Fire And Ice

"Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice."

Robert Frost

That's about all I have to say about love and politics today. And, as usual, someone else said it first and best.

Another version of Fire And Ice below.

Wounded Animals

Remember the 'angry left' that the wingnuts on the right have railed against since Saint Reagan or before? From what I am seeing in the news and around some of the lefty blogs the right is trying to raise the ante. McGrumpy and Caribou Barbie are increasingly feeding angrier and angrier crowds that shouting 'terrorist' and even 'kill him' with no response from either candidate. They are feeding it and taking energy from it. It's like the seen in Star Wars where Luke is finally facing the Emperor and Darth Vader in person and the Emperor encourages the anger and hate. I can't remember the exact dialogue but it is something like "yes young Skywalker let the hate grow--your transition to the dark side is almost complete". It's the first thing that came to my mind when I read the stories of the angry crowds surrounding.

I don't remember this much outright hate and vitriol in previous campaigns. What is different this time? Could it be that in the previous campaigns they were the assured winners and that this time it is almost assured that they are the losers? Does it go beyond the election itself and actually touch on who they are and the knowledge that they are about to lose control?

The reality is that in the last 8 years they have had power. They have had their boy George in the White House with Darth Cheney in the background pulling the strings. Bush and Cheney were their justification for their extremist views. Bush and Cheney in power validated their hate, war mongering, gay baiting, and yes, racist views. Think back over how often the rallying point for the conservative right has been their derision and resentment of liberals, intellectuals, Europeans or anything else that threatened their carefully constructed alternate and self-serving reality. What is happening now is that it is starting to sink in that they are losing and losing in a big way. The failure of Iraq, Afghanistan, free market capitalism and all the rest is shredding their belief structure. Cap all of the sense of loss with the unthinkable - a black man as President of the U.S. and you have a sense of how dangerous this is really is. If you think cornered and wounded animal then you may get the sense of where we are.

Anybody what to take odds on how soon the "N" word pops up at one of these hate fests?


crossposted at Fallenmonk

Obama Brings Out the Best of the Christian Right

Here is what Obama said in a June 2006 speech to the liberal Christian group Call to Renewal.

Obama suggested that it would be impractical to govern based solely on the word of the Bible, noting that some passages suggest slavery is permissible and eating shellfish is disgraceful.

"Which passages of scripture should guide our public policy?" Obama asked in the speech. "Should we go with Leviticus, which suggests slavery is OK and that eating shellfish is an abomination? Or we could go with Deuteronomy, which suggests stoning your child if he strays from the faith? Or should we just stick to the Sermon on the Mount?

While I am no longer a Christian, I am a somewhat familiar with the Bible and understand that it has to be read and interpreted with serious look at the times and circumstances in which it was written. I am also well aware that what stands today as the Christian Bible is the result of some serious editing by the Catholic church around 300 A.D. Understandably, they took a lot of controversial and really good stuff out as they felt the masses they were trying to swindle and control would get some wrong ideas about the whole Catholic church and Pope being a direct conduit to God and infallible thing. That said, what Obama says is completely rational, completely honest and something someone who has come to terms with the warts on his chosen faith would say. I agree with it 100%.

Here is what the Focus on the Family founder James Dobson has to say in response:

"I think he's deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own world view, his own confused theology," Dobson said, adding that Obama is "dragging biblical understanding through the gutter."

He also goes on to say that Obama should not be referencing antiquated dietary codes and passages from the Old Testament that are no longer relevant to the teachings of the New Testament.

In response to Obama's suggestion that;

"Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal rather than religion-specific values," Obama said. "It requires their proposals be subject to argument and amenable to reason."

Dobson says that the suggestion is an attempt to lead by the "lowest common denominator of morality."

So what's the deal? Dobson has already ready made it clear that he won't support McSame but here he is trashing Obama and thereby helping McBush. Here is my call. Dobson has apparently realized that Obama is a real threat, not just to McCain, but to his own distorted view of Christianity and ability to influence the Christian right. Obama talks about his faith and talks about Christianity in real terms and it resonates not just with the "casual" Christians but with a growing number of evangelicals, if you believe the polls. Dobson is now coming to terms with the fact that his hold on the evangelical right is being threatened by someone of real faith that makes sense and expresses that faith and understanding in ways that reach people across a broad spectrum of the population. He knows that fewer and fewer people actually care what he and the rest of his ilk have to say anymore. This is especially true in politics, and that's really Dobson's home turf. He may have loads of red-state followers who will unthinkingly swallow the pap he peddles, but his influence in in Washington is rapidly dimming and when Obama is in the White House he will be persona non grata - big time. He knows his time in the limelight is over and is fighting back in the only way he knows which is lying and distorting Christian belief to his own ends just like all the other snake oil hucksters that feed off the Christian right.

