Late Night Music: Stevie Wonder!?!

A drummer. An amazing drummer. Who knew?

They won’t let me embed this, so you’ll have to go here.

It is indescribably delicious. Just go there and watch it. You won’t be disappointed.

Confounding the Founding Fathers

by Stephen Fleischman

Our Founding Fathers would surely be confounded today by the way the democratic system upon which they founded this country is running out of steam.

Adapted from the British attempt at democracy, starting with the Magna Carta, ours began as a democracy in the narrowest sense of the word; a democracy for the ruling class. The vote was restricted to white, male, landed gentry. But the Founding Fathers devised a system of checks and balances, three branches of government—executive, legislative, judiciary—splitting the responsibilities of power to keep each other honest. Thomas Jefferson inserted the Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution and turned it into a work of art.

Around the same time, the late 1700s, Britain’s Industrial Revolution was booming along, making its way across the Atlantic. Entrepreneurs were looking for raw materials and markets. The new manufacturing class that sprang up to meet the need, fit right in with the landed gentry.

But that was then. This is now. What we have today is a maze of interlocking directorates, intertwined corporate oligarchies, each out to seize the wealth, the power and control of government. The executive branch has become a brazen, authoritarian bungle, the legislative has invalidated itself and the judiciary has become the flunky of the executive branch.

Cindy Sheehan put it boldly in her farewell letter to America, “if we don’t find alternatives to this corrupt “two” party system our Representative Republic will die and be replaced with what we are rapidly descending into with nary a check or balance: a fascist corporate wasteland.”

The Owners Of This Country

(I had originally posted a video of this routine which was removed from YouTube. I came across another performance of this great bit and am republishing it with the original post)

George Carlin has been so good over so many decades that it’s hard to process. He’s a little older than me, but we both grew up at around the same time and within blocks of each other in Morningside Heights in Manhattan. We shared the moulding of a neighborhood and an environment. He has been making me laugh so hard that I cry, and making me think about my culture and the world around me since I was a young teen just old enough to begin thinking critically about such things. Thank you George.

Late Night Music: The Dixie Chicks

I am working away from home this month and I came across this video. The first time I heard this song, when Taking The Long Way came out, I immediately thought of my bride. She keeps the world at bay for me.

So tonight, when home is far away, this is for Priscilla.

(lyrics below the fold)

Memorial Day

This is dedicated to the sons and daughters of Connecticut who have gone to Iraq and not come back. This is just one State. Multiply this by 50 and it just becomes incomprehensible.

I keep calling my senators and congrssman and I tell them to end this horrific occupation. I don’t call it a war, I call it an occupation because that is what it is. I call them every day. They tell me, “yes, yes, we don’t like the war, we want the troops home”, but the soldiers are still there. They are still dying. More will die today. I will keep calling them every day. I will keep telling them that it is not a war, it is an occupation. It only takes a moment, it’s only three phone calls. I just tell them every day, “Support our troops, get them home”. So far they have disappointed me, but I will keep calling them. Until this killing ends.

Scared Enough?

BOO!

Republican strategery from the 2004 convention.

(h/t Flip Wilson | 05.25.07 – 9:22 pm; in the comments at Digby)

Centrifuging Iran

by Stephen Fleischman

George W. Bush is not going to stand for Iran getting a nucular weapon. No Siree. He’s not going to let it happen.

He has two US aircraft carriers and a flotilla of warships in the Persian Gulf right now, for previously unannounced exercises, playing military games, to see to it that Iran stops enriching uranium.

George Bush would like to think he can control the world’s nuclear power.

But the genie is out of the bottle, and has been for some time. Let’s review the bidding on the nuclear problem.

Late Night Music: Fleetwood Mac

Spectacular performance of one of THE great rock songs of all time.

War Pigs

From DownWithTyranny:

“War Pigs” is one of the best known of all Black Sabbath’s work. It first appeared on their incredible 1970 release, Paranoid.
…
It was originally an anti-Vietnam War song, but has come to be used by anyone who hates the horrors of war and warmakers.

Read more —>

Late Night Music: Alison Krauss

This has always been of my favorites. No drums, yet amazing rhythms. This sweet song has always made me think of a few lucky people I’ve known; and I’ve always liked lucky people.