Throw in the towel, Senator

It isn't her fanciful imagination about sniper fire, or any of the other piddling mistakes and misstatements she and her henchmen have made. It isn't her gender; in fact I'd prefer a female President. But it is her supporters, it is the large number of backhanded racial slurs that have emanated from her camp (although usually not directly), and whipping her potential supporters, but most of all the right wing, into an Anti-Obama frenzy. I think Obama is indeed pretty special. Do I think he walks on water like most of the Obamanites? Not so much. But he is the real deal.

In recent polls, John McCain taking on either Obama or Clinton gives them a serious ass-whuppin'. I am even sick of seeing Bill Clinton, a person I have *mostly* always admired. And even Chelsea was disgusting last night.

Give it up Hillary. The people may not have spoken with the deafening roar we'd hoped, but they have spoken. Do you want to be VP? Great. Otherwise, as they say, lead, follow, or get out of the way (preferably the latter). Sure you could hope for a great procedural dogfight at the convention, and maybe you could win the nomination. In the end, that will only leave us with a McCan presidency.

It's me and Barack from here on in. It's time. "Hurry up please, it's time."


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All This Is That Reheated: Woody Guthrie's transit and eclipse--"I been in the red all my life"

click Woody to enlarge

I have been listening to Woody Guthrie a lot lately, and thinking a lot about his monolithic influence on folk music, but especially on rock and roll. Along the same lines, I have been re-listening to the masterful Billy Bragg/Wilco collaborations on his music. Who would have ever thought a quirky Brit folkie and an alt country (and also quirky) American band would produce a fine tribute to Guthrie that also challenges the folk community? In any case, I wrote a long piece a couple of years ago about Woody, and I am reprinting it today...

I been in the red all my life

Woody Guthrie was a great man, and a great writer. Yeah, I didn't say great singer, but I like his singing. Any fool can get all Frenchified and rococo. It takes a genius to get simple. This genius fled Dust Bowl Oklahoma in the 30’s and became famous a few years later for his songs Dust Bowl Ballads. For most of the rest of his life he would be a roamer and a troubadour. He is one of the great American songwriters, right up there in the pantheon with Stephen Foster, Gershwin, Bob Dylan, Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer, Duke Ellington, Irving Berlin and others. He may be at the top of the rockpile. . .in my booklet, at least.

Woody Guthrie loved America as deeply as anyone ever has. He thrived on the people and the idiom. We remember him mainly for his songs, but he was also a wonderful writer. You may have heard his songs like So Long It’s Been Good To Know You, I Ain’t Got No Home In This World Anymore, Dust Can’t Kill Me, Union Maid, Reuben James, Planewreck At Los Gatos, and over a thousand more songs.

click to enlarge

He hit 46 of these United States, usually with just his guitar and a toothbrush. One of the songs inspired by a trip, This Land Is Your Land, should probably be the national anthem. Woody’s influence has been monolithic, although most of us have only experienced Woody absorbed and filtered through Bob Dylan, Ramblin' Jack Elliott, Phil Ochs, Allen Ginsberg, Joan Baez, or Wilco, among hundreds of others. His work has been passed down through cultural osmosis.

When the notorious House Unamerican Activities Committee (HUAC) began collecting names and driving the blacklisting, Woody was not afraid. He had nothing to hide, and the committee, like the dust, couldn’t kill him.

Some people considered The B.P.A. and the Grand Coulee Dam tributes to an "experiment in American socialism." These huge public works projects were "a revolutionary slap at the private enterprise system." Guthrie’s Columbia River songs reflect his optimism the dam would bring an increased standard of living to the people. One of Guthrie’s most famous songs, Pastures of Plenty, presents an idealist's vision of public irrigation and electrification:

I think of the dust and the days that are gone,
And the day that’s to come on a farm of our own;
One turn of the wheel and the waters will flow
‘Cross the green growing field, down the hot thirsty row.

Look down in the canyon and there you will see
The Grand Coulee shower her blessings on me;
The lights for the city for factory, and mill,
Green Pastures of Plenty from dry barren hills.