BTW, I always thought James Dobson was a minister or Doctor of Divinity or some other holy roller muckity-muck. It turns out he has no credentials in religion at all. In an email issued by Dobson in which he takes offense and being compared to Al Sharpton in the same June 2006 Obama speech he writes:

"I don’t want to be defensive here," Dr. Dobson says on the broadcast. "Obviously, that is offensive to me.

"He equates me with Al Sharpton, who is a reverend. I am not a reverend. I’m not a minister. I’m not a theologian. I’m not an evangelist. I’m a psychologist. I have a Ph.D. in Child Development from the University of Southern California. And there is no equivalence to us. I don’t want to overreact to it, but this comment was made two years ago, and it’s taken me two years to find out about it."

So the guy isn't a preacher or some big wig comparative religion scholar but a child psychologist for Goddess's sake. Where does he get off lecturing people about religion and the Bible? There is, however, one thing this bit of information brings forth and that is... are you glad your kid didn't spend any time in session with this fruitcake or what?

Crossposted at Fallenmonk

Here's Our Job

An article in the New York Times today highlights our job as liberals, Democrats and progressives over the next months before the November election. While it is easy to stand around and shake our heads in wonder at the way the conservative right vote it is much more important for us to understand why they vote the way they do and what we can do to change it. These are the people that are suffering worst from Shrub's economic policies. These are the people that will continue to suffer if McSame is elected. We really need to reach them and educate them. They need to understand that a vote for McSame in November is a vote for the same people that have been shafting them for years. They need to understand that these are the people who are making them have to decide whether to put gas the car or to buy food. They need to understand that they are the ones laboring hardest and suffering the most from the deliberate strategy of Shrub and Cheney and their collusion with the petroleum industry to make this country one that is painfully divided between the filthy rich and the devastatingly poor.

Across broad swaths of the South, Southwest and the upper Great Plains, the combination of low incomes, high gas prices and heavy dependence on pickup trucks and vans is putting an even tighter squeeze on family budgets.

Here in the Mississippi Delta, some farm workers are borrowing money from their bosses so they can fill their tanks and get to work. Some are switching jobs for shorter commutes.

People are giving up meat so they can buy fuel. Gasoline theft is rising. And drivers are running out of gas more often, leaving their cars by the side of the road until they can scrape together gas money.

The disparity between rural America and the rest of the country is a matter of simple home economics. Nationwide, Americans are now spending about 4 percent of their take-home income on gasoline. By contrast, in some counties in the Mississippi Delta, that figure has surpassed 13 percent.

As a result, gasoline expenses are rivaling what families spend on food and housing.

“This crisis really impacts those who are at the economic margins of society, mostly in the rural areas and particularly parts of the Southeast,” said Fred Rozell, retail pricing director at the Oil Price Information Service, a fuel analysis firm. “These are people who have to decide between food and transportation.”

A survey by Mr. Rozell’s firm late last month found that the gasoline crisis is taking the highest toll, as a percentage of income, on people in rural areas of the South, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming and North and South Dakota.

With the exception of rural Maine, the Northeast appears least affected by gasoline prices because people there make more money and drive shorter distances, or they take a bus or train to work.

But across Mississippi and the rural South, little public transit is available and people have no choice but to drive to work. Since jobs are scarce, commutes are frequently 20 miles or more. Many of the vehicles on the roads here are old rundown trucks, some getting 10 or fewer miles to the gallon.

The survey showed that of the 13 counties where people spent 13 percent or more of their family income on gasoline, 5 were located in Mississippi, 4 were in Alabama, 3 were in Kentucky and 1 was in West Virginia.

There it is in black and white. The areas of the country where people are spending over 10% of their income today on gasoline are smack dab in the middle of the most reliable Republican-voting states. You do have to wonder why they can't see it, but regardless we obviously have our job to do. We need to understand why they continue to shoot themselves in the foot and figure out a way to make them quit. It won't be easy trying to convince these folks to change the way they've always voted. It will be very difficult and maybe even impossible to convince all of them that the Democrats aren't going to take away their Bibles and put gays in every Boy Scout troop but it is a job that needs to be done. We have to do our very best to instill in them the reality that their future under John McCain is going to be far worse than it is now and far worse than anything they can imagine with Barack Obama and the Democrats in charge.

Schoolhouse Rock on Pirates and Emperors

The Vidiot found this one, and as she says, "Too brilliant not to post."

Gunpowder, gelatine, dynamite with a laser beam

The Benazir Bhutto assassination story has gotten even stranger:

A police officer who witnessed the assassination said that a mysterious crowd stopped Bhutto's car that day, moving her to emerge through the sunroof. And a document has surfaced in the Pakistani news media that contradicts the government's version of her death and contains details on the pistol and the suicide bomb used in the murder.

The witness was Ishtiaq Hussain Shah of the Rawalpindi police. As Bhutto's car headed onto Rawalpindi's Liaquat Road after an election rally Dec. 27, a crowd appeared from nowhere and stopped the motorcade, shouting slogans of her Pakistan Peoples Party and waving party banners, according to his account.

