Of all the colossal mistakes in U.S. political history, I'm pretty sure that when all is said and done this one will rank in the top ten--Donald Trump speaking of John McCain, July 2015:
"He's not a war hero. He was a war hero because he was captured. I like people who weren't captured."
You have to wonder if those words were echoing through John McCain's thoughts as he cast the decisive no vote on Skinny repeal ending Donald Trump's last best chance (for now) to destroy Obamacare.
It had to feel awfully sweet--I'm sure Sen. McCain didn't spend five years fighting for his life while being tortured at the Hanoi Hilton to have his character questioned by an orange clown whose idea of torture is his not being able to cheat at golf.
Won't make you as bat shit crazy as Donald Trump, though
Unconcerned with trivial inconveniences like the police in America gunning down African-Americans with impunity, or legal immigrants being deported simply because their skin is brown, our dunce of an Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, has set his sights on the folks who smoke marijuana, even going so far as to assert that "good people don't smoke marijuana."
Which got me to thinking--if I recall correctly, didn't President Obama smoke a little weed back in the day? And who, do you suppose, will history recall as being good--the guy who saved our economy from the brink of ruin or the guy that Coretta Scott King called out for being a racist bastard? The guy who gave over twenty million Americans health insurance or the guy who helped to collude with a foreign government to sway an American election and then lied to Congress about it?
In the end, though, these are the kind of bullshit platitudes you get when you have a monkey turd for an Attorney General of the United States.
Apparently angered by the fact that radical right wingers finally elected their perfect candidate and he turned out to be an incompetent idiot just like we Liberals have always predicted he would be, political "commentator" Alex Jones (among others) is telling his followers that we Leftists want Civil War because we think that children with leukemia should have healthcare and believe our President shouldn't be a pathological liar. As such, he's inciting his followers to be prepared to kill a bunch of Liberals, and warning us Liberals that the fringe right-wingers are "killing machines"--all the while assuming (and please do not take this as a call to arms for the left) that once they start shooting us we'll line up like ducks in a carnival game and never once think to shoot back.
Too bad there's no one on the right to warn these bozos that lunacy and stupidity are a lethal combination--but not to rich folks like Alex Jones, who more than likely will be watching from the comfort of his heavily guarded fortress.
"Oh, I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused..."
And with that opening line--the entire song was written on a three hour train ride to visit his Mom when he was twenty-two--one of rock's great singer/songwriters showed early on that he was going to be a force to be reckoned with.
While looking over the career resume of Elvis Costello...it really makes you wonder just what the fuck it is you've done with your life, and how on earth can you be fifteen episodes behind on Designated Survivor? His first three albums (My Aim Is True--#168, This Year's Model--#98, andArmed Forces--#482) are all on Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" (not sure any other artist can say the same--Springsteen maybe? Zeppelin?). Over the course of the last forty years he has released 24 studio albums and 7 collaborative albums (including a country album, a classical album, and a jazz album). starred in an opera written by Attractions' guitarist Steve Nieve, produced numerous albums (including one of rock's great unheralded albums, Eastside Storyby Squeeze), penned several pieces on his music fandom, starred in a TV show (a sort of Inside the Actor's Studio for musicians) and found time to spend on charitable causes and bashing Bedtime for Bonzo's equally clueless bedmate, Margaret Thatcher. Which doesn't even include selection into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, a Grammy Award, collaborations with Burt Bachrach and Paul McCartney, and the numerous tours in support of the numerous albums he's released. Oh, and for good measure, he's married to jazz chanteuse Diana Krall.
Fun Fact: Alas, Elvis Costello was not his given name--he was born Declan Patrick McManus, a name which is not quite as high on the Coolness Quotient as Elvis Costello...
