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Wednesday, September 28, 2005
 
a Taxing Situation

A singular tax, its destruction, a jewel for the new republican crown AlterNet: An Embarrassment of Riches. The estate tax repeal has been put on hold AlterNet: Case Against Inheritance Tax Is Bogus, however temporarily by the twin hurricanes. My father used to have the opinion that in a world of taxes he would sweep away; starting with the income tax, the estate tax is one he'd keep. Mind now this was a long time ago before the Reagan revolution, the contract on America, and the steady beat of gilded era "truths". Nothing that happened in the 20th century really makes these people happy. Or really much of the 19th for that matter. They have their periods and their sticking to them. I have my opinions on this, that stem from those days; the death valley days of the late progressive era. Repeal of the estate tax is inconsistent with democracy. Antagonistic to it, even. The thin reality skinning the grand illusion of class mobility in this society is the minute churn made possible by the non-invinceibilty of the elite. It is possible to fall out of it, to be nudged out. There are gaps. It is possible to make money that does not owe its production to preexisting means. A pinnacle upper class able to completely protect and transfer its wealth essentially has escaped democracy. It insulates itself and alters the rules of society to gather to itself ownership of all possible production. Suppresses what it cannot own. It is a fantasist's notion to suppose the nation's owners would be content exist obligingly alongside the world of ordinary people. As the gulf between the classes widens the remaining power political institutions increasingly becomes a threat. Finally it will become necessary to take the rule of the people away.

I've heard it said by Wall Street Journal editorialists that Russia's recent repeal of it's estate tax validates our following suit. Russia's autocratic state is increasing becoming a favorably exercised example for American conservatives. Another gambit is to point to nations with significantly lower Gini indexes, phasing out estate taxes. For very different reasons neither of these examples is remotely relevant.

Tax cuts are a political platform. We can imagine a simple taxonomy of terms in combination which might include (1) tax + spend (2) tax + tax (3) spend + tax (4) spend + spend. There is an implied cause and effect, some of these equal balance and some equal debt. Some among the conservatives celebrate the concept they refer to as starving the beast. killing bad big government by systematically attacking its ability to raise revenue. As important as the concept of starving the government to death I believe that the need to trot out a tax cut with every election cycle calls just as loud. Not even the monumental cost of repairing the damage done by Katrina FT.com / World / US - Katrina clean-up will hit Bush agenda, says Snow can interrupt the process established.

I've always had a special contempt for governments that couldn't handle natural disasters. Countries that boast gated communities of millionaires, just uphill from a low plain of shantytowns. Regimes that can't help their people because thats not how they ever saw government as being. As protectors - leaders. They had nothing in place that could even begin to accomplish this. They never saw beyond their own preferred mix of wealth extraction and collection. Their own blend of incompetency & ideology. The dismantling of FEMA hollowing it, clearing it out of professional staff to make way for nests of political spiders. This is the result of canvassing the despots of the third world for ideas.

Even now what we get from our own regime, Three thin ideological initiatives The Wave of the Future: From Tragedy to Far-Reaching Policy, in Less Than a Month - Center for Media and Democracy. The 'Katrina' wage Cut (suspension of the Davis-Bacon Act) an initiative that allows less than minimum wage be paid to workers in the gulf states On Josh Marshall's sites TPM and TPM cafe, some have tossed around a counter proposal to have those in congress who support this have their own wages cut (if possible to below minimum) -- seems only fair, but I'm not holding my breath.

There is also a House Republican Study Committee (RSC) who have tasked themselves with providing free-market solutions in response to Hurricane Katrina, high gas prices and other difficulties. As well there is operation save-the-presidents-tax cut; officially known as 'Operation Offset' a revisiting of the budget plan in in the wake of the gulf states rebuilding programs. I have some questions as to what they intend here. Are they volunteering to give back their own pork -- which would be something? Are they volunteering each others pork -- still commendable? Or are they handing over new deal and great society programs for slaughter while leaving they're on ox un-gored? Dana Milbanks has written a piece for the Post Deep Pockets, Small Government and the Man in the Middle illuminating the minor differences even within the GOP on these questions.

