Home Page Redesign

Hey, I've redesigned my homepage with some help from friends. Let me know what you think and I'll send you a special something for the holidays...

Rick Cusick - Brooklyn Singer Songwriter

Anti-evolution teachings gain foothold in U.S. schools / Evangelicals see flaws in Darwinism

Ah... Pennsylvania! A great place to grow children, and they've started teaching Intelligent Design.

Now, as a bit toward the left, you might assume I was totally against this. You would be wrong, though. I don't necessarily agree with the idea that the universe magically sprang into being and what's here now is the result of mathematical models. Strict deconstructionism is not necessarilythe answer.

Some form of consciousness is driving the show, somehow.

I'm fine letting them teach God in the schools, if they want to. Inquisitive kids will seek out their own truth. The others might as well have something that makes sense.

Comments?

Do a review!

Why not show your love for your blogger, and review my CD, East over at CDbaby?

I can owe you... =)

Congressman Tim Ryan

It's a bit out of date, but this is great.

Congressman Tim Ryan from Ohio opposing the draft bill, but explaining how it got legs.

File sharing and buying

Interesting article on the status of the bigs starting to move into the file-sharing arena.

Will be interesting to how all this plays out in the end. Will musicians even make CD's in 3 years?

Mr Brooks and his rose-colored specs

I needed a laugh tonight, so I figured on reading the Onion, but then I read this opinion piece in the Times by David Brooks. Amazing, how the World Bank has done some much good for the developing world. Those guys in pinstripes really deserve pat on the back. Nice of someone to point out the good work they're doing.

In lighter news, tonight we went to see Kinsey, a movie about the late sex-researcher. Very interesting film, I highly recommend it.

Happy Thanksgiving!!! (MarkFiore animation)

Gobble, gobble!

Who needs SNL when you have eBay?

Yes, can I have this, please?

I've always wanted to control the weather. And still, you have to ask yourself: "what if it's real???"

You feel that?

Doe that feels like a draft?

How about this? (via Dailykos)

A friend of mine saw Noam CHomsky speak a few weeks ago in NJ, where he said that there was no way they would ever reinstitute the draft.

We shall see...

U2

Yes please. Yes please!

SNL-I Will Follow

Gotta love it. Unscripted, most likely.

Colin, we hardly knew ya!

Happy Sunday! Check out this Times article, a great editorial on Colin Powell's departure from State (registration req. - just do it), which includes this gem:

As I watched images from Mr. Powell's life flicker past, and as the fruits of the American victory became clear - a ravaged city; an elusive enemy, most of whom had escaped; a countrywide counterattack in which insurgents seized parts of Mosul - I felt a ghostly echo of words I could not quite grasp. Two days later, watching an American general declare that in Falluja our forces had "broken the back of the insurgency," I felt the sentences I'd struggled to recall suddenly take shape; I reached for Mr. Powell's memoir and found these bitter lines:

"Our senior officers knew the war was going badly. Yet they bowed to groupthink pressure and kept up pretenses. ...Many of my generation, the career captains, majors, and lieutenant colonels seasoned in that war, vowed that when our turn came to call the shots, we would not quietly acquiesce in halfhearted warfare for half-baked reasons that the American people could not understand."

Sure... Mark Danner with the biting analysis.

Today we're walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, always a treat. We'll be lunching at Pho Na Trang, the best Vietnamese I've ever had. To say that I feel shame when I eat in restaurants of cultures that the US has wronged is to understate the facts. I wonder if that's why the coasts and the urban area voted predominently against the status quo? Because we interact with people from other countries and cultures, and have that sounding board for how terrible this country's policies can be across the sea.

Two terms that everyone needs to have on their lips:

Birth Tax - the $40 k or so of debt that each child born today in the US inherits due to rampant spending
Credit Card Congress, or the Charge and Spend Republicans - no definition needed.

GarageBand.com

OK, so I've been blogging less frequently lately. Much of that has to do with me doing extra promotion work for my music, and part of that has included some work over at GarageBand.com. This site has something for musicians, fans, critics, industry people, you name it.

Over the next few weeks I'm going to be writing about music, primarily, since writing about the state of the Union is something that Kos will always be better at than I.

Happy Friday!

Kyoto in effect...

After seven-year gestation, Kyoto Protocol set to be born. This should be interesting, if nothing else a wide-open example of the US moving in exactly the opposite direction from the rest of the civilized world. Invested in that carbon-sequestration company yet?

Quick Plug

This is a quick plug for my pal in Seattle, folk slinger Eb Boesel. Check him out, he's got some good stuff going on over there on the left coast...

H.O.P.E.

