And now we talk about last night’s Republican Debate in Orange, County, Florida, on FOX news sponsored by Google. They introduced all nine candidates at the beginning. Gary Johnson was the newby and he had the least to say and is the only candidate who did not “hold his own”. Kane again spoke of his 9 9 9 plan. As you know if his tax measures are put into place it will be the end of the line for this economy. The last thing poor people need is to pay an additional 9% sales tax on everything they buy. Although that wouldn’t be as bad as 23%. That idea really gets the tea bagger’s motor running. Santaurum made a number of abrasive statements. He said that having gays in the military was a government imposed “social experiment” and that gay’s shouldn’t have special rights to have sex that hetrosexuals don’t. The last time I checked ANY improper sexual conduct by either gay or straight would bring about disciplinary action. Santaurum also wants to escalate the war in Afghanistan, to “turn the generals loose and let them fight the war properly without all the administration restraints”. I believe it was also he who said that withdrawal in Iraq was wrong and we should stay there a few more years in case a crisis develops. But what would Santaurum have the President do that isn’t already being done. We’re working on the best intelligence and battle tacticts, and we’ve been bombing those people back to the stone age with our unmanned drones. And of course the gay veteran who asked the question about how he was treated by the military was Boo’d. I just don’t think it’s patriotic to boo any veteran who has served his country proudly. As I said higher up, my impression was that Mitt Romney won this debate, and I was glad to see my opinion echoed by radio commentators today. Romney handled every question quite adeptly. He put Perry in his place. And Perry wasn’t very smart because every time you mention another candidate’s name, they are given a chance to respond by the host. Rick Perry stumbled badly on several issues. He was confusing on his stance on state medicare. Personally I don’t think medicare in any form is what the American people want now. Maybe in a couple decades but not today. But Perry is going to lose the nomination over this whole illegal immigrant thing and those students getting reduced college admission fees over residents of this country. Tea baggers don’t like that. Also there is the whole papaloma virus vaccine thing still hanging over his head. Michelle Bachman retrenched her words last night saying she never personally said that the drug led to mental retardation. Judy still believes it. When asked how much of our pay check we should be allowed to keep, Michelle Bachman said “All of It”. I guess that scores a Ten on the tally of right answers. Many of the candidates such as Romney criticized sharply Obama’s refusal to be clearer in his stance on whether to admit the Palistinians as a UN state. I think this is a strategic error on the president’s part. Education was criticized extensively- - and many want the department of education eliminated. I found myself much in sympathy with many things that were said on this issue. When Kane was asked which government department he would eliminate were he President he said “The E P A”. Kane wants to do away with all environmental regulation, and mocked the regulation of “dust”. Well it was asbestos “dust” that killed Thom Hartman’s father. There are a lot of sick people now who wish the EPA had been stricter. Kane also said he would not be alive today if he were left to the machinations of “Obama Care”. Yes anyone who survives cancer deserves commendation for perseverance. But I fear it’s far more a function of Income level rather than government regulations. Of course there were the usual charges that Obama is a socialist. Would a socialist mandate insurance from a private capitalist company that’s only out to make money? Some say that the Obama jobs plan is bad and won’t work because “It’s only jobs created with other people’s money”. Of course to my way of thinking it’s sheer insanity- - - if it’s true that we spend a dollar forty for every dollar we take in, then it would absolutely insane to cut taxes like they all want to do to “turn the businessman loose and get the economy going”. We’ve done it their way for the past ten years and it hasn’t worked. Some say the Obama stimulus didn’t work. But it did. And I would like to close on this thought. Just think what would happen if a Rick Perry were elected President. Social Security would be done away with. By the way this is another thing Romney nailed him on in the debate. Perry had said “The creation of social security to begin with was a terrible mistake”. Well if Perry gets elected President this economy is going to crash and crash big, making what we’ve seen already as just a walk in the park. And when that economy crashes this time the banks are falling with it and the rich, too will suffer. And they won’t like that. And they will resent the tea party, and suddenly “socialists” like John Boehner and Barock Obama won’t seem all that bad afterall.
Remember when Judy said that the media would somehow rig it so that President Obama would be elected next year no matter who his opponent was? Well, Congressman Joe Walsh has said pretty much the same thing. He said that the media would “Protect Obama from all critical scrutiny because he is the first Black president”. I can’t disagree with this statement more strongly. The media has come down hard on this President like a ton of bricks. The media regards people like Rick Perry and Michelle Bachman as his equals. There is no attempt made whatsoever to wade through the lies in the bucket of bullshit that’s been dumped on this President, way worse than they ever did with Bill Clinton. Of course Bill Clinton had a successful presidency. It’s really hard to argue anything like that for our current President. Now they are saying that if you’re a fellow democrat and criticize this President, you must be some kind of a closet racist also. This statement is equally absurd considering that the chief critics of Obama policies are in the Black congressional caucus. Jeroldine Ferarro said that is Barock Obama weren’t Black he never would be running for President. Let me make this abundantly clearly right now. Obama’s failings, real or perceived, have absolutely nothing to do with his being Black. But the term “Liberal media” is still accepted as fact among the far right, even though it hasn’t been true in some thirty years. It’s just another obstacle this President is going to have to overcome. It’s the new, updated 21st Century racism.
