to profit from the deaths of our soldiers. There will be no religious fanatics. There will be no mean-spirited name-calling. And there will be no lies.
Yes, no lies. Imagine that?
There's only one way out of the mess the Republicans have put our nation in. First throw them out. And then elect some smart people who know how to put the brakes on the largest robbery since Lufthansa. We're going to become Robin Hood and his merry men. The Republicans have robbed from the poor and given to the rich.
This will stop.
Then I woke up and remembered I was dreaming. No Democrat would ever make that speech.
This is also available on huffingtonpost.com
Friday, September 15, 2006
Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Job #1 Is NOT Iraq
Not that the "Democratic Tsunami" (as front-runner Chris Matthews likes to say) is a sure thing…but should the public throw the evildoers out of Congress and out on the (K) street, Iraq, while important, is not the most important issue facing Americans.
Yes, global warming and the dozens of other environmental issues must be addressed, and they will be once (or if) the oil companies are divested of ownership of the American government. We know what to do about that.
But Job One should be health care.
It is the sole issue that touches each of us every day. There are powerful forces to be beaten, but what the health care industry (pimping the Republicans, and many Democrats like Joe Lieberman) have designed…what passes for a "Health Care System" …is criminal in the extreme. The problem is there are no criminal penalties against it. To the contrary, the health care industry owns the levers of power in government.
For a start, let's stop calling them "the health care industry." They are "illness profiteers" and no better than war profiteers. They make money from our illness. They make it if we're not sick, and they make more if we are.
First, they take our money in CASE we get sick. Then they want us to be sick enough to need medical care and then borrow money from the banks (in on the deal) to pay for it. So the pharmaceutical companies get our money, the hospital industry gets our money, and doctors too, but banks via their credit card operations, and medical loan companies get to transfer money to those industries and then bill us at a huge rate of interest so we can pay it off.
We're hit three times. Number 1: We pay premiums. Number 2: The money we owe when the coverage isn't enough (or through deductibles and co-pays), and Number 3: The interest we pay when we have to go into debt to pay off the deductibles, etc.
Nice thing they've set up for themselves. A license to print money? No, a license to steal from us, when we are at our most vulnerable.
Why aren't these people in jail?
On top of that, millions upon millions of us don't have ANY health care. When you stop and think about that, it's hardly within the imagination of folks of good will, that this could even be possible. The illness profiteers are not good folks.
And as soon as you begin to talk about a system of national health care as they have in Canada, the illness profiteers will start screaming "Socialized Medicine," as though that's a bad thing. Ever talk to a Canadian about it? Of course there are problems. We're all human and human institutions and individuals make mistakes. We always tinker with things and try to make them better.
The simple fact is that the Canadian system works for folks. Please don't bother commenting here with anecdotal problems. For the vast majority of Canadians, the thing works. And it could work here.
If the Democrats were truly different from Republicans, they'd have a plan on the table NOW, and stop grandstanding about Rumsfeld. The American public has already made up its mind about Iraq and Bush. Even moderate Republicans know they made a big mistake electing that bunch to two terms.
Why is Sen. Clinton so silent on the subject? Who knows better than she what Americans are up against in the fight for fair health care? It's like someone sat her down like Howard Beale was sat down in "Network" and shut her up, because she's been silent ever since the first year of her husband's first term.
I can safely say that if it weren't for employer-provided health care, hundreds of thousands of people would be dead. I'm one of them.
The illness profiteers, who make billions from the real and potential suffering and misery of all of us, must be defeated.
It's a national shame.
This also appears on huffingtonpost.com
Yes, global warming and the dozens of other environmental issues must be addressed, and they will be once (or if) the oil companies are divested of ownership of the American government. We know what to do about that.
But Job One should be health care.
It is the sole issue that touches each of us every day. There are powerful forces to be beaten, but what the health care industry (pimping the Republicans, and many Democrats like Joe Lieberman) have designed…what passes for a "Health Care System" …is criminal in the extreme. The problem is there are no criminal penalties against it. To the contrary, the health care industry owns the levers of power in government.
For a start, let's stop calling them "the health care industry." They are "illness profiteers" and no better than war profiteers. They make money from our illness. They make it if we're not sick, and they make more if we are.
First, they take our money in CASE we get sick. Then they want us to be sick enough to need medical care and then borrow money from the banks (in on the deal) to pay for it. So the pharmaceutical companies get our money, the hospital industry gets our money, and doctors too, but banks via their credit card operations, and medical loan companies get to transfer money to those industries and then bill us at a huge rate of interest so we can pay it off.
We're hit three times. Number 1: We pay premiums. Number 2: The money we owe when the coverage isn't enough (or through deductibles and co-pays), and Number 3: The interest we pay when we have to go into debt to pay off the deductibles, etc.
Nice thing they've set up for themselves. A license to print money? No, a license to steal from us, when we are at our most vulnerable.
Why aren't these people in jail?
On top of that, millions upon millions of us don't have ANY health care. When you stop and think about that, it's hardly within the imagination of folks of good will, that this could even be possible. The illness profiteers are not good folks.
And as soon as you begin to talk about a system of national health care as they have in Canada, the illness profiteers will start screaming "Socialized Medicine," as though that's a bad thing. Ever talk to a Canadian about it? Of course there are problems. We're all human and human institutions and individuals make mistakes. We always tinker with things and try to make them better.
The simple fact is that the Canadian system works for folks. Please don't bother commenting here with anecdotal problems. For the vast majority of Canadians, the thing works. And it could work here.
If the Democrats were truly different from Republicans, they'd have a plan on the table NOW, and stop grandstanding about Rumsfeld. The American public has already made up its mind about Iraq and Bush. Even moderate Republicans know they made a big mistake electing that bunch to two terms.
Why is Sen. Clinton so silent on the subject? Who knows better than she what Americans are up against in the fight for fair health care? It's like someone sat her down like Howard Beale was sat down in "Network" and shut her up, because she's been silent ever since the first year of her husband's first term.
I can safely say that if it weren't for employer-provided health care, hundreds of thousands of people would be dead. I'm one of them.
The illness profiteers, who make billions from the real and potential suffering and misery of all of us, must be defeated.
It's a national shame.
This also appears on huffingtonpost.com
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
The New Orleans News Cycle Is Over--Now DO Something
The TV crews are gone. The politicians have gone home. The news cycle has turned. Yet, the unreality continues, made worse by the fact that the unreality is so real.
Any American touched by New Orleans prior to the failure of the Army Corps of Engineers and the subsequent flood, and who has re-visited or even keeps in touch with things there, knows how bad things are.
There's an old Meters' song, "Talkin' 'Bout New Orleans," that says, "If you've ever been there, then you know what I mean." It meant the good things. It even meant the bad things. It meant the things about New Orleans that made it unique on the planet.
Now, if you have visited New Orleans since the flood, you have another sense of that song.
And by the way, let's stop calling the disaster "Katrina." It's short and convenient, but let's get it right. Call it the flood. A man-made flood caused by incompetence and greed. It wasn't a hurricane that drowned a city, it was a flood caused by massive, criminal incompetence.
But that's not what this is about.
This is about the emotions those of us who have a New Orleans connection are feeling. The emotions that come through the psychic air 3500 miles away here in Portland, Oregon…the despair, the anger, the sense of living in a daily nightmare that just won't seem to go away. The sense of loss. Loss and abandonment. Is anyone surprised that the suicide rate in New Orleans has tripled in the past year?
Can you feel it?
How dare Bush show his face? The shame of the conditions in New Orleans is on him. It should eat him alive at night…that and the tens of thousands of dead and maimed Americans and Iraqis from his own personal boutique war.
I was at Jazzfest in May, and as I wrote here at the time, the anger and despair of the people of New Orleans ran as deep as the Mississippi. Lately these feelings have been given more exposure, but if Bush had a single testicle, he would have faced some real people and took the heat. Taking heat is not in his job description. Taking heat is part of taking responsibility, he doesn't do that.
Thankfully, his allies are deserting him. If we are able to swing the House of Representatives in the fall, he will stand with his administration and have to answer for what he's done. I would prefer that he move into the cell formerly occupied by Milosovic and be tried before the world, but that's not going to happen.
The anger and despair of the people of New Orleans (at home and also those who are part of the tragic diaspora) and their sense of unreality is the legacy of American greed and bumbling.
I can feel it. Maybe you can too.
The power must be taken away from the Republicans. Congress must be taken back, and these jackals and their servants must be swept out of the Executive Branch, from top to bottom.
Feel like you want to do something for the people of New Orleans other than sending money their way? Do something to change the balance of power.
The next sixty days are crucial. Don't let it slip through your fingers again.
this also appears on huffingtonpost.com
Any American touched by New Orleans prior to the failure of the Army Corps of Engineers and the subsequent flood, and who has re-visited or even keeps in touch with things there, knows how bad things are.
There's an old Meters' song, "Talkin' 'Bout New Orleans," that says, "If you've ever been there, then you know what I mean." It meant the good things. It even meant the bad things. It meant the things about New Orleans that made it unique on the planet.
Now, if you have visited New Orleans since the flood, you have another sense of that song.
And by the way, let's stop calling the disaster "Katrina." It's short and convenient, but let's get it right. Call it the flood. A man-made flood caused by incompetence and greed. It wasn't a hurricane that drowned a city, it was a flood caused by massive, criminal incompetence.
But that's not what this is about.
This is about the emotions those of us who have a New Orleans connection are feeling. The emotions that come through the psychic air 3500 miles away here in Portland, Oregon…the despair, the anger, the sense of living in a daily nightmare that just won't seem to go away. The sense of loss. Loss and abandonment. Is anyone surprised that the suicide rate in New Orleans has tripled in the past year?
Can you feel it?
How dare Bush show his face? The shame of the conditions in New Orleans is on him. It should eat him alive at night…that and the tens of thousands of dead and maimed Americans and Iraqis from his own personal boutique war.
I was at Jazzfest in May, and as I wrote here at the time, the anger and despair of the people of New Orleans ran as deep as the Mississippi. Lately these feelings have been given more exposure, but if Bush had a single testicle, he would have faced some real people and took the heat. Taking heat is not in his job description. Taking heat is part of taking responsibility, he doesn't do that.
Thankfully, his allies are deserting him. If we are able to swing the House of Representatives in the fall, he will stand with his administration and have to answer for what he's done. I would prefer that he move into the cell formerly occupied by Milosovic and be tried before the world, but that's not going to happen.
The anger and despair of the people of New Orleans (at home and also those who are part of the tragic diaspora) and their sense of unreality is the legacy of American greed and bumbling.
I can feel it. Maybe you can too.
The power must be taken away from the Republicans. Congress must be taken back, and these jackals and their servants must be swept out of the Executive Branch, from top to bottom.
Feel like you want to do something for the people of New Orleans other than sending money their way? Do something to change the balance of power.
The next sixty days are crucial. Don't let it slip through your fingers again.
this also appears on huffingtonpost.com
Monday, August 21, 2006
REVEALED! Whitney Solo Concert for Osama--1985
All of our current difficulties in the world could have been prevented. We would not be in Iraq. 9/11 would never have happened. We would be at peace around the world, had it not been for one 1985 incident that I have now been authorized to reveal.
The location was a remote palace in Yemen. The principals were Osama Bin Laden and Whitney Houston. No one knew that the fate of the planet would turn on the events that night, but indeed that was the case.
As the New York Post has reported, "Kola Boof, the Sudanese poet and novelist who claims to have once been bin Laden's sex slave, writes in her autobiography, 'Diary of a Lost Girl,' which is excerpted in the September Harper's: 'He told me Whitney Houston was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.'"
But Boof (pronounced "Booth" in Sudanese) did not know about the clandestine solo concert Bin Laden ordered performed for him by Houston in 1985. Bin Laden's people contacted her personally, bypassing her agent, telling her that he wanted to hear her sing a capella, for his ears only, in exchange for $1 million in cash, all in untraceable bills.
When she asked why, she was told Bin Laden admired her beauty and her voice and craved a one-on-one concert. She asked if he expected sexual favors and was told that no, he had great respect for her.
She agreed and was handed a brief case containing the money. The next day she was picked up by his representatives and driven to a private airport in a huge limo where a private jet was waiting. Houston found it filled with lavish gifts of jewelry, perfumes, food and clothing. She was shocked to find all of the clothing fit her perfectly. When she asked why that was, the servant told her that Osama had done his homework.
When she arrived at the palace she was pampered and massaged and spent the night alone in a suite the size of her entire Hollywood mansion. She was told her meeting with Osama was to take place early that evening.
According to the New York Post story, Boof reported that, "He said he wanted to give [her] a mansion that he owned in a suburb of Khartoum. He explained to me that to possess Whitney, he would be willing to break his color rule and make her one of his wives."
She was introduced to several of his children during the day. They did not know who she was because he did not allow Western music to be played in the palace.
Finally the time came for their meeting. She walked into a vast marble room, the floor covered with Persian rugs, finding him sitting in a large wooden throne-like chair. The first words out of his mouth were compliments to her beauty. She smiled. He smiled and told her how truly Islamic he thought she was, something he also told Boof, according to the New York Post. The comment confused her, but she complimented him on his children, saying, "I believe the children are our are future. Teach them well and let them lead the way."
He was pleased to hear that, and told her she must be very wise. She added, "You should make sure you show them all the beauty they possess inside. Give them a sense of pride to make it easier. Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be."
He said, "Will you sing for me now?"
She sang several songs. Osama was visibly moved, and also visibly sexually excited. This was confirmed by Boof when she wrote, "'In his briefcase, I would come across photographs of the Star [magazine], as well as copies of Playboy. 'African women are only good for a man's lower pleasures,''" she quoted him as saying.
He was so excited that he proposed marriage to her on the spot. She asked, "But where is the mother of the children I met today?"
He replied that, according to Islamic custom, he had several wives and many children. "Did you think I was saving all my love for you?"
She stood up in front of him and boldly said, "I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone's shadows. If I fail, if I succeed, at least I live as I believe. No matter what they take from me, they can't take away my dignity."
He told her she had been brainwashed by American culture, a statement confirmed by Boof, and quoted in the New York Post article.
At that point, she spread her arms and sang the Star Spangled Banner just as she would at a subsequent Super Bowl. When she finished singing, she turned her back and walked out of the room.
It was downhill from there. Jihad was declared, buildings were destroyed, countries invaded and thousands of lives lost. Oddly enough, one survivor was Houston's husband, Bobby Brown whom Osama threatened to kill, according to Boof.
We can only imagine what would have happened, had Houston's decision gone the other way. When she returned to America, she wrote to a friend, "I could feel his love for me but the greatest love of all is easy to achieve. Learning to love yourself …it is the greatest love of all"
You can also find this at huffingtonpost.com
The location was a remote palace in Yemen. The principals were Osama Bin Laden and Whitney Houston. No one knew that the fate of the planet would turn on the events that night, but indeed that was the case.
As the New York Post has reported, "Kola Boof, the Sudanese poet and novelist who claims to have once been bin Laden's sex slave, writes in her autobiography, 'Diary of a Lost Girl,' which is excerpted in the September Harper's: 'He told me Whitney Houston was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.'"
But Boof (pronounced "Booth" in Sudanese) did not know about the clandestine solo concert Bin Laden ordered performed for him by Houston in 1985. Bin Laden's people contacted her personally, bypassing her agent, telling her that he wanted to hear her sing a capella, for his ears only, in exchange for $1 million in cash, all in untraceable bills.
When she asked why, she was told Bin Laden admired her beauty and her voice and craved a one-on-one concert. She asked if he expected sexual favors and was told that no, he had great respect for her.
She agreed and was handed a brief case containing the money. The next day she was picked up by his representatives and driven to a private airport in a huge limo where a private jet was waiting. Houston found it filled with lavish gifts of jewelry, perfumes, food and clothing. She was shocked to find all of the clothing fit her perfectly. When she asked why that was, the servant told her that Osama had done his homework.
When she arrived at the palace she was pampered and massaged and spent the night alone in a suite the size of her entire Hollywood mansion. She was told her meeting with Osama was to take place early that evening.
According to the New York Post story, Boof reported that, "He said he wanted to give [her] a mansion that he owned in a suburb of Khartoum. He explained to me that to possess Whitney, he would be willing to break his color rule and make her one of his wives."
She was introduced to several of his children during the day. They did not know who she was because he did not allow Western music to be played in the palace.
Finally the time came for their meeting. She walked into a vast marble room, the floor covered with Persian rugs, finding him sitting in a large wooden throne-like chair. The first words out of his mouth were compliments to her beauty. She smiled. He smiled and told her how truly Islamic he thought she was, something he also told Boof, according to the New York Post. The comment confused her, but she complimented him on his children, saying, "I believe the children are our are future. Teach them well and let them lead the way."
He was pleased to hear that, and told her she must be very wise. She added, "You should make sure you show them all the beauty they possess inside. Give them a sense of pride to make it easier. Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be."
He said, "Will you sing for me now?"
She sang several songs. Osama was visibly moved, and also visibly sexually excited. This was confirmed by Boof when she wrote, "'In his briefcase, I would come across photographs of the Star [magazine], as well as copies of Playboy. 'African women are only good for a man's lower pleasures,''" she quoted him as saying.
He was so excited that he proposed marriage to her on the spot. She asked, "But where is the mother of the children I met today?"
He replied that, according to Islamic custom, he had several wives and many children. "Did you think I was saving all my love for you?"
She stood up in front of him and boldly said, "I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone's shadows. If I fail, if I succeed, at least I live as I believe. No matter what they take from me, they can't take away my dignity."
He told her she had been brainwashed by American culture, a statement confirmed by Boof, and quoted in the New York Post article.
At that point, she spread her arms and sang the Star Spangled Banner just as she would at a subsequent Super Bowl. When she finished singing, she turned her back and walked out of the room.