With thanks to my friend Ken Muse, I have to share this wonderful website, H.O.P.E. with you this morning. Thanks to Ashlee Simpson and her lip sync'ing fiasco, the nice folks down over at HOPE are allowing people to trae in their A.S. CD's at the Knitting Factory for real music.

Enjoy!

Iraq Coalition Casualties

Josh Marshall over at TPM had a link to this Iraq Coalition Casualties website this morning, and after looking at it, I put the link to the main page here.

Pretty detailed description of coalition casualties to date in Iraq. Rather disconcerting to see this month's total is on pace for the highest monthly amount so far. Obviously the Falujah offensive is the reason behind this spike, but still it's not pleasing. Yes, I understand in war people die, but again - what are we fighting for?

I'm trying to find anyone who has ever suggested that people in that part of the world don't want to be free...which the prez used in numerous stump speeches as part of his rationalization for why we fight.

Oh, and the French have developed the world's perfect medicine. I wonder if all those people who criticized the French for their stance on the war in Iraq will boycott it?

War Between Democracies / Over One Billion Prevented

Arafat's death this morning led to some interesting interviews this morning on Democracy Now. There was a comment on how this is a chance for the Palestinians to establish a real democracy, and how that would help, since Democracies don't make was on each other.

That thesis sounded fishy to me, so I did some hunting, and came up with this gem of a site: War Between Democracies, which includes the great piece:

"Although there is no undisputed case of two democracies at war, the evidence certainly casts doubt on the thesis. In fact, the thesis is not nearly as strong as the statement that no two countries with a McDonald's Restaurant have ever gone to war with one another, so why do you never hear distinguished international diplomats expound on the need to sell more beef patties in the world?
At first, this McDonald's factoid seems enormously trivial; however, when you stop and think about it, the McDonald's Peace Formula can be quite interesting. It seems to indicate that as countries are incorporated into the global economy by trans-national corporations, they stop waging war on one another (although it might be vice versa). Unfortunately, no one wants to go around saying that the best way to assure peace is to surrender your national economy to large heartless corporations. It makes a much better campaign slogan to say that democracy is the best path to peace. This is why we see so many people claiming that democracies never fight each other, and relatively few people outside of McDonald's Corporate Headquarters claiming the geopolitical virtues of burger bars. "

But, lest we pin our hopes of World Peace to the Big Mac:
"Unfortunately for world peace, the Big Mac Attack Rule finally broke down in 1999. On 24 March 1999, NATO began its air attack on Yugoslavia. Faced with angry nationalism, vandalism and boycotts, all the McDonalds in Yugoslavia shut their doors on 26 March. This means that for two full days, McDonaldland was wrenched asunder by its first intramural war ever. When McD finally reopened on 17 April, it was an occassion of public celebration almost matching the end of the Kosovo War itself."

Can someone please tell me why this is happening?

Can anyone really justify why this carnage is happening? (SFGATE.com)

Why did it need to happen? How are these images affecting you?

Anything like these images did?

How about this stuff here?

Feed the moon.

Digital Sharing...the right way?

Here's an article I found on the blog of Joe Taylor, a working indie musician's best friend. The article itself is here, basically defining a way for people to benefit from sharing files, not be punished for it.

If anyone has any experience with Weed, please let me know or comment on it. I'm considering releasing a few tracks from East into the mix, but I haven't heard much either way on it.

Deliver us from the downloaders

Please, stop the pirates! (Miami Herald)

This is a moral issue. I mean, really - how can we as a nation be safe and lead the world if people !gasp! get music for free. It's not like there are bands out there dying for people to hear their music, fighting to be heard. No, not at all. There's plenty of outlets and ways for bands to connect to new fans. And young and new bands are really concerned about making sure that their record labels recover all that money they spent on their acts.

And as musicians, we certainly want to make sure that people pay for their music. After all, it's a commodity, right? Right?

La Machine

Saturday night we went to see "The Machinist" in the City. I went primarily because I like Christian Bale in basically everything he's done, and I had heard that he lost an absurd amount of weight for this film.

You have no idea what thin is until you see this movie.

Bale is basically emaciated to the point of Adrian Brody in the Pianist. Now...i hate to say this, but I'm not sure I understand or agree with the artistic statement in this case. Brody's choice was clearly a personal one, with deep meaning on a topic that he took extremely seriously. Bale is starring in a horror movie...and although it's shot beautifully, is really "just a film". Being no film critic, I should probably shut up now. But I found it a little bit troubling that someone would suffer for their art, when the statement the art is making is not really that deep.

Yes, the movie is interesting, visually appealing, and sticks in your head for a few hours after you leave the theatre. But I don't know that I'll think about it in the same terms as I think of the Pianist.

One thing's for sure. Bale should pass around that diet he used. People would love to know how to lose that much weight.