Woody was profoundly shocked by what happened to the poor Okies who left the Dust Bowl for California, by how they were killed, beaten and starved out by the State Police and farm owners. Something had gone very wrong with this great country. His song about Pretty Boy Floyd summed up his feelings:

Now as through this world I ramble
I’ve seen lots of funny men.
Some will rob you with a six-gun
And some with a fountain pen.
But as through this life you travel
And as through this life you roam,

You’ll never see an outlaw
Drive a family from its home.

Woody believed the Great Depression and dust bowl were caused by the Big Boss Man and King Coal. He wasn’t singing anymore about lost love; he was pointing fingers.

One night, on a radio show, he hit it on the head: "A policeman will just stand there and let a banker rob a farmer or a financier rob a working man. But if a farmer robs a banker, you would have a whole army of cops out shooting at him. Robbery is a chapter of etiquette.”

Woody Guthrie was a patriot, but he was no Democrat. As he said in that same radio broadcast: “I ain’t a communist necessarily, but I been in the red all my life.”

By 1947, Woody was working on his second marriage, to Marjorie. Between his travel and performances, he lived with her and his daughter Cathy Ann in Brooklyn. Woody nicknamed her Stackabones, and wrote his famous children’s songs for (and with) her:

Why can’t a dish break a hammer?
Why, or why, oh why?
Because a hammer’s
got a pretty hard head.
Goodbye goodbye goodbye.

Why can’t a bird
break an elephant?
Why, oh why, oh why?
Because an elephant’s got a
pretty hard skin.
Goodbye goodbye goodbye.

He published stories about Stackabones. Cathy Ann was very much like Woody, singing, rhyming, and always playing with words. One day her dress caught on fire and she was badly burned. She was singing when Woody got to the hospital, but she died that night.

Woody sat down and wrote: “And the things you fear most shall surely come upon you.” It seemed like everyone he ever loved was doomed to go up in flames. There were fires in his childhood. The brand new family house had burned down. His sister Nora died when her dress caught fire. Just she and her mother were at home. She was singing when Woody saw her in the hospital too. There were many rumors about her death. There were other fires. And there was his mother’s problem. After her daughter died, she became more and more nervous and remote until finally she spent all her days wandering through town like she was lost. No one knew what to do.

There was another fire. Woody’s mother was holding a kerosene lamp and when his father woke up, he was on fire.

When Woody came home the next day after a visit with relatives, a neighbor told him his father was in the hospital and his mother had been put in an insane asylum. In his wonderful book Bound For Glory, he compared his own restlessness and nervousness to his mother’s condition.

After the death of Stackabones, Woody lost his spark. He and Marjorie soon had other children (including Arlo), but he never took the same interest. He had become unpredictable. He still wrote hundreds of pages each week, and always had new songs in the works. But they weren’t like the old ones. He just couldn’t concentrate anymore.

A painting of Woody at the Columbia dam,
about which he wrote some of his greatest
songs

Marjorie forced him to move out when he attacked their son Arlo one day. Woody went into the hospital to cure himself of alcoholism, and a young doctor figured out his problem. He asked Woody questions about his parents and grandparents, and diagnosed him with Huntington’s Chorea, called chorea because of the violent dance-like movements of its victims (the root of the word choreography). Huntington’s Chorea is an inherited degenerative disease and a victim’s offspring stand a fifty-fifty chance of getting the disease. The course of the illness is long and savage.

The changes in Woody occurred so slowly that few of his friends really noticed. Almost everyone chalked it up to drink, or said “Well, that’s just Woody. That’s the way he walks and talks." Some people avoided him now. He slurred his words and staggered and was becoming less and less capable of working at all.


Bob Dylan's copy of Woody's Book
Bound For Glory

When Woody was trying to concentrate, he wrote his name everywhere. . .on walls, on people’s books, on pieces of paper. Woody Guthrie. Woody Guthrie. It was almost as if he was trying to convince himself he really DID exist.

One day he was lighting a fire and the gas can exploded. His arm could no longer hold a guitar very well.

Woody checked into the State Hospital in Queens, and with the exception of visits with friends on weekends, he lived there the rest of his life.

