Just Saying...

"Buttercup" Lucinda Williams NEWEST single from BLESSED STUDIO TRACK

2011-03-05T15:09:00.000-08:00

Lucinda Williams’s new album “Blessed” is just fucking wonderful. In the studio version she has expanded her band with organ and piano for a fuller sound with less steel guitar and vocal twang which is a personal plus for me - I’m a rocker. Most of Lucinda’s previous albums have been about Lucinda’s condition and you related to it or not. However, in this album Lucinda has expanded the discussion to a broader look at the human condition and she will also probably expand her fan base. Not a new observation but worth repeating, she is the female Bob Dylan. I give this album five stars and better then sex rating – buy it.

Is there a Springsteen tour in the works?

2011-02-16T22:35:00.000-08:00

MAXED OUT Max
Max Weinberg, (above right) former bandleader for “The Tonight Show,” told us he hasn’t spoken to his old boss Conan O’Brien since O’Brien started his new cable talk show. “He is very busy with his show — a daily show is a grind, and he’s doing everything he can to make it work,” he told us at the launch of his residency at the Maritime Hotel’s Hiro Ballroom. Weinberg, who bangs the drums for the E Street Band, also revealed that an album and tour are on the horizon with the boss of all bosses — Bruce Springsteen. “The vibes are feeling right, maybe in the next year, to do something.”

An Undeserved Win for the GOP

2010-11-10T14:59:00.000-08:00

Vanden Heuvel: 'An Undeserved Win for the GOP'
11/07/2010
“This was an unearned win for the Republican Party,” writes Katrina vandenHeuvelin The Wall Street Journal. "The election was fundamentally about one thing -- the rotten economy -- and Democrats paid the price as voters expressed their discontent. Conservatives in both parties who claim the vote represented an ideological shift to the right are plain wrong.

“The quickly congealing conventional wisdom is that President Obama tried to do too much and was too liberal. The opposite is true: Voters were alienated because they didn't believe his team had fought aggressively enough for the interests of working- and middle-class citizens.

“For 30 years, these Americans have seen their incomes stagnate as the top 1% accrued a staggering percentage of the nation's wealth. By rescuing the big banks and failing to place demands on them, the White House economic team, led by Larry Summers and Tim Geithner, ceded populist energy to the tea party. The inadequacy of the recovery program -- largely a result of concessions to the GOP -- became a political catastrophe for the White House.

“In the face of this anemic economy, the president failed to convince voters he was on a consistent course that would turn things around. Furthermore, the absence of a clear explanation about how conservative policies have failed in the past and will continue to fail allowed a right-wing narrative of empty slogans to gain traction. Obama abandoned his smart argument about building a new foundation for the economy, embracing deficit reduction instead. This only left voters confused about the White House's recovery plan.

“Going forward, Obama would be wise to lay out a bold plan to create jobs. He should take the advice of the more than 300 economists, including former Clinton labor secretary Robert Reich, who have urged his administration not to undercut the recovery by focusing prematurely on deficit reduction. Joining Republicans' embrace of Social Security cuts and austerity makes for bad policy and bad politics. Instead, Obama and Democrats should promote sensible investments, particularly in vital infrastructure like roads and rail, as well as green energy initiatives.

“If, as University of Massachusetts economist Robert Pollin and others argue, the single most important reason for the failure of economic recovery is that private credit markets are locked up, especially for small businesses, then the federal government could help by expanding existing federal loan guarantees by $300 billion. Meanwhile, excess cash reserves held by banks -- now estimated at an unprecedented $1.1 trillion in Federal Reserve accounts -- should be taxed an initial 1%-2%. Pollin estimates that this combination could generate about three million new jobs if it succeeds in pumping about $300 billion into productive investments. This plan should get bipartisan support.

“As the president made clear in his press conference Wednesday, he remains committed to a politics of ‘civility and common ground.’ Common ground is fine, so long as it makes the government more responsive to the needs of the majority of Americans. This means investments in people and deteriorating infrastructure; ending a wasteful and futile war in Afghanistan; and enacting ethics and campaign finance reform that levels the playing field so ordinary Americans' voices aren't drowned out by covert political money. If this sensible agenda is met with Republican obstruction, as is likely, Obama should channel Harry Truman and come out fighting against a know-nothing, do-nothing GOP.

“Common ground and common sense also demand that the president listen to and remobilize the base that is the heart of his party. An empowered Democratic electorate -- the young, Latinos, African-Americans, single women, union folks -- will be an effective counterweight to the assaults of the GOP and its corporate funders.

“The Republicans have won control of the House, but they do not have a mandate to dismantle government. According to many polls, majorities across party lines want government to work. They aren't interested in rolling back decades of social and economic progress, abolishing the Education Department and the minimum wage, or privatizing Social Security and Medicare -- issues that many tea party candidates touted.

“More than 20 million Americans are out of work or underemployed. These people are interested in real solutions. They will not find them with a GOP committed to slashing billions from key domestic programs even as they make tax cuts for the rich permanent.

“All of this presents an opportunity for Obama to show he stands with working people and the middle class. This not a time to retreat. This is a time for the politics of conviction that Obama has said so many times he believes in.”

WSJ 11/5

As the Canadians see it

2010-11-09T20:36:00.000-08:00

America - He's your President for Goodness Sake!
By William Thomas
Posted: Friday, October 1st, 2010

There was a time not so long ago when Americans, regardless of their political stripes, rallied round their president. Once elected, the man who won the White House was no longer viewed as a Republican or Democrat, but the President of the United States. The oath of office was taken, the wagons were circled around the country’s borders and it was America versus the rest of the world with the president of all the people at the helm.
Suddenly President Barack Obama, with the potential to become an exceptional president has become the glaring exception to that unwritten, patriotic rule.
Four days before President Obama’s inauguration, before he officially took charge of the American government, Rush Limbaugh boasted publicly that he hoped the president would fail. Of course, when the president fails the country flounders. Wishing harm upon your country in order to further your own narrow political views is selfish, sinister and a tad treasonous as well.
Subsequently, during his State of the Union address, which is pretty much a pep rally for America, an unknown congressional representative from South Carolina, later identified as Joe Wilson, stopped the show when he called the President of the United States a liar. The president showed great restraint in ignoring this unprecedented insult and carried on with his speech. Speaker Nancy Pelosi was so stunned by the slur, she forgot to jump to her feet while clapping wildly, 30 or 40 times after that.
Last spring, President Obama took his wife Michelle to see a play in New York City and republicans attacked him over the cost of security for the excursion. The president can’t take his wife out to dinner and a show without being scrutinized by the political opposition? As history has proven, a president in a theatre without adequate security is a tragically bad idea.
Remember: “Apart from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?”
At some point, the treatment of President Obama went from offensive to ugly and then to downright dangerous.
The health-care debate, which looked more like extreme fighting in a mud pit than a national dialogue, revealed a very vulgar side of America. President Obama’s face appeared on protest signs white-faced and blood-mouthed in a satanic clown image. In other tasteless portrayals, people who disagreed with his position distorted his face to look like Hitler complete with mustache and swastika.
Odd, that burning the flag makes Americans crazy, but depicting the president as a clown and a maniacal fascist is accepted as part of the new rude America.
Maligning the image of the leader of the free world is one thing, putting the president’s life in peril is quite another. More than once, men with guns were videotaped at the health-care rallies where the president spoke. Again, history shows that letting men with guns get within range of a president has not served America well in the past.
And still the “birthers” are out there claiming Barack Obama was not born in the United States, although public documentation proves otherwise. Hawaii is definitely part of the United States, but the Panama Canal Zone where his electoral opponent Senator John McCain was born? Nobody’s sure.
Last month, a 44-year-old woman in Buffalo was quite taken by President Obama when she met him in a chicken wing restaurant called Duff’s. Did she say something about a pleasure and an honour to meet the man or utter encouraging words for the difficult job he is doing? No. Quote: “You’re a hottie with a smokin’ little body.”
Lady, that was the President of the United States you were addressing, not one of the Jonas Brothers! He’s your president for goodness sakes, not the guy driving the Zamboni at “Monster Trucks On Ice.” Maybe next it’ll be, “Take Your President To A Topless Bar Day.”
In President Barack Obama, Americans have a charismatic leader with a good and honest heart. Unlike his predecessor, he’s a very intelligent leader. And unlike that president’s predecessor, he’s a highly moral man.
In President Obama, Americans have the real deal, the whole package and a leader that citizens of almost every country around the world look to with great envy. Given the opportunity, Canadians would trade our leader, hell, most of our leaders for Obama in a heartbeat.
What America has in Obama is a head of state with vitality and insight and youth. Think about it, Barack Obama is a young Nelson Mandela. Mandela was the face of change and charity for all of Africa but he was too old to make it happen. The great things Obama might do for America and the world could go on for decades after he’s out of office.
America, you know not what you have.
The man is being challenged unfairly, characterized with vulgarity and treated with the kind of deep disrespect to which no previous president was subjected. It’s like the day after electing the first black man to be president, thereby electrifying the world with hope and joy, Americans sobered up and decided the bad old days were better.
President Obama may fail but it will not be a Richard Nixon default fraught with larceny and lies. President Obama, given a fair chance, will surely succeed but his triumph will never come with a Bill Clinton caveat – “if only he’d got control of that zipper.”
Please. Give the man a fair, fighting chance. This incivility toward the leader who won over Americans and gave hope to billions of people around the world that their lives could be enhanced by his example, just naturally has to stop.
Believe me, when Americans drive by the White House and see a sign on the lawn that reads: “No shirt. No shoes. No service,” they’ll realize this new national rudeness has gone way, way too far.