This next story involved the Police. I’ve been hearing how cops don’t like citizen by-standers video taping arrests that are made. Well here is a case where you’re in public and there is no presumption of privacy. Also the police are performing a public, official act and therefore should be “on the record” in everything they do. After the machination of those Georgia cops in the last posting I see why the police would want to keep certain things secret. But now they want to pass a law making it a crime to blink your headlights to warn oncoming drivers of a police speed trap. The cops say doing this will “endanger the public safety”. I hardly see how. If you are tipping off drivers than they will be driving more carefully and the roads will be safer, right? Isn’t that what everybody wants? But of course the police cite it as a raising revenue problem and therefore preventing the bagging of drivers interfears with there “revenue gathering” operations. Of course truckers have been alerting drivers on their citizen’s band radios for a long time warning of “smokey bear” around the corner. Also months ago on one scarey thing they said that it’s actually counted as a crime to put coins in other peoples’ expired parking meters. This is absurd on its face. Surely if you went into the store and found the driver and told him his meter had run out and he went out and put more coins in, this would not be a crime. How is being a Good Sameritan doing the same act a crime? But now there is a yet more cinister motive other than revenue raising we need to be concerned about. As you know search and ceisure laws being what they are the cops are looking for any form of “probable cause” in order to pull a vehicle over and case the car for narcotics or whatever, which they would have no justification for doing otherwise. And you Arizona people needn’t be reminded about the illegal immigrant problem. It would seem these days Law Enforcement wants to be “In Your Face” any way they can.
First of all I want to announce that we have enough material for another posting and that will be later today. I want to talk about rock guitar players. And I’m going to keep the E T I stuff to an absolute minimum. It was Ron Rhodes who told me back in the ‘eighties that the best guitar players weren’t the fastest because it didn’t take any talent to play fast. I still tend to disagree with that. I brought up Ted Nugent for example. He’s fast but he also radiates a tremendous amount of energy and feeling. In fact along with Jimmy Pate he’s one of the top two rock guitarists of all time. I haven’t quite decided on who the other three are. There are a couple of cases where I would agree with Ron. For instance the Deep Purple guitar player is the weakest link in the band. Everyone else in the band is better than he. Also I am not a tremendous Randy Rhodes fan. I actually prefer Tony Ioni’s playing in Black Sabbath a lot better. He’s a very effective guitar player and knows how to ‘say a lot with a lot fewer notes”. He’s also a guy who performs below his ability, and you see glimpses of his true ability now and then. Which brings us to Jethro Tull’s first guitar player - - Abrams. If you’ve heard the guitar and drum work out on “Cat’s Squerel” on their first album- - you note that Black Sabbath pretty much kited that whole routing in “Warning” on their first album. But Tony Ioni used to be in Jethro Tull for a brief time so perhaps Tony was just “stealing it back”. Abrams – J T’s first guitar player I like immensely more than Martin Barr. I think that’s the guy’s name who was their guitar player from “Benefit” onward. Barr’s playing is just lifeless in comparison and just doesn’t have that “anointing”. Abrams had a natural instinct as to just which notes to play to make a song sound good. You can’t buy that kind of instinct. You have to be born with it. Other guitar players of note that attract my attention are Angus Young of AC DC and also that Jordan Kakonan (?) guy from Jefferson Airplane, who undoubtedly has a unique style. Robbie Krieger of the Doors is quite good but I don’t know if I’d put him in the elite. Jimi Hendrix showed brilliance obviously even back with the two Phoenix 10 record albums with Lonnie Youngblood. Both of those albums are well worth your while to buy. One of the other three might be whoever played the lead guitar part on “Free Bird”. That workout has to be physically exhausting. We go back to Ted Nugent and it’s partly his cosmic credentials that got noted by Burt Lombard and Mal Evans. You have to separate Ted Nugent the guitarist from Ted Nugent the right wing nut. Eddy Van Halen is good, of course. The worst thing he ever did was the part on “Beat It” which is terribly unmelodic. Robin Trower deserves a tip of the hat. (Richi Velenz is a big fan of his) And now we come to Brian Jones. You know how in dating relationships where you’re being dumped and one party says to the other “If isn’t you; it’s me” when what they really mean is “It isn’t me; it’s you”? Well, in Brian Jones’ case it truly is a case of “If wasn’t you; it’s me”. I just projected a lot of stuff on to him that wasn’t there. While I admire his blues playing on the first four Stones albums, and from December’s Children on he was cut back and on Aftermath he was cut back to almost nothing. I think he played more on "Between the Buttons". Obviously Jones was an intelligent "renascence man". But I began reading books on Brian Jones’ relation with the Stones about the time Watergate was breaking and there was all this stuff about purges going on in the Nixon administration to kick all the liberals or anyone with a brain out of the administration. Mr. Buchannon told our class "After the election you'rs going to see a whole lot more of the "old Nixon" alluding to the Joe Mc Carthy days. And I saw Brian Jones as another victim, whose creativity couldn’t be tolerated by the other members of the band. I now see that this was an almost completely false impression. Brian represented everything I wasn’t He was blond haired, blue eyes, talented, charismatic. And I also inferred that since Brian stopped playing almost entirely after “Satanic Majesty’s Request” that somehow there was some psychedelic purge going on in the group and Brian’s services were no longer needed. Again this was a false impression. I guess I was looking for something utterly “brilliant” about the guy that in the end, just wasn’t there. I still have a natural curiosity as to where he ended up in the afterlife. Perhaps his most stellar role of all time was his guitar playing in “Paint It Black”. And of course in the early days he was a mover in the group but something happened along the way that had to be some lack in his character and personality.
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