One of my fave C&W geetar playing singers, Matraca Berg, kills on this Dolly Parton cover. Forget chirpy and maudlin; she slows it down, with just the right amount of pleading and pathos in her rich voice. Nice arrangement, too. The addition of a mandolin is brilliant.
01/28/2012
What’s Your Blues Name?
I spent way too long tracking back site to site to find where and from whom this originated, no luck, then Googling it (figure my preferences from that, you bastards), but all I could learn was that it started on Facebook and it’s pretty much everywhere. So just have fun with this more readable version and don’t ask questions.
Me? I’m Texas Bones Jefferson.
01/28/2012
Rules of American justice
Glenn Greenwald has, in his column at Salon.com, recently pointed out that John Kiriakou, a former CIA agent, has been charged under a World-War-I era Espionage Act. Kiriakou is the sixth prosecution by the Obama administration in three years. To put that in perspective, in the 90 years the act has been on the books, only three other people have ever been charged. The actual crime of these dastardly six people? Leaking confidential information to the press – something government officials do on a regular basis.
Kiriakou made news in 2007 when he told ABC News that he led the team that captured accused Terrorist Abu Zubaydah and that the techniques to which Zubaydah was subjected, including waterboarding, clearly constituted “torture,” though he claimed they were effective and arguably justifiable. He’s also accused of being the source for a 2008 New York Times article that disclosed the name of one of Zubaydah’s CIA interrogators.
…This is all accomplished by characterizing disclosures in American newspapers about America’s wrongdoing as “aiding the enemy” (the alleged enemy being informed is Al Qaeda, but the actual concern is that the American people learn what their government is doing).
One of the four charges being leveled at John Kiriakou is that he lied to the CIA about the book he wrote so they would agree to let him publish it. They’re saying he falsified a form. Because of that, and because he dared tell the public that we were waterboarding prisoners, he may very well wind up in Gitmo with them.
Do you remember Valerie Plame? Our enemies still do, thanks to ex-Vice President Dick Cheney. But then, if the White House leaks, that’s just “politics”. It’s only when the government is doing something illegal that it must stay hidden. And what happened to those people in the White House who lied us into an illegal war? Obama said we should move forward and not look back. The things that Kiriakou is charged with were a lot less criminal than the charges that should have been brought against the Bush Administration, and they happened while Bush was president. What happened to Obama’s policy of moving forward and not looking back? It apparently only applies to the White House.
01/27/2012
Mark Lanegan Band – Burning Jacob’s Ladder
Mark Lanegan started out his career in 1985 with the band Screaming Trees, formed in Ellensburg, WA. He’s been involved in various other projects through the years, including stints in Queens of the Stone Age, several albums with Isobel Campbell (from Belle & Sebastian), as well as The Gutter Twins and The Twilight Singers releases, among others.
In 1990, while still a member of the Screaming Trees (a couple years before their breakthrough album Sweet Oblivion), Lanegan released his first solo album, The Winding Sheet on Sub Pop records. That album initiated a long collaboration with friend Mike Johnson which would continue for all of the material released on Sub Pop.
The song featured here is the B-Side to The Gravedigger’s Song (offered as a free download if you sign up for Lanegan’s mailing list) promoting Mark’s new record Blues Funeral to be released February 6 on Beggar’s Banquet.
01/27/2012
Blue Marble
Earth, as seen from
the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA’s most recently launched Earth-observing satellite – Suomi NPP.
01/27/2012
My turn…
I admire many musicians, and have been fortunate enough to get to see them all live. The absolute greatest thrill, however was seeing Stephane Grappelli in a small, intimate jazz club on a rooftop in Ft. Worth, Texas. Remembering it, I still get goosebumps.
I have about 30 gigs of Stephane on my iPod – virtually everything he’s recorded. (Guess what I listen to most often?) Although I discovered this musical giant late in life, I studied violin just to be able to play like him. Arthritis kept me from succeeding, but nothing keeps me from enjoying.
01/27/2012
Guy Fawkes in Poland
Polish legislators from the Palikot’s Movement party protested
against ACTA, or the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, during a parliament session, in Warsaw, Poland, Thursday, Jan. 26, 2012, after the Polish government signed the agreement.
by holding Guy Fawkes masks in front of their faces, while Parliament was in session. ACTA shares some similarities with the proposed SOPA/PIPA legislation in this country, and opponents of ACTA fear that it will lead to online censorship. Protesters also took to the streets in Poland to express their displeasure.