Had Enough Yet?

2010-11-06T16:00:00.000-07:00

We have been living under corporate fascism for the last 30 years. The antidote to capitalism, out of control, is democratic socialism.

President Obama: It Gets Better

2010-10-23T20:06:00.000-07:00

Weekly Address: Letting Wall Street Run Wild Again

2010-10-23T20:01:00.000-07:00

Obama! A Modern U.S. President

2010-10-15T15:44:00.000-07:00

Media

2010-10-06T00:44:00.000-07:00

Remembering 911

2010-09-11T23:24:00.000-07:00

It was hard to remember and honer those souls that perished nine years ago. Between the purveyors of hate and intolerance and creepy hucksters selling hotdogs, beer and a chance to shake their hand. However, by days end we did manage to remember the NYFD going up and directing those trapped in the towers to go down and the heros of flight 93 who saved the White House from attack.

The Memorial | Flight 93 National Memorial

2010-09-11T19:56:00.000-07:00

The Memorial | Flight 93 National Memorial

Fox Spends Labor Day Attacking Working People

2010-09-10T22:23:00.000-07:00

09/09/2010

"Most people celebrate working people on Labor Day," writes Tula Connell in the AFL-CIO blog Now. "But not the extremists on Fox News. There, hate-mongering never takes a day off.

"Here are a few ugly examples of Fox from our friends at Media Matters for America:

"Tucker Carlson attacks autoworkers.

"Glenn Beck assails an 80-year-old labor activist because she spoke at a high school.

"Stuart Varney criticizes a union-backed Securities and Exchange Commission rule that would allow more shareholders of public companies to use proxy votes to nominate board members.

"Clearly Fox opposes opening up the election process to shareholders who have a financial stake in a company because it would mean less chance for corporate greed and mismanagement.

"Meanwhile, the anti-worker crowd doesn’t like being called out by Media Matters. So what do they do -- they resort to thuggish suggestions of violence, saying Media Matters employees should be 'curb-stomped.'”

AFL-CIO now 9/7

Labor Day

2010-09-06T02:12:00.000-07:00

Don't vote against your own economic self interests.

California's Prop. 23, backed by oil giants with a lot to lose, needs to go down in flames - latimes.com

2010-09-05T13:36:00.000-07:00

California's Prop. 23, backed by oil giants with a lot to lose, needs to go down in flames - latimes.com

The Billionaires Bankrolling the Tea Party

2010-08-28T21:18:00.000-07:00

Link to Article

The Two Stories of This Terrible Economy, Yet Obama and the Dems Won’t Tell Theirs

2010-08-27T17:43:00.000-07:00

Link to story

Good Vibrations

2010-08-24T00:12:00.000-07:00

Brian Wilson -- the guy who morphed '50s doo-wop into surfing USA, and then had a little bit of a breakdown -- fought his way back to sanity, and in 2004 graced us with his masterpiece Smile. Last week, Brian released his latest album: Brian Wilson Reimagines Gershwin. He sings a wonderfully vulnerable version of "I Love You Porgy" and does not gender change the lyrics. If you don't equate standards with Sinatra or worship at Our Lady of the Perpetual Cool you might love this album as much as I do

It Is Still Possible

2010-08-20T21:49:00.000-07:00

It Is Still Possible I love this guy!

Rupert Murdoch's questionable ties to terrorism.

2010-08-20T00:55:00.000-07:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Extremist Makeover - Homeland Edition

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party

Follow The Money

2010-08-19T08:07:00.000-07:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

News Corp. Gives Money to Republicans

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Tea Party

Elizabeth Warren for Sheriff

2010-08-18T22:28:00.000-07:00

The Truth About China As #2

2010-08-17T20:58:00.000-07:00

robertreich.org By Robert Reich

It’s official. China is now #2. Its economy (measured in nominal GDP for the second quarter) is now bigger than Japan’s (according to numbers released today from the Japanese government). And at the rate it’s growing, China could be the world’s biggest economy in a little more than a decade (Goldman Sachs says by 2027, PricewaterhouseCoopers says by 2020).

Don’t be misled by these numbers. The important thing isn’t China’s ranking, nor the total value of China’s production, nor even the extraordinary speed by which China has reached #2.

What’s most important is the share China’s production received and consumed by the Chinese themselves. The problem is it continues to drop.

China has dozens of billionaires but the vast majority of the Chinese are still extremely poor. The typical Chinese lives off the equivalent of about $3,600 a year. That puts him behind workers in 126 other countries. (The typical Japanese earns the equivalent of about $39,000; the typical American, $46,400.)

Yes, Chinese employers are starting to respond to new-found demands of Chinese workers for higher wages. But Chinese wages are so meager relative to China’s productive capacity that it would take a tsunami of labor agitation to push pay up to where it should be.

China is now the world’s largest market for everything from cars to cell phones – but that’s not because these items are within easy reach of the average Chinese. It’s because, out of 1.3 billion people, a couple of hundred million can save enough to buy them.

If the wages and purchasing power of Chinese households continues to rise more slowly than China’s capacity to produce goods and services — more slowly than China’s corporate profits and the government’s share of national income — we’re all in trouble.

Think of China as a giant production machine that’s growing 10 percent a year (this year, somewhat less). The machine sucks in more and more raw materials and components from rest of world – it’s now the world’s #1 buyer of iron ore and copper, and close to the #1 importer of crude oil – and spews out a growing mountain of stuff, along with huge environmental problems.

But because the Chinese consume a smaller and smaller proportion of this stuff, it has to be exported to consumers elsewhere (Europe, North America, Japan) to keep the Chinese working. Much of the money China earns by selling it around the world is reinvested in factories, roads, trains, and power plants that enlarge China’s capacity to produce far more. Another big portion is lent to or invested in the rest of the world (helping to finance America’s budget deficit at very low cost).

But this can’t go on. China’s workers won’t allow it. Workers in other nations who are losing their jobs won’t allow it, either.

The answer is not simply more labor agitation in China or an upward revaluation of China’s currency relative to the dollar. The problem is bigger. All over the world, we’re witnessing a growing gap between production and consumption, while the environment continues to degrade. The Chinese machine is fast heading for a breakdown only because it’s growing fastest.

Why Growth May Still Leave 95% of Americans Behind

2010-08-14T22:03:00.000-07:00

Why Growth May Still Leave 95% of Americans Behind

Robert Reich (Forget a Double Dip. We're Still in One Long Big Dipper.)

