Here is the latest news from David Gans, producer and host of the Grateful Dead Hour.
Bush reserves the right to torture
Sen. John McCain proposed an amendment to the military appropriations bill that would prohibit “cruel, inhuman or degrading” treatment of prisoners in the custody of the U.S. military. This may strike you as a “goes without saying” proposition — the amendment passed the Senate 90 to nine. The United States has been signing anti-torture treaties under Democrats and Republicans for at least 50 years. But the Bush administration actually managed to find some weasel words to create a loophole in this longstanding commitment to civilized behavior. According to the Bushies, if the United States is holding a prisoner on foreign soil, our soldiers can still subject him or her to cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment — the very forms of torture used by the soldiers who were later prosecuted for their conduct at Abu Ghraib. Does this make any sense, moral or common? So deeply does President Bush feel our country, despite all its treaty commitments, has a right to torture that he has threatened to veto the bill if it passes. This would the first time in five years he has ever vetoed anything. Think about it: Five years of stupefying pork, ideological nonsense, dumb administrative ideas, fiscal idiocy, misbegotten energy programs — and the first thing the man vetoes is a bill to pay our soldiers because it carries an amendment saying, once again, that this country does not torture prisoners.
Richard Thompson in Portland 10/7/05
I’ve been a fan of Richard Thompson for years, but never saw him live until last night at the Aladdin Theater in Portland.
A bit of good luck got us in the door ahead of most of the crowd, so we had seats about three rows back. It was just Richard w/ Danny Thompson on bass. Before the show I stepped up to see what pedals he was using. one was a Line 6 delay modeler, and since I stupidly failed to write down what I saw I’ve already forgotten the name of second effects box. The third item appeared to be a tube preamp.
For some songs, he had a lovely warbling effect, thicker than a Leslie speaker. But for the most part, it was just pure guitar, played with awesome power, subtlety, and expression. And of course, I can say exactly the same for his singing and the songwriting. The set included “Vincent Black Lightning” and “When the Spell Is Broken”; I would like to have heard “Keep Your Distance,” but that song wouldn’t have been as spectacular in this setting as all the stuff he did play, so I am in no way disappointed by its absence.
I’m in the cult now, folks.
The opener was Griffin House, from Cincinnati. Not terribly impressive at first, but during the third song he kicked into gear and showed what he could do. Nothing particularly thrilling in the guitar department, but he had some fine songs and sang them very well. I bought both his CDs.
P.S. Henry Kaiser directed this adorable video for “Let It Blow” (from the new CD Front Parlour Ballads), which was also performed at the show.
Changing minds, one at a time
Rich Simon, a writer friend who teaches at a community college here in the East Bay, posted this story on his blog:
I had a student yesterday — a Bush supporter, a member of the campus Christian prayer group, a Vietnamese immigrant and a good, smart kid — pretty much have a meltdown. I had asked what the authors’ purpose was in writing the book (Age of Propaganda, Pratkanis and Aronson, BTW). He answered: “because they don’t like President Bush.”
A few in the class chuckled. I asked them when the book had been published. They flipped to the title page. It had been initially published in 1992.
Read the rest.
Republican scumbags taste the fruits of their vileness
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 Bill Frist that put Martha Stewart recently in prison? Because one of the single most visible, highest profile Republican money men has been indicted for fraud, is being investigated for client shakedowns, and has his close business associates being investigated for a mob-connected murder?
What utter cowardice. What pathetic anti-American pedantry. What laughable protestation. The crimes of campaign money laundering, of fraud, of conspiracy, the violation of the laws of the nation, to be answered with stern visions of potential gunfire if Democrats have the audacity to pursue it.
This is the world of the Republican Party, split open like a rotting pumpkin. Crime after crime after crime being investigated, all revolving around the Republican money machine. Every seed connected by the strands of money they share between them. Barely-laundered campaign money passed in the palm of every flabby handshake. Every player in boldface, underlined print in the Rolodex of every other.
And still, this same bottom-tier world of flag-waving supporters still obsessed over an extramarital sex act, but offended to the point of sad, blustering threats at the notion that crimes by gilded and worshipped Republicans are really still crimes.
Your party has set aflame the entire political landscape, and now, once burned, you warn sternly from the branches of a burnt-out tree about “playing with fire”. You used the ashes of one of the great liberal cities of America, New York City, as war paint for your own sick, racist dreams. You shudder at a burning flag, yet are willing to snip-and-cut basic tenets of the Constitution as needed or convenient.
And now, you’re outraged, not by any of the rest of it, not by anything that has come before, but because a few prominent Republican faces have — shock of shocks — been indicted in probes that have spanned years of investigation, and interrogation, and deposition. That, you say, represents the underpinnings of a civil war.
You poor, hollow, blood-painted clowns. Cheering the trials and failures of your country with the same pennants and giant foam hands that you wave at your favorite sports teams. Willing to accept the most outrageous of lies, if they are spoken from your favorite talking heads, and soothe your own notions of America for you, and only for you.
And as for the audacity of Democrats speaking up during this process… the redfaced, flatulent fury with which you declare Republicans off-limits to that which you so gleefully hurl yourself…
Welcome to the world of the politics of personal destruction, you tubthumping, chin-jutting, Bush humping gits. Welcome to the nasty and partisan world that Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Michelle Malkin, Hugh Hewitt, Grover Norquist, Newt Gingrich, Tom DeLay, and a legion of insignificant lowest-rung toadies like yourselves nurtured into fruition daily with eager, grubby hands, and now look upon with dull-faced faux horror.