It was downhill from there. Jihad was declared, buildings were destroyed, countries invaded and thousands of lives lost. Oddly enough, one survivor was Houston's husband, Bobby Brown whom Osama threatened to kill, according to Boof.
We can only imagine what would have happened, had Houston's decision gone the other way. When she returned to America, she wrote to a friend, "I could feel his love for me but the greatest love of all is easy to achieve. Learning to love yourself …it is the greatest love of all"
You can also find this at huffingtonpost.com
REVEALED! Whitney Solo Concert for Osama--1985
All of our current difficulties in the world could have been prevented. We would not be in Iraq. 9/11 would never have happened. We would be at peace around the world, had it not been for one 1985 incident that I have now been authorized to reveal.
The location was a remote palace in Yemen. The principals were Osama Bin Laden and Whitney Houston. No one knew that the fate of the planet would turn on the events that night, but indeed that was the case.
As the New York Post has reported, "Kola Boof, the Sudanese poet and novelist who claims to have once been bin Laden's sex slave, writes in her autobiography, 'Diary of a Lost Girl,' which is excerpted in the September Harper's: 'He told me Whitney Houston was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.'"
But Boof (pronounced "Booth" in Sudanese) did not know about the clandestine solo concert Bin Laden ordered performed for him by Houston in 1985. Bin Laden's people contacted her personally, bypassing her agent, telling her that he wanted to hear her sing a capella, for his ears only, in exchange for $1 million in cash, all in untraceable bills.
When she asked why, she was told Bin Laden admired her beauty and her voice and craved a one-on-one concert. She asked if he expected sexual favors and was told that no, he had great respect for her.
She agreed and was handed a brief case containing the money. The next day she was picked up by his representatives and driven to a private airport in a huge limo where a private jet was waiting. Houston found it filled with lavish gifts of jewelry, perfumes, food and clothing. She was shocked to find all of the clothing fit her perfectly. When she asked why that was, the servant told her that Osama had done his homework.
When she arrived at the palace she was pampered and massaged and spent the night alone in a suite the size of her entire Hollywood mansion. She was told her meeting with Osama was to take place early that evening.
According to the New York Post story, Boof reported that, "He said he wanted to give [her] a mansion that he owned in a suburb of Khartoum. He explained to me that to possess Whitney, he would be willing to break his color rule and make her one of his wives."
She was introduced to several of his children during the day. They did not know who she was because he did not allow Western music to be played in the palace.
Finally the time came for their meeting. She walked into a vast marble room, the floor covered with Persian rugs, finding him sitting in a large wooden throne-like chair. The first words out of his mouth were compliments to her beauty. She smiled. He smiled and told her how truly Islamic he thought she was, something he also told Boof, according to the New York Post. The comment confused her, but she complimented him on his children, saying, "I believe the children are our are future. Teach them well and let them lead the way."
He was pleased to hear that, and told her she must be very wise. She added, "You should make sure you show them all the beauty they possess inside. Give them a sense of pride to make it easier. Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be."
He said, "Will you sing for me now?"
She sang several songs. Osama was visibly moved, and also visibly sexually excited. This was confirmed by Boof when she wrote, "'In his briefcase, I would come across photographs of the Star [magazine], as well as copies of Playboy. 'African women are only good for a man's lower pleasures,''" she quoted him as saying.
He was so excited that he proposed marriage to her on the spot. She asked, "But where is the mother of the children I met today?"
He replied that, according to Islamic custom, he had several wives and many children. "Did you think I was saving all my love for you?"
She stood up in front of him and boldly said, "I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone's shadows. If I fail, if I succeed, at least I live as I believe. No matter what they take from me, they can't take away my dignity."
He told her she had been brainwashed by American culture, a statement confirmed by Boof, and quoted in the New York Post article.
At that point, she spread her arms and sang the Star Spangled Banner just as she would at a subsequent Super Bowl. When she finished singing, she turned her back and walked out of the room.
It was downhill from there. Jihad was declared, buildings were destroyed, countries invaded and thousands of lives lost. Oddly enough, one survivor was Houston's husband, Bobby Brown whom Osama threatened to kill, according to Boof.
We can only imagine what would have happened, had Houston's decision gone the other way. When she returned to America, she wrote to a friend, "I could feel his love for me but the greatest love of all is easy to achieve. Learning to love yourself …it is the greatest love of all"
You can also find this at huffingtonpost.com
The location was a remote palace in Yemen. The principals were Osama Bin Laden and Whitney Houston. No one knew that the fate of the planet would turn on the events that night, but indeed that was the case.
As the New York Post has reported, "Kola Boof, the Sudanese poet and novelist who claims to have once been bin Laden's sex slave, writes in her autobiography, 'Diary of a Lost Girl,' which is excerpted in the September Harper's: 'He told me Whitney Houston was the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen.'"
But Boof (pronounced "Booth" in Sudanese) did not know about the clandestine solo concert Bin Laden ordered performed for him by Houston in 1985. Bin Laden's people contacted her personally, bypassing her agent, telling her that he wanted to hear her sing a capella, for his ears only, in exchange for $1 million in cash, all in untraceable bills.
When she asked why, she was told Bin Laden admired her beauty and her voice and craved a one-on-one concert. She asked if he expected sexual favors and was told that no, he had great respect for her.
She agreed and was handed a brief case containing the money. The next day she was picked up by his representatives and driven to a private airport in a huge limo where a private jet was waiting. Houston found it filled with lavish gifts of jewelry, perfumes, food and clothing. She was shocked to find all of the clothing fit her perfectly. When she asked why that was, the servant told her that Osama had done his homework.
When she arrived at the palace she was pampered and massaged and spent the night alone in a suite the size of her entire Hollywood mansion. She was told her meeting with Osama was to take place early that evening.
According to the New York Post story, Boof reported that, "He said he wanted to give [her] a mansion that he owned in a suburb of Khartoum. He explained to me that to possess Whitney, he would be willing to break his color rule and make her one of his wives."
She was introduced to several of his children during the day. They did not know who she was because he did not allow Western music to be played in the palace.
Finally the time came for their meeting. She walked into a vast marble room, the floor covered with Persian rugs, finding him sitting in a large wooden throne-like chair. The first words out of his mouth were compliments to her beauty. She smiled. He smiled and told her how truly Islamic he thought she was, something he also told Boof, according to the New York Post. The comment confused her, but she complimented him on his children, saying, "I believe the children are our are future. Teach them well and let them lead the way."
He was pleased to hear that, and told her she must be very wise. She added, "You should make sure you show them all the beauty they possess inside. Give them a sense of pride to make it easier. Let the children's laughter remind us how we used to be."
He said, "Will you sing for me now?"
She sang several songs. Osama was visibly moved, and also visibly sexually excited. This was confirmed by Boof when she wrote, "'In his briefcase, I would come across photographs of the Star [magazine], as well as copies of Playboy. 'African women are only good for a man's lower pleasures,''" she quoted him as saying.
He was so excited that he proposed marriage to her on the spot. She asked, "But where is the mother of the children I met today?"
He replied that, according to Islamic custom, he had several wives and many children. "Did you think I was saving all my love for you?"
She stood up in front of him and boldly said, "I decided long ago, never to walk in anyone's shadows. If I fail, if I succeed, at least I live as I believe. No matter what they take from me, they can't take away my dignity."
He told her she had been brainwashed by American culture, a statement confirmed by Boof, and quoted in the New York Post article.
At that point, she spread her arms and sang the Star Spangled Banner just as she would at a subsequent Super Bowl. When she finished singing, she turned her back and walked out of the room.
It was downhill from there. Jihad was declared, buildings were destroyed, countries invaded and thousands of lives lost. Oddly enough, one survivor was Houston's husband, Bobby Brown whom Osama threatened to kill, according to Boof.
We can only imagine what would have happened, had Houston's decision gone the other way. When she returned to America, she wrote to a friend, "I could feel his love for me but the greatest love of all is easy to achieve. Learning to love yourself …it is the greatest love of all"
You can also find this at huffingtonpost.com
Friday, August 18, 2006
Corporate lies: Tobacco Department. And a Slap on the Wrist
Yesterday Federal Judge Gladys Kessler ruled that "smoking causes disease, suffering, and death," and that tobacco companies were gulping profits like a Hummer gulps gas, “with little, if any, regard for individual illness and suffering, soaring health costs, or the integrity of the legal system.”
The defendants are Philip Morris USA Inc. and its parent, Altria Group Inc.; R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.; Brown & Williamson Tobacco Co.; British American Tobacco Ltd.; Lorillard Tobacco Co.; Liggett Group Inc.; Counsel for Tobacco Research-U.S.A.; and the now-defunct Tobacco Institute.
She added that "Over the course of more than 50 years, defendants lied, misrepresented and deceived the American public, including smokers and the young people they avidly sought as 'replacement smokers,' about the devastating health effects of smoking and environmental tobacco smoke."
She isn't kidding. But are you aware of the extent of what the tobacco companies told us was true about cigarettes?
Kirven Blount, in his book, "What's Your Poison: Addictive Advertising of the '40s- '60s," reprints dozens of cigarette ads. The outrageous lies the tobacco companies told us are astounding, given what we know about cigarettes, and the fact that they knew those same facts when these ads were written. Forget the Marlboro Man and the "image" ads, these are very specific.
Take the Camel Brand. No cute cartoon characters back then. Nope, just statements like (all caps and capitalizations as they appear in the ad):
"According to a recent Nationwide survey:
MORE DOCTORS SMOKE CAMELS THAN ANY OTHER CIGARETTE
EVERY DOCTOR IN PRIVATE PRACTICE WAS ASKED"
There's a photo of a grandfatherly "doctor" in one ad and a female "doctor" in another. In other Camel ads:
"28% LESS NICOTINE EXTRA COOLNESS FLAVOR"
And testimonials:
"Vivian Blaine says; 'I've tried the different mildness tests. My throat made my choice….CAMELS!' Not one single case of throat irritation due to smoking CAMELS."
"These smokers gave CAMELS 30-YEAR Mildness Tests."
"'My voice is my living'…says Vaughn Monroe radio and recording star."
Below it there's a word balloon coming out of Vaughn's mouth.
" …so it's only common sense that I smoke the cigarette that agrees with my throat…CAMEL!"
They cap it off with these lines:
"Not one single case of throat irritation due to smoking CAMELS
Make a note…Remember Your Throat"
"Camels agree with more people than any other cigarette."
And, apparently Camels are good for your psychological well-being:
"WATCH YOUR NERVES…LET UP…LIGHT A CAMEL
In hazardous jobs—in every-day 'grinds"—smokers say 'CAMELS ARE SOOTHING TO THE NERVES.'"
They were not alone. Philip Morris pulled this out of their corporate asses:
"DO YOU INHALE?
All smokers do—some times. And inhaling increases the chance of smoking-irritation.
Reported by eminent medical authorities is this vital difference between Philip Morris and four other leading cigarettes. On comparison, the other four brands averaged 235% more irritant than the strikingly constrained Philip Morris.
Further—the irritant effect of the four other leading brands was found to last more than five times as long! You can't see this difference…but you can feel it, especially when you inhale! That's vital to all who smoke.
Especially if you inhale—Call for Philip Morris! Enjoy the world's finest tobaccos—with no worry about throat irritation.
MEDIAL AUTHORITIES KNOW THIS ONE IS SUPERIOR--- PHILIP MORRIS
Scientifically proved less irritating to the nose and throat.
When smokers changed to Philip Morris, substantially every case of irritation of the nose and throat---due to smoking---cleared up completely, or definitely improved!
This is from the findings of distinguished doctors, in clinical tests of men and women smokers---reported in an authoritative medical journal. Solid proof that this finer-tasting cigarette is less irritating to the nose and throat."
It is one thing to cover up the fact that your product is a major cause of DEATH and DISEASE, but it's another to ACTIVELY tell you it doesn't.
A news story yesterday said, "Mark Smith, a spokesman for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company…said, the company was disappointed by Kessler's finding that the companies had conspired to violate federal law and deceive consumers." This goes to show you that they haven't stopped lying. Consider these Chesterfield ads:
They got SINGERS to endorse the cancer sticks.
"'You might say I'm careful, that's why I say Chesterfields SATISFY me!' Rise Stevens (autograph) Metropolitan Operas World Famous Carmen"
"MILDNESS—plus No Unpleasant After-taste *
* from the report of a well-known research organization…and only Chesterfield has it!"
"Hundreds of prominent tobacco growers say: 'When I apply the Standard Tobacco Growers' Test to cigarettes, I find Chesterfield is the one that smells Milder and smokes Milder.'"
"Only Chesterfield is Made the Modern way---with ACCU RAY to bring you SMOOTHER, COOLER SMOKING than was every before possible."
Accu-ray, how space-age.
They all seem to acknowledge that cigarettes make you feel bad, but they all claim that THEIRS doesn't. Take Pall Mall:
"Guard Against Throat-Scratch
…smoke PALL MALL the cigarette whose mildness you can measure.
Outstanding…and they are mild!"
The problem with the ruling yesterday is that the death-dealing liars got to keep their money. No reparations for killing your parents and grandparents. This is thanks to the Bush administration. The justice department tried to keep the damage to their corporate masters as minimal as possible. They succeeded.
Tomorrow, nobody will remember this story.
Just add it to the list of lies, lies and more lies. They don't mind killing you for money. Remember that in November. They don't mind killing you for money.
They've merely stopped telling us that we'll get pleasure from it as they did in this Camel ad:
"IT'S A PSYCHOLOGICAL FACT: PLEASURE HELPS YOUR DISPOSITION
For more pure pleasure…have a CAMEL"
They use fear now, not pleasure. The lies are the same, however. And they're from the same folks.
this also appears on huffingtonpost.com
The defendants are Philip Morris USA Inc. and its parent, Altria Group Inc.; R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Co.; Brown & Williamson Tobacco Co.; British American Tobacco Ltd.; Lorillard Tobacco Co.; Liggett Group Inc.; Counsel for Tobacco Research-U.S.A.; and the now-defunct Tobacco Institute.
She added that "Over the course of more than 50 years, defendants lied, misrepresented and deceived the American public, including smokers and the young people they avidly sought as 'replacement smokers,' about the devastating health effects of smoking and environmental tobacco smoke."
She isn't kidding. But are you aware of the extent of what the tobacco companies told us was true about cigarettes?
Kirven Blount, in his book, "What's Your Poison: Addictive Advertising of the '40s- '60s," reprints dozens of cigarette ads. The outrageous lies the tobacco companies told us are astounding, given what we know about cigarettes, and the fact that they knew those same facts when these ads were written. Forget the Marlboro Man and the "image" ads, these are very specific.
Take the Camel Brand. No cute cartoon characters back then. Nope, just statements like (all caps and capitalizations as they appear in the ad):
"According to a recent Nationwide survey:
MORE DOCTORS SMOKE CAMELS THAN ANY OTHER CIGARETTE
EVERY DOCTOR IN PRIVATE PRACTICE WAS ASKED"
There's a photo of a grandfatherly "doctor" in one ad and a female "doctor" in another. In other Camel ads:
"28% LESS NICOTINE EXTRA COOLNESS FLAVOR"
And testimonials:
"Vivian Blaine says; 'I've tried the different mildness tests. My throat made my choice….CAMELS!' Not one single case of throat irritation due to smoking CAMELS."
"These smokers gave CAMELS 30-YEAR Mildness Tests."
"'My voice is my living'…says Vaughn Monroe radio and recording star."
Below it there's a word balloon coming out of Vaughn's mouth.
" …so it's only common sense that I smoke the cigarette that agrees with my throat…CAMEL!"
They cap it off with these lines:
"Not one single case of throat irritation due to smoking CAMELS
Make a note…Remember Your Throat"
"Camels agree with more people than any other cigarette."
And, apparently Camels are good for your psychological well-being:
"WATCH YOUR NERVES…LET UP…LIGHT A CAMEL
In hazardous jobs—in every-day 'grinds"—smokers say 'CAMELS ARE SOOTHING TO THE NERVES.'"
They were not alone. Philip Morris pulled this out of their corporate asses:
"DO YOU INHALE?
All smokers do—some times. And inhaling increases the chance of smoking-irritation.
Reported by eminent medical authorities is this vital difference between Philip Morris and four other leading cigarettes. On comparison, the other four brands averaged 235% more irritant than the strikingly constrained Philip Morris.
Further—the irritant effect of the four other leading brands was found to last more than five times as long! You can't see this difference…but you can feel it, especially when you inhale! That's vital to all who smoke.
Especially if you inhale—Call for Philip Morris! Enjoy the world's finest tobaccos—with no worry about throat irritation.
MEDIAL AUTHORITIES KNOW THIS ONE IS SUPERIOR--- PHILIP MORRIS
Scientifically proved less irritating to the nose and throat.
When smokers changed to Philip Morris, substantially every case of irritation of the nose and throat---due to smoking---cleared up completely, or definitely improved!
This is from the findings of distinguished doctors, in clinical tests of men and women smokers---reported in an authoritative medical journal. Solid proof that this finer-tasting cigarette is less irritating to the nose and throat."
It is one thing to cover up the fact that your product is a major cause of DEATH and DISEASE, but it's another to ACTIVELY tell you it doesn't.
A news story yesterday said, "Mark Smith, a spokesman for R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company…said, the company was disappointed by Kessler's finding that the companies had conspired to violate federal law and deceive consumers." This goes to show you that they haven't stopped lying. Consider these Chesterfield ads:
They got SINGERS to endorse the cancer sticks.
"'You might say I'm careful, that's why I say Chesterfields SATISFY me!' Rise Stevens (autograph) Metropolitan Operas World Famous Carmen"
"MILDNESS—plus No Unpleasant After-taste *
* from the report of a well-known research organization…and only Chesterfield has it!"
"Hundreds of prominent tobacco growers say: 'When I apply the Standard Tobacco Growers' Test to cigarettes, I find Chesterfield is the one that smells Milder and smokes Milder.'"