2010-08-14T11:52:00.000-07:00

Link

Song Saturday

2010-08-13T21:43:00.000-07:00

Kermit hurts too

The Middle Class in America Is Radically Shrinking. Here Are the Stats to Prove it

2010-07-29T00:46:00.000-07:00

Posted Jul 15, 2010 02:25pm EDT by Michael Snyder in Recession LINK TO ARTICLE

From The Business Insider

Editor's note: Michael Snyder is editor of theeconomiccollapseblog.com

The 22 statistics detailed here prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that the middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence in America.

The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer at a staggering rate. Once upon a time, the United States had the largest and most prosperous middle class in the history of the world, but now that is changing at a blinding pace.

So why are we witnessing such fundamental changes? Well, the globalism and "free trade" that our politicians and business leaders insisted would be so good for us have had some rather nasty side effects. It turns out that they didn't tell us that the "global economy" would mean that middle class American workers would eventually have to directly compete for jobs with people on the other side of the world where there is no minimum wage and very few regulations. The big global corporations have greatly benefited by exploiting third world labor pools over the last several decades, but middle class American workers have increasingly found things to be very tough.

Here are the statistics to prove it:

•    83 percent of all U.S. stocks are in the hands of 1 percent of the people.
•    61 percent of Americans "always or usually" live paycheck to paycheck, which was up from 49 percent in 2008 and 43 percent in 2007.
•    66 percent of the income growth between 2001 and 2007 went to the top 1% of all Americans.
•    36 percent of Americans say that they don't contribute anything to retirement savings.
•    A staggering 43 percent of Americans have less than $10,000 saved up for retirement.
•    24 percent of American workers say that they have postponed their planned retirement age in the past year.
•    Over 1.4 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009, which represented a 32 percent increase over 2008.
•    Only the top 5 percent of U.S. households have earned enough additional income to match the rise in housing costs since 1975.
•    For the first time in U.S. history, banks own a greater share of residential housing net worth in the United States than all individual Americans put together.
•    In 1950, the ratio of the average executive's paycheck to the average worker's paycheck was about 30 to 1. Since the year 2000, that ratio has exploded to between 300 to 500 to one.
•    As of 2007, the bottom 80 percent of American households held about 7% of the liquid financial assets.
•    The bottom 50 percent of income earners in the United States now collectively own less than 1 percent of the nation’s wealth.
•    Average Wall Street bonuses for 2009 were up 17 percent when compared with 2008.
•    In the United States, the average federal worker now earns 60% MORE than the average worker in the private sector.
•    The top 1 percent of U.S. households own nearly twice as much of America's corporate wealth as they did just 15 years ago.
•    In America today, the average time needed to find a job has risen to a record 35.2 weeks.
•    More than 40 percent of Americans who actually are employed are now working in service jobs, which are often very low paying.
•    or the first time in U.S. history, more than 40 million Americans are on food stamps, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture projects that number will go up to 43 million Americans in 2011.
•    This is what American workers now must compete against: in China a garment worker makes approximately 86 cents an hour and in Cambodia a garment worker makes approximately 22 cents an hour.
•    Approximately 21 percent of all children in the United States are living below the poverty line in 2010 - the highest rate in 20 years.
•    Despite the financial crisis, the number of millionaires in the United States rose a whopping 16 percent to 7.8 million in 2009.
•    The top 10 percent of Americans now earn around 50 percent of our national income.

Giant Sucking Sound

The reality is that no matter how smart, how strong, how educated or how hard working American workers are, they just cannot compete with people who are desperate to put in 10 to 12 hour days at less than a dollar an hour on the other side of the world. After all, what corporation in their right mind is going to pay an American worker 10 times more (plus benefits) to do the same job? The world is fundamentally changing. Wealth and power are rapidly becoming concentrated at the top and the big global corporations are making massive amounts of money. Meanwhile, the American middle class is being systematically wiped out of existence as U.S. workers are slowly being merged into the new "global" labor pool.

What do most Americans have to offer in the marketplace other than their labor? Not much. The truth is that most Americans are absolutely dependent on someone else giving them a job. But today, U.S. workers are "less attractive" than ever. Compared to the rest of the world, American workers are extremely expensive, and the government keeps passing more rules and regulations seemingly on a monthly basis that makes it even more difficult to conduct business in the United States.

So corporations are moving operations out of the U.S. at breathtaking speed. Since the U.S. government does not penalize them for doing so, there really is no incentive for them to stay.

What has developed is a situation where the people at the top are doing quite well, while most Americans are finding it increasingly difficult to make it. There are now about six unemployed Americans for every new job opening in the United States, and the number of "chronically unemployed" is absolutely soaring. There simply are not nearly enough jobs for everyone.

Many of those who are able to get jobs are finding that they are making less money than they used to. In fact, an increasingly large percentage of Americans are working at low wage retail and service jobs.

But you can't raise a family on what you make flipping burgers at McDonald's or on what you bring in from greeting customers down at the local Wal-Mart.

The truth is that the middle class in America is dying -- and once it is gone it will be incredibly difficult to rebuild.

Robert Reich: Slouching Towards a Double-Dip or a Lousy Recovery at Best

2010-07-03T14:05:00.000-07:00

Robert Reich: Slouching Towards a Double-Dip or a Lousy Recovery at Best

Should Springsteen's Electric Nebraska rear its head?

2010-06-22T01:19:00.000-07:00

LINK

Inside Story of How Obama Let the World’s Most Dangerous Oil Company Get Away with Murder

2010-06-13T17:11:00.000-07:00

LINK

A fitting Memorial Day tribute -- latimes.com

2010-05-29T14:42:00.000-07:00

A fitting Memorial Day tribute -- latimes.com

Go Californa Blue

2010-05-06T17:17:00.000-07:00

Another Bailout

2010-05-04T01:06:00.000-07:00

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

E.J. Dionne: How Wall Street Creates Socialists - Truthdig

2010-04-29T00:12:00.000-07:00

E.J. Dionne: How Wall Street Creates Socialists - Truthdig

"The Only Surprises Are the History We Do Not Know" (Harry Truman) | Matters of Principle

2010-04-26T22:25:00.000-07:00

"The Only Surprises Are the History We Do Not Know" (Harry Truman) | Matters of Principle

Obama Ahead of Election 2010: The Secrets of His Success

2010-04-26T20:53:00.000-07:00

Obama Ahead of Election 2010: The Secrets of His Success

Obama Hasn't Changed, but Where's the Country That Elected Him?

2010-04-23T01:21:00.000-07:00

Obama Hasn't Changed, but Where's the Country That Elected Him?

58% In New Jersey View Bruce Favorably

2010-04-18T23:58:00.000-07:00

58% In New Jersey View Bruce Favorably

Posted using ShareThis

Eugene Robinson - Haley Barbour's 'diddly' sense of slavery's history

2010-04-13T00:51:00.000-07:00

Eugene Robinson - Haley Barbour's 'diddly' sense of slavery's history

Op-Ed Columnist - Going to Extreme - NYTimes.com

2010-03-26T21:44:00.000-07:00

Op-Ed Columnist - Going to Extreme - NYTimes.com

Waterloo | FrumForum

2010-03-24T08:04:00.001-07:00

Waterloo | FrumForum

Posted using ShareThis

The Celestial Navigator: Something Practical You Can Do To Prevent The Great Texas Textbook Massacre...

2010-03-20T22:08:00.000-07:00

The Celestial Navigator: Something Practical You Can Do To Prevent The Great Texas Textbook Massacre...

In The End Kucinich Does The Right Thing for His Country and President

2010-03-17T13:33:00.000-07:00

POLITICO Arena: Jeffrey C. Stewart's response to 'Kucinich a "yes" on health care; Will Pelosi be an effective GOP foil?Is the Obama Administration spurning U.S. allies? A GOP disconnect in Senate primaries?'

One Thing At a Time | Matters of Principle

2010-03-16T08:31:00.000-07:00

One Thing At a Time | Matters of Principle

The Celestial Navigator: The Fundies Have Done It In Texas (The Great Texas Textbook Massacre)

2010-03-15T00:23:00.000-07:00

The Celestial Navigator: The Fundies Have Done It In Texas (The Great Texas Textbook Massacre)

Christians Urged to Boycott Glenn Beck - The Caucus Blog - NYTimes.com

2010-03-13T22:08:00.000-08:00

Christians Urged to Boycott Glenn Beck - The Caucus Blog - NYTimes.com

DAH - IT'S NO SOUTH PARK!