Naomi Kline has written a couple of articles for the Nation Purging the Poor (heard of on Amy Goodman's Democracy Now). And has coined the phrase disaster capitalism The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. She notes the parallels in approach and in corporation of those who would rebuild (for a small fee) New Orleans and contiguous devastated areas, with the Iraq reconstruction period of two years ago under the aegis of the Provisional Authority government

There has been a lot made of the efficiency of the military and the market vs the inefficiency of government. This has led to talk in jest of course of dialing back the Posse comitatus act [legislation put in place toward the end of post civil war reconstruction that placed a bright line between the military and civilian affairs inside US territory. Similar suggestions would replace FEMA with Walmart Wall Street shouldn't trump the government in emergency response | csmonitor.com. These are good jokes, Beau Gestes. They miss the larger question. The US military is after all part of the US government why can't other government agencies be encouraged to attain the effectiveness of the military With its esprit de corps, can-do attitude. Its cold clear lines of authority. Why are the institutions of democratic government forever asked to heap ashes upon themselves, give way to others and remove themselves from existence? Purse strings of a people must be tied and untied by someone, that someone calls the shots.


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Sunday, September 25, 2005
 
A good man is hard to find

I'm recycling the title of a Flannery O'Conner short story for a weblog post. I think this may be illegal in some states. I can always claim I'm a yankee and don't know any better. Thats yankee as a mason-dixon boundary issue. Nothing to do with those pin-striped yahoo's from Queens. I'm from the Bay State.

Having somewhat recently (and only recently) flipped the switch on this buggy that gives me email notification when someone posts a comment on Atomized Jr. here. I did see that someone put up a comment on a post from 13 December 2003. It was from a Steve Myers who wrote to say that he had been Mark Edmunds best friend in High School back in North Canton Ohio. I had been writing a set of stories about Mark, who I knew in the Navy right after Steve knew him. I have a few more stories involving Mark and those times roughly sketched out, which I will have to finish and share. Mark was one of a kind, I can not only say something like "I've never known anyone like him since." I can add to that - I never at any point expected to. And I've known Lithuanians, and Peru-French-Canadians. Any thought that this Steve Myers might be jerking my chain on knowing Mark are dispelled by lines like "spent many late nights in drunken philosophical discussion about what is important. Bastard would pass out and snore like the sailor he was to become." Hey he does know Edmunds I thought. I haven't heard from Mark in twenty years, but it would be about time.


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Sunday, September 18, 2005
 
Roberts, John... No file found.

I tried through the second half of last week and over the weekend to come up with a few words, on the outcome of a weeks worth of Senate conformation hearings for John Roberts. For all that, all I have is a feeling like a bait and switch is taking place. I'm falling back into impressions of issues because I'm out out of my depth trying to think through them or by reason uncover the causes and effects, of the patterns of forces and power that actually shape this issue. An emotional civic consciousness.

I've read all the articles I've seen on this. Well, I've read all these to the left here at least.

Much has been said (written), on not saying much. As much his bona fides are absent from being laid out for all to see. Assurances seem to be forthcoming from some quarters. A law professor Robert P. George writes at length about privacy in a NYT op ed The Supreme Court's Private Life - New York Times. He takes pains and much careful moderate language to make sure we know there is no innate constitutional right to privacy. He specifically mentions Griswold v. Connecticut. To understand this op-ed one must work backwards from Robert George's other recent writings. To get a stronger sense of how he feels about constitutional privacy, how the notion of privacy in Griswold was the antecedent for Roe vs Wade. Woman have 'no' right of privacy in their reproductive being Our national sin by robert george. A weblog associated with touchstone quotes George as stating that right-thinking people should feel good about Roberts because he is a 'constitutionalist" and understands what needs to be done  . It is worth noting that George is not explaining Roberts, he is explicitly telling Roberts his position.

What the Administration is hoping to gain is a twofer on a half record. That's why he is being named to the court as its chief in one compact set of hearings. Roberts is what I would call a test tube nominee, grown  for the job. The relative success of this gambit is creating a future precedent in creating career paths where a lawyer can gain just enough experience to seem like a viable candidate to the US Supreme Court while leaving a work history (paper trail) that can be substantially shielded from public scrutiny. Only in advising corporate counsel positions, or turns in executive branch government could this be accomplished. Do this and you name a political hot-house flower to the bench. One of my brothers-in-law was a briefing asst. to Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg during her confirmation hearings. Certainly his primary interest was to