"Only Chesterfield is Made the Modern way---with ACCU RAY to bring you SMOOTHER, COOLER SMOKING than was every before possible."
Accu-ray, how space-age.
They all seem to acknowledge that cigarettes make you feel bad, but they all claim that THEIRS doesn't. Take Pall Mall:
"Guard Against Throat-Scratch
…smoke PALL MALL the cigarette whose mildness you can measure.
Outstanding…and they are mild!"
The problem with the ruling yesterday is that the death-dealing liars got to keep their money. No reparations for killing your parents and grandparents. This is thanks to the Bush administration. The justice department tried to keep the damage to their corporate masters as minimal as possible. They succeeded.
Tomorrow, nobody will remember this story.
Just add it to the list of lies, lies and more lies. They don't mind killing you for money. Remember that in November. They don't mind killing you for money.
They've merely stopped telling us that we'll get pleasure from it as they did in this Camel ad:
"IT'S A PSYCHOLOGICAL FACT: PLEASURE HELPS YOUR DISPOSITION
For more pure pleasure…have a CAMEL"
They use fear now, not pleasure. The lies are the same, however. And they're from the same folks.
this also appears on huffingtonpost.com
Monday, August 07, 2006
Hezbollah didn't win. Nobody won.
Don't believe the nonsense you hear that Hezbollah (or Hizbullah, or any other manner of spelling it) has won the latest chapter in the centuries-old war in the Middle-East. Nor have they lost. Neither has Israel won or lost.
A cease-fire will be just that, they'll stop shooting, for the most part. There is no victory. There can be no victors. There will be no final victors. And when the oil runs out, it will stop being important to the rest of the world. When the oil runs out, nobody will care if the Shia wipe out the Sunnis or who lives in Israel/ Palestine/West Bank/Gaza/Kurdistan/the other two parts of Iraq/or any of the Emirates.
Most of us will never see that day, but it is as inevitable as death.
When the oil runs out the hatred and killing in the Middle-East will be as remote to the rest of the world as the same behavior in Sudan is now or as Rwanda was a decade ago.
"The Arab Street" will be as meaningless as "The Peruvian Street." And by the way, how crazy is it to decide life and death and the possible annihilation of the planet by how many goobers are jumping up and down on top of flags they don't like, firing guns into the air and acting like fools?
Why not just decide everything the same way the winner is decided on "American Idol?" So kindly don't tell me that Hezbollah won because "The Arab Street" believes it to be true. They also believe that women should walk around with their heads covered up and that thieves should have their hands cut off.
It is like having U.S. foreign policy decided by the students at Bob Jones University. Of course, that's how the Republicans gained control of U.S. foreign policy. The Arab Street and The Republican Base have a great deal in common.
And before you get to weeping over the slaughter of the innocent in Lebanon, consider that many of the surrounding countries, and all of the radical Islamists want Israel wiped off the map. What would you do if they said the same thing about the United States and attacked us. Oh, you mean they did? And you even supported BUSH when it came to raining fire on the Taliban who supported Al-Qaeda, didn't you.
Supported? You cheered.
And when the Germans and Japanese threatened our survival you didn't hesitate to wave the flag when we fire-bombed the civilians of Dresden and wiped out two entire major Japanese cities with nuclear weapons.
So don't come crying to me when innocents are killed in a war.
This is dirty. We encouraged it. We stood by while the bombs fell. No, we were not threatened. You're doing a heckuva job, Condi.
Hezbollah didn't win. Nobody won. Everybody lost. There is no chance for a lasting peace, and hardly a chance for any kind of settlement brokered by the crew currently representing us. Perhaps when the Republican finger-painters who are at the controls lose their jobs in 2008, some reason might be restored to the process, but even Clinton couldn't make a peace with those who only wanted Israel destroyed.
On the other hand, it was Europeans who created the country of Iraq out of three groups who hate each other and planted the seeds bearing fruit today by their other colonial mistakes. It was also Europeans who decided that Jews should own the land where Israel now sits, and told the people who had been controlling that land to go fuck themselves. There's that.
People tend to forget these things.
It's obvious the U.S. has squandered any positive role it might have had in the Middle-East. Perhaps a leader from a country other than the U.S. can emerge and stop all this, but I doubt it. The state of the holy land is the best argument for atheism.
This also appears on huffingtonpost.com
A cease-fire will be just that, they'll stop shooting, for the most part. There is no victory. There can be no victors. There will be no final victors. And when the oil runs out, it will stop being important to the rest of the world. When the oil runs out, nobody will care if the Shia wipe out the Sunnis or who lives in Israel/ Palestine/West Bank/Gaza/Kurdistan/the other two parts of Iraq/or any of the Emirates.
Most of us will never see that day, but it is as inevitable as death.
When the oil runs out the hatred and killing in the Middle-East will be as remote to the rest of the world as the same behavior in Sudan is now or as Rwanda was a decade ago.
"The Arab Street" will be as meaningless as "The Peruvian Street." And by the way, how crazy is it to decide life and death and the possible annihilation of the planet by how many goobers are jumping up and down on top of flags they don't like, firing guns into the air and acting like fools?
Why not just decide everything the same way the winner is decided on "American Idol?" So kindly don't tell me that Hezbollah won because "The Arab Street" believes it to be true. They also believe that women should walk around with their heads covered up and that thieves should have their hands cut off.
It is like having U.S. foreign policy decided by the students at Bob Jones University. Of course, that's how the Republicans gained control of U.S. foreign policy. The Arab Street and The Republican Base have a great deal in common.
And before you get to weeping over the slaughter of the innocent in Lebanon, consider that many of the surrounding countries, and all of the radical Islamists want Israel wiped off the map. What would you do if they said the same thing about the United States and attacked us. Oh, you mean they did? And you even supported BUSH when it came to raining fire on the Taliban who supported Al-Qaeda, didn't you.
Supported? You cheered.
And when the Germans and Japanese threatened our survival you didn't hesitate to wave the flag when we fire-bombed the civilians of Dresden and wiped out two entire major Japanese cities with nuclear weapons.
So don't come crying to me when innocents are killed in a war.
This is dirty. We encouraged it. We stood by while the bombs fell. No, we were not threatened. You're doing a heckuva job, Condi.
Hezbollah didn't win. Nobody won. Everybody lost. There is no chance for a lasting peace, and hardly a chance for any kind of settlement brokered by the crew currently representing us. Perhaps when the Republican finger-painters who are at the controls lose their jobs in 2008, some reason might be restored to the process, but even Clinton couldn't make a peace with those who only wanted Israel destroyed.
On the other hand, it was Europeans who created the country of Iraq out of three groups who hate each other and planted the seeds bearing fruit today by their other colonial mistakes. It was also Europeans who decided that Jews should own the land where Israel now sits, and told the people who had been controlling that land to go fuck themselves. There's that.
People tend to forget these things.
It's obvious the U.S. has squandered any positive role it might have had in the Middle-East. Perhaps a leader from a country other than the U.S. can emerge and stop all this, but I doubt it. The state of the holy land is the best argument for atheism.
This also appears on huffingtonpost.com
Sunday, July 30, 2006
CounterPunch July Playlist
Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band 40th Reunion. DVD 2006
This concert took place in the UK in January of 2006.
I don't feel like I should have to explain who they are and I will not, but I know I should because the band had a relatively short lifespan, was British, never had a hit, and was too strange to make it out of cult status.
I am a member of their cult. Wanna buy a flower?
Missing only the dearly departed Vivian Stanshall (a man), the band is led by another man who calls himself Neil Innes, but doesn't look a bit like Neil Innes did forty years ago. Also appearing are old men impersonating Roger Ruskin Spear, Rodney Slater, Vernon Dudley Bohay-Nowell, and Legs Larry Smith. Also also appearing is the electric trouser press instrument, and the theramin leg.
Also also also appearing: Big hello to big John Wayne, xylophone. Looking very relaxed Adolf Hitler on vibes. Eric Clapton on ukulele. Yeah! Digging General de Gaulle on accordion. Really wild, General! Thank you, sir. Roy Rogers on Trigger. We welcome Val Doonican as himself. (Hello there.)
Among others.
Viv was such a huge presence in the Bonzos, that several people have stepped in to fill his shoes, including Stephen Fry, doing recitations such as:"My darling, in my cardboard-coloured dreams, once again, I heard your laugh. And I kiss, yes, I kiss your perfumed hair. The sweet essence of Giraffe. And eachtime I hear your name, oh, oh, my, my, how it hurts! In the wardrobe of my soul...in the section labeled "shirts."—from "Canyons of Your Mind."
Phil Jupitus stepped in for the dead Viv with a bowel-moving rendition of "The Strain," Stanshall's ode to taking a shit.
The audience was so attuned that when Innes athked the muthical lithp, "Do you like thoul muthic?" the audience replied, "No," en masse. Tho did I.
The audio sucks, the shooting sucks, Innes loses some of his voice as the night wears on, clams abound and few of the props seem to work; in other words, a perfect evening.
When they started playing "Jollity Farm," I cried.
I'll repeat that, the shirt event.
Nancy King Untitled CD c. mid-1990s
Nancy King is in the top 5 of our greatest living jazz singers. Thankfully, she is just now, at an age somewhere over 55, getting some of her due. She's quirky, scatty, bright, sarcastic and sweet, with the evidence of a difficult yet rewarding life advertised on her face.
She has been active nationally with a recent CD with pianist Fred Hersch.
She has lived most of her life in Portland, Oregon where she has frequently collaborated with the virtuoso bassist Glen Moore of the band "Oregon," as well as her long time pianist, Steve Christopherson.
She burned this CD for me in 1997 for an appearance on a radio show I was doing. I'm not sure when it was recorded, but I'm guessing it was shortly before that, maybe not. I played it underneath our interview, stopping along the way to talk to her about aspects of what we were hearing.
To tell you the truth, she puts all the current slim, cute jazz divas to shame. What she's got, only time and life gives you. Thank goodness she's still around to communicate that.
She's bop, she's ballad, she's irony and love, she's a brat and a seductress, as contemporary as they come but with deep roots. You can find a not-so-up-to-date website at http://www.nancykingjazz.com/.
Raymond Scott "Reckless Nights and Turkish Twilights" CD 1992/1998
Call me old fashioned, but the father of cartoon music never sounded better. Of course, as every schoolboy knows, Scott didn't compose these familiar tunes to be used in cartoons. He had all but abandoned Hollywood for New York when Carl Stalling decided to put some of Scott's music to Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies.
In addition, what most people don't know is that Scott was a pioneer of electronic music, building proto-synthesizers and other such machines. He also composed hundreds of jingles and other ephemera. Odd then, that he is best known for music to chase wabbits by.
He was also Dorothy Collins' husband and led the band on "You're Hit Parade." (Ask your grandfather.)
One of the oldest methods self-entertainment includes the following: 1) smoke some dope, 2) turn on the TV, 3) put some music on, and 4) turn the TV audio off and continue to change the channels till the music fits. Laugh if you like, but it still works. And it's still just as much fun.
It works with old movies, it works with Wolf Blitzer and the other night Raymond Scott's CD worked with a silent Dada film from the 20s. It worked really well. Like it was written for it.
Might have just be me. Doesn't matter.
The CD I have is a 1998 re-mastered version of the original 1992 transfer to digital. Ray would have loved it.
Papa Grows Funk "Live at the Leaf" CD 2006
Even if Ivan Neville's Dumpstaphunk occupies the throne of New Orleans funk bands, PGF is thatclosebehind. This was recorded live last April at the Maple Leaf Bar, a creaky old place in New Orleans. It might look like it's going to fall down any moment, but the Leaf is a cathedral of great music.
PGF has been holding down Monday nights there for years, in that narrow, sweaty, way-to-loud room next to the bar where you swear that any moment the whole place may explode, implode or otherwise self-destruct due to the level of funk and blues. I'm not exaggerating.
John Gros (pronounced Grow, hence the name of the band) holds all the keys to the rooms where they store the legacy of the great New Orleans piano players. He knows it, lives and plays it. It's in him. It is him. Add fiery guitarist June Yamagishi, ultra-cool Jason Minglesdorf on saxes, Fatback Mark Pero on bass and you've got all the funk you can use. They have had one major change in their lineup in the past year or so. Although Jeffrey "Jellybean" Alexander is a fine drummer, nobody can replace Russ Batiste. Nobody, nohow.
Still, if you're 3000 miles away from New Orleans like I am, slipping this CD in the drawer and closing your eyes will very nearly make you sweat no matter what the temperature.
P.S. Now that they've got the live CD done, they could use some new tunes.
Salif Keita "M'Bemba" CD 2005
Have you ever seen a bad review of a world music recording? I never have, although I don’t go looking for reviews good or bad. I think it's probably politically incorrect to not like something like this. Not that this is a review. I don't know what this is. David Vest just told me I should write these things, and he's rarely wrong about such matters.
My taste in African music tends toward old Ethiopian soul music and Tabu Ley Rochereau. And I don't keep up with it. This didn't grab me. I know that Mali is supposed to be where the roots of American music lie. I wanted to like this. I paid cash, retail full price, too.
I am prepared to be wrong.
Delmark Goldfarb "Up To My Neck" CD 2004
From the deep past when men were men and it was cool to play in jug bands, comes Del Goldfarb who spent some time working for the Blues Museum in Memphis, organizing the collection by day and trying on clothes worn by Johnny Cash and Billy Lee Riley donated to the museum by night.
He also spent a long time playing with jug band legends like Fritz Richmond and people like John Sebastion. Both of them are on here, plus Cody Dickson from the North Mississippi All-Stars. Del lives in Portland, Oregon now where he plays, records and drives a delivery truck.
The title of the album refers to major back surgery he had a while back which is documented on the front of the CD by a nasty photo of the scar running up to the back of his neck.
This is a pretty amiable, kinda dog-eared good-timey type-a-thing. Which is also pretty much describes what Del is like, too. Find it at http://www.delgoldfarb.com/
"James Brown's Funky Summer" CD included in August 2006 issue of Mojo Magazine
Mojo, the British music magazine always includes a CD and most of them are spectacular. Not all of them. I never want to see another album of Beatles or Kinks covers, but this one falls into the classic category.
Not only does it include, "Gut Bucket" a cut from James Brown's new recording due out next year and a welcome return to his brand of funk instead of following trends, something that's left him in the wilderness for decades. The best thing about the tune is that he seems to have regained his voice which had been reduced to a hoarse shout. He'll never have the ballad voice of "Please, Please, Please," but he actually sounds like James Brown on this.
The rest of the disc is filled with musicians who worked with Mr. B or covered his tunes. One from from "Maceo (Parker) And All The King's Men" is included. I found that LP years ago. It was recorded (poorly) during a time when Maceo and James weren't working together. Bootsy Collins, Fred Wesley, Bobby Byrd, Vicki Anderson and Lyn Collins from various versions of the Famous Flames/JB's have solo cuts. Tammi Terrell, Albert King (Cold Sweat), Soul Survivors (minus the traffic), Roy Brown (!), The 5 Royales cover other JB tunes.
The magazine is always a treasure, even if I don't care about British pop (and never did), but this CD makes it extra-special.
This also appears on CounterPunch.com
This concert took place in the UK in January of 2006.
I don't feel like I should have to explain who they are and I will not, but I know I should because the band had a relatively short lifespan, was British, never had a hit, and was too strange to make it out of cult status.
I am a member of their cult. Wanna buy a flower?
Missing only the dearly departed Vivian Stanshall (a man), the band is led by another man who calls himself Neil Innes, but doesn't look a bit like Neil Innes did forty years ago. Also appearing are old men impersonating Roger Ruskin Spear, Rodney Slater, Vernon Dudley Bohay-Nowell, and Legs Larry Smith. Also also appearing is the electric trouser press instrument, and the theramin leg.
Also also also appearing: Big hello to big John Wayne, xylophone. Looking very relaxed Adolf Hitler on vibes. Eric Clapton on ukulele. Yeah! Digging General de Gaulle on accordion. Really wild, General! Thank you, sir. Roy Rogers on Trigger. We welcome Val Doonican as himself. (Hello there.)
Among others.
Viv was such a huge presence in the Bonzos, that several people have stepped in to fill his shoes, including Stephen Fry, doing recitations such as:"My darling, in my cardboard-coloured dreams, once again, I heard your laugh. And I kiss, yes, I kiss your perfumed hair. The sweet essence of Giraffe. And eachtime I hear your name, oh, oh, my, my, how it hurts! In the wardrobe of my soul...in the section labeled "shirts."—from "Canyons of Your Mind."
Phil Jupitus stepped in for the dead Viv with a bowel-moving rendition of "The Strain," Stanshall's ode to taking a shit.
The audience was so attuned that when Innes athked the muthical lithp, "Do you like thoul muthic?" the audience replied, "No," en masse. Tho did I.
The audio sucks, the shooting sucks, Innes loses some of his voice as the night wears on, clams abound and few of the props seem to work; in other words, a perfect evening.
When they started playing "Jollity Farm," I cried.
I'll repeat that, the shirt event.
Nancy King Untitled CD c. mid-1990s
Nancy King is in the top 5 of our greatest living jazz singers. Thankfully, she is just now, at an age somewhere over 55, getting some of her due. She's quirky, scatty, bright, sarcastic and sweet, with the evidence of a difficult yet rewarding life advertised on her face.
She has been active nationally with a recent CD with pianist Fred Hersch.
She has lived most of her life in Portland, Oregon where she has frequently collaborated with the virtuoso bassist Glen Moore of the band "Oregon," as well as her long time pianist, Steve Christopherson.
She burned this CD for me in 1997 for an appearance on a radio show I was doing. I'm not sure when it was recorded, but I'm guessing it was shortly before that, maybe not. I played it underneath our interview, stopping along the way to talk to her about aspects of what we were hearing.
To tell you the truth, she puts all the current slim, cute jazz divas to shame. What she's got, only time and life gives you. Thank goodness she's still around to communicate that.