2010-03-13T17:36:00.000-08:00

It will get people talking and some free air time but not in a positive way.

... and so I'm I Congress

2010-03-03T00:24:00.000-08:00

Why centrist voters are fed up

2010-02-28T01:49:00.000-08:00

Why centrist voters are fed up - CNN.com

Obama aides to meet with atheists on White House grounds | McClatchy

2010-02-25T23:42:00.000-08:00

Obama aides to meet with atheists on White House grounds | McClatchy

A snapshot of income disparity - latimes.com

2010-02-25T00:32:00.000-08:00

A snapshot of income disparity - latimes.com

Seems We Are Winning This War!

2010-02-24T23:46:00.000-08:00

Half of Afghanistan Taliban leadership arrested in Pakistan

Posted using ShareThis Seems we are winning this war!

My Fathers House

2010-02-12T00:56:00.000-08:00

Last night I dreamed that I was a child out where the pines grow wild and tall
I was trying to make it home through the forest before the darkness falls

I heard the wind rustling through the trees and ghostly voices rose from the fields
I ran with my heart pounding down that broken path
With the devil snappin' at my heels

I broke through the trees, and there in the night
My father's house stood shining hard and bright the branches and brambles tore my clothes and scratched my arms
But I ran till I fell, shaking in his arms

I awoke and I imagined the hard things that pulled us apart
Will never again, sir, tear us from each other's hearts
I got dressed, and to that house I did ride from out on the road, I could see its windows shining in light

I walked up the steps and stood on the porch a woman I didn't recognize came and spoke to me through a chained door
I told her my story, and who I'd come for
She said "I'm sorry, son, but no one by that name lives here anymore"

My father's house shines hard and bright it stands like a beacon calling me in the night
Calling and calling, so cold and alone
Shining 'cross this dark highway where our sins lie unatoned

Copyright © Bruce Springsteen (ASCAP)

Trumka Warns Obama: Spending Freeze Could Mean Lost Decade

2010-02-11T08:36:00.000-08:00

Trumka Warns Obama: Spending Freeze Could Mean Lost Decade

Unions bash Democrats, warn of political fallout - James Hohmann - POLITICO.com

2010-02-11T08:23:00.000-08:00

Unions bash Democrats, warn of political fallout - James Hohmann - POLITICO.com

Op-Ed Columnist - America Is Not Yet Lost - NYTimes.com

2010-02-08T21:06:00.000-08:00

Op-Ed Columnist - America Is Not Yet Lost - NYTimes.com

America: A fearsome foursome

2010-02-07T21:41:00.000-08:00

By Edward Luce
Published: February 3 2010 20:09 | Last updated: February 3 2010 20:09

The team seen most often in the Oval Office

David Axelrod, senior adviser A former journalist on the Chicago Tribune who quit to set up a political advertising firm, Mr Axelrod, 54, is Barack Obama’s longest-standing mentor, from his days in Chicago politics. Always at the candidate’s side during the election campaign, he is the chief defender of the Obama brand. Still a journalist at heart, he describes himself as having been “posted to Washington”.
Robert Gibbs, communications chief
The most visible face of the White House for his sardonic daily briefings. Mr Gibbs, 38, is perhaps the least likely member of the circle – he is a career Democratic press officer from Alabama who quit John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign and shortly afterwards went to work for Senator Obama. A constant presence during the campaign, he is also seen as a keeper of the flame.
Rahm Emanuel, chief of staff
The best story about Mr Emanuel, 50, concerns the dead fish he delivered to a pollster who displeased him. The least honey-tongued politician in Washington, he is also one of the most effective. Friends say he is relentlessly energetic, critics that he has attention deficit disorder. He has enemies but even detractors concede he may well achieve his aim of becoming the first Jewish speaker of the House of Representatives.
Valerie Jarrett, senior adviser
An old friend of the Obamas, having hired Michelle to work in Chicago politics in the early 1990s, Ms Jarrett, 53, is probably the first family’s most intimate White House confidante. A former businessperson and aide to Richard Daley, mayor of Chicago, she was briefly considered as a candidate to fill Mr Obama’s Senate seat. She was part of the circle he consulted before running for president.
At a crucial stage in the Democratic primaries in late 2007, Barack Obama rejuvenated his campaign with a barnstorming speech, in which he ended on a promise of what his victory would produce: “A nation healed. A world repaired. An America that believes again.”

Just over a year into his tenure, America’s 44th president governs a bitterly divided nation, a world increasingly hard to manage and an America that seems more disillusioned than ever with Washington’s ways. What went wrong?

Pundits, Democratic lawmakers and opinion pollsters offer a smorgasbord of reasons – from Mr Obama’s decision to devote his first year in office to healthcare reform, to the president’s inability to convince voters he can “feel their [economic] pain”, to the apparent ungovernability of today’s Washington. All may indeed have contributed to the quandary in which Mr Obama finds himself. But those around him have a more specific diagnosis – and one that is striking in its uniformity. The Obama White House is geared for campaigning rather than governing, they say.

In dozens of interviews with his closest allies and friends in Washington – most of them given unattributably in order to protect their access to the Oval Office – each observes that the president draws on the advice of a very tight circle. The inner core consists of just four people – Rahm Emanuel, the pugnacious chief of staff; David Axelrod and Valerie Jarrett, his senior advisers; and Robert Gibbs, his communications chief.

Two, Mr Emanuel and Mr Axelrod, have box-like offices within spitting distance of the Oval Office. The president, who is the first to keep a BlackBerry, rarely holds a meeting, including on national security, without some or all of them present.

With the exception of Mr Emanuel, who was a senior Democrat in the House of Representatives, all were an integral part of Mr Obama’s brilliantly managed campaign. Apart from Mr Gibbs, who is from Alabama, all are Chicagoans – like the president. And barring Richard Nixon’s White House, few can think of an administration that has been so dominated by such a small inner circle.

“It is a very tightly knit group,” says a prominent Obama backer who has visited the White House more than 40 times in the past year. “This is a kind of ‘we few’ group ... that achieved the improbable in the most unlikely election victory anyone can remember and, unsurprisingly, their bond is very deep.”

John Podesta, a former chief of staff to Bill Clinton and founder of the Center for American Progress, the most influential think-tank in Mr Obama’s Washington, says that while he believes Mr Obama does hear a range of views, including dissenting advice, problems can arise from the narrow composition of the group itself.

Among the broader circle that Mr Obama also consults are the self-effacing Peter Rouse, who was chief of staff to Tom Daschle in his time as Senate majority leader; Jim Messina, deputy chief of staff; the economics team led by Lawrence Summers and including Peter Orszag, budget director; Joe Biden, the vice-president; and Denis McDonough, deputy national security adviser. But none is part of the inner circle.

“Clearly this kind of core management approach worked for the election campaign and President Obama has extended it to the White House,” says Mr Podesta, who managed Mr Obama’s widely praised post-election transition. “It is a very tight inner circle and that has its advantages. But I would like to see the president make more use of other people in his administration, particularly his cabinet.”

This White House-centric structure has generated one overriding – and unexpected – failure. Contrary to conventional wisdom, Mr Emanuel managed the legislative aspect of the healthcare bill quite skilfully, say observers. The weak link was the failure to carry public opinion – not Capitol Hill. But for the setback in Massachusetts, which deprived the Democrats of their 60-seat supermajority in the Senate, Mr Obama would by now almost certainly have signed healthcare into law – and with it would have become a historic president.

But the normally liberal voters of Massachusetts wished otherwise. The Democrats lost the seat to a candidate, Scott Brown, who promised voters he would be the “41st [Republican] vote” in the Senate – the one that would tip the balance against healthcare. Subsequent polling bears out the view that a decisive number of Democrats switched their votes with precisely that motivation in mind.

“Historians will puzzle over the fact that Barack Obama, the best communicator of his generation, totally lost control of the narrative in his first year in office and allowed people to view something they had voted for as something they suddenly didn’t want,” says Jim Morone, America’s leading political scientist on healthcare reform. “Communication was the one thing everyone thought Obama would be able to master.”