Bhutto, apparently thinking she was greeting her supporters, emerged through the sunroof of the bulletproof car to wave.

It was Shah's job to clear the way for the motorcade. But 10 feet from where he was standing, a man in the crowd wearing a jacket and sunglasses raised his arm and shot at the former prime minister. "I jumped to overpower him," the deputy police superintendent said later. "A mighty explosion took place soon afterwards."

But Musharraf is a good friend of the USofA, and would never, ever do anything to compromise that friendship:

To many in Pakistan, it all raises questions about whether the government was complicit in the assassination. To others, it points at the very least to a concerted attempt to hide the massive extent of a security failure.

Indeed. As the phrase goes, cui bono: To whose benefit?

And On The 8th Day

I never submitted the whole system of my opinions to the creed of any party of men whatever in religion, in philosophy, in politics, or in anything else where I was capable of thinking for myself. Such an addiction is the last degradation of a free and moral agent.

-Thomas Jefferson, letter to Francis Hopkinson, March 13, 1789

I'm finding it discomfiting to watch the current 'network battle of comparative mythologies' being played out before the nation, at the expense of policy debate and active discussion of solutions to truly pressing problems facing the planet and those creatures that share it.

It is always a distasteful thing to observe grown men trying to outjesus each other, glibly conspiring to nimbly filch the true light from their opponents and hold it over their own heads in such a pandering fashion...And frankly, how 'holy' one might be, or aspire to be is not and should not represent a serious criterion for holding public office in the 21st century.

Now, I was baptized, attended Sunday School and have read the Bible several times, if it matters... And indeed, I might have committed myself further into Christianity at critical junctures, but found myself in a state of receding interest brought on by certain logical inconsistencies and the imperfect filtering of greater plans through lesser minds.

What is my religion now?...I won't discuss that even if I have one, as I don't care to pretend that I am some sort of example or have a glimmering insight toward a true path, but if I have faith in anything it is not in any religion that claims to hold all the answers if one would just suspend objective reality for a critical moment.

Nor would I want such a belief structure, as I prefer the adventure of exploring celestial mysteries independently of dogma or cant.

Also, I am certainly not a friend to the timorously faithed folk uncertain of their beliefs at best, or sanctimoniously corrupt Januses at worst, who seek to legislate public morality so as to ensure that everyone else is as unhappily occluded as they.

All too often this is done by such characters as a ersatz form of 'balance' which more closely resembles their own desperately repressed subjective uncertainties that are then writ conspicuously in the public sphere to complete their hoped-for personal exorcism.

When the faith needed to maintain a fictive lid on reality becomes so needy that legislative pressure is deemed necessary to reinforce some type of communal ethereal belief, lest the whole construct tumble into the morass of cognitive dissonance...

One no longer has a religion, but suffers from a delusion.

And there will be sorrow no more

To everyone stopping by from Crooks & Liars, welcome! And please, click the "Home" link at the bottom, or here "Home" to read other fun stuff by me and the other great writers here. And for those primarily interested in the music posts, check out my series on Under-appreciated Guitarists, 'Cause I can play this here guitar, Pt's, 1 - 13.



I certainly knew of Brett Gurewitz and Epitaph Records, and his band Bad Religion, but had never met him until he came into the studio where I worked as Chief Tech. Engineer to mix "The Process of Belief" in 2001.

Jerry Finn was originally hired to mix the album, and recording was taking place at a furious pace. The band would record all night, and deliver tapes (yes, no ProTools was used in the making of this album!) to my studio first thing in the morning for Jerry to start mixing.

After a few days, Brett decided things were moving too fast, the quality of the recording was suffering due to the tight schedule, and he stopped the process (no pun intended). After finishing the overdubs at a more sensible pace, however, Jerry was committed to another project so Brett decided to mix the album himself. And thus I got to know him.

We talked music, and especially politics. Brett has a fine mind, and a clear understanding of world issues today. We talked about the sabre rattling toward Iraq, and how the U.S. had armed the Taliban and the Pakistani Mujahadeen to fight the Soviets, and how this was clearly going to backfire in our faces.

While he was mixing "Sorrow" I told him that in my opinion it should be the first single. Radio friendly, great melody combined with the patented Bad Religion guitar drive, it really felt to me like a hit.

There is a sound effect in the chorus of "Sorrow", in the line "there will be (explosion) sorrow" that I told Brett I thought was especially cool. I was truly surprised when he called me to come into the control room and listen to the final mix, before it was printed. He asked me it I though the explosion was loud enough, I told him, "No, I really think it should be up a bit more."

"Cool", he said, and pushed it up a bit more.

He was kind enough to give me a credit in the "Thanks to..." section of the liner notes. Great guy, great band, and great music.

Here they are live on Craig Kilborne:



Here is "Sorrow" live in 2002 (sadly, without Mr. Brett):