Wearing Guy Fawkes masks in their legislative chamber. Can you imagine any US lawmakers doing something like this in the halls of Congress? Neither can I. Good for the Polish lawmakers, and good for the Polish protesters.
And, by the way, the United States signed this agreement last year. It makes you wonder why Congress tried so hard to ram through SOPA/PIPA, when this treaty already commits this country to going after internet piracy. The federal crackdown on Megaupload also shows that they already have the ability to go after piracy (or perceived piracy). My own opinion is that the Congress wanted the DOJ to have even more power to shut down websites on the mere suspicion that a website might have a link to a website that links to a website that may possibly be engaged in “piracy.” In other words, in order to give the government the legal authority to shut down any damned web site that they want to. (Even though, basically, they pretty much have that power already.)
I think we should all send a Guy Fawkes mask to our own legislators. Save the image, enlarge it, and mail it.
01/27/2012
The Human Costs for Apple’s Chinese Workers
As we noted in a previous post, Apple is allowing monitoring of worker’s conditions in the overseas plants where Apple products are made. However, despite their very public announcement, there has been concern about their will to follow-through on such a plan. An explosion at one of those factories has brought Apple back into the news, and not in a way they’d prefer. Previous executives are starting to leak that it may all be for show, according to a story in the New York Times.
“We’ve known about labor abuses in some factories for four years, and they’re still going on,” said one former Apple executive who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity because of confidentiality agreements. “Why? Because the system works for us. Suppliers would change everything tomorrow if Apple told them they didn’t have another choice.”
“If half of iPhones were malfunctioning, do you think Apple would let it go on for four years?” the executive asked.
The problem is, as usual, the bottom line. Apple is making record profits, but that could change if the production at the factories is reduced to make life worth living for the employees. It’s the age-old question that has always beset the 1%: how much is enough? Not being one of them I can’t honestly say what I’d do if I were. Can you? Honestly?
01/27/2012
A swing and a miss
Another asteroid is making a near miss of Earth on Friday, making its closest approach around 10:30 EST. Asteroid 2012 BX34 is small, as asteroids go – about 36 feet across. And, although it’s missing the planet by 37,000 miles, that’s really close by space standards.
Only a few lucky astronomers will be able to see BX34 – it’s just too small for most of us to find in the sky. And an object that size falling from the sky wouldn’t cause any problems for the planet. It’d practically have to hit you on the head to give you reason to worry. The concern is over what else is out there. You see, they just discovered this asteroid. So there’s some concern about what else might be floating around, waiting to surprise us.
01/26/2012
Press Freedom Index
Reporters Without Borders released their 10th annual press freedom index today.
While Finland and Norway maintained their position at the top, and the worst of the worst remain in their time honored positions, there was quite a bit of movement up and down the chart for other countries.
Setting aside the atrocious quality or lack thereof in the U.S. for reporting, the organization noted the extreme reaction by the police to American journalists covering OWS protests as the main reason why we have fallen from 20th to 47th place.
01/26/2012
Nicholas Ryan Gant
I don’t really know much about Mr. Gant other than he’s an incredibly talented singer out of Brooklyn. Ovall are a jazz/hip hop band out of Tokyo, led by Shingo Suzuki.
Nicholas Ryan Gant has an interesting Alt-Rock covers record on bandcamp. The seven song album, Angst in A’cappella, is offered as a free download.
01/26/2012
Brewer and Obama’s photo-op goes awry
This picture greeted Associated Press readers Thursday morning and it quickly spread around the world. It shows, in graphic detail, the problem that currently exists between Republican politicians and the President – no respect. I don’t know if their problem is rooted in their overt racism or if it’s “just politics”, but they’ve shown less and less respect for the office since Obama became America’s President. And now this.
Arizona Governor Jan Brewer met President Barack Obama at the base of Air Force One’s steps when he arrived at Phoenix on Wednesday. She states that she gave the POTUS a letter inviting him to return to Arizona to meet her for lunch and to join her for a visit to the border. She says that he was upset about the way she described their previous meetings in her book.