Whatever issue arises, whether it is a failed terrorist plot in Detroit, the healthcare bill, economic doldrums or the 30,000-troop surge to Afghanistan, the White House instinctively fields Mr Axelrod or Mr Gibbs on television to explain the administration’s position. “Every event is treated like a twist in an election campaign and no one except the inner circle can be trusted to defend the president,” says an exasperated outside adviser.

Perhaps the biggest losers are the cabinet members. Kathleen Sebelius, Mr Obama’s health secretary and formerly governor of Kansas, almost never appears on television and has been largely excluded both from devising and selling the healthcare bill. Others such as Ken Salazar, the interior secretary who is a former senator for Colorado, and Janet Napolitano, head of the Department for Homeland Security and former governor of Arizona, have virtually disappeared from view.

The Hollywood touch
Political scientists credit Ronald Reagan with having managed the best transition from campaigning to governing when he moved to the White House in 1981. While lacking in intellectual skills, Reagan was often a shrewd judge of character. Following his victory in a bitter primary campaign with George H.W. Bush in 1980, Reagan promptly hired his defeated opponent’s campaign manager, James Baker, to be his first chief of staff. Understated but authoritative, Mr Baker is considered one of the most effective performers in that role, to which he brought a good managerial background and an ability to play honest broker.
Administration insiders say the famously irascible Mr Emanuel treats cabinet principals like minions. “I am not sure the president realises how much he is humiliating some of the big figures he spent so much trouble recruiting into his cabinet,” says the head of a presidential advisory board who visits the Oval Office frequently. “If you want people to trust you, you must first place trust in them.”

In addition to hurling frequent profanities at people within the administration, Mr Emanuel has alienated many of Mr Obama’s closest outside supporters. At a meeting of Democratic groups last August, Mr Emanuel described liberals as “f***ing retards” after one suggested they mobilise resources on healthcare reform.

“We are treated as though we are children,” says the head of a large organisation that raised millions of dollars for Mr Obama’s campaign. “Our advice is never sought. We are only told: ‘This is the message, please get it out.’ I am not sure whether the president fully realises that when the chief of staff speaks, people assume he is speaking for the president.”

The same can be observed in foreign policy. On Mr Obama’s November trip to China, members of the cabinet such as the Nobel prizewinning Stephen Chu, energy secretary, were left cooling their heels while Mr Gibbs, Mr Axelrod and Ms Jarrett were constantly at the president’s side.

The White House complained bitterly about what it saw as unfairly negative media coverage of a trip dubbed Mr Obama’s “G2” visit to China. But, as journalists were keenly aware, none of Mr Obama’s inner circle had any background in China. “We were about 40 vans down in the motorcade and got barely any time with the president,” says a senior official with extensive knowledge of the region. “It was like the Obama campaign was visiting China.”

Then there are the president’s big strategic decisions. Of these, devoting the first year to healthcare is well known and remains a source of heated contention. Less understood is the collateral damage it caused to unrelated initiatives. “The whole Rahm Emanuel approach is that victory begets victory – the success of healthcare would create the momentum for cap-and-trade [on carbon emissions] and then financial sector reform,” says one close ally of Mr Obama. “But what happens if the first in the sequence is defeat?”

Insiders attribute Mr Obama’s waning enthusiasm for the Arab-Israeli peace initiative to a desire to avoid antagonising sceptical lawmakers whose support was needed on healthcare. The steam went out of his Arab-Israeli push in mid-summer, just when the healthcare bill was running into serious difficulties.

The same applies to reforming the legal apparatus in the “war on terror” – not least his pledge to close the Guantánamo Bay detention centre within a year of taking office. That promise has been abandoned.

“Rahm said: ‘We’ve got these two Boeing 747s circling that we are trying to bring down to the tarmac [healthcare and the decision on the Afghanistan troop surge] and we can’t risk a flock of f***ing Canadian geese causing them to crash,’ ” says an official who attended an Oval Office strategy meeting. The geese stood for the closure of Guantánamo.

An outside adviser adds: “I don’t understand how the president could launch healthcare reform and an Arab-Israeli peace process – two goals that have eluded US presidents for generations – without having done better scenario planning. Either would be historic. But to launch them at the same time?”

Again, close allies of the president attribute the problem to the campaign-like nucleus around Mr Obama in which all things are possible. “There is this sense after you have won such an amazing victory, when you have proved conventional wisdom wrong again and again, that you can simply do the same thing in government,” says one. “Of course, they are different skills. To be successful, presidents need to separate the stream of advice they get on policy from the stream of advice they get on politics. That still isn’t happening.”

The White House declined to answer questions on whether Mr Obama needed to broaden his circle of advisers. But some supporters say he should find a new chief of staff. Mr Emanuel has hinted that he might not stay in the job very long and is thought to have an eye on running for mayor of Chicago. Others say Mr Obama should bring in fresh blood. They point to Mr Clinton’s decision to recruit David Gergen, a veteran of previous White Houses, when the last Democratic president ran into trouble in 1993. That is credited with helping to steady the Clinton ship, after he too began with an inner circle largely carried over from his campaign.

But Mr Gergen himself disagrees. Now teaching at Harvard and commenting for CNN, Mr Gergen says members of the inner circle meet two key tests. First, they are all talented. Second, Mr Obama trusts them. “These are important attributes,” Mr Gergen says. His biggest doubt is whether Mr Obama sees any problem with the existing set-up.

“There is an old joke,” says Mr Gergen. “How many psychiatrists does it take to change a lightbulb? Only one. But the lightbulb must want to change. I don’t think President Obama wants to make any changes.”

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010. Print a single copy of this article for personal use. Contact us if you wish to print more to distribute to others.

The People Speak

2010-02-06T00:22:00.000-08:00

The People Speak

Bill Moyers: "Let's Face It, Two Political Parties; Equal Opportunity Hypocrites"

2010-02-05T21:53:00.000-08:00

The Celestial Navigator: The Puppet Masters#disqus_thread

2010-02-04T15:17:00.000-08:00

The Celestial Navigator: The Puppet Masters#disqus_thread

Poll of Republicans Met With Shock, Skepticism

2010-02-04T00:14:00.000-08:00

Link

Poll shows peril for Republicans - Glenn Thrush and Jake Sherman - POLITICO.com

2010-02-03T23:13:00.000-08:00

Poll shows peril for Republicans - Glenn Thrush and Jake Sherman - POLITICO.com

Backbone, mind, and heart

2010-02-02T20:50:00.000-08:00

Backbone, mind, and heart

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Barack Obama’s former mentor criticises ‘complacent Administration’

2010-02-02T08:01:00.000-08:00

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article7010392.ece

From The Times

February 1, 2010

Barack Obama’s former mentor criticises ‘complacent Administration’

Giles Whittell in Washington

Professor Chris Edley said that the President was being let down by senior staff

President Obama’s self-confidence borders on complacency. He is ill served by senior staff, especially his Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel. He does not appear to be learning on the job as he did when campaigning for the White House. His Administration is too deferential to Congress, too reliant on the President’s personal charm, and as a result is regarded by its enemies as weak and ineffectual.

As Mr Obama prepared to release his $3.8 trillion (£2.4 trillion) budget today, this assessment of his first year in office came not from one of his established critics on the Right, but from one of his most respected mentors — his former professor at Harvard Law School, Chris Edley.

“What I fear is that having made history, having won a Nobel prize, having been celebrated around the world, a measure of complacency may have set in,” Professor Edley told The Times. “I don’t mean that the effort is not there, but that the discipline of self-criticism has perhaps faded.”

Professor Edley, who worked in the Clinton and Carter Administrations and is now Dean of the Law School at the University of California, Berkeley, added: “I wouldn’t give [Obama] as high a grade as President as I gave him when he was my student. I know he can do better.”

He reserved the harshest criticism for Mr Emanuel, the second-most powerful figure in the White House, who has been pilloried by liberals for appearing to undermine Mr Obama’s healthcare reforms since the loss of a crucial Senate seat to the Republicans.

“You’re not going to reinvent Barack into somebody who delights in pummelling a policy opponent, so his staff need to do that for him. And as far as one can tell from the outside, that is precisely what Rahm Emanuel has failed to do,” he said.

