Political Rants

It ain’t broke.

Not that this is all that unusual, but I heard from various representatives of the Republican party and the “tea party” movement on NPR this morning. I really wonder why these right-wing types are so critical of NPR – the network is almost wholly devoted to providing them with outsized coverage. Every time they sneeze, Steve Inskeep is holding the rag. Sure, I listen to them regularly, because they have some good reporters, some good programs, and because they’re better than everything else on my upstate New York radio dial. But that’s a bit like voting for Barack Obama over Mitt Romney. Yeah, Barry’s a pretty lousy president; he’s just better by an order of magnitude than the object he was running against. Pretty low bar, frankly.

Low-bar radioWhat irks me, though, is the legitimization of truly extremist right-wing notions of governance (or lack of same) through what I’m sure NPR and other networks consider “balance coverage”. A brief example: yesterday there was a report on some research having to do with economic inequality and the degree to which people believe the federal government has an active role to play in addressing its effects. It was presented in the usual “this side thinks this, while the other thinks this” manner; specifically, 90% of Democrats believe the government should be involved in fighting inequality, while Republicans are evenly split. This was played as reinforcing the notion of a nation divided along party lines, but they buried the lead – by these percentages, it looks like a significant majority … maybe 60 -70% – agree that the government has an active role to play. Why the hell isn’t that the story?

The only reason why extremist tea party-type ideas significantly influence national policy is that they have an outsized voice in the national conversation. That’s why we are essentially cutting the long-term unemployed off at the knees, canceling their unemployment when there’s still three job seekers for every available job, slashing food stamps while cutting taxes on corporations and throwing more money at the Pentagon. Large numbers of unemployed people are a necessary component of capitalism – that keeps labor inexpensive and profits high. So to the free market fundamentalist, that system is not broken … it’s working just fine. And that is the point of view that will continue to drive the national conversation until, along with the tea party, Occupy Wall Street gets their own response to the State of the Union.

Color me disgusted.

luv u,

jp

Usual Rubbish

Learning Capellini.

I’m sure I’m not the first to make this observation, but I’ll say it anyway. There’s something compelling about Capella (the Goat star). What it compels us to do is another thing entirely.

Big GreenBooked into another series of club dates on the fourth stone out from Capella, my Big Green colleagues and I have tried to make the best of it. It hasn’t been easy. For one thing, the locals here are not very fond of country music, and since our latest album, Cowboy Scat: Songs in the Key of Rick, is largely made up of mock-country numbers,  that puts a damper on things. We’ve had to reach deep down into the song bag to keep these rock-like creatures happy. (And by that crack I don’t simply mean that they like rock music. I mean, they are themselves animate rocks, with stony arms and legs and eyes like geodes. But yes, unsurprisingly, they prefer rock music.)

We asked sFshzenKlyrn, our perennial sit-in guitarist, to remove his cowboy hat for the duration (he tries his best to look the part when we go all Rick Perry) and light into some of our heavier numbers from days past, like Why Not Call It George?, one of Matt’s more rocking ruminations on the scientific method. Here’s an excerpt of the lyric, last verse:

Continental drift can be reversed
great tumblers shift
and Pangaea can be reclaimed
After me it can be renamed
Why not call it George? Call it George, after me

Do you speak Capellini?Always a favorite of Mitch Macaphee, our mad science adviser, who would very much like to name a continent after himself, particularly if said continent was the result of an experiment gone horribly right.

Well, sFshzenKlyrn turned in a searing solo that sent the rock-like denizens of Capella 4 into fits of geological ecstasy. There was waving and shouting, and if I spoke Capellini, I could tell you what they were saying. Their wallets speak louder than words, however, and they were grateful enough to drop some serious stone on us before the end of our week-long engagement. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) has a built-in assay lab, and he tells me that the currency rocks on Capella four are mostly feldspar, with traces of iron. Not exactly a fortune, but we’ll leave that to be made elsewhere.

Next stop: Earth-Mass Gassy Planet KOI-314c

Political Rants

Rest for one.

After an eight-year coma, Ariel Sharon died this past week. I say good for him. I am glad that he’s gone, and I say that without malice. No one deserves what he went through as a result of that stroke, not even a heartless killer. And I regret to say that that is exactly what he was, despite the graveside accolades.

Starting with the Qibya massacre in 1953, when troops led by Sharon killed almost 70 Palestinians, as well as destroying 45 homes and a mosque, Sharon made it his business to make the Arab inhabitants of Israel/Palestine miserable, homeless, or dead. He earned his title “The Bulldozer” Sharon: Gone but not forgotten.after the 1967 war when he pacified Gaza by destroying thousands of homes. While Sharon is hailed as a hero of the 1973 war – a war resulting from the stalemate policy encouraged by super-genius Henry Kissinger – he is probably best remembered for his role in the murderous 1982 invasion of Lebanon, in the midst of that country’s civil war, culminating in the massacre of Palestinians by Israeli-allied Christian militias in the Sabra and Shatila refugee camps in Beirut, then under the control of the IDF.

That might have ended his public career, but it’s hard to keep a good killer down. Even though he was found to be substantially responsible for the deaths of the refugees in Beirut, he was back in subsequent Likud governments as minister without portfolio, then later as housing minister under Netanyahu’s first government in the mid-nineties. I recall his exhortation to settlers on the West Bank at one point during that period that they should “take every hilltop” – this from a man now hailed as one who was willing to trade land for peace.

Sharon’s tenure as Prime Minister was launched by his provocative visit to the “Dome of the Rock” in East Jerusalem, sparking the second Intifada. He used massive force to crush the uprising, reaching into his bulldozer bag of tricks, sending IDF soldiers into neighborhoods and schools in the West Bank, and basically burning the place down. Sharon pushed the separation wall, which is designed to lock in the Israeli government’s maximalist land claims on the West Bank. His much heralded evacuation of settlers from Gaza was a farce – those settlements were never anything more than a chip to be traded away in negotiations. And it was Sharon who chose the current PA leader Abu Mazen – insisted upon it, once Arafat was out of the way.

Rest in peace, big fella. Your legacy lives on.

Weird ass music since 1986