His son, the musician Arlo Guthrie talked about him to Rolling Stone magazine:

“I remember him coming home from the hospital and taking me out to the backyard, just him and me, and teaching me the last verses to This Land Is Your Land because he thinks if I don’t learn them no one will remember. He can barely strum a guitar now and—can you imagine?—his friends think he’s crazy or drunk and they stick him in a green room with all these crazy people…”

“All of a sudden everyone is singing his songs. Kids are singing This Land Is Your Land in school and people are talking about making it the national anthem. Bob Dylan and the others are copying him. And he can’t react to it. Here’s the guy who had all these words and now that he’s really big, he can’t say anything.”

Only Shakespeare could write something that terrible. Woodrow Wilson Guthrie died in 1967, in his fifties. Some experts believe the disease may have enhanced his rhyminess and wordplay, and acted as a creative spur like alcohol and drugs have worked on others.

As the cells died in his brain, it rewired itself, forcing new and wonderful pathways between the nerve synapses. This also led to the not-so-wonderful behavior his family and friends saw. Just like his mother. Starved from all that work, his nerves short-circuited.

Woody and the disease are so bound up together, it’s hard to know where it started and Woody began. No one really knows if the disease starts when you are 14, or in your later years. It cannot be cured. It cannot be predicted in advance. Research is ongoing now, mainly because of what happened to Woody.

Most importantly, of course, is not the disease, but his music and his books. When we sing his most famous song, we sing the first verses. The last verses he tried to teach Arlo are probably politically pink at best, and they were the ones Woody hoped would survive:

In the squares of the city by the shadow of the steeple,
Near the relief office I saw my people
And some were stumbling and some were wondering if
This land was made for you and me.

As I went rambling that dusty highway
I saw a sign that said Private Property
But on the other side it didn’t say nothing.
That side was made for you and me.

Some of the photographs and images of Woody are copyrighted and unlicensed. However, the individual who uploaded this work to Wikipedia, and first used it in an article, as well as subsequent persons who place it into articles, asserts that this use qualifies as fair use of the material under United States copyright law. All This Is That is using the photo under the Fair Use provisions of the copyright act as well, as those provisions apply to scholarly work.
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Originally posted in February, 2006

Saddam Hussein paid for my Congressman—Jim McDermott—to visit Iraq

Saddam Paid for Lawmakers' Iraq Trip -

That's my congressman on the right

Saddam Hussein's intelligence agency secretly footed the bill for a trip to Iraq for three congressmen during the run-up to the U.S.-led invasion, federal prosecutors said Wednesday. Jim McDermott of Washington, David Bonior of Michigan and Mike Thompson of California were not named in the indictment, but the trio did ineeed travel to Iraq in 2002.

An indictment unsealed in Detroit accuses Muthanna Al-Hanooti, a member of a Michigan nonprofit group, of arranging for three members of Congress to travel to Iraq in October 2002 at the behest of Saddam's regime.

Justice Department spokesman Dean Boyd said investigators "have no information whatsoever" any of them knew the trip was underwritten by Saddam. One investigator said McDermott was invited to go to Iraq by a Seattle church group and was unaware of any other funding for the trip. I mean even a pinko like McDermott would have turned down that funding!

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Alien Montage

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Hillary Clinton not only came under sniper fire, she returned it

An excellent video of the then First Lady...she not only encountered sniper fire in Bosnia, she returned it. Thanks to Jeff Clinton for finding this YouTube video...