Referring to the prospect of Democratic losses in the mid-term elections, as a result of opposition among independent voters to the stimulus and healthcare Bills, Professor Edley added: “It’s almost as if Rahm Emanuel cares more about the re-election prospects of his friends on [Capitol] Hill than he does about scoring policy victories that reflect Obama’s values.”

Mr Emanuel’s willingness to let health reforms slide could condemn Mr Obama to “a caretaker presidency”, Paul Krugman, the Nobel prize-winning economist, has warned.

Congressional Democrats have accused Mr Emanuel of being more visible on television than on Capitol Hill, and there is increasing speculation that he may be the first senior staffer to be eased out of the White House — or that he may resign to run for the Chicago mayoralty.

Nothing would please Professor Edley more. In late 2007, at Mr Obama’s invitation, he made a dramatic intervention in his presidential campaign, dismissing as mediocre the policy positions drawn up by senior staff and imploring them to give the young Senator from Illinois more time to think.

Asked what he would say if given a similar opportunity one year into the Obama presidency, Mr Edley lamented the failure of the White House to force Congress into line, as President Lyndon Johnson would have done. “You have to be his inner LBJ, the leader who twists arms past their breaking point and is prepared to make some enemies in order to make some progress,” he said.

The professor fears that Mr Obama’s best chance to deliver the change he promised may have been wasted. The White House was overly dependent on the President’s personality as an instrument of persuasion, “and if your only advocacy tool is charm you should expect some pretty strong headwinds”, Professor Edley said.

The Administration’s biggest mistake, he said, has been to pander to Congressional vanities by leaving the two chambers to argue about their own versions of healthcare reform with little concrete guidance from the White House. “As a result the Administration has accomplished less than it might have and is perceived on the Hill as much weaker than it might have been,” he concluded.

Mr Obama will hope for a rosier assessment next time round.

I have to agree with this assessment! In my opinion Obama squandered his first year in office. It was good and noble that he spent his political capital on the HCR Bill. However, it was a mistake to let congress write the bill without any leadership or vision proffered by him. He let the fight for HCR go on far too long, letting the Republicans and tea-baggers define the Bill and take pot shots at him. Meanwhile, what Americans needed and wanted were jobs, jobs, jobs – it’s the economy stupid.

denurd

A very productive Congress, despite what the approval ratings say - washingtonpost.com

2010-02-01T22:55:00.000-08:00

A very productive Congress, despite what the approval ratings say - washingtonpost.com

Can Obama Build A Grassroots Health-Care Movement? | The LA Progressive

2010-02-01T01:51:00.000-08:00

If they are going to mobilize the grassroots then they will have to fight for real reform; one that includes a public option.

Can Obama Build A Grassroots Health-Care Movement? | The LA Progressive

Op-Ed Columnist - The State of the Union Is Comatose - NYTimes.com

2010-01-31T02:02:00.000-08:00

Op-Ed Columnist - The State of the Union Is Comatose - NYTimes.com

Actor Rip Torn arrested, charged with breaking into local bank with loaded gun- The Register Citizen News - Northwest Connecticut's Daily Newspaper

2010-01-30T21:20:00.000-08:00

Actor Rip Torn arrested, charged with breaking into local bank with loaded gun- The Register Citizen News - Northwest Connecticut's Daily Newspaper

How sad is this? He was really a wonderful actor.

"Fear the Boom and Bust" a Hayek vs. Keynes Rap Anthem

2010-01-30T01:44:00.000-08:00

OH YES HE DID - HE DOES NOT QUIT!

2010-01-29T23:59:00.000-08:00

Oh yes he did - he does not quit! MSNBC's Luke Russert, who was on the scene in Baltimore,relayed that a Republican official and other GOP aides had confided to him that allowing the "cameras to roll like that" was a "mistake." So effective was the president that Fox News cut away from the broadcast 20 minutes before it ended.

Robert Reich (Obama Needs To Teach The Public How to Get Out Of The Mess We're In, But He's Not)

2010-01-28T20:52:00.000-08:00

Robert Reich (Obama Needs To Teach The Public How to Get Out Of The Mess We're In, But He's Not)

Richard Trumka: Calling on All Working Americans to Stand Up and Fight

2010-01-28T01:15:00.000-08:00

Richard Trumka: Calling on All Working Americans to Stand Up and Fight

From Asbury Park to the Promised Land: The Life and Music of Bruce Springsteen

2010-01-27T23:54:00.000-08:00

From Asbury Park to the Promised Land: The Life and Music of Bruce Springsteen

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is on my bucket list.

I want to see the Springsteen exhibit; which means I should go this year.

The End of Big Government | Matters of Principle

2010-01-26T08:31:00.000-08:00

The End of Big Government | Matters of Principle

Robert Reich (Obama's Tiny Jobs Ideas for Main Street, A Big Spending Freeze for Wall Street)

2010-01-26T01:31:00.000-08:00

Robert Reich (Obama's Tiny Jobs Ideas for Main Street, A Big Spending Freeze for Wall Street)

Friends

2010-01-25T01:34:00.000-08:00

Charlie and Lewie

Lewie is fifteen years old

Lt. Gov. of South Carolina: "Don't feed the poor. They'll 'breed.'" | Video Cafe

2010-01-24T15:28:00.000-08:00

In the midst of a “Great Recession” our Christian Republican brethren have a plan. God help us if they become the majority party again.

Lt. Gov. of South Carolina: "Don't feed the poor. They'll 'breed.'" | Video Cafe

Don't let corporations steal our elections

2010-01-22T01:09:00.001-08:00

Swept off our feet - The Boston Globe

2010-01-22T00:25:00.000-08:00

Swept off our feet - The Boston Globe

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Heart to Heart International

2010-01-13T16:25:00.000-08:00

Link Unlike Red Cross 98% of your donation goes to help people in Haiti

Link

The BRAD BLOG : Palin, Fox, 'Jesus on Acid' and the End of the World

2010-01-13T00:13:00.000-08:00

The BRAD BLOG : Palin, Fox, 'Jesus on Acid' and the End of the World

Gary Hart: Getting the Government We Seem to Want

2010-01-06T23:28:00.000-08:00

Gary Hart: Getting the Government We Seem to Want

Classy tribute to Bruce Springsteen at Kennedy Center Honors

2009-12-30T11:10:00.001-08:00

JOHN LENNON 1940 TO 1980

2009-12-08T13:23:00.000-08:00

My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.

John Lennon

Palin: America must seek God’s will for “answers to so many of the great challenges we’re facing”

2009-12-06T13:39:00.000-08:00

Link
Whatever happened to the concept of separation between church and state? The same people that claimer for a theocracy now, were shocked and appalled that a Catholic, John F. Kennedy, ran for president. They, the nucleus of the Religious Right, clamed the Pope would dictate United States policy. By the way these are the same folks that claim President Obama is not a citizen. Let’s just tell it like it is; they are the same Sothern Baptist Dixiecrats who wore sheets and hoods back in the day.

Eliot Spitzer: Geithner, Bernanke "Complicit" in Financial Crisis and Should Go

2009-12-04T19:31:00.000-08:00

Link

Elizabeth Warren: America Without a Middle Class

2009-12-02T15:45:00.000-08:00

Link This say's it all - if they are to big too fail, they're too big.

Dennis Kucinich vs Rick Santorum on Afghanistan

2009-11-28T17:32:00.001-08:00

The Other Education

2009-11-27T13:54:00.000-08:00

By DAVID BROOKS
Like many of you, I went to elementary school, high school and college. I took such and such classes, earned such and such grades, and amassed such and such degrees.

But on the night of Feb. 2, 1975, I turned on WMMR in Philadelphia and became mesmerized by a concert the radio station was broadcasting. The concert was by a group I’d never heard of — Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Thus began a part of my second education.

We don’t usually think of this second education. For reasons having to do with the peculiarities of our civilization, we pay a great deal of attention to our scholastic educations, which are formal and supervised, and we devote much less public thought to our emotional educations, which are unsupervised and haphazard. This is odd, since our emotional educations are much more important to our long-term happiness and the quality of our lives.