She's bop, she's ballad, she's irony and love, she's a brat and a seductress, as contemporary as they come but with deep roots. You can find a not-so-up-to-date website at http://www.nancykingjazz.com/.
Raymond Scott "Reckless Nights and Turkish Twilights" CD 1992/1998
Call me old fashioned, but the father of cartoon music never sounded better. Of course, as every schoolboy knows, Scott didn't compose these familiar tunes to be used in cartoons. He had all but abandoned Hollywood for New York when Carl Stalling decided to put some of Scott's music to Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies.
In addition, what most people don't know is that Scott was a pioneer of electronic music, building proto-synthesizers and other such machines. He also composed hundreds of jingles and other ephemera. Odd then, that he is best known for music to chase wabbits by.
He was also Dorothy Collins' husband and led the band on "You're Hit Parade." (Ask your grandfather.)
One of the oldest methods self-entertainment includes the following: 1) smoke some dope, 2) turn on the TV, 3) put some music on, and 4) turn the TV audio off and continue to change the channels till the music fits. Laugh if you like, but it still works. And it's still just as much fun.
It works with old movies, it works with Wolf Blitzer and the other night Raymond Scott's CD worked with a silent Dada film from the 20s. It worked really well. Like it was written for it.
Might have just be me. Doesn't matter.
The CD I have is a 1998 re-mastered version of the original 1992 transfer to digital. Ray would have loved it.
Papa Grows Funk "Live at the Leaf" CD 2006
Even if Ivan Neville's Dumpstaphunk occupies the throne of New Orleans funk bands, PGF is thatclosebehind. This was recorded live last April at the Maple Leaf Bar, a creaky old place in New Orleans. It might look like it's going to fall down any moment, but the Leaf is a cathedral of great music.
PGF has been holding down Monday nights there for years, in that narrow, sweaty, way-to-loud room next to the bar where you swear that any moment the whole place may explode, implode or otherwise self-destruct due to the level of funk and blues. I'm not exaggerating.
John Gros (pronounced Grow, hence the name of the band) holds all the keys to the rooms where they store the legacy of the great New Orleans piano players. He knows it, lives and plays it. It's in him. It is him. Add fiery guitarist June Yamagishi, ultra-cool Jason Minglesdorf on saxes, Fatback Mark Pero on bass and you've got all the funk you can use. They have had one major change in their lineup in the past year or so. Although Jeffrey "Jellybean" Alexander is a fine drummer, nobody can replace Russ Batiste. Nobody, nohow.
Still, if you're 3000 miles away from New Orleans like I am, slipping this CD in the drawer and closing your eyes will very nearly make you sweat no matter what the temperature.
P.S. Now that they've got the live CD done, they could use some new tunes.
Salif Keita "M'Bemba" CD 2005
Have you ever seen a bad review of a world music recording? I never have, although I don’t go looking for reviews good or bad. I think it's probably politically incorrect to not like something like this. Not that this is a review. I don't know what this is. David Vest just told me I should write these things, and he's rarely wrong about such matters.
My taste in African music tends toward old Ethiopian soul music and Tabu Ley Rochereau. And I don't keep up with it. This didn't grab me. I know that Mali is supposed to be where the roots of American music lie. I wanted to like this. I paid cash, retail full price, too.
I am prepared to be wrong.
Delmark Goldfarb "Up To My Neck" CD 2004
From the deep past when men were men and it was cool to play in jug bands, comes Del Goldfarb who spent some time working for the Blues Museum in Memphis, organizing the collection by day and trying on clothes worn by Johnny Cash and Billy Lee Riley donated to the museum by night.
He also spent a long time playing with jug band legends like Fritz Richmond and people like John Sebastion. Both of them are on here, plus Cody Dickson from the North Mississippi All-Stars. Del lives in Portland, Oregon now where he plays, records and drives a delivery truck.
The title of the album refers to major back surgery he had a while back which is documented on the front of the CD by a nasty photo of the scar running up to the back of his neck.
This is a pretty amiable, kinda dog-eared good-timey type-a-thing. Which is also pretty much describes what Del is like, too. Find it at http://www.delgoldfarb.com/
"James Brown's Funky Summer" CD included in August 2006 issue of Mojo Magazine
Mojo, the British music magazine always includes a CD and most of them are spectacular. Not all of them. I never want to see another album of Beatles or Kinks covers, but this one falls into the classic category.
Not only does it include, "Gut Bucket" a cut from James Brown's new recording due out next year and a welcome return to his brand of funk instead of following trends, something that's left him in the wilderness for decades. The best thing about the tune is that he seems to have regained his voice which had been reduced to a hoarse shout. He'll never have the ballad voice of "Please, Please, Please," but he actually sounds like James Brown on this.
The rest of the disc is filled with musicians who worked with Mr. B or covered his tunes. One from from "Maceo (Parker) And All The King's Men" is included. I found that LP years ago. It was recorded (poorly) during a time when Maceo and James weren't working together. Bootsy Collins, Fred Wesley, Bobby Byrd, Vicki Anderson and Lyn Collins from various versions of the Famous Flames/JB's have solo cuts. Tammi Terrell, Albert King (Cold Sweat), Soul Survivors (minus the traffic), Roy Brown (!), The 5 Royales cover other JB tunes.
The magazine is always a treasure, even if I don't care about British pop (and never did), but this CD makes it extra-special.
This also appears on CounterPunch.com
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
A Middle Eastern "Who's On First" History Lesson
Let me get this straight.
We attacked Saddam in GW1 and then promised the Shiites that we would help them to overthrow him. Then we shrugged and said, "Nah, never mind," freeing Saddy to kill them, while the Baathist Sunnis remained in power.
Then we attacked Saddam again, killed a lot of Sunnis, and we threw the Baathists out and made friends with the Shiites who were building armies of their own, some of whom were killing our soldiers. Then we tortured a lot of Sunnis and put the Shiites in power.
Then somebody told the home office that Iran was full of Shiites who liked the idea that Iraq was going to be run by their home boys. Then the Sunnis started killing everybody, our soldiers, lots of Shiites and a few Kurds.
So then to stop the Sunnis from killing everybody, we made a place for them in the new "government," while building ourselves a palace/embassy which would enable us to stay in Iraq in perpetuity. For what reason, we've never been told.
Then the Shiites and the Sunnis decided that maybe they should concentrate on killing each other. "Oh, ok," they said, "we'll kill a few Americans, but they're not much of a factor anymore, and those Americans will probably be ok with whoever won, as long as they can hand out fat contracts to their friends and be involved in oil."
That particular civil war has been raging for several months, although the liars in government and the scaredy cats in the media alternately said, things were getting better or (at worst) things were "verging" on a civil war. Meanwhile, to anybody in Iraq, civil war was a fact of life and death.
So guess what happens then? The Shiite Hezbollah sparks a new war vs. Israel. They get their weapons from the Shiite Iranians, FWB of the Iraqi Shiites. Hezbollah also gets support from Sunni Syria. All of a sudden, it is suggested we might begin playing diplomatic footsie with Sunni Syria against Shiite Iran.
Oh, wait a minute. We're not involved in diplomacy. It's the Democrats who are suggesting that we bring Syria into line with the Saudis and Jordanians and against Iran and Hezbollah.
It's the home office which is helping fill orders for missiles and watching the price of oil rise (their version of Viagra). How much money do you think they could make with just "one more week" of carnage?
And the deaths? I can see them sitting around a table, like the representatives of the Five Families in The Godfather and hearing Cheney say, "Let them lose their souls."
So let's add this up. We set up the Shiites in Iraq. They're FWB with Iran which we might invade. The Sunnis whom we defeated in Iraq, and who have killed the bulk of the American military in Iraq and may now end up on our side in the Israel-Hezbollah war.
We have made friends of our enemies who still try to kill our men and women. We have made enemies of the guys we brought to power in Iraq and we have given Israel a blank check and a lot of death machines to kill them. And now the Iraqi Shiites just announced that they want Hezbollah to win.
Third base.
Cheney is Abbott. W is Costello. The problem is the jokes aren't funny. And the movie is out of control.
This can also be found on huffingtonpost.com
We attacked Saddam in GW1 and then promised the Shiites that we would help them to overthrow him. Then we shrugged and said, "Nah, never mind," freeing Saddy to kill them, while the Baathist Sunnis remained in power.
Then we attacked Saddam again, killed a lot of Sunnis, and we threw the Baathists out and made friends with the Shiites who were building armies of their own, some of whom were killing our soldiers. Then we tortured a lot of Sunnis and put the Shiites in power.
Then somebody told the home office that Iran was full of Shiites who liked the idea that Iraq was going to be run by their home boys. Then the Sunnis started killing everybody, our soldiers, lots of Shiites and a few Kurds.
So then to stop the Sunnis from killing everybody, we made a place for them in the new "government," while building ourselves a palace/embassy which would enable us to stay in Iraq in perpetuity. For what reason, we've never been told.
Then the Shiites and the Sunnis decided that maybe they should concentrate on killing each other. "Oh, ok," they said, "we'll kill a few Americans, but they're not much of a factor anymore, and those Americans will probably be ok with whoever won, as long as they can hand out fat contracts to their friends and be involved in oil."
That particular civil war has been raging for several months, although the liars in government and the scaredy cats in the media alternately said, things were getting better or (at worst) things were "verging" on a civil war. Meanwhile, to anybody in Iraq, civil war was a fact of life and death.
So guess what happens then? The Shiite Hezbollah sparks a new war vs. Israel. They get their weapons from the Shiite Iranians, FWB of the Iraqi Shiites. Hezbollah also gets support from Sunni Syria. All of a sudden, it is suggested we might begin playing diplomatic footsie with Sunni Syria against Shiite Iran.
Oh, wait a minute. We're not involved in diplomacy. It's the Democrats who are suggesting that we bring Syria into line with the Saudis and Jordanians and against Iran and Hezbollah.
It's the home office which is helping fill orders for missiles and watching the price of oil rise (their version of Viagra). How much money do you think they could make with just "one more week" of carnage?
And the deaths? I can see them sitting around a table, like the representatives of the Five Families in The Godfather and hearing Cheney say, "Let them lose their souls."
So let's add this up. We set up the Shiites in Iraq. They're FWB with Iran which we might invade. The Sunnis whom we defeated in Iraq, and who have killed the bulk of the American military in Iraq and may now end up on our side in the Israel-Hezbollah war.
We have made friends of our enemies who still try to kill our men and women. We have made enemies of the guys we brought to power in Iraq and we have given Israel a blank check and a lot of death machines to kill them. And now the Iraqi Shiites just announced that they want Hezbollah to win.
Third base.
Cheney is Abbott. W is Costello. The problem is the jokes aren't funny. And the movie is out of control.
This can also be found on huffingtonpost.com
Monday, July 17, 2006
Another Bush Pet Goat Moment
We have just witnessed yet another "Pet Goat" moment in the sad history of the Bush presidency. Another one of the many we have suffered through. The first one of such moments was, of course, when he did not act when informed of the airliner hitting the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 and continued reading the now-famous book.
There have been many others we have not seen, but the most public "Pet Goat" moment since then had been when he appeared to be totally disengaged as New Orleans was destroyed.
He glazes over. He doesn't know what to do. He can't think. He becomes inert. We have seen it, publicly, a few times. How many times do you think Rove, Cheney and company have seen it and told him what he should do?
At the precise moment when the nation needs a leader, he fails.
This weekend is the latest example. Look at him with the other leaders. He looks out of place. Look at Putin humiliate him at the news conference as the audience of reporters laughs in his face when Putin gets off a good line about the Iraq "democracy."
Look at him making a fool out of himself driving that little golf cart. It makes Dukakis on the tank look like Patton himself.
And when he was caught talking with the microphone on, did he give a well-thought out analysis of the situation? No, it was locker room talk, the only kind he knows. He said, "See the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over."
Now there's a statement for the ages.
George W. Bush never fails to disappoint the nation. He makes fools out of all of us.
He looked totally out of his element at G8. What is his element? Hanging out with a bunch of rich goobers cracking jokes is. It is certainly not leading the world out of a dangerous conflict which threatens to become a wider war, dragging the United States in.
He is weak. He is lost. Just look at him. I've interviewed thousands of people. I am a good judge of character and intelligence. He has neither. He made a stop at the Portland, Oregon airport in the spring of 2000, long before he gained the Republican nomination. I went out there, in the media crush, just to see him and get a sense.
The first thing I noticed was that his neck was bright red. "Oh," I thought, "he must be an alki." I watched him glad hand. I came away with the simple conclusion that this was one of those men who I have tried to avoid my whole life. He was not the kind of man I wanted to drink with. I've never understood that. Wouldn't you want to drink with a man you could hold a conversation with? He looked mean and stupid.
I have had to revise my evaluation downward since then.
Perhaps someone should make him a tape of the newscasts on the Israel/ Hezbollah conflict. Never mind, he still would sound just as lost as he did all weekend. The Middle East is burning and nobody is home at the White House. We can't help because his keepers cut the U.S. off from the Islamic combatants.
The best we can hope for is that several of the G8 leaders took him by the hand and gave him a few good ideas. God knows, he's never had one on his own.
As we stagger and lurch toward the day when we are finally rid of him and his crew, America should invoke all the gods to help us avoid something irrevocable…Jesus, Allah, Moses, Zoroaster, Buddha…you name the god, we'll invoke his name.
Yes, it's that bad.
This can also be found on huffingtonpost.com
There have been many others we have not seen, but the most public "Pet Goat" moment since then had been when he appeared to be totally disengaged as New Orleans was destroyed.
He glazes over. He doesn't know what to do. He can't think. He becomes inert. We have seen it, publicly, a few times. How many times do you think Rove, Cheney and company have seen it and told him what he should do?
At the precise moment when the nation needs a leader, he fails.
This weekend is the latest example. Look at him with the other leaders. He looks out of place. Look at Putin humiliate him at the news conference as the audience of reporters laughs in his face when Putin gets off a good line about the Iraq "democracy."
Look at him making a fool out of himself driving that little golf cart. It makes Dukakis on the tank look like Patton himself.
And when he was caught talking with the microphone on, did he give a well-thought out analysis of the situation? No, it was locker room talk, the only kind he knows. He said, "See the irony is that what they need to do is get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit and it's over."
Now there's a statement for the ages.
George W. Bush never fails to disappoint the nation. He makes fools out of all of us.
He looked totally out of his element at G8. What is his element? Hanging out with a bunch of rich goobers cracking jokes is. It is certainly not leading the world out of a dangerous conflict which threatens to become a wider war, dragging the United States in.
He is weak. He is lost. Just look at him. I've interviewed thousands of people. I am a good judge of character and intelligence. He has neither. He made a stop at the Portland, Oregon airport in the spring of 2000, long before he gained the Republican nomination. I went out there, in the media crush, just to see him and get a sense.
The first thing I noticed was that his neck was bright red. "Oh," I thought, "he must be an alki." I watched him glad hand. I came away with the simple conclusion that this was one of those men who I have tried to avoid my whole life. He was not the kind of man I wanted to drink with. I've never understood that. Wouldn't you want to drink with a man you could hold a conversation with? He looked mean and stupid.
I have had to revise my evaluation downward since then.
Perhaps someone should make him a tape of the newscasts on the Israel/ Hezbollah conflict. Never mind, he still would sound just as lost as he did all weekend. The Middle East is burning and nobody is home at the White House. We can't help because his keepers cut the U.S. off from the Islamic combatants.
The best we can hope for is that several of the G8 leaders took him by the hand and gave him a few good ideas. God knows, he's never had one on his own.
As we stagger and lurch toward the day when we are finally rid of him and his crew, America should invoke all the gods to help us avoid something irrevocable…Jesus, Allah, Moses, Zoroaster, Buddha…you name the god, we'll invoke his name.
Yes, it's that bad.
This can also be found on huffingtonpost.com
Thursday, July 13, 2006
Feeling Like Slim Pickens On the Bomb
Waving my hat and yelling "Yahoooo." (Not in the internet way, but rather in the Pickens way, with the exhilaration of going out with a bang.) In the sense that events may be overtaking themselves in momentum and severity. The news stations are already in clear-the-decks this-looks-like-some-bad-shit mode. A new logo has appeared at the bottom of the screen.
Somewhere a neo-con is clapping his hands while the rest of us are wondering if a couple of missteps could lead to U.S. forces crossing over into Iran, or at least bombing it. The Republicans have proven that it doesn't take much for them to order up more weapons and ammo from their friends. And if you buy it, you gotta use it, right? And what better way than to have it all coalesce right in Bibleland. It's a slam-dunk.
With the rest of us riding the Republican bomb, Pickens style.
At a time like this, it is critically important that our leaders speak the truth to us. What we're faced with is a group of people so pathologically successful in their lies, that when we hear them now, we figure that the truth is whatever opposite to what they're saying.
Republicans lie. Republican lies. Easy to say. These four words should always be handy when discussing current affairs. Republican lies: two words joined at the hip. Synonymous even. I don't have to enumerate. Just about everything of any significance they've ever said in public has been carefully constructed and brilliantly conceived lying.
Hey, I appreciate the talent, thanks for the bomb.
Republican hate is another thing that makes me want to wave my hat as I dive through the clouds. This afternoon, the same old white racist evildoers from Georgia are in the U.S. Congress trying to destroy the Voting Rights Act. Here is the mating of Republican lies and Republican hate. A double-dip, not only do we get to fix some elections again, but we get to screw Negroes.
It must be fun to be a white racist Republican Member of Congress, or any Republican.
This is why I feel like a Pickens-on-a-bomb. Their demonstrated lack of the ability to govern and operate a government, not to say a super-power sits me astride the nuke, screaming. I don't think the Republicans have it in them, at best, and at worst, it may allow them to unleash the war they'd really like to fight.
I'm kissing my ass goodbye.