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Four Thousand - 4,000 - MMMM dead and counting in Iraq "War"/Country Joe McDonald Performs Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die Rag (with lyrics)

Country Joe McDonald performs "Feel Like I'm Fixin' To Die Rag




I FEEL LIKE I'M FIXIN' TO DIE
by Country Joe McDonald

Yeah, come on all of you, big strong men,
Uncle Sam needs your help again.
He's got himself in a terrible jam
Way down yonder in Vietnam
So put down your books and pick up a gun,
We're gonna have a whole lotta fun.
And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
Well, come on generals, let's move fast;
Your big chance has come at last.
Gotta go out and get those reds —
The only good commie is the one who's dead
And you know that peace can only be won
When we've blown 'em all to kingdom come.
And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
Huh!
Well, come on Wall Street, don't move slow,
Why man, this is war au-go-go.
There's plenty good money to be made
By supplying the Army with the tools of the trade,
Just hope and pray that if they drop the bomb,
They drop it on the Viet Cong.
And it's one, two, three,
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam.
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
Well, come on mothers throughout the land,
Pack your boys off to Vietnam.
Come on fathers, don't hesitate,
Send 'em off before it's too late.
Be the first one on your block
To have your boy come home in a box.
And it's one, two, three
What are we fighting for ?
Don't ask me, I don't give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam.
And it's five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain't no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we're all gonna die.
---o0o---

President Bush discusses long term affair with plushie "Heather"

President Bush discusses long term affair with the plushie "Heather"

By Pablo Fanque, All This Is That national affairs editor

In a stunning admission to reporters Saturday following the White House Easter Egg Roll, President Bush discussed a long-term relationship with a plushie Bunny named Heather [1]. The President acknowledged that while he was a devout Christian, he considers his relationship with Heather to be something that "transcends the teachings of Jesus, and even the temporal plane in which my deep relationship with Laura flourishes. " The President went on to detail why he believes his relations with Heather do not breach his matrimonial bonds with Laura Bush.

Skeptical reporters asked for scriptural proofs, and inquired as to whether the First Lady knew of the relationship. One reporter, who was immediately escorted from the briefing room asked is this is "a three-way relationship?"

[1] What is a Plushophile, or Plushie, or Furry? A plushophile is someone who loves plushies. This can be for any reason and ranges anywhere from those who love to collect them to those who like to cuddle, sleep with or who become sexually involved with their plushies. Many, probably most, plushophiles are also furries. It is never safe to assume that particular plushophiles are sexually active with plushies, nor that they are inactive with people because of their plushophilia.
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Barack Obama's version of gutter politics/Senior adviser invoked Monica Lewinsky's blue dress

Only hours after Governor Richardson ripped into the Clinton campaign and James Carville, for practising gutter politics, one of Obama's advisors took it into the gutter just about as deep as you can go. Gordon Fischer a former director of the Iowa Democrats and an adviser on Indiana, wrote in his blog:

"When Joe McCarthy questioned others' patriotism, McCarthy actually believed, at least aparently (sic), the questions were genuine, and he did so in order to build up, not tear down, his own party, the GOP. Bill Clinton cannot possibly seriously believe Obama is not a patriot, and cannot possibly be said to be helping -- instead he is hurting -- his own party. B. Clinton should never be forgiven. Period. This is a stain on his legacy, much worse, much deeper, than the one on Monica's blue dress."

Uh, is this what Senator Obama meant when he promised to focus on policy differences instead of personal attacks? Those remarks have since been removed from the blog, and Obama's camp has gone to some trouble to distance themselves from both the remarks and the author of those remarks. . .acknowledging by implication that the Clinton camp has no control over James Carville either. Or did they just reverse positions and decide to fight fire with fire?

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Aviophobia: Pilot's gun discharges on US Airways flight

This little news item really hit home, since I just flew on U.S. Airways a week ago. From the WCNC (Charlotte) news:

Pilot's gun discharges on US Airways flight
by Diana Rugg

"A US Airways pilot’s gun accidentally discharged during a flight from Denver to Charlotte Saturday, according to as statement released by the airline. The statement said the discharge happened on Flight 1536, which left Denver at approximately 6:45am and arrived in Charlotte at approximately 11:51am.



"The Airbus A319 plane landed safely and none of the flight’s 124 passengers or five crew members was injured, according to the statement. It was a full flight. And airline spokeswoman said the plane has been taken out of service to make sure it is safe to return to flight.



A Transportation Safety Administration spokeswoman reached by WCNC Sunday said the pilot is part of TSA’s Federal Flight Deck Officer (FFDO) program, which trains pilots to carry guns on flights. Andrea McCauley said the gun discharged in the cockpit, but she could not release how the gun was being transported at the time. She did not release the pilot’s name, but said he was authorized to carry the weapon and was last requalified in the FFDO program last November.



