A weekly audio postcard from the wide musical world of America’s best-loved band!
David Gans This post from The Daily Kos (by Hunter) is a thing of beauty. An excerpt: Playing with fire, you say? Because the indictments ringing Tom DeLay finally reached up that one, final step from his ring of closest advisers to DeLay himself? Because the SEC has launched a formal investigation into the same behaviors by … Read more
In his column in today’s San Francisco Chronicle, Jon Carroll talks about National Geographic’s new Wildcam – “a live video feed from a remote watering hole in Botswana. You can watch elephants, wildebeest, giraffes, baboons and ostriches coming down to feed, interacting in interesting ways, hanging out.” From the Wildcam site: Embark on a quiet … Read more
The U.S. drug czar’s office is running ads implying that smoking marijuana can lead to insanity. But pushing dubious science is no way to persuade teenagers not to do drugs. By Maia Szalavitz Parents who read the New York Times or Newsweek this past summer could be forgiven for freaking out when they came across … Read more
A column by Tim Wise in the LA Weekly, forwarded to me by Bob Sarles: A God With Whom I Am Not Familiar This is an open letter to the man sitting behind me at La Paz today, in Nashville, at lunchtime, in the Brooks Brothers shirt: You don’t know me. But I know you. … Read more
The title of this post comes from the Huffington Post — Max Blumenthal pointing to his column in the 9/19 issue of The Nation, a story headlined Pat Robertson’s Katrina Cash: Robertson has used the tax-exempt, nonprofit Operation Blessing as a front for his shadowy financial schemes, while exerting his influence within the GOP to … Read more
Mark Morford’s column in today’s SF Chronicle is apposite. An excerpt: …it’s so unfair, isn’t it, to attack poor Dubya like this? Just a little misplaced? After all, Bush has always been the rich white man’s president. He is the CEO president, the megacorporate businessman’s friend, the thug of the religious right, a big reservoir-tipped … Read more
I met a real Christian yesterday. Her name is Oral Lee Brown. This is a woman who “adopted” a classroom full of first-graders in 1987 and aided them all the way through the Oakland schools and into college. I was in her office to record her end of an interview with a Boston radio producer. … Read more
“…official Washington was like a dog watching television. It saw the lights and images, but did not seem to comprehend their meaning or see any link to reality.”
Amazingly informative piece on Stratfor by George Friedman, New Orleans: A Geopolitical Prize. Last Sunday, nature took out New Orleans almost as surely as a nuclear strike. Hurricane Katrina’s geopolitical effect was not, in many ways, distinguishable from a mushroom cloud. The key exit from North America was closed. The petrochemical industry, which has become … Read more
I canceled a planned trip to Oregon this weekend. I was scheduled to play a private party west of Portland – a really nice tribal reunion that I played last year. My decision was based in part on the cost of gasoline, but it’s more than that. It just seems like a bad time to … Read more