This can also be seen on huffingtonpost.com (although why would you go there to read it again?)
Somewhere a neo-con is clapping his hands while the rest of us are wondering if a couple of missteps could lead to U.S. forces crossing over into Iran, or at least bombing it. The Republicans have proven that it doesn't take much for them to order up more weapons and ammo from their friends. And if you buy it, you gotta use it, right? And what better way than to have it all coalesce right in Bibleland. It's a slam-dunk.
With the rest of us riding the Republican bomb, Pickens style.
At a time like this, it is critically important that our leaders speak the truth to us. What we're faced with is a group of people so pathologically successful in their lies, that when we hear them now, we figure that the truth is whatever opposite to what they're saying.
Republicans lie. Republican lies. Easy to say. These four words should always be handy when discussing current affairs. Republican lies: two words joined at the hip. Synonymous even. I don't have to enumerate. Just about everything of any significance they've ever said in public has been carefully constructed and brilliantly conceived lying.
Hey, I appreciate the talent, thanks for the bomb.
Republican hate is another thing that makes me want to wave my hat as I dive through the clouds. This afternoon, the same old white racist evildoers from Georgia are in the U.S. Congress trying to destroy the Voting Rights Act. Here is the mating of Republican lies and Republican hate. A double-dip, not only do we get to fix some elections again, but we get to screw Negroes.
It must be fun to be a white racist Republican Member of Congress, or any Republican.
This is why I feel like a Pickens-on-a-bomb. Their demonstrated lack of the ability to govern and operate a government, not to say a super-power sits me astride the nuke, screaming. I don't think the Republicans have it in them, at best, and at worst, it may allow them to unleash the war they'd really like to fight.
I'm kissing my ass goodbye.
This can also be seen on huffingtonpost.com (although why would you go there to read it again?)
Tuesday, June 27, 2006
Leary Bio: Opportunity for Unfounded 60's Revisionists
The reviews of Robert Greenfield's biography of Timothy Leary have allowed "sixties" revisionists to spread unfounded and uniformly negative opinions on an entire era.
Having been one of the publishers/editors of the same "underground" paper in Baltimore that P.J. O'Rourke, the first of such revisionists, made his mark lying about, I have some expertise on the subject.
Here's the myth promoted by the revisionists: The sixties were all about hedonism and self-satisfaction.
I wish.
First of all, the subject of "The Sixties" is so broad and complex, so full of contradictions and countervailing points of view that to generalize about it at all is not worth the effort. There are a few aspects that need attention, however.
Simply put, the ethos of the era for us can be summed up in these words: fairness, community, freedom of personal choice, and peace. Period. End of sentence.
Fairness in how government treated its citizens, and how people treated each other. After having been told that America was the land of the free, we saw people refused voting rights, freedom to reside where they could afford to, even denied service at lunch counters, hotels and rest rooms.
Imagine that? "Who would make rules like that?" we wondered.
We were told that America stood for peace in the world and then they sent us to fight a war of vanity in Vietnam. That didn't make sense to us and we did everything we could to bring our peers out of that hell. Many of us refused to participate.
The women in our life knocked us upside the head and let us know that things weren't so hot for them. Made sense to us. In the eyes of conservatives, hippies were girlie-men then, and stayed that way. And the hippie women were manly-girls, let's not forget that. This is nonsense and shouldn't be believed any more than any of their familiar lies which have come into current relief so clearly these days, but which are consistent with their history.
We were told that sex was, what a sin? With the development of the birth control pill we were the first generation, and maybe the last to be able to have unprotected sex anytime we wanted, with whom we wanted. Was there something wrong with that? Did we keep on with it? Nah, we got married and had kids. Did we have fun while we tried out everything under God's Red Light? Fuck yes.
Is that hedonism? Only to those who didn’t' get any.
When we dressed or acted in ways that seemed strange to the generation before us we got out asses kicked, literally. Would you like to know how many times I was arrested on trumped up charges simply because I was a long-haired hippie who worked for "that" paper? Don't forget, people were killed and imprisoned for exercising the rights guaranteed them in the Constitution.
What we found out was that the America we were taught existed was a figment of a script writer at best, and the deliberate misrepresentation, at worst.
All this has nothing to do with Timothy Leary, and none of it was taken into account by reviewers, NY Times and New Yorker included, who lashed out at an entire generation.
Did we take LSD? Sure we did. I took tons of it. I loved my hallucinations, even the bad ones. Did I find God? I'm still looking. Did it change my life? Yes, in some ways. It loosened the reins. I think if you asked P.J. O'Rourke if he regrets taking LSD and smoking all that dope, he would say he took some good things away from it.
But don’t tell me that Timothy Leary is responsible for anything except talking a good game. I enjoyed what he had to say. Some of it made sense and some of it didn’t'. I guess a few people bought it all, but that's just human nature.
The bluster and meanness of the revisionists who have attacked an era in which the driving idea was to make a better world reveals their own bleakness of spirit. They build the idea that Leary was much more influential than he ever was.
Take my word for it, he wasn't. The stars of the "counter-culture" (which actually existed) were just that, stars. We liked them. They entertained us. We took from them what we needed.
As those of us who fought for the right to control every aspect of our lives grow old and begin the fight to control the manner of our own death, the record needs to be set straight. Don't fuck with us. We're old, we know the score and we're still determined to "reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it."
This also appears on huffingtonpost.com
Having been one of the publishers/editors of the same "underground" paper in Baltimore that P.J. O'Rourke, the first of such revisionists, made his mark lying about, I have some expertise on the subject.
Here's the myth promoted by the revisionists: The sixties were all about hedonism and self-satisfaction.
I wish.
First of all, the subject of "The Sixties" is so broad and complex, so full of contradictions and countervailing points of view that to generalize about it at all is not worth the effort. There are a few aspects that need attention, however.
Simply put, the ethos of the era for us can be summed up in these words: fairness, community, freedom of personal choice, and peace. Period. End of sentence.
Fairness in how government treated its citizens, and how people treated each other. After having been told that America was the land of the free, we saw people refused voting rights, freedom to reside where they could afford to, even denied service at lunch counters, hotels and rest rooms.
Imagine that? "Who would make rules like that?" we wondered.
We were told that America stood for peace in the world and then they sent us to fight a war of vanity in Vietnam. That didn't make sense to us and we did everything we could to bring our peers out of that hell. Many of us refused to participate.
The women in our life knocked us upside the head and let us know that things weren't so hot for them. Made sense to us. In the eyes of conservatives, hippies were girlie-men then, and stayed that way. And the hippie women were manly-girls, let's not forget that. This is nonsense and shouldn't be believed any more than any of their familiar lies which have come into current relief so clearly these days, but which are consistent with their history.
We were told that sex was, what a sin? With the development of the birth control pill we were the first generation, and maybe the last to be able to have unprotected sex anytime we wanted, with whom we wanted. Was there something wrong with that? Did we keep on with it? Nah, we got married and had kids. Did we have fun while we tried out everything under God's Red Light? Fuck yes.
Is that hedonism? Only to those who didn’t' get any.
When we dressed or acted in ways that seemed strange to the generation before us we got out asses kicked, literally. Would you like to know how many times I was arrested on trumped up charges simply because I was a long-haired hippie who worked for "that" paper? Don't forget, people were killed and imprisoned for exercising the rights guaranteed them in the Constitution.
What we found out was that the America we were taught existed was a figment of a script writer at best, and the deliberate misrepresentation, at worst.
All this has nothing to do with Timothy Leary, and none of it was taken into account by reviewers, NY Times and New Yorker included, who lashed out at an entire generation.
Did we take LSD? Sure we did. I took tons of it. I loved my hallucinations, even the bad ones. Did I find God? I'm still looking. Did it change my life? Yes, in some ways. It loosened the reins. I think if you asked P.J. O'Rourke if he regrets taking LSD and smoking all that dope, he would say he took some good things away from it.
But don’t tell me that Timothy Leary is responsible for anything except talking a good game. I enjoyed what he had to say. Some of it made sense and some of it didn’t'. I guess a few people bought it all, but that's just human nature.
The bluster and meanness of the revisionists who have attacked an era in which the driving idea was to make a better world reveals their own bleakness of spirit. They build the idea that Leary was much more influential than he ever was.
Take my word for it, he wasn't. The stars of the "counter-culture" (which actually existed) were just that, stars. We liked them. They entertained us. We took from them what we needed.
As those of us who fought for the right to control every aspect of our lives grow old and begin the fight to control the manner of our own death, the record needs to be set straight. Don't fuck with us. We're old, we know the score and we're still determined to "reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it."
This also appears on huffingtonpost.com
Tuesday, June 20, 2006
Keyword For Dems: Competence
I started to write this last week. Senator Brownback's sham hearing on assisted suicide intervened and I posted about that instead. Yesterday, this site bannered a story in which exasperating-but-many-times-right Senator Joe Biden used the word "competence."
These should be the Democrats' keywords from this time forth: 1. Competence. 2. Incompetence.
You and I know that those who currently hold power are a pack of lying thieves, religious lunatics, sadistic and immoral perpetrators of evil, and despoilers of the planet.
The problem is that if you say these truths in public, you're branded a left-wing nut. Pointing out these truths hasn't been enough to shake the electorate out of the habit of voting for those who appeal to their worst instincts.
Here's the only issue that matters: competence. Progressives know how to run a government and conservatives don't. It is demonstrable on every level. From the broken furniture of the Medicaid prescription drug plan, to getting food and water to folks trapped in New Orleans.
At every turn, even when it comes to running wars, something that conservatives SHOULD be good at, given their love for starting them, they prove that they can talk a good game, but can't deliver.
The only thing they CAN deliver is dollars to themselves and the people who put them in power.
Even then they constantly get caught stealing.
We know how close they have come to making this country a police state. We know that (dare we say?) they staged what amounts to a coup in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. Doesn't matter, sounds like whining.
They can't pick up the garbage. This requirement of all local politicians must be required of Federal politicians. They have to do the job. It's simple. Republicans have failed. Democrats must point out how they have succeeded in the past; that they know how to pick up the garbage.
There's nothing more to say: Competence vs. Incompetence. Those are the talking points. No more, no less.
Ok, there is one other thing Democrats can do. When a Republican says you don't support the troops, you say, "OK, I'll make a deal with you, I'll start supporting the troops when you stop having cheating on your wife with the pizza boy.
That might shut him up.
This also appears on huffingtonpost.com.
These should be the Democrats' keywords from this time forth: 1. Competence. 2. Incompetence.
You and I know that those who currently hold power are a pack of lying thieves, religious lunatics, sadistic and immoral perpetrators of evil, and despoilers of the planet.
The problem is that if you say these truths in public, you're branded a left-wing nut. Pointing out these truths hasn't been enough to shake the electorate out of the habit of voting for those who appeal to their worst instincts.
Here's the only issue that matters: competence. Progressives know how to run a government and conservatives don't. It is demonstrable on every level. From the broken furniture of the Medicaid prescription drug plan, to getting food and water to folks trapped in New Orleans.
At every turn, even when it comes to running wars, something that conservatives SHOULD be good at, given their love for starting them, they prove that they can talk a good game, but can't deliver.
The only thing they CAN deliver is dollars to themselves and the people who put them in power.
Even then they constantly get caught stealing.
We know how close they have come to making this country a police state. We know that (dare we say?) they staged what amounts to a coup in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections. Doesn't matter, sounds like whining.
They can't pick up the garbage. This requirement of all local politicians must be required of Federal politicians. They have to do the job. It's simple. Republicans have failed. Democrats must point out how they have succeeded in the past; that they know how to pick up the garbage.
There's nothing more to say: Competence vs. Incompetence. Those are the talking points. No more, no less.
Ok, there is one other thing Democrats can do. When a Republican says you don't support the troops, you say, "OK, I'll make a deal with you, I'll start supporting the troops when you stop having cheating on your wife with the pizza boy.
That might shut him up.
This also appears on huffingtonpost.com.
Monday, June 12, 2006
Brownback panders to radical right on Death With Dignity
Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kansas), a legislator who believes that the government should control our behavior based on his own religious beliefs threw a pathetic bone to his fanatical supporters on Friday by calling a quick subcommittee hearing on assisted suicide.
In the wake of the Gay Hate amendment that went to down to defeat earlier in the week, this was another attempt by the increasingly rag-tag discredited Republican Taliban to force their rabid fundamentalism on the rest of us.
Appealing to the Republican base which believes that government's place is in bedrooms and hospital rooms but not boardrooms, he demonstrated the cynicism and total bankruptcy of a party on the way out. Even Oregon's conservative Senator Gordon Smith has put the issue to rest.
Oregon voted three times, once in the legislature and twice in ballot initiatives to approve its Death With Dignity law. In 2000, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden blocked a bill sponsored by the Republicans, laughingly called the "Pain Relief Promotion Act," the aim of which was to knock down the Oregon law.
In 2001, the Bush administration tried to block the law again by having Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft rule that doctors who prescribe the lethal dose would be liable for criminal prosecution. It was a flimsy excuse used to pander to the religious radicals and it was laughed out of Federal Court on the State level, in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court and finally ruled against in the U.S. Supreme Court.
But these guys never stop. Brownback was quoted in The Oregonian as saying, "I held a hearing on this topic because I think we should carefully consider the unintended consequences and slippery slope of doctor-assisted suicide and euthanasia. Legalizing doctor-assisted suicide can lead toward involuntary euthanasia, as we've seen in the Netherlands."
He knows this is a lie. There is no slippery slope. Oregonians use the law in very small numbers, and the evidence of several years of the law being in effect points to the fact that the law provides a cushion of peace for those dying.
The arguments against the law have been proven wrong. It isn't abused. Thousands of people have not flocked to Oregon to use it. Relatives aren't persuading their dying loved ones to get it over with. It is a law that works.
As the religious radical right sinks, you can bet they will be going down with guns blazing. But we know that their arguments are wrong at best and lies at worst.
This is not a campaign issue. It is just another attempt by a cynic in Congress to pander. He doesn't even have a bill to propose. He just wanted some publicity at the taxpayer's expense.
Other radical right wingers continue to lie about the issue. Lee Edwards, of the Heritage Foundation (they hijacked the word "heritage" too) was quoted in The Oregonian saying, "It's the concept of the scientific or the medical community treating people with less dignity, as expendable. With physician-assisted suicide, life is treated as a burden, that people who don't meet a certain standard, that it is somehow better off for them to be dead."
He pulled that out of his ass. He has no information to back that up, based on the Oregon experience. It's just a lie, made up to scare people. I have personally watched doctors agonize over the issue. Nobody has ever said anybody should be better off dead. Shame on you, Edwards.
The upside is that like the ravings of Ann Coulter, Brownback DOES bring up the subject again. That's not a bad thing. His religious posturing alerts people to the issue and how important it is. And they also turn off the rest of the electorate, weary of such posturing.
California will take up the issue again soon. This time there is a better chance of its passing. The more the radical right wing discredits itself, the more chance the bill will pass.
It's a medical issue, one between the patient and doctor. It's not a political issue. If it is a religious issue for YOU, don't do it.
That's the American way.
In the wake of the Gay Hate amendment that went to down to defeat earlier in the week, this was another attempt by the increasingly rag-tag discredited Republican Taliban to force their rabid fundamentalism on the rest of us.
Appealing to the Republican base which believes that government's place is in bedrooms and hospital rooms but not boardrooms, he demonstrated the cynicism and total bankruptcy of a party on the way out. Even Oregon's conservative Senator Gordon Smith has put the issue to rest.
Oregon voted three times, once in the legislature and twice in ballot initiatives to approve its Death With Dignity law. In 2000, Oregon Senator Ron Wyden blocked a bill sponsored by the Republicans, laughingly called the "Pain Relief Promotion Act," the aim of which was to knock down the Oregon law.
In 2001, the Bush administration tried to block the law again by having Atty. Gen. John Ashcroft rule that doctors who prescribe the lethal dose would be liable for criminal prosecution. It was a flimsy excuse used to pander to the religious radicals and it was laughed out of Federal Court on the State level, in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court and finally ruled against in the U.S. Supreme Court.
But these guys never stop. Brownback was quoted in The Oregonian as saying, "I held a hearing on this topic because I think we should carefully consider the unintended consequences and slippery slope of doctor-assisted suicide and euthanasia. Legalizing doctor-assisted suicide can lead toward involuntary euthanasia, as we've seen in the Netherlands."
He knows this is a lie. There is no slippery slope. Oregonians use the law in very small numbers, and the evidence of several years of the law being in effect points to the fact that the law provides a cushion of peace for those dying.
The arguments against the law have been proven wrong. It isn't abused. Thousands of people have not flocked to Oregon to use it. Relatives aren't persuading their dying loved ones to get it over with. It is a law that works.
As the religious radical right sinks, you can bet they will be going down with guns blazing. But we know that their arguments are wrong at best and lies at worst.
This is not a campaign issue. It is just another attempt by a cynic in Congress to pander. He doesn't even have a bill to propose. He just wanted some publicity at the taxpayer's expense.
Other radical right wingers continue to lie about the issue. Lee Edwards, of the Heritage Foundation (they hijacked the word "heritage" too) was quoted in The Oregonian saying, "It's the concept of the scientific or the medical community treating people with less dignity, as expendable. With physician-assisted suicide, life is treated as a burden, that people who don't meet a certain standard, that it is somehow better off for them to be dead."
He pulled that out of his ass. He has no information to back that up, based on the Oregon experience. It's just a lie, made up to scare people. I have personally watched doctors agonize over the issue. Nobody has ever said anybody should be better off dead. Shame on you, Edwards.
The upside is that like the ravings of Ann Coulter, Brownback DOES bring up the subject again. That's not a bad thing. His religious posturing alerts people to the issue and how important it is. And they also turn off the rest of the electorate, weary of such posturing.
California will take up the issue again soon. This time there is a better chance of its passing. The more the radical right wing discredits itself, the more chance the bill will pass.
It's a medical issue, one between the patient and doctor. It's not a political issue. If it is a religious issue for YOU, don't do it.
That's the American way.
Wednesday, June 07, 2006
Thank You, Ann Coulter
Thanks, Annie! Keep up the good work.
Every time you open your mouth you put another Republican out of business. You are the poster child, the personification, the pure essence of Republicanism.
Orrin Hatch, after the defeat of the Gay Hatred Amendment today, asked Ted Kennedy if he thought that 49% of the American public were bigots. Ted can't say yes, but I can.
That's why we need more Ann Coulter on national TV. Please let her open her mouth and spew hatred and dishonesty. I welcome it. The more she talks the more quickly the demise of the Republican party.
For all of Rush and O'Reilly's lies and distortions, even they don't go as far as she does.
Her Today appearance might be the last straw, but maybe not. What else could she say after making fun of widows. WIDOWS! And 9/11 widows besides.
That's like something a political humorist would write as the next logical but ridiculous statement she might say. What's left?
She comes out against victims of child rape, telling them to stop whining.
She says Adolph Eichmann was only following orders, telling Jews to stop kvetching.
She says Martin Luther King asked for it.
See what I mean? I can see her saying those things.
Big Annie is a national treasure. She has helped define Republicans as cruel bigots, haters whose evil is unsurpassed in American life. It's not something I made up. It's something she brays and sprays every time she opens her mouth.
Keep talking, girl.
This also appears on huffingtonpost.com
Every time you open your mouth you put another Republican out of business. You are the poster child, the personification, the pure essence of Republicanism.
Orrin Hatch, after the defeat of the Gay Hatred Amendment today, asked Ted Kennedy if he thought that 49% of the American public were bigots. Ted can't say yes, but I can.
That's why we need more Ann Coulter on national TV. Please let her open her mouth and spew hatred and dishonesty. I welcome it. The more she talks the more quickly the demise of the Republican party.
For all of Rush and O'Reilly's lies and distortions, even they don't go as far as she does.
Her Today appearance might be the last straw, but maybe not. What else could she say after making fun of widows. WIDOWS! And 9/11 widows besides.
That's like something a political humorist would write as the next logical but ridiculous statement she might say. What's left?
She comes out against victims of child rape, telling them to stop whining.
She says Adolph Eichmann was only following orders, telling Jews to stop kvetching.
She says Martin Luther King asked for it.
See what I mean? I can see her saying those things.
Big Annie is a national treasure. She has helped define Republicans as cruel bigots, haters whose evil is unsurpassed in American life. It's not something I made up. It's something she brays and sprays every time she opens her mouth.
Keep talking, girl.
This also appears on huffingtonpost.com
Monday, June 05, 2006
The Emperor's New Buildings
Note: This is a piece the MSM in Portland didn't want you to see. It was rejected (roundly) by everybody to whom I pitched it.
Every so often it falls upon a citizen to tell the emperor he is naked. That the new suit made by those "swindlers," as Hans Christian Anderson called them in the original story, is a hoax. That the "swindlers" have put one over on us, and have convinced us that something wonderful exists where, in reality, nothing exists.
The architecture with which similar "swindlers" have clothed Portland…the Pearl District, most of the new buildings downtown, and the inevitably-to-be-flooded River District are is as ugly as sin and will obviously deteriorate faster than cheese left out in the sun.
We want to believe that these awkward, clunky manifestations of "build-fast-on-the-cheap-and-sell-high-as-possible" scheming are making us look beautiful. Remember the "honest old minister" sent by the emperor to check on how the new suit of clothes was coming? He said, '"Oh, it is very pretty, exceedingly beautiful. What a beautiful pattern, what brilliant colours! I shall tell the emperor that I like the cloth very much.'"
Is that what the rich residents of "The Henry" said when they looked up at their new home? Perhaps they really saw a dull green bunker, more fit for a small city in East Germany, when there was an East Germany. Instead, they said they liked it very much, just like the old minister.
Portland architecture has always been built on the cheap, but some of it was good cheap, The Portland Building, or the Art Museum, for example. But the collection of unconnected, graceless buildings in the Pearl, some of which are already showing signs of deterioration, barely five years into what should prove to be a short lifespan has apparently fooled the moneyed class into believing that their city is making itself attractive.
As Hans put it," Nobody wished to let others know he saw nothing…"And we gave them huge tax breaks to build, don't forget that. Elected officials and the unelected whom they appoint also looked at models and drawings of these buildings and saw what? Maybe they saw money. They certainly didn't see beauty or longevity. Was Hans writing the story of Portland in the 21st Century when he said "(T)he swindlers asked for more money, silk and gold-cloth, which they required for weaving. They kept everything for themselves, and not a thread came near the loom, but they continued, as hitherto, to work at the empty looms."
We've got a lot of empty looms. Some of them are rising before our eyes at the moment in the flood plain near the OHSU tram boondoggle (which was brought to you by the same folks).
Yes, the same folks that brought you East Berlin in the Pearl are bringing you Budapest 1957 by the river. All you have to do is look. This lack of architectural self-awareness in a town that prides itself on self-awareness leaves a relative newbie (nine years) like me in the dark. 'But he has nothing on at all,' said a little child at last," wrote Hans. Twenty years from now, when the buildings in The Pearl have fallen apart and the money has moved elsewhere, people around here are going to want to know who the "swindlers" were.
Start with Homer Williams and list pretty much every other person or corporation who has foisted this "swindled" result on the rest of us. But blame yourself, because you're the one who looked at the new and said, like the "honest courtier" who, "praised the cloth, which he did not see, and expressed his joy at the beautiful colours and the fine pattern. 'It is very excellent,' he said to the emperor."
Every so often it falls upon a citizen to tell the emperor he is naked. That the new suit made by those "swindlers," as Hans Christian Anderson called them in the original story, is a hoax. That the "swindlers" have put one over on us, and have convinced us that something wonderful exists where, in reality, nothing exists.
The architecture with which similar "swindlers" have clothed Portland…the Pearl District, most of the new buildings downtown, and the inevitably-to-be-flooded River District are is as ugly as sin and will obviously deteriorate faster than cheese left out in the sun.
We want to believe that these awkward, clunky manifestations of "build-fast-on-the-cheap-and-sell-high-as-possible" scheming are making us look beautiful. Remember the "honest old minister" sent by the emperor to check on how the new suit of clothes was coming? He said, '"Oh, it is very pretty, exceedingly beautiful. What a beautiful pattern, what brilliant colours! I shall tell the emperor that I like the cloth very much.'"
Is that what the rich residents of "The Henry" said when they looked up at their new home? Perhaps they really saw a dull green bunker, more fit for a small city in East Germany, when there was an East Germany. Instead, they said they liked it very much, just like the old minister.
Portland architecture has always been built on the cheap, but some of it was good cheap, The Portland Building, or the Art Museum, for example. But the collection of unconnected, graceless buildings in the Pearl, some of which are already showing signs of deterioration, barely five years into what should prove to be a short lifespan has apparently fooled the moneyed class into believing that their city is making itself attractive.
As Hans put it," Nobody wished to let others know he saw nothing…"And we gave them huge tax breaks to build, don't forget that. Elected officials and the unelected whom they appoint also looked at models and drawings of these buildings and saw what? Maybe they saw money. They certainly didn't see beauty or longevity. Was Hans writing the story of Portland in the 21st Century when he said "(T)he swindlers asked for more money, silk and gold-cloth, which they required for weaving. They kept everything for themselves, and not a thread came near the loom, but they continued, as hitherto, to work at the empty looms."
We've got a lot of empty looms. Some of them are rising before our eyes at the moment in the flood plain near the OHSU tram boondoggle (which was brought to you by the same folks).
Yes, the same folks that brought you East Berlin in the Pearl are bringing you Budapest 1957 by the river. All you have to do is look. This lack of architectural self-awareness in a town that prides itself on self-awareness leaves a relative newbie (nine years) like me in the dark. 'But he has nothing on at all,' said a little child at last," wrote Hans. Twenty years from now, when the buildings in The Pearl have fallen apart and the money has moved elsewhere, people around here are going to want to know who the "swindlers" were.
Start with Homer Williams and list pretty much every other person or corporation who has foisted this "swindled" result on the rest of us. But blame yourself, because you're the one who looked at the new and said, like the "honest courtier" who, "praised the cloth, which he did not see, and expressed his joy at the beautiful colours and the fine pattern. 'It is very excellent,' he said to the emperor."
Saturday, June 03, 2006
My June Playlist
While waiting for the new John Ashcroft/50 Cent a capella collaboration to be released, I’m listening to.
1. Sun Ra, Untitled LP
On one side the label is hand-colored orange and green. Somebody wrote "Sun Ra" in black above the hand lettered list of four tunes which include "Space is the Place, "Dedicated to Natures, "The Cosmos Me," and "Space Shuttle." Under that is a crinkle-cut pasted-on piece of paper that has "compositions by SUN RA" typed in black.
I have no idea when this is from. I know it's before the summer of 1977, because that's when I got it.
You've got to pull out some Ra now and then. It's as fresh as it was the day it was recorded, and has never been surpassed on a lot of levels. Ra was the ultimate trickster, a genius who might have, indeed, been from another planet.
The brilliance and cheesiness, the great musicianship and the head-shaking weirdness of it all proves Ra's famous quote, "It ain't necessarily so that it ain't necessarily so."
And it ain't.
2. Stanton Moore "All Kooked Out!" CD
Best known as Gallactic's drummer, he's already in the pantheon of great New Orleans drummers, having studied at the feet of some of the current masters. This is from 1998 and has Charlie Hunter on 8-string guitar, Skerik, the little-known but much admired saxophonist. This is Moore at the start of his career, all young and bursting forth.
The interesting thing about Moore is that as good as this is (I had it on in the car for a week), he's gotten that much better over the years.
I once heard a street argument in Portland, Oregon over who was the best drummer in New Orleans, Russell Batiste or Stanton Moore. I voted for Russ between the two at the time, but you can find great drummers on any street there. Or you could before Katrina.
I could get started on the current diaspora in New Orleans, but you can read about that here, in a piece I wrote on Jazzfest 2006. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-dantoni/the-real-jazzfest-anger-_b_21045.html
3. Phillip Glass "Mishima" soundtrack CD
I was driving from Portland to Seattle to see the Orioles game and suddenly remembered the delights of driving fast with Phillip Glass blasting out of the speakers…especially Mishima, with its electric guitars, and martial drums.
Even though it evokes the persona of Mishima, the music itself is more effective by itself than it is in the movie it was written for. The opening is one of the most thrilling two minutes and forty-five seconds ever written.
When they used to let you use electronic equipment on planes during takeoff, this or The Photographer would always be in my ears. I still think about it when I'm taking off….or driving 85 on I-5 between Seattle and Portland.
Is that dishonoring Mishima? He can't get to me. He daid.
3. The Meters "Kickback" CD
Sundazed Music released all of The Meters LPs a few years ago. This is a collection of tunes that never got on any Meters' albums. There's some great stuff on here, and some not-so-great. They take pains to point out that the previously unreleased "Love The One You're With" is based on the Isley Brothers' version and not the original. Doesn't really matter though, there's a reason it wasn't released.
These are from the Warner Brothers/SeaSaint days of the mid 1970s.
The gem is "All I Do Everyday" which I re-discovered because New Orleans/now Portland, Oregon saxophonist Reggie Houston does it in nearly every set his Earth Island Band plays. I think I played this song 5 times in a row one day in the car. I'm going to go play it again now.
When the Meters played their famed reunion concert at Jazzfest 2005, they pulled out "He Bite Me," a song that's also on this. It could be the funniest song they ever recorded. It's about a dragon. Zig and George growl. Don't ask.
"Keep On Marching (Funky Soldier)" used to be in the regular set list of The Funky Meters, Art and George's band with Russell Batiste and Brian Stolz who kept the Meters' music alive until they finally figured out how to get along.
4. Michael Haberman "Plays Sorabi—The Legendary Works for Piano"
Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892-1988) wrote dense solo piano music, which Habermann discovered in a little shop in Mexico City in the 1970s. He became the only pianist Sorabi would trust to play his music.
It is not Cecil Taylor-like pounding and histrionics. A lot of it is just flat-out beautiful, if difficult. Some of these pieces have 8 staves for two hands. It took Habermann years to get them down.
He used to live in the apartment next to mine in Baltimore in the 1980s and I could lay in bed and listen to him practice. Before he knocked on my door to ask if he was bothering us, I thought angels lived next door.
5. Brian Eno "Music for Films" "Music for Airports" LPs
Although he never really disappeared, Eno has wormed his way back into public consciousness by working on Paul Simon's latest album. What's fun about these is that they're LPs and have scratches, adding to the "ambience."
I bought into the whole concept when they were released in the late 70s. They hold up. Could have been made today. In the back of my head there's a voice saying, "It's not New Age. It's not New Age. Really, it's not."
The music on here works the way it was designed to work.
It's isn't New Age. Really, it's not.
6. Eric Dolphy "Out There" LP
Oh man. Dolphy on alto, flute, clarinet and bass clarinet. Ron Carter on CELLO and George Duvivier on BASS and the young Roy Haynes at his young and gnarling best. Recorded FORTY-SIX years ago….jazz players today should BE this innovative.
What ever happened to the avant-garde?
Dolphy's tribute to Mingus, "The Baron," a Randy Weston tune and the rest Dolphy originals.
This album jumps out the speakers and runs away begging for new listeners and the long life it deserves.
I have the 1969 re-issue with notes from Ralph Berton in which he says, "…you won't 'know where you are;' you won't hear the well known chords and changes; you're on your own with the music being flung your way, music representative of a great deal that's happening now. Are they speaking to you? Or just thinking out loud? And do you like listening in?"
Is it me, or did the avant-garde stop? Somebody called today's scene "museumification of the music." The music on here is bright life. A museum couldn't hold it.
7. Oregon "Crossing" CD
The final recording with Colin Wolcott, and possibly their best. Well, it's the best one of theirs I've listened to this month, anyway. I have never gotten tired of Glen Moore's "Pepe Linque" and I've heard it a million times.
They are still huge in Europe. They are still little-known in America. Don't get me started. Sometimes I think most of the greatest music will never be discovered by most people. Oh well, that's show biz.
Glen Moore once unlocked Oregon for me, even though I had always loved them. He told me that when they started out, their objective was to make music as beautiful as Bill Evans'. Makes sense, huh?
8. Joe Turner "In The Evening" LP
Back when Joe had to sit down to sing. On the stool, becalmed until it was time for him to sing a verse, he would fill with some sort of inspired helium and belt out his lines, only to slump back on the stool until it was his turn to sing the next verse.
This is a Pablo release from 1976 backed by a quintet, including piano and guitar. Joe was a blues droner as well as a blues shouter by then. He's lanquid and old and world-weary. This makes "I've Got the World On a String" especially effective.
I've pretty much destroyed this record over the years by playing it when I've been pretty much destroyed, myself. It works every time. Like I said before, scratches help.
This also appears on counterpunch.org
1. Sun Ra, Untitled LP
On one side the label is hand-colored orange and green. Somebody wrote "Sun Ra" in black above the hand lettered list of four tunes which include "Space is the Place, "Dedicated to Natures, "The Cosmos Me," and "Space Shuttle." Under that is a crinkle-cut pasted-on piece of paper that has "compositions by SUN RA" typed in black.
I have no idea when this is from. I know it's before the summer of 1977, because that's when I got it.
You've got to pull out some Ra now and then. It's as fresh as it was the day it was recorded, and has never been surpassed on a lot of levels. Ra was the ultimate trickster, a genius who might have, indeed, been from another planet.
The brilliance and cheesiness, the great musicianship and the head-shaking weirdness of it all proves Ra's famous quote, "It ain't necessarily so that it ain't necessarily so."
And it ain't.
2. Stanton Moore "All Kooked Out!" CD
Best known as Gallactic's drummer, he's already in the pantheon of great New Orleans drummers, having studied at the feet of some of the current masters. This is from 1998 and has Charlie Hunter on 8-string guitar, Skerik, the little-known but much admired saxophonist. This is Moore at the start of his career, all young and bursting forth.
The interesting thing about Moore is that as good as this is (I had it on in the car for a week), he's gotten that much better over the years.
I once heard a street argument in Portland, Oregon over who was the best drummer in New Orleans, Russell Batiste or Stanton Moore. I voted for Russ between the two at the time, but you can find great drummers on any street there. Or you could before Katrina.
I could get started on the current diaspora in New Orleans, but you can read about that here, in a piece I wrote on Jazzfest 2006. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tom-dantoni/the-real-jazzfest-anger-_b_21045.html
3. Phillip Glass "Mishima" soundtrack CD
I was driving from Portland to Seattle to see the Orioles game and suddenly remembered the delights of driving fast with Phillip Glass blasting out of the speakers…especially Mishima, with its electric guitars, and martial drums.
Even though it evokes the persona of Mishima, the music itself is more effective by itself than it is in the movie it was written for. The opening is one of the most thrilling two minutes and forty-five seconds ever written.
When they used to let you use electronic equipment on planes during takeoff, this or The Photographer would always be in my ears. I still think about it when I'm taking off….or driving 85 on I-5 between Seattle and Portland.
Is that dishonoring Mishima? He can't get to me. He daid.
3. The Meters "Kickback" CD
Sundazed Music released all of The Meters LPs a few years ago. This is a collection of tunes that never got on any Meters' albums. There's some great stuff on here, and some not-so-great. They take pains to point out that the previously unreleased "Love The One You're With" is based on the Isley Brothers' version and not the original. Doesn't really matter though, there's a reason it wasn't released.
These are from the Warner Brothers/SeaSaint days of the mid 1970s.
The gem is "All I Do Everyday" which I re-discovered because New Orleans/now Portland, Oregon saxophonist Reggie Houston does it in nearly every set his Earth Island Band plays. I think I played this song 5 times in a row one day in the car. I'm going to go play it again now.