In any case, over the next few decades Springsteen would become one of the professors in my second education. In album after album he assigned a new course in my emotional curriculum.

This second education doesn’t work the way the scholastic education works. In a normal schoolroom, information walks through the front door and announces itself by light of day. It’s direct. The teacher describes the material to be covered, and then everybody works through it.

The knowledge transmitted in an emotional education, on the other hand, comes indirectly, seeping through the cracks of the windowpanes, from under the floorboards and through the vents. It’s generally a byproduct of the search for pleasure, and the learning is indirect and unconscious.

From that first night in the winter of 1975, I wanted the thrill that Springsteen was offering. His manager, Jon Landau, says that each style of music elicits its own set of responses. Rock, when done right, is jolting and exhilarating.

Once I got a taste of that emotional uplift, I was hooked. The uplifting experiences alone were bound to open the mind for learning.

I followed Springsteen into his world. Once again, it wasn’t the explicit characters that mattered most. Springsteen sings about teenage couples out on a desperate lark, workers struggling as the mills close down, and drifters on the wrong side of the law. These stories don’t directly touch my life, and as far as I know he’s never written a song about a middle-age pundit who interviews politicians by day and makes mind-numbingly repetitive school lunches at night.

What mattered most, as with any artist, were the assumptions behind the stories. His tales take place in a distinct universe, a distinct map of reality. In Springsteen’s universe, life’s “losers” always retain their dignity. Their choices have immense moral consequences, and are seen on an epic and anthemic scale.

There are certain prominent neighborhoods on his map — one called defeat, another called exaltation, another called nostalgia. Certain emotional chords — stoicism, for one — are common, while others are absent. “There is no sarcasm in his writing,” Landau says, “and not a lot of irony.”

I find I can’t really describe what this landscape feels like, especially in newspaper prose. But I do believe his narrative tone, the mental map, has worked its way into my head, influencing the way I organize the buzzing confusion of reality, shaping the unconscious categories through which I perceive events. Just as being from New York or rural Georgia gives you a perspective from which to see the world, so spending time in Springsteen’s universe inculcates its own preconscious viewpoint.

Then there is the man himself. Like other parts of the emotional education, it is hard to bring the knowledge to consciousness, but I do think important lessons are communicated by that embarrassed half-giggle he falls into when talking about himself. I do think a message is conveyed in the way he continually situates himself within a tradition — de-emphasizing his own individual contributions, stressing instead the R&B groups, the gospel and folk singers whose work comes out through him.

I’m not claiming my second education has been exemplary or advanced. I’m describing it because I have only become aware of it retrospectively, and society pays too much attention to the first education and not enough to the second.

In fact, we all gather our own emotional faculty — artists, friends, family and teams. Each refines and develops the inner instrument with a million strings.

Last week, my kids attended their first Springsteen concert in Baltimore. At one point, I looked over at my 15-year-old daughter. She had her hands clapped to her cheeks and a look of slack-jawed, joyous astonishment on her face. She couldn’t believe what she was seeing — 10,000 people in a state of utter abandon, with Springsteen surrendering himself to them in the center of the arena.

It begins again.
RQ4TJC4QGNEC

Bruce Springsteen 1978 Interview

2009-11-25T00:08:00.001-08:00

I worked on this news show but a few years before the time of this interview. Eyewitness News with the late Jerry Dunphy and Christine Lunde - what a blast from the past.

BUFFALO: GREETINGS AND GOODBYE... "FOR A LITTLE WHILE"

2009-11-23T12:44:00.000-08:00

Link

Bruce Springsteen and E Street “Say Goodbye for a Little While” as Tour Wraps in Buffalo

2009-11-23T12:28:00.000-08:00

Link

Winding down E STREET : Music : The Buffalo News

2009-11-22T12:07:00.000-08:00

Link

Post Show Audio Review By Jeff Miers

Review: Bruce Springsteen show a concert of a lifetime -- baltimoresun.com

2009-11-21T19:30:00.001-08:00

Review: Bruce Springsteen show a concert of a lifetime -- baltimoresun.com

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Last Show, Last dance, last chance too see Bruce and the E Street Band – will maybe. Springsteen and the legendary E Street Band will end their Dream tour (“Working on a Dream”) in Buffalo NY tomorrow at the HSBC Arena. Last year the band lost Danny Federici to cancer, he was with Bruce from the beginning. Bruce’s wife Patti Scialfa no longer performs with the band on a regular basis and finally “Big Man” Clarence Clemons is retiring for health reasons. Clarence says they will be back but I think the “glory days” of touring are over. However, Bruce like Bob Dylan will be on tour until the day he dies.

What's Next For Bruce Springsteen: Box Set Darkness On The Edge Of Town & Dream DVD

2009-11-19T15:26:00.000-08:00

By Andy Greene for Rolling Stone Blog Link

This Sunday, Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band will wrap up their two-year tour by performing their 1973 debut album Greetings From Asbury Park in its entirety (stick with Rolling Stone for a full report). After that, Springsteen’s next moves are unclear. His manager, Jon Landau, says the only plans for 2010 are the release of the long-delayed Darkness on the Edge of Town box set and a DVD of the Working on a Dream tour. “The Darkness box set is 93 percent done,” he tells RS. “It’s absolutely fantastic and there are just some finishing touches that we need to turn our attention to and finalize and we’ll get it out there.” As for the Dream DVD, Landau says, “We’re working on some different approaches to a DVD for this tour. We’ll release it sometime fairly soon, post-Christmas.” Grab the next issue of RS, out November 25th, to read E Street’s reflections on their magical two years on the road.

The Darkness box will likely contain a remastered edition of the disc, a new documentary about the making of the LP, as well as live footage from the 1978 tour. A handful of pro-shot shows circulate through the fan community, but there’s no word on which concert will be brought out of the vaults for the set. In 2005, fans were stunned when a previously unknown complete performance from London in 1975 appeared on the Born to Run box set. The Darkness on the Edge of Town tour is widely regarded as the high water mark of Springsteen’s live career.

There are no plans for another E Street Band album or tour next year. “We just had back-to-back tours and back-to-back records,” Landau says. “That’s never happened before, so we’re going to have substantial downtime at this point. The E Street Band does have an illustrious future, but I don’t have anything more specific to tell you about next year except those two media projects that are on the horizon.”

The E Street Band have mixed feelings about the tour coming to an end. “I really don’t want the work to end, but I need to go home,” says guitarist Nils Lofgren. “It’s kind of an inherent level of homesickness that wears on you. I’m really looking forward to being home and actually unpacking my suitcase. It sat there with my dogs giving me dirty looks for two years.”

Steven Van Zandt has similar feelings. “It feels very much like The Sopranos,” he says. “Everybody was like, ‘Well, we’re extremely successful and still very high on the ratings,’ but David Chase knew it was time to stop. In the end I agreed and I feel like it’s the same thing here.” He says he hasn’t had any discussions with Springsteen about future work. “I’m always afraid to stop,” he says. “You think, ‘If we stop, can we get this thing going again?’ After a year or two off, you find yourself at the bottom of Mt. Everest looking up and thinking, ‘How are we gonna get there?’ I will be surprised if we don’t continue and if you ask me if I think we’ll continue I’ll certainly say yes. It’s just a matter of what happens to everybody physically, beginning with Clarence [Clemons] I suppose. He may fantasize about retiring, but with all his ex-wives I doubt it.”

Can't Get No Higher

2009-11-18T20:02:00.000-08:00

Higher and Higher

Clarence Clemons keeps rockin' with raw willpower

2009-11-13T21:32:00.000-08:00

I found this touching article on Bruce and Clarence . One of the great joys in my life is Bruce’s music and experiencing the Boss and E Street Band in concert. We have already lost Danny – it is hard to imagine life without these guys.

Madam Marie

LINK

By KILEY ARMSTRONG (AP) – 1 day ago

NEW YORK — It's a touching moment, increasingly familiar to fans watching the E Street Band make its entrance: As the audience howls in anticipation and the rest of the band stands at the ready, Bruce Springsteen gently and lovingly helps Clarence Clemons walk to his saxophone at the front of the stage.