Released in 1977 on his debut album, the aforementioned My Aim Is True, "(The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes" was never released as a single (should have been!) but was one of numerous songs on his first LP that all the cool kids loved. There seems to be some disagreement among fans as to the song's meaning, with a lot of folks thinking it has something to do with suicide, but I find the song too cynically joyous to be about suicide. Personally, I thought the song was about a guy who had gotten his heart broken by a less than faithful lover and was now in the recovery phase wherein one realizes that life will go on without her and joy and happiness and laughter are now re-entering said life. Hence, the angels wanting to wear his red shoes--red shoes are made for dancing (and walking to Oz) and surely angels must love dancing as much as the rest of us (though they're presumably better at it, being angels and all). Anyway, the song has the early Elvis Costello "Can you believe this shit?' vocals, some magical guitar work, great lyrics, a catchy as all hell melody, and some backing vocal back and forth ("Oh, I know that she's disgusted [oh why's that?]") which one guesses Joe Jackson borrowed for his wonderful hit, "Is She Really Going Out With Him?" The song closes with Costello singing "Red shoes, the angels wanna wear my red shoes" over and over (emaycee fave--oft repeated lyrics), and if this one doesn't put a smile on your face every time you hear it...well, we have very different tastes in great music....
Lyric Sheet: "Oh I said 'I'm so happy I could die'/She said, 'Drop dead,' then left with another guy..."
You're the one with the headache--the "free" market is the ball and chain
One of the reasons Trumpcare has failed thus far, is that radical right-wingers like Rand Paul don't believe it goes far enough in screwing over your average American. Paul wants to turn it all over to the marketplace (Exact quote: "You have to believe that leaving people alone, that the marketplace will bring prices down." Seriously? Who the fuck believes that other than rich folks?) and let it decide what prices to charge folks like us who aren't millionaires.
And while this piece from Think Progress does an excellent job of debunking Paul's bullshit, it doesn't make the simple argument: the marketplace doesn't care if you live or die, but the government (at least when it's run by Democrats) does. Frankly, if the poor, the working class, and the middle class want affordable healthcare that will actually protect them when they're sick, the government must be involved.
Otherwise, you can guarantee that business will start booming for funeral homes--which, come to think of it, may be the republican plan after all.
Never underestimate the GOP's ability to fuck the little man
In recent days, two noted conservative pundits, Charles Krauthammer (at one time he was what passes for the voice of reason in GOP bizarroworld) and Mona Charen (makes Ann Coulter look like one of Limbaugh's feminazis) have both begun to question (Krauthammer here and Charen here) whether Donald Trump has gone beyond what is acceptable with regard to Russian collusion in light of Trump Jr.'s monumentally bad week.
I don't buy it for a minute.
The republican elite hates Donald Trump because he isn't and hasn't ever been one of them, and their fervent hope all along has been that he fucks up beyond repair so they can place their puppet, Mike Pence, on the throne, knowing full well that Trump's supporters aren't about to throw their support to Democrats as some sort of retribution. After the dog and pony show that is the Trump administration, Pence will be the calm before their storm and allow the GOP to ram through the agenda their wealthy backers are paying for.
This is just a game to them--and as long as they can put more money in people like the Koch brothers pockets and fuck over the rest of us economically, they'll consider it a win.
Hard as it may be to believe nearly forty years down the road, but when the Cars released their first album in 1978 they were right up there with a slew of bands from the mid to late 70's such as Elvis Costello, The Clash, The Sex Pistols, The Ramones, The Police, Talking Heads, and Dire Straits as far as bands that all the cool kids (or music dorks) were listening to and music critics were fawning over. Alas, unlike the the other performers who shared their time frame (with the exception of Dire Straits who pretty much followed a similar career path as the Cars), the Cars stopped pushing the envelope musically after their first LP and headed straight into massive mainstream success and rested upon the laurels of their debut album.
But, oh, what laurels to rest upon....
Formed circa 1976 in Boston Massachusetts, the Cars exploded onto the music scene in 1978 on the heels of their aptly entitled debut, The Cars, which would go on to sell six million copies and remain on the Billboard 200 for 139 weeks (and rank at #284 on Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" list), Over the course of the next ten years the Cars would release five more albums, garner a couple of Grammy nominations, win the first ever Video of the Year at the MTV Video Music Awards in 1984 (Zzzzz....), sell millions more records, and call it quits in 1988. Twenty-two years later they reformed and released the obligatory reunion album replete with the obligatory reunion tour (sadly, co-founder--along with Ric Ocasek--Benjamin Orr had passed away in 2000 from pancreatic cancer), and they remain together to the present day, still touring and still hoping for that call from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that so many of their contemporaries noted above (except Dire Straits) have already received.