Iowa

I've been thinking a lot about Iowa this last day or so. About how Iowa is the place where John Kerry basically became the democratic nominee, and then how he actually lost Iowa in the general election. I remember the whole Howard Dean fiasco, where the press "Linda McCartney-ed" his audio track from that last rally when he was fired up. Dean was my candidate, as I'm sure he was for anyone who's main issue was opposition to the war in Iraq. Well, except for DK's people.

Then again, Dick Gephart's vitriolic attacks on Dean were part of the reason Kerry was able to get ahead in Iowa. And the Republicans were scared of the Deaniacs, frightened of a true referendum on the war in Iraq. Given the way things have gone over the past 10 months, you can understand why.

So, Iowa. Next time, we're not going to buy what you're selling. I'll pick my nominee from New Hampshire, thanks very much.

"Just a one-finger victory salute"

HAHAHAHA!!!

Here some of your family values!

Nice, very classy.

Why is the British Press so much better?

Because they create stuff like this interactive US voting history map.

Thanks to TH for the link. Click on the "Past Elections" tab, press play.

All kinds of cool stuff.

Mandate yer A$$

To the jerk with the smirk: Yeah, right... you got political capital, pal. Look here, monkey brains.

You SQUEAKED by. Even better, look here:



The days of your doctrine of hate are numbered. Your support is growing old, our support is growing up.

What's the next move?

If you voted blue yesterday, you might be thinking about getting out of here (from Harpers.org). Sure, it might seem an alternative. If you think that the US is on verge of becoming 1930 Germany, and it can become anything close to being that bad, it would make sense to leave this place, go somewhere else. I imagine Americans might be able to apply for refugee status from a few places. Then again, maybe not for very long.

But consider this... we lost Tuesday by 11 to 18 electoral votes. And New York is pretty blue. So rather than moving abroad, we need to get about half-a-million New Yorkers to move to Ohio. Which is, for all intent and purposes, another country anyway.

Ach man...

Morning Giggle (Not A Dollarshort)

This new map of the US over at Not A Dollarshort pretty much sums up the way we in the blue states feel today, I'm guessing.

Bush's victory speech seemed better than his usual mastery of the English language, but for one passage that bothered me. "[...] make our public schools all that they can be..."

Um...suspiciously like the Army! Kind of like using "No Child Left Behind" as the name of a bill that allows the military unfettered access to student records? Kind of like the motto of the Army Rangers. Kind of see a pattern here?

They will take your children, and turn them into soldiers to fight for the oil. "With God on our side..."

Question: Who would Jesus bomb?

Is that so?

OK, so "4 more wars" it is. I'll miss freedom, and liberty, and privacy.

But at least things can't get any worse. Right?

Hmmm....

Not sure what to think of what's going on in Ohio now. Probably means "4 more wars", but we'll wait and see.

The Truth about the Wars

Last night on my way home I heard Jesse Ventura in an ad for this website: Operation Truth, which I checked out today. It's worth a look, if for nothing else that those of us who are not getting shot at every day can try to begin to understand what's going on. When we marched last February 15th in NYC, and Marlee got arrested, what we were doing seemed like it might make a difference, but in the end it was speed bump on Bush's rush to war.

Maybe this will help wake people up.

Trouble and Nervousness on the Right (The New York Times)

So a little nail biting going on in the BushCo camp. And well there should be. An incumbent president unable to pull more than 50% of the pre-vote polls?? This Times article shows the right giving all the usual excuses: High Anxiety..., liberal media bias, dirty tricks (pot, this is kettle?), etc.

Look, Bush had 4 years to convince more people than before that he deserves to be president again. He clearly didn't do it, even when handed two or three opportunities to unite the country and the world. With an agenda based on the idea that dismantling Democratic Party institutions is good for America, like it was in Texas, his side needs to wake up to the reality that the wool can't be stretched over everyone's eyes without starting to fray.

I hope you voted, and if you couldn't vote, well... call someone you know who can and remind them to vote. Let your employees leave early or come in late so they have time to vote. Teach your children that there's nothing more important than what happens tonight, not in your life to this point, and maybe never again. Hopefully never again will the country be so divided, walking on a razor-blade of public opinion and cultural war.

The Votemaster Unmasked

So today over at www.electoral-vote.com we found out who was the man behind the map. An American living abroad, Andrew Tanenbaum, CS Professor at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

If you've never been to the website, today's a good day to check it out. It's come down to the wire, and from all accounts, this election is going to be decided in a courtroom. Welcome to the world's model democracy!

Not sure if anyone out there listens to Air America Radio, but Howard Dean was on Morning Sedition, and made a comment that really struck. He said that what happened in 2000 will not happen again, but he wasn't referring to the hanging chad nonsense. He was referring to what happened after that nonsense. At the barricades.