"Take your time," Scooter says reassuringly as they inch forward. "Don't rush. You've got time."

Time is on the minds of many as E Street nears the finale of back-to-back tours that have kept the band globe-trotting for the better part of two years.

Death has touched a band that had remained unchanged for decades. And Clemons — the Big Man — is showing his 67 years. Rife with painful ailments, he moves gingerly, a huge contrast to Springsteen's explosive and unflagging energy. Both knees have been replaced; he spent a long time in a wheelchair.

Then, in February, the band appeared at the Super Bowl, before a U.S. television audience estimated at almost 100 million. And Clemons stood.

Since then, he's logged thousands of miles with E Street. Amid doctors and physical therapy, he's wedged in book-signings for "Big Man: Real Life & Tall Tales," released in October. And he's started a second book with friend and Hollywood producer Don Reo.

If sheer willpower is all it takes, the Big Man will never be down for the count.

"I always said in my life that when it doesn't feel joyous any more, then it will be time to quit," he said in a recent interview. "But the joy is getting better and better."

___

Clemons got his first horn at age 9. He was awed by the sax sounds of King Curtis, Junior Walker, Sil Austin and Boots Randolph — and by the voice of Aretha Franklin, with whom he later recorded.

In his youth, he sloughed off racism. He had trouble forming attachments in his segregated, black high school, because it was outside the white community where his family lived.

For years, he seemed destined for football. After a car wreck ruined his Cleveland Browns tryout, he decided "God wanted me to do something else."

He refuses to dwell on the negative. Ask about the glory days, though — the band's gritty, camaraderie-fueled beginnings in the 1970s — and his eyes light up.

His book details the rags-to-riches adventures. As legend has it, a gale blew the door off an Asbury Park, N.J., club as Clemons — horn always at the ready — entered and asked to sit in with the Boss-to-be.

It was, he says, "beyond male bonding."

He shared a house with keyboardist Danny Federici, drummer Vini "Mad Dog" Lopez — and three boa constrictors.

The old ties still bind E Street. But Springsteen has remained his No. 1 bro-mance. Once, Clemons' jealous girlfriend asked if they were lovers.

"When I first met him, I didn't want to let go, and he didn't want to let go," said Clemons. "It's like you finally found out what you were looking for all your life artistically, creatively."

They were "inseparable. ... We just talked about ourselves, about what we wanted in life."

The connection is "still there. I love being with him. I love being around him."

When Springsteen delivers Clemons to his sax stand, he plants a kiss on the Big Man's lips.

"It's the most passion that you have without sex," says Clemons. "Two androgynous beings becoming one."

"It's love. It's two men — two strong, very virile men — finding that space in life where they can let go enough of their masculinity to feel the passion of love and respect and trust. Friendships are based on those things, and you seal it with a kiss."

___

Still, Clemons concedes that he doesn't always get Springsteen's lyrics. Take "Blinded by the Light" — "Madman drummers bummers and Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat ..."

"I had no (expletive) idea what it meant."

"I still don't," he says, laughing.

"Bruce's lyrics are very, very dense, sometimes complicated. I think that, in the beginning, some of his lyrics probably didn't make sense to him. It made him have a certain feeling."

"I'm still in there, trying to figure it out."

Nor does he understand how the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame could have inducted Springsteen without E Street. "We have been together as a band for 33, 34 years. And we contributed so much," he says. "It's a bunch of suits who make these decisions."

But he takes the high road: "When a fan says, `Man, you saved my life; I heard Jungleland ... and I cried ... and I felt joy in my life again,' that's my hall of fame."

And to be honest, he's had problems far greater than any Hall of Fame concerns: the knees; three hip replacements; two eye surgeries; a pacemaker; sleep apnea. He's avoiding back surgery because "the down time is so long."

Powerful narcotics after the knee replacements muddled his thinking, triggering depression and self-doubt — so he swapped them for a diet-and-fitness regime.

"I stopped smokin' pot. I stopped doing any of that stuff," except for a rare, light beer, watered down by ice.

He likes the new feeling of playing with a clear head.

"The stage is a healing floor — no matter how bad you hurt."

"I told Bruce, when this all started, `One day we'll dance together again.' And he says, `I'll be waiting.'"

Last weekend, Clemons, still walking with difficulty, did dance. It wasn't the old antics — leaping onto a speaker or lying on the stage, legs waving wildly. At Madison Square Garden, the joy erupted from the Big Man's upper body as he swayed, with rhythm and grace.

___

But how long will the dance go on?

On Nov. 22 in Buffalo, the band has one last blowout. Then they'll go their separate ways for who-knows how long.

"We'll be seein' you further up the road," Springsteen reassured the New York City crowd.

But retirement is "something I think about," says Clemons. "I'll be 70 years old in a couple of years. I don't know how much energy I'll have left. That energy, I want to spend with my family."

Let's be clear: His definition of retirement is different from most people's.

"I really believe that this is something that is going to go on forever. When I say `retiring,' I don't mean `stop playing music.'"

But he's mindful of the ticking clock. "There's been a lot of death in the last few years," says Clemons.

Two linchpins of that early circle — Federici and Springsteen assistant Terry Magovern — are gone. Recently, they lost Springsteen's cousin, assistant road manager Lenny Sullivan.

For Clemons, it accentuates the gift of time.

"I know that one day I'm going to die," he says. "I want to accomplish as much as I can before I do."

Dennis Kucinich Explains Why He Voted Against The Health Care Bill

2009-11-09T22:25:00.000-08:00

On Fox News no less!

The White Album

2009-11-05T23:49:00.000-08:00

A friend sent me a review of “The Beatles” better known as the White Album. It reminded me of how much I loved that Album back in the day, so I scurried over to Amazon and bought the re-mastered CD – we shell see if it holds up over time.

A Democrat Remembers Gerald Ford

2006-12-27T21:54:00.000-08:00

I don’t know if this quote originated with Jack Kennedy, but I do know that he said: “Politics is the art of the possible.” That quote sums up Gerald Ford. He was not the best, the brightest, nor the most handsome. However, he showed up every day for work, first as the House Minority Leader and later as our first non-elected President, and found the common ground in which he could achieve the possible. He did so with civility and good humor - something today’s politicians lack. He brought humility and humanity back to the White House, and his wife turned frailties into virtue. In today’s polarized political atmosphere, it's hard to believe that in their day, Jerry and Betty Ford supported the Equal Rights Amendment and a woman’s right to choose. Gerald Ford was the butt of many jokes and Chevy Chase pratfalls, but he was the right guy at the right time. As it turned out, he could walk and chew gum at the same time.

Bobby

2006-11-25T14:10:00.000-08:00

With his new film “Bobby” Emilio Estevez comes of age as a director. One of Hollywood’s triple-threat hyphens: actor – writer – director, he is the talented scion of actor Martin Sheen. I have always found Mr. Estevez a rather charming actor, but as a director/writer he has left me feeling that he had served less than a full-course meal. However, in recent years, he has labored as a director in the fast-paced confines of episodic TV and his commitment to perfecting his craft has paid off.

The film takes place at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles on the day of the California Primary, June 6, 1968. The Ambassador Ballroom is where Robert Kennedy’s supporters will gather to celebrate his victory. "Bobby" is reminiscent of a Robert Altman film in the sense that there is a large cast of characters that are seemingly unrelated until woven together at the end; however, Estevez is a far more linear storyteller than Altman. Virginia Fallon (Demi Moore), an aging, alcoholic singer on the verge of being a has-been, along with John Casey (Anthony Hopkins), a retired concierge, serve to remind us of a grander, more glamorous and innocent City of Angels; of course, whatever vestige of innocents is left will be gone by the end of the day.

Mr. Estevez skillfully paints a picture of a time and place - the fear young men felt of being drafted and sent to Vietnam, the nobility of man, race relations, drugs on the campaign trail - it is all there. If you want an unbiased view of Robert Kennedy’s life and times, this is not it. This film was made by and for those who loved Bobby and what he stood for – what America should stand for. It is a grim reminder that no leader with his moral clarity or vision has emerged to replace him. The audience I was in applauded at the end of the screening. I highly recommend this film and give it 4 out of 5 stars.