A statement from TSA said the airplane was never in danger, and the TSA and the Federal Air Marshals Service are investigating the incident. WCNC reporter Diana Rugg is following up on this story. If you or someone you know were on that flight, please e-mail her at drugg@wcnc.com.

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Hymn No. 322: Up from the grave He arose

We used to sing this every Easter in the Baptist Church.

No. 322. Up from the Grave He Arose (Low in the Grave He Lay)
Text: Robert Lowry, 1826-1899 Music: Robert Lowry, 1826-1899




Up from the Grave He Arose

1. Low in the grave he lay, Jesus my Savior,
waiting the coming day, Jesus my Lord!



Refrain:
Up from the grave he arose;
with a mighty triumph o'er his foes;
he arose a victor from the dark domain,
and he lives forever, with his saints to reign.
He arose! He arose! Hallelujah! Christ arose!

2. Vainly they watch his bed, Jesus my Savior,
vainly they seal the dead, Jesus my Lord!



(Refrain)

3. Death cannot keep its prey, Jesus my Savior;
he tore the bars away, Jesus my Lord!



(Refrain)
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Bill Richardson's slap in the face/another rat slips off the sinking ship HMS Clinton

After their shameless open courting of their old pal and cabinet member, Bill Richardson; after the two Bills most publicly drank beer, ate ribs, and watched the Superbowl together last month, and after promising to not endorse Obama, the Governor of New Mexico endorsed Barak Obama for President Friday in Portland, Oregon.

"Your candidacy is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for our country, and you are a once-in-a-lifetime leader," said Richardson, the nation's only Hispanic governor, before a roaring crowd of 12,000 in Portland's Memorial Coliseum. "You will make every American proud to be an American."

Richardson broke the news to Clinton late Thursday. "We've had better conversations," he said.

In his speech, Richardson said "It is time for Democrats to stop fighting amongst ourselves and to prepare for the tough fight we have against John McCain," the Republican nominee. Or, in short, "get out of the race Hillary."

The Clinton camp, naturally, tried to brush off the endorsement, saying it was largely symbolic, and not likely to turn any votes around (well, if you don't count the superdelegates!). To find out what the Clintons are really thinking, perhaps it's best to look at their longtime loose cannon rolling around on the deck:

James Carville told the New York Times that Richardson, a former member of Bill Clinton's Cabinet, had committed "an act of betrayal." "Right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out [Jesus] for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic."

Now things are heating up. In response, Governor Richardson said this morning on a talk show:

"I'm not going to get in the gutter like that," Richardson said on "Fox News Sunday." "That's typical of many of the people around Senator Clinton. They think they have a sense of entitlement to the presidency."

"I am very loyal to the Clintons," said Richardson, but he said he wanted something beyond "Bush, Clinton, Bush, Clinton." "You know, what about the rest of us?" he asked.
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A novel by Stephen Clarke-Willson: Nano-plasm—a large nano-tech project goes astray

Stephen Clarke-Willson has written a novel titled Nano-Plasm" in which "a major nano-technology product roll-out goes horribly wrong." He has published a trade-paperback edition, which you can (and should!) buy at Lulu.com. They sell the paperback for $13.08. You can download it for $6.25. Or, you can read it free on the Nano-plasm blog, one chapter at a time. There is even a 'bot that will email you the new chapters when you've caught up. They're up to Chapter 18 right now. He's got it covered—put it on your electronic reading device or smart phone for half-price, read it on line free and get the rest emailed to you. If you're a greybeard, or just like books, you can actually just buy it!

I used to work with Dr. Clarke-Willson, and I remember when he started this novel on a business trip. He wrote the first chapter in the air, in transit, on a Palm Pilot. I read the first chapters years ago...he released a chunk of the novel early on, and then went back and finished it.

"But it was going to take more than a forensic expert to figure out how Smythe’s brain and eyes and a portion of his spinal column had been removed from his head intact, and placed two feet away on the floor."

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