When the Meters played their famed reunion concert at Jazzfest 2005, they pulled out "He Bite Me," a song that's also on this. It could be the funniest song they ever recorded. It's about a dragon. Zig and George growl. Don't ask.
"Keep On Marching (Funky Soldier)" used to be in the regular set list of The Funky Meters, Art and George's band with Russell Batiste and Brian Stolz who kept the Meters' music alive until they finally figured out how to get along.
4. Michael Haberman "Plays Sorabi—The Legendary Works for Piano"
Kaikhosru Shapurji Sorabji (1892-1988) wrote dense solo piano music, which Habermann discovered in a little shop in Mexico City in the 1970s. He became the only pianist Sorabi would trust to play his music.
It is not Cecil Taylor-like pounding and histrionics. A lot of it is just flat-out beautiful, if difficult. Some of these pieces have 8 staves for two hands. It took Habermann years to get them down.
He used to live in the apartment next to mine in Baltimore in the 1980s and I could lay in bed and listen to him practice. Before he knocked on my door to ask if he was bothering us, I thought angels lived next door.
5. Brian Eno "Music for Films" "Music for Airports" LPs
Although he never really disappeared, Eno has wormed his way back into public consciousness by working on Paul Simon's latest album. What's fun about these is that they're LPs and have scratches, adding to the "ambience."
I bought into the whole concept when they were released in the late 70s. They hold up. Could have been made today. In the back of my head there's a voice saying, "It's not New Age. It's not New Age. Really, it's not."
The music on here works the way it was designed to work.
It's isn't New Age. Really, it's not.
6. Eric Dolphy "Out There" LP
Oh man. Dolphy on alto, flute, clarinet and bass clarinet. Ron Carter on CELLO and George Duvivier on BASS and the young Roy Haynes at his young and gnarling best. Recorded FORTY-SIX years ago….jazz players today should BE this innovative.
What ever happened to the avant-garde?
Dolphy's tribute to Mingus, "The Baron," a Randy Weston tune and the rest Dolphy originals.
This album jumps out the speakers and runs away begging for new listeners and the long life it deserves.
I have the 1969 re-issue with notes from Ralph Berton in which he says, "…you won't 'know where you are;' you won't hear the well known chords and changes; you're on your own with the music being flung your way, music representative of a great deal that's happening now. Are they speaking to you? Or just thinking out loud? And do you like listening in?"
Is it me, or did the avant-garde stop? Somebody called today's scene "museumification of the music." The music on here is bright life. A museum couldn't hold it.
7. Oregon "Crossing" CD
The final recording with Colin Wolcott, and possibly their best. Well, it's the best one of theirs I've listened to this month, anyway. I have never gotten tired of Glen Moore's "Pepe Linque" and I've heard it a million times.
They are still huge in Europe. They are still little-known in America. Don't get me started. Sometimes I think most of the greatest music will never be discovered by most people. Oh well, that's show biz.
Glen Moore once unlocked Oregon for me, even though I had always loved them. He told me that when they started out, their objective was to make music as beautiful as Bill Evans'. Makes sense, huh?
8. Joe Turner "In The Evening" LP
Back when Joe had to sit down to sing. On the stool, becalmed until it was time for him to sing a verse, he would fill with some sort of inspired helium and belt out his lines, only to slump back on the stool until it was his turn to sing the next verse.
This is a Pablo release from 1976 backed by a quintet, including piano and guitar. Joe was a blues droner as well as a blues shouter by then. He's lanquid and old and world-weary. This makes "I've Got the World On a String" especially effective.
I've pretty much destroyed this record over the years by playing it when I've been pretty much destroyed, myself. It works every time. Like I said before, scratches help.
This also appears on counterpunch.org
Friday, May 26, 2006
Happy Birthday Jack Kevorkian
To clarify, Dr. Jack Kevorkian is still very much in favor of physician-assisted suicide and Oregon remains the only state in which it is legal.
News reports today, if read quickly, indicate that Kevorkian, who marks his 78th birthday today in a prison cell for helping a man die on television, does not favor the concept of controlling one’s own death any longer. This is not the case. He said only that he might have done things differently in his own cases.
There are many things to criticize about his methods, but without Kevorkian’s public persona and actions, the inexorable journey to nation-wide adoption of the Oregon model would probably not have come as quickly. He certainly does not deserve to rot and die in a prison cell.
In the future, Kevorkian will be known as a visionary, and the torture which he as been put through since his incarceration will be looked at as barbaric and unconscionable.
Having said that, when I was first discussing making a documentary out of Robert Schwartz’ death under Oregon’s Death With Dignity law, Robert and I discussed how the Kevorkian/Thomas Youk 60 Minutes story (which got him sent to jail) was a failure because: 1) Kevorkian was the story, not the dying man, and 2) there was no context for Youk’s death, other than the fact that he had Lou Gehrig’s Disease and wanted to die.
I promised Robert that the documentary would provide that context. Just before he died, Robert told his family and friends, at a service of Holy Communion on his back porch, how happy he was that they could be there and not be liable to criminal prosecution. He didn’t say, “as Kevorkian was,” but he might as well have.
Still, even though it was all legal, the facilitator took pains to make sure he did not hand Robert the glass of liquid Nembutal. Under the Oregon law, the patient must take the lethal dose on his own.
Happy Birthday, Dr. Kevorkian, from a resident of Oregon, who feels more secure and more in control of his own destiny because of your sacrifice. And I thank you for the men and women who have used the law, whether they took the medication or not.
This also appears on huffingtonpost.com
News reports today, if read quickly, indicate that Kevorkian, who marks his 78th birthday today in a prison cell for helping a man die on television, does not favor the concept of controlling one’s own death any longer. This is not the case. He said only that he might have done things differently in his own cases.
There are many things to criticize about his methods, but without Kevorkian’s public persona and actions, the inexorable journey to nation-wide adoption of the Oregon model would probably not have come as quickly. He certainly does not deserve to rot and die in a prison cell.
In the future, Kevorkian will be known as a visionary, and the torture which he as been put through since his incarceration will be looked at as barbaric and unconscionable.
Having said that, when I was first discussing making a documentary out of Robert Schwartz’ death under Oregon’s Death With Dignity law, Robert and I discussed how the Kevorkian/Thomas Youk 60 Minutes story (which got him sent to jail) was a failure because: 1) Kevorkian was the story, not the dying man, and 2) there was no context for Youk’s death, other than the fact that he had Lou Gehrig’s Disease and wanted to die.
I promised Robert that the documentary would provide that context. Just before he died, Robert told his family and friends, at a service of Holy Communion on his back porch, how happy he was that they could be there and not be liable to criminal prosecution. He didn’t say, “as Kevorkian was,” but he might as well have.
Still, even though it was all legal, the facilitator took pains to make sure he did not hand Robert the glass of liquid Nembutal. Under the Oregon law, the patient must take the lethal dose on his own.
Happy Birthday, Dr. Kevorkian, from a resident of Oregon, who feels more secure and more in control of his own destiny because of your sacrifice. And I thank you for the men and women who have used the law, whether they took the medication or not.
This also appears on huffingtonpost.com
Monday, May 15, 2006
The Real Jazzfest: Anger and Sorrow
For two weeks the news from the 2006 New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival (Jazzfest) sounded hopeful. The Festival folks and the city as a whole tried to put on a smiley-face for the tourists. Good-intentioned big names like Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan, Dave Matthews were the focus. What has been missing from the Jazzfest coverage Jazzfest is the anger and the sorrow expressed by many of the local musicians who performed.
Also missing are about 200,000 residents of New Orleans who are still spread out all over America. Some estimate more. An overwhelming percentage of them are African-Americans. An Associated Press story estimated 150,000 in Houston alone. That’s larger than many familiar American cities. The 2000 U.S. Census tells us that the population of New Orleans was close to 485,000 with 67.5% of those African-Americans.
The essence of New Orleans culture and the wellspring of American music begins at Congo Square where slaves were allowed to drum and dance on Sundays. The blues was born in that context. The combination of the healing joy of music and the expression of the misery of conditions under which the slaves lived continues to this day.
New Orleans culture doesn’t get any deeper than the Second Line. Not only a part of funerals but of everyday life in New Orleans, especially for African-Americans. The Social and Pleasure Clubs and brass bands and Mardi Gras Indians who made the street parade a way of life have been a large part of the diaspora of the flood of 2005. Diaspora is a word I heard many times during the second weekend of the festival. It means a dispersion of a people from their original homeland. The word originally referred to the dispersion of Jews outside of Israel during the sixth century B.C., when they were exiled to Babylonia.
Some people go to Jazzfest to hear the mainstream performers. The festival promoters bring them in to attract affluent white folks who love the food and much of the flavor of the festival, but want most of their entertainment white. In recent years the promoters added jam-bands to attract younger audiences.
But the soul of the festival has always been the local musicians. Big Chief Monk Boudreau of the Golden Eagles Mardi Gras Indians was scheduled for a mid-afternoon set on Friday of the second weekend. New Orleans music magazine “Offbeat” describes Monk as, “One of the great voices in the Mardi Gras Indian tradition, Big Chief Monk Boudreaux tells the history in song. Post Katrina, this kind man with a warm smile spearheaded getting Indians feathers and plumes for their new suits.”
Donations to fund the suits rolled in from organizations and individuals such as Wynton Marsalis, Ed Bradley and Harry Shearer. Coordinating the effort with Monk was Quint Davis, who is Jazzfest’s director. After they found “plumes” from all over the country, they stored them in a building in New Orleans which was hit by a tornado.
Davis was quoted in The Times-Picayune, New Orleans daily paper, “’Monk and I were dying, dying, I tell you,’ Davis said. ‘Out of all the streets, all the buildings in New Orleans, here where the plums are, a tornado pops up. I tell you, though, when I heard the boxes were safe, I knew it was meant to be. Monk and I knew that this tradition is supposed to be kept alive.’”
Big Chief Monk Boudreax does not usually bring politics or social commentary into his music. The Mardi Gras Indian chants are all about what happens on Mardi Gras day and how they’re going to win confrontations with other tribes. He can go on for twenty minutes chanting “Donkey Got Water.”
But at the end of his set he unleashed all of the anger and all of the sorrow inside of him. With an all-star band backing him, chanting “You’ve got to save our city tonight,” Monk began half-singing half-chanting about the state of things and how he feels about them.
He said it made a grown man cry. He mourned the dead. He mourned the absence of the evacuees. He thundered at the fate of his city and the politicians who have not done nearly enough. It was the centerpiece of Jazzfest.
Later that day Big Chief Victor Harris of the Fi Yi Yi and Mandingo Warriors Mardi Gras Indians performed on one of the stages. He was dressed in bright green feathers and surrounded by his tribe, some of whom had been flown in from other parts of the country. It was another transforming moment.
This is from Steve Hochman’s account on Blogging New Orleans http://www.bloggingneworleans.com/2006/05/05/urban-renewal/ :
“No wind, no rain, no storm can stop Fi Yi Yi from coming home,” he said, encased in the stunning green suit he'd sewn by hand, as he had for his kids as well, in the six months between Katrina and Mardi Gras (the Indians usually start work on each year's new suit the day after Mardi Gras; the ones he'd been working on were destroyed in the flood).
As one of his associates chanted, “From Mandingo out to Houston, from Mandingo out to Atlanta . . . the drums are calling all of the people to come home,” the Big Chief took up the cry:
“Calling all the people to come back home, New Orleans is where you belong. They took my people away from home. I'm still waiting on my mother, my sister, my brother to come back home.”
He had to step back from the mic. He was crying. He walked around the stage trying to compose himself. Hochman picks it up:
And then:
“Shame on our representatives. Shame on our officials. Shame on all of them. They say they only want good people back. All people are good people.
“Listen to the drums.
’Listen to the drums
“I am not afraid.”
In the audience, people cried along with him, as they had during Boudreax’s last song.
There is anger and sorrow everywhere, both in New Orleans and among its evacuees. At the head of the list of critics is Cyril Neville, a member of New Orleans first family of music, now living in Austin, Texas. He refused to come home for Jazzfest. He was quoted by Robert Gabriel in an Austin Chronicle story:
"What happened during Katrina was not an evacuation as much as a roundup and a forced displacement," insists Neville. "It was the height of arrogance, greed, conceit, and disdain for a people who you think are less human than you. As that wind blew through New Orleans and that forced migration took place, that was the end, or at least a lot of people want it to be the end, of African-American political power in New Orleans.
"Why it's considered such a stretch for anyone to connect the dots between a boldfaced legacy of oppression and gentrification of black neighborhoods in New Orleans and the marginalization of poor blacks post-Katrina defies common sense. Life in the Big Easy has always been dictated by barriers between white and black. It's no secret that the economic disparity between the two communities serve as a study in violent inequality. Of course, rich whites have been eagerly debilitating poor blacks in New Orleans like a favored pastime. Ku Klux Klan sympathizer David Duke almost became governor of Louisiana only 16 years ago. To anyone paying any attention, no degree of racism in New Orleans should be considered surprising under any circumstance.
"The carving of New Orleans wards for political and economic gain is something that goes back at least to the Forties," says Neville. "At one point, Claiborne Avenue was one of the richest African-American thoroughfares in the United States. So they put the Claiborne overpass through it. There were two rows of oak trees where you could walk in the rain and not get wet on Claiborne Avenue. People picnicked there, people had birthday parties, christening parties. Every carnival, that's where the Mardi Gras Indians would make a straight shoot from uptown all the way downtown and back. Naturally, they tore down all the trees, put an overpass through there, and killed that entrepreneurial area of the city.
"That's the other point that a lot of people missed in what I was saying. It's hard to put into words what it was like on a day-to-day basis living in New Orleans as an African-American, because it's a proven fact in this country that no matter how high you climb up the social ladder or how many degrees and how many letters you have behind your name, if you're black, you're black, and regardless of what you think of yourself, you can get broke down right quick. You could be on your way home from a great meeting – you just did a great thing for your company and everybody is happy. You're in your Porsche on top of the world and then you get pulled over and called the big N and brought back to reality of where you are and who you are to the society that you're coming up in.
"A lot of those people that we saw in the Dome and at the Convention Center had been written off a long time before Katrina. A couple weeks before the storm hit, the oldest masking Mardi Gras Indian, Big Chief Tootie Montana, died at a meeting at the New Orleans City Council protesting how the chief of police and the city itself had been treating our culture, which since 1841 had been happening out in the streets from neighborhood to neighborhood."
"The powers-that-be only want a certain element back as far as black people are concerned," maintains Neville. "But the spirit of New Orleans is African and it ain't going anywhere. I guarantee any convention they have in that Convention Center and anything they have in that Dome will be haunted. People already don't understand that the Dome was built on top of a whole neighborhood. They've got a whole African-American cemetery underneath that Dome. Louis Armstrong's house was taken to the dump, chopped into pieces, and set on fire and a new parish prison was built on where he grew up."
Of course, there is also a spirit of rebuilding among those who have been able to come home. On the Tuesday that the flood hit, I was in Portland, Oregon but my heart was in New Orleans. I went to hear Reggie Houston play that night. Reggie held the baritone sax chair in Fats Domino’s band for twenty years. He also co-led Charmaine Neville’s band during that time. Reggie had moved to Portland in 2004, and missed the flood.
The next morning in an op-ed piece for The Oregonian, Portland’s daily paper, I wrote:
At the bandstand, Reggie played with a greater intensity than usual. At the other end of the room, the endless loops of devastation played on CNN. Reggie provided the soundtrack. The juxtaposition of the classic “Junko Partner,” the raucous brass band tune, “It Ain’t My Fault” with a ruined New Orleans was uplifting and heartbreaking all at the same time.
The traditional jazz funeral in New Orleans consists of a walking dirge, a memorial, and then a joyous second-line parade afterward. Reggie knows this, it is in his blood.
We’re in the dirge right now. Images flash. Proposing marriage to my wife over dinner. Sitting in Buster Holmes greasy spoon in 1979, tasting real red beans and rice for the first time as The Meters played on the jukebox. Shooting a TV story on the streetcar. Buying hats at Meyer The Hatter on St. Charles St. A Neville Brothers Christmas concert at Tipitina’s. Losing my shoes at The Columns Hotel. The delirium of musical overload at Jazzfest.
As The Meters’ song says, “if you’ve ever been there, then you know what I mean.”
I told my wife that if I die before she does, I want my ashes to be spread on Congo Square in New Orleans. Congo Square is the place where the slaves were allowed to dance and make music. It is said to be the only place in America where this was the case. It is also said that from that place American music sprung.
Some day, Congo Square will again be a destination for the living and the dead. The spirit of New Orleans will win this battle. Reggie showed me that Tuesday night.
On Sunday at the Festival, I was sitting in a tent eating some crawfish monica when I heard the unmistakable sound of a brass band. I dropped everything because I saw Reggie Houston marching and playing with the Storyville Stompers, led by a Social Aid and Pleasure Club, and followed by second-liners. I got in line. The spirit was there. Later, I found out that the Festival had flown in many of the members of the Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs for the Festival.
This was a good thing. The reunions were joyful and heartbreaking. But it also made it look like things were normal. Thanks aren’t normal. Of course, New Orleans is a pimp. They’re even charging tourists to ride Grey Line tours through the devastation.
Later that night, Reggie invited us to “Bullet’s,” a little club in the 7th Ward, in Gentilly, a neighborhood in which the water covered the rooftops. The club had been a haven for survivors because it had a second floor. During the aftermath, Rollin “Little Bullet” Garcia, Jr. stayed there, gun in hand to protect his place.
He rebuilt it. In that little place, surrounded by street after street of empty houses, by FEMA trailers, by darkness and misery, Reggie and his “pardners” rocked the house. One hundred percent Black except for me, my wife and two friends, people danced, they sang and in that moment the true spirit of New Orleans was alive.
Trymaine Lee, in The Times-Picayune, wrote about Bulllet’s:
“This here is therapeutic," Little Bullet said of his bar late last week, as he poured a beer for a customer. "The history's here. Ray Charles played here once. So did Roy Brown and other local artists. They (regulars) step through these doors and besides a little paint, nothing much has changed.
“Some days are harder than others, he said. One customer broke down crying recently. He said he wanted to die, the memories of Katrina were too tough to deal with. The hole it carved into his life was too deep for him to climb out of.
“I just cooked up a bowl of gumbo and shot the (breeze) with him, and it’s like nothing ever changed,” bar owner said. “If I can give them that then he knows he ain’t in this alone. That none of us are in this alone.”
"We do this so everybody can have something," said Cecilia Garcia, Little Bullet's wife. "These men have lost their homes. Some of them lost their wives. Coming here gives them something to hold onto."
There is spirit enough to rebuild this broken city, but it can never be truly rebuilt until its children come home. Until that happens, it can be built, but never rebuilt.
Just don’t mistake the attempts at attracting tourists for the real feelings on the ground. The hurt, the anger and the sorrow will take as much time to heal as the ruined buildings. More, I think.
The theme of the festival was “The Healing Power of Music.” In that way, the Festival was really for the folks in New Orleans, to show themselves they could, in some fashion, be like they were before the flood. In that, it was a success.
The end of this story is far from over.
This also appears on huffingtonpost.com
Also missing are about 200,000 residents of New Orleans who are still spread out all over America. Some estimate more. An overwhelming percentage of them are African-Americans. An Associated Press story estimated 150,000 in Houston alone. That’s larger than many familiar American cities. The 2000 U.S. Census tells us that the population of New Orleans was close to 485,000 with 67.5% of those African-Americans.
The essence of New Orleans culture and the wellspring of American music begins at Congo Square where slaves were allowed to drum and dance on Sundays. The blues was born in that context. The combination of the healing joy of music and the expression of the misery of conditions under which the slaves lived continues to this day.
New Orleans culture doesn’t get any deeper than the Second Line. Not only a part of funerals but of everyday life in New Orleans, especially for African-Americans. The Social and Pleasure Clubs and brass bands and Mardi Gras Indians who made the street parade a way of life have been a large part of the diaspora of the flood of 2005. Diaspora is a word I heard many times during the second weekend of the festival. It means a dispersion of a people from their original homeland. The word originally referred to the dispersion of Jews outside of Israel during the sixth century B.C., when they were exiled to Babylonia.
Some people go to Jazzfest to hear the mainstream performers. The festival promoters bring them in to attract affluent white folks who love the food and much of the flavor of the festival, but want most of their entertainment white. In recent years the promoters added jam-bands to attract younger audiences.
But the soul of the festival has always been the local musicians. Big Chief Monk Boudreau of the Golden Eagles Mardi Gras Indians was scheduled for a mid-afternoon set on Friday of the second weekend. New Orleans music magazine “Offbeat” describes Monk as, “One of the great voices in the Mardi Gras Indian tradition, Big Chief Monk Boudreaux tells the history in song. Post Katrina, this kind man with a warm smile spearheaded getting Indians feathers and plumes for their new suits.”
Donations to fund the suits rolled in from organizations and individuals such as Wynton Marsalis, Ed Bradley and Harry Shearer. Coordinating the effort with Monk was Quint Davis, who is Jazzfest’s director. After they found “plumes” from all over the country, they stored them in a building in New Orleans which was hit by a tornado.
Davis was quoted in The Times-Picayune, New Orleans daily paper, “’Monk and I were dying, dying, I tell you,’ Davis said. ‘Out of all the streets, all the buildings in New Orleans, here where the plums are, a tornado pops up. I tell you, though, when I heard the boxes were safe, I knew it was meant to be. Monk and I knew that this tradition is supposed to be kept alive.’”
Big Chief Monk Boudreax does not usually bring politics or social commentary into his music. The Mardi Gras Indian chants are all about what happens on Mardi Gras day and how they’re going to win confrontations with other tribes. He can go on for twenty minutes chanting “Donkey Got Water.”
But at the end of his set he unleashed all of the anger and all of the sorrow inside of him. With an all-star band backing him, chanting “You’ve got to save our city tonight,” Monk began half-singing half-chanting about the state of things and how he feels about them.
He said it made a grown man cry. He mourned the dead. He mourned the absence of the evacuees. He thundered at the fate of his city and the politicians who have not done nearly enough. It was the centerpiece of Jazzfest.
Later that day Big Chief Victor Harris of the Fi Yi Yi and Mandingo Warriors Mardi Gras Indians performed on one of the stages. He was dressed in bright green feathers and surrounded by his tribe, some of whom had been flown in from other parts of the country. It was another transforming moment.
This is from Steve Hochman’s account on Blogging New Orleans http://www.bloggingneworleans.com/2006/05/05/urban-renewal/ :
“No wind, no rain, no storm can stop Fi Yi Yi from coming home,” he said, encased in the stunning green suit he'd sewn by hand, as he had for his kids as well, in the six months between Katrina and Mardi Gras (the Indians usually start work on each year's new suit the day after Mardi Gras; the ones he'd been working on were destroyed in the flood).
As one of his associates chanted, “From Mandingo out to Houston, from Mandingo out to Atlanta . . . the drums are calling all of the people to come home,” the Big Chief took up the cry:
“Calling all the people to come back home, New Orleans is where you belong. They took my people away from home. I'm still waiting on my mother, my sister, my brother to come back home.”
He had to step back from the mic. He was crying. He walked around the stage trying to compose himself. Hochman picks it up:
And then:
“Shame on our representatives. Shame on our officials. Shame on all of them. They say they only want good people back. All people are good people.
“Listen to the drums.
’Listen to the drums
“I am not afraid.”
In the audience, people cried along with him, as they had during Boudreax’s last song.
There is anger and sorrow everywhere, both in New Orleans and among its evacuees. At the head of the list of critics is Cyril Neville, a member of New Orleans first family of music, now living in Austin, Texas. He refused to come home for Jazzfest. He was quoted by Robert Gabriel in an Austin Chronicle story:
"What happened during Katrina was not an evacuation as much as a roundup and a forced displacement," insists Neville. "It was the height of arrogance, greed, conceit, and disdain for a people who you think are less human than you. As that wind blew through New Orleans and that forced migration took place, that was the end, or at least a lot of people want it to be the end, of African-American political power in New Orleans.
"Why it's considered such a stretch for anyone to connect the dots between a boldfaced legacy of oppression and gentrification of black neighborhoods in New Orleans and the marginalization of poor blacks post-Katrina defies common sense. Life in the Big Easy has always been dictated by barriers between white and black. It's no secret that the economic disparity between the two communities serve as a study in violent inequality. Of course, rich whites have been eagerly debilitating poor blacks in New Orleans like a favored pastime. Ku Klux Klan sympathizer David Duke almost became governor of Louisiana only 16 years ago. To anyone paying any attention, no degree of racism in New Orleans should be considered surprising under any circumstance.
"The carving of New Orleans wards for political and economic gain is something that goes back at least to the Forties," says Neville. "At one point, Claiborne Avenue was one of the richest African-American thoroughfares in the United States. So they put the Claiborne overpass through it. There were two rows of oak trees where you could walk in the rain and not get wet on Claiborne Avenue. People picnicked there, people had birthday parties, christening parties. Every carnival, that's where the Mardi Gras Indians would make a straight shoot from uptown all the way downtown and back. Naturally, they tore down all the trees, put an overpass through there, and killed that entrepreneurial area of the city.
"That's the other point that a lot of people missed in what I was saying. It's hard to put into words what it was like on a day-to-day basis living in New Orleans as an African-American, because it's a proven fact in this country that no matter how high you climb up the social ladder or how many degrees and how many letters you have behind your name, if you're black, you're black, and regardless of what you think of yourself, you can get broke down right quick. You could be on your way home from a great meeting – you just did a great thing for your company and everybody is happy. You're in your Porsche on top of the world and then you get pulled over and called the big N and brought back to reality of where you are and who you are to the society that you're coming up in.
"A lot of those people that we saw in the Dome and at the Convention Center had been written off a long time before Katrina. A couple weeks before the storm hit, the oldest masking Mardi Gras Indian, Big Chief Tootie Montana, died at a meeting at the New Orleans City Council protesting how the chief of police and the city itself had been treating our culture, which since 1841 had been happening out in the streets from neighborhood to neighborhood."
"The powers-that-be only want a certain element back as far as black people are concerned," maintains Neville. "But the spirit of New Orleans is African and it ain't going anywhere. I guarantee any convention they have in that Convention Center and anything they have in that Dome will be haunted. People already don't understand that the Dome was built on top of a whole neighborhood. They've got a whole African-American cemetery underneath that Dome. Louis Armstrong's house was taken to the dump, chopped into pieces, and set on fire and a new parish prison was built on where he grew up."
Of course, there is also a spirit of rebuilding among those who have been able to come home. On the Tuesday that the flood hit, I was in Portland, Oregon but my heart was in New Orleans. I went to hear Reggie Houston play that night. Reggie held the baritone sax chair in Fats Domino’s band for twenty years. He also co-led Charmaine Neville’s band during that time. Reggie had moved to Portland in 2004, and missed the flood.
The next morning in an op-ed piece for The Oregonian, Portland’s daily paper, I wrote:
At the bandstand, Reggie played with a greater intensity than usual. At the other end of the room, the endless loops of devastation played on CNN. Reggie provided the soundtrack. The juxtaposition of the classic “Junko Partner,” the raucous brass band tune, “It Ain’t My Fault” with a ruined New Orleans was uplifting and heartbreaking all at the same time.
The traditional jazz funeral in New Orleans consists of a walking dirge, a memorial, and then a joyous second-line parade afterward. Reggie knows this, it is in his blood.
We’re in the dirge right now. Images flash. Proposing marriage to my wife over dinner. Sitting in Buster Holmes greasy spoon in 1979, tasting real red beans and rice for the first time as The Meters played on the jukebox. Shooting a TV story on the streetcar. Buying hats at Meyer The Hatter on St. Charles St. A Neville Brothers Christmas concert at Tipitina’s. Losing my shoes at The Columns Hotel. The delirium of musical overload at Jazzfest.
As The Meters’ song says, “if you’ve ever been there, then you know what I mean.”
I told my wife that if I die before she does, I want my ashes to be spread on Congo Square in New Orleans. Congo Square is the place where the slaves were allowed to dance and make music. It is said to be the only place in America where this was the case. It is also said that from that place American music sprung.
Some day, Congo Square will again be a destination for the living and the dead. The spirit of New Orleans will win this battle. Reggie showed me that Tuesday night.
On Sunday at the Festival, I was sitting in a tent eating some crawfish monica when I heard the unmistakable sound of a brass band. I dropped everything because I saw Reggie Houston marching and playing with the Storyville Stompers, led by a Social Aid and Pleasure Club, and followed by second-liners. I got in line. The spirit was there. Later, I found out that the Festival had flown in many of the members of the Social Aid and Pleasure Clubs for the Festival.
This was a good thing. The reunions were joyful and heartbreaking. But it also made it look like things were normal. Thanks aren’t normal. Of course, New Orleans is a pimp. They’re even charging tourists to ride Grey Line tours through the devastation.
Later that night, Reggie invited us to “Bullet’s,” a little club in the 7th Ward, in Gentilly, a neighborhood in which the water covered the rooftops. The club had been a haven for survivors because it had a second floor. During the aftermath, Rollin “Little Bullet” Garcia, Jr. stayed there, gun in hand to protect his place.
He rebuilt it. In that little place, surrounded by street after street of empty houses, by FEMA trailers, by darkness and misery, Reggie and his “pardners” rocked the house. One hundred percent Black except for me, my wife and two friends, people danced, they sang and in that moment the true spirit of New Orleans was alive.
Trymaine Lee, in The Times-Picayune, wrote about Bulllet’s:
“This here is therapeutic," Little Bullet said of his bar late last week, as he poured a beer for a customer. "The history's here. Ray Charles played here once. So did Roy Brown and other local artists. They (regulars) step through these doors and besides a little paint, nothing much has changed.
“Some days are harder than others, he said. One customer broke down crying recently. He said he wanted to die, the memories of Katrina were too tough to deal with. The hole it carved into his life was too deep for him to climb out of.
“I just cooked up a bowl of gumbo and shot the (breeze) with him, and it’s like nothing ever changed,” bar owner said. “If I can give them that then he knows he ain’t in this alone. That none of us are in this alone.”
"We do this so everybody can have something," said Cecilia Garcia, Little Bullet's wife. "These men have lost their homes. Some of them lost their wives. Coming here gives them something to hold onto."
There is spirit enough to rebuild this broken city, but it can never be truly rebuilt until its children come home. Until that happens, it can be built, but never rebuilt.
Just don’t mistake the attempts at attracting tourists for the real feelings on the ground. The hurt, the anger and the sorrow will take as much time to heal as the ruined buildings. More, I think.
The theme of the festival was “The Healing Power of Music.” In that way, the Festival was really for the folks in New Orleans, to show themselves they could, in some fashion, be like they were before the flood. In that, it was a success.
The end of this story is far from over.
This also appears on huffingtonpost.com
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
The Madness of King George: Dangerous and Unstable
In his farewell speech to the White House staff in 1974, Richard Nixon said “…only if you have been in the deepest valley can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain.”
For George W. Bush, the opposite is true. Only if you have been on the highest mountain can you ever know how tragic it is to be in the deepest valley.
No matter how evil we think he is, he must know his position. He must be in the dark valley of his failure. He must feel the pain of seeing his world crashing around him. This makes him the most dangerous man in the world.
He must feel it all slipping away. His war is a disaster. The people have turned against him. His closest aides are being arrested. Even his father doesn’t approve. God knows what Barbara has said to him.
The world is collapsing around him. Only three years ago, he was triumphant, at least in his own mind. He stood in uniform, Commander-In-Chief, on the deck of that aircraft carrier, surrounded by men who were under his control, and declared he was King of the Hill. Number One. He did everything but raise his index finger.
Can you imagine what was going through his mind? Yes, of course he was set up by his handlers and put into that situation, but that has nothing to do with how he thought of himself and his world at that moment.
Bush is a classic bully. The website “Kids Health” says, “Some kids who bully realize that they don't get the respect they want by threatening others. They may have thought that bullying would make them popular, but they soon find out that other kids just think of them as troublemaking losers.” Have you ever heard a better description of the President of the United States? But does he yet realize?
We’re not talking about the actions of his administration, those are directed by others. We’re talking about HIM. What happens when a bully is defeated? I’ve never been a bully, so I can’t tell you. Perhaps they learn a lesson. Perhaps they strike back.
What must he think when he’s alone? Is there a level of insanity creeping in? He isn’t an evil genius. He is no Stalin or Hitler. He was a rich kid who bullied is way through life. But really, he is a weak boy who thought he had finally proven to his mom, his dad and brother and to all the Yalies who had made fun of him that he had beaten them all. Has he ever understood anything about himself? Has he ever been in therapy? What is the real level of self-awareness in this man?
It’s all darkness and defeat for him now. If we think his remaining time is a long two year nine-month sentence, how does HE feel? I wonder if he wouldn’t just chuck it and get back to Texas and have it over with?
Or is he ready to strike back, an unrepentant super-bully?
How would we deal with such a defeat? Would our despair overwhelm us? Can you imagine that feeling? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have sympathy for him. His evil will outlive him and he deserves ever moment of his misery. The question is: what does his potential instability mean for us?
This also appears on huffingtonpost.com
For George W. Bush, the opposite is true. Only if you have been on the highest mountain can you ever know how tragic it is to be in the deepest valley.
No matter how evil we think he is, he must know his position. He must be in the dark valley of his failure. He must feel the pain of seeing his world crashing around him. This makes him the most dangerous man in the world.
He must feel it all slipping away. His war is a disaster. The people have turned against him. His closest aides are being arrested. Even his father doesn’t approve. God knows what Barbara has said to him.
The world is collapsing around him. Only three years ago, he was triumphant, at least in his own mind. He stood in uniform, Commander-In-Chief, on the deck of that aircraft carrier, surrounded by men who were under his control, and declared he was King of the Hill. Number One. He did everything but raise his index finger.
Can you imagine what was going through his mind? Yes, of course he was set up by his handlers and put into that situation, but that has nothing to do with how he thought of himself and his world at that moment.
Bush is a classic bully. The website “Kids Health” says, “Some kids who bully realize that they don't get the respect they want by threatening others. They may have thought that bullying would make them popular, but they soon find out that other kids just think of them as troublemaking losers.” Have you ever heard a better description of the President of the United States? But does he yet realize?
We’re not talking about the actions of his administration, those are directed by others. We’re talking about HIM. What happens when a bully is defeated? I’ve never been a bully, so I can’t tell you. Perhaps they learn a lesson. Perhaps they strike back.
What must he think when he’s alone? Is there a level of insanity creeping in? He isn’t an evil genius. He is no Stalin or Hitler. He was a rich kid who bullied is way through life. But really, he is a weak boy who thought he had finally proven to his mom, his dad and brother and to all the Yalies who had made fun of him that he had beaten them all. Has he ever understood anything about himself? Has he ever been in therapy? What is the real level of self-awareness in this man?
It’s all darkness and defeat for him now. If we think his remaining time is a long two year nine-month sentence, how does HE feel? I wonder if he wouldn’t just chuck it and get back to Texas and have it over with?
Or is he ready to strike back, an unrepentant super-bully?
How would we deal with such a defeat? Would our despair overwhelm us? Can you imagine that feeling? Don’t get me wrong, I don’t have sympathy for him. His evil will outlive him and he deserves ever moment of his misery. The question is: what does his potential instability mean for us?
This also appears on huffingtonpost.com
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