Fun (and slightly sad) Fact: Nirvana performed a cover version of "My Best Friend's Girl" at their final concert in 1994.
Opening with a funkily tuned guitar that until I did my weekly half-assed research I had always assumed was a bass guitar line, and mixing in some hand claps shortly thereafter, "My Best Friend's Girl" can best be described as quirky fun--without being a novelty song. The rather strange subject matter (a man salaciously describing his best friend's girlfriend...who it just so happens, used to be his girlfriend), Ric Ocasek's matter of fact vocals, and, of all things, some rockabilly guitar licks surrounded by synth pop technology made for a song (as with others on their debut album) that wasn't quite like anything I'd ever heard before in 1978, and made for months of delicious fun singing along with the band's backing vocalists as they harmonized "my best friend's girlfriend" again and again in support of Ocasek's oddball lyrics and lovestruck vocals. Alas, the song would only reach #35 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100, but would go to #3 in the U.K. (why are there so many cool kids in the British Isles?). Still, it's a delightful blast from my past, and has not diminished in my eyes one iota in the last forty years, and is just as joyous and catchy as the first time I heard it.
Lyric Sheet: "You're always dancing down the street/With your suede blue eyes..."
You know, there's some delicious irony in the fact that 72 years after America led the way in defeating a psychopathic German despot and hence the President of the United States became the de facto leader of the free world, that a German Chancellor has become the de facto leader of the free world as she tries to help save us all from a psychopathic American President.
And for the umpteenth time in the history of humankind, truth proves stranger than fiction.
Trying to pick my favorite R.E.M. song was a bit like trying to pick my favorite dessert--far too many sweet, sweet choices. In the end, I chose "Imitation of Life" because of how much it surprised me. R.E.M. had pretty much reached the point of still being a very serviceable band, just not a band that I was still highly anticipating any release they had (and not that performers don't surprise later in their careers--Springsteen, Neil Young, and Lou Reed all had stellar releases at various points deep into their latter years). And still does for that matter--whenever I'm listening to my R.E.M. playlist I find "Imitation of Life" to be one of the songs I most look forward to hearing.
Formed in Athens, Georgia in 1980, R.E.M. started as a critic's darling without a lot of sales and ended in 2011 as one of the greatest bands of all time with a shitload of sales. They are often credited with being one of the biggest guiding forces of the alternative rock scene, and their influence on so many of the bands that came out of the 1990's alternative explosion (Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and a host of others) was seismic. Along the way they released 16 studio albums, sold over 85 million records, had epic world tours, won 3 Grammy Awards, and were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility. And yet, as one comment I read while I was doing my half-assed research for this week's tune noted, they were one of the few bands to become popular and still remain cool.
Released in 2001 on their RevealLP, "Imitation of Life" met with very little commercial success (par for the course for R.E.M. after the mid-nineties) only reaching #83 on the Billboard Hot 100 (and probably not with much of a bullet). It did, however, become R.E.M.'s first #1 single in Japan, so at least there's that.
If there's any one word I could use to describe "Imitation of Life" it would be joyous, though I don't think the song is meant to be so. Throughout the course of its career, R.E.M. often could turn songs of a sad nature into upbeat pop songs ("Fall on Me," "Man on the Moon," "Don't Go Back to Rockville"), and "Imitation of Life" is another such single. Led by Michael Stipe's compassionate vocals and veiled lyrics, it seems to me a song about courage in the face of sorrow and one's daily strife, about enjoying the moment, though it could mean fuck all for all I know, as Stipe is known for a) obscure meanings, and b) never discussing his obscure meanings. But I like the imagery, from freezing rain to hurricanes, from sugarcane to cinnamon, and Peter Buck's usual steadfast guitar work, all of which come together to form the umpteenth pop gem featured here on Friday Night Jukebox, of which I'm certain there'll be more than a few still coming.
Enjoy (and note that in the video Michael Stipe gives ample evidence that being a good dancer is not a requisite for being a frontman for a great band...):
Poor's always been gettin' fucked over by the rich...
Of the myriad of things the Democratic Party needs to do better, one is countering the idea oft repeated by republicans and the media (who should really know better) that somehow Social Security and Medicare are "entitlements."
Nothing could be further from the truth.