“I said to him, you know, I have always respected the office of the president and that the book is what the book is,” she told reporters Wednesday. She said Obama complained that she described him as not treating her cordially.
“I said that I was sorry that he felt that way. Anyway, we’re glad he’s here, and we’ll regroup.”
As of this writing, there has not been an official version of the airport discussion issued from the White House. I have no doubt that it will differ in some of the details. But it doesn’t begin to approach the real problem. Republican politicians aren’t content with destroying the economy and starting a war between the haves and have-nots. Now they insist that any non-GOP President doesn’t deserve the basic respect the office has traditionally held. And we know from their “leadership” on freedom of religion, abortion rights, and pet ownership, how that usually turns out.
01/26/2012
Antonin Scalia: Blame Congress for Citizens United
According to U.S. Supreme Court justice Antonin Scalia, Congress is to blame for the tons of anonymous money flowing into campaigns.
Scalia said the blame for this type of system shouldn’t fall on the Supreme Court, which he said decides merely whether the system is legal under the U.S. Constitution. Instead, he said the ones who have to change things are the politicians who created the system and the voters who often reward the candidates who spend the most money.
“If the system seems crazy to you, don’t blame it on the court,” Scalia said, during a discussion in front of South Carolina lawyers that lasted for more than an hour.
In making the Citizens United decision, SCOTUS invalidated a 63-year-old ban on corporate money in federal elections and overruled a 20-year-old precedent permitting such bans. According to Scalia it’s not the court’s fault unless a liberal judge makes a decision he doesn’t like. It turns out that activist judges are all liberals, while conservative judges are simply “originalists”. Which is a good thing, since Newt Gingrich thinks activist judges should be arrested. I wonder how that case would fare in Scalia’s courtroom?
01/26/2012
What have we gained?
As the Republican candidates ramp up their anti-Castro rhetoric in Florida, I find myself wondering what exactly we have gained from our national policy on Cuba? What do we hope to gain by continuing a policy of pretending they don’t exist into the future? What could possibly improve between our nations without some sort of normalization of diplomatic relations? On the same hand, one could include Iran in those questions. Our lack of relations with them both, for similar reasons: They violently rejected American puppets as their leaders, and we didn’t like that.
We just made major steps to re-establish diplomatic relations with Burma (or Myanmar, if you prefer), even though they’ve only recently made any effort at all to step out of their status as one of the most dangerously corrupt and least developed nations in the world, and they still have a long, long way to go. It seems to me that if we can put aside that kind of history, we could also attempt to do so with Cuba and Iran. We need to grow up as a nation, and realize that shunning the kid that we don’t like isn’t sound or logical diplomatic policy. Nor has it ever been proven effective in deterring those nations from doing things we don’t want them to do.
01/26/2012
SEAL Team 6 Rescues American from Somalia Pirates
American citizen Jessica Buchanan and her Dutch colleague Poul Hagen Thisted were rescued early Wednesday by SEAL Team 6. President Obama authorized the rescue mission Monday according to ABC News.
At approximately 1:40 a.m. Wednesday local time — 5:40 p.m. Tuesday eastern time — SEAL Team 6 was aboard a specially equipped C-130 moving rapidly toward the target — a remote encampment deep in northern Somalia.
One by one the SEALs hurled themselves out of the plane at high altitude, parachuting silently to within a few miles of the hideout, then hiking to the enemy grounds, which were pitch black, with armed pirates everywhere.
Within minutes of arriving at the encampment gunfire erupted from the kidnappers, but the SEALs quickly killed all nine of the heavily armed kidnappers. By approximately 2:30 a.m. local time the hostages — now in U.S. hands — were moved on board black hawk helicopters and headed for Djibouti.
Jessica’s three-month captivity had received little publicity so her captors would not ask for more money and put her at further risk. It was her failing health, combined with a “window of opportunity” that made President Obama decide to send the covert SEAL team in this week. Although Obama knew the mission had succeeded before he gave the State of the Union address to Congress, he didn’t include that information to keep the rescue from seeming like a political move.
I’m sure that the rescued prisoners and their families could care less about appearances – they’re just happy to have everyone together again, safe and well.