Every job you have ever had--from flipping burgers at McDonald's, to selling jeans to the cool kids at The Gap, to Assistant Manager of Sweat Socks at Foot Locker, to Klothing Account Rep at Kmart, to junior partner at Doodad, Doohickey, and Doowop, to U.S. Senator from the great state of Michigan--you have paid a percentage (6.2% of gross wages for Social Security, 1.45% for Medicare) of every penny you have ever made into Social Security and Medicare (also known as the Federal Insurance Contributions Act or FICA). Neither of which you can partake of until you're in your sixties.
So how exactly is paying into two systems for better than forty fucking years so you can retire and have healthcare late in life make them entitlements?
They are called entitlements because a) the companies you work for over the course of your career have to match the percentage you pay and aren't happy enough that their cost cutting has you doing the work of three people for the pay of one, but would also like you starve in your old age and die quickly because you don't have healthcare, so they can make their already rich shareholders even richer, b) rich people don't need them, and don't want to pay into them so they can have even more money in their Cayman Islands' accounts, and would also like you to starve in your old age and die quickly because you don't have healthcare, and c) Wall Street and big banks would much prefer that you invest in the stock market for your retirement plans so they can steal even more of your money than they already have.
In the end, they're called entitlements because the economic powers that be want to fuck you coming and fuck you going.
Regular readers (both of you) will have noticed that this blog is, and always will be, ad free--because it's not about money, it's about people (well that and the fact that no money making enterprise cares about it either). But every now and again a business will do something surprising and worth noting...like this ad from Ancestry.com showing just how far we have come in our diverseness in the 241 years we've been fighting for the American dream:
With a little help from one of America's greatest poets, Langston Hughes, one of America's greatest actresses, Alfre Woodard, and the fighting the good fight folks at MoveOn, a beautiful reminder that the Resistance has been going on for quite some time (the poem is here for those of you like me who can comprehend it better by reading it rather than listening to it):
And with those four words a legendary rock and roll band was born
It's hard to overestimate the legacy of the Ramones--despite their lack of commercial success (their highest charting album hit #49, their highest charting single hit #66--both, one presumes, with a bullet!) their influence on the punk movement and later the alternative scene (much like their non-selling kin The Velvet Underground) was astounding. Formed in Queens, New York in 1974, the Ramones would spend the next 22 years making fourteen albums and touring over two hundred days a year. They were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2002, were listed as #26 on Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Artists of All Time," and in 2011 received a Lifetime Achievement award from the Grammy's. Sadly, much of this glory was missed by the original band members, as three of the four (Joey in 2001, Dee Dee in 2002, and Johnny in 2004) had passed away less than eight years after their dissolution, and the last original Ramone (Tommy) died in 2014.
Fun Fact: There have been 48 (yes, 48) full-length tribute albums devoted to the Ramones. Not bad for four middle class kids from Queens....
Released on their oh so cleverly named debut album (which was certified gold--500,000 copies sold--thirty eight years later in 2014), The Ramones, in 1976. "Blitzkrieg Bop" was the world's vinyl introduction to the Ramones. I'm not sure there's ever been another band whose first song on their first album transformed a generation of musicians the way "Blitzkrieg Bop" did--when you listen to the guitars it's not hard to guess where the Sex Pistols, the Clash, and Green Day (among a multitude of others) borrowed their guitar sounds from. In keeping with the Ramones disdain for long songs (their songs are generally three minutes or less in length), "Blitzkrieg Bop" is two minutes and nineteen seconds of pure adrenaline with Joey's shout singing vocals, Johnny's blistering guitar, and Tommy's no holds barred drumming. Even at the age of fifty-eight, it's hard when listening to it to not jump around the house with arms and legs thrashing. It's power pop at its finest...and as it often went in the Ramones' career, the song never even made the damn charts.
And it's a reminder that all too often, greatness is only seen in retrospect (Hello, Hillary Clinton!).
The average American gets paid just enough so he doesn't quit his job, and works just hard enough so he doesn't get fired.
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross." Source unknown
Uncle emaycee Wants You For the Coming Class War! Enlist today....
Capitalism: Give a man a fish, feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you can exploit his labor, become filthy rich, and keep the poor bastard living paycheck to paycheck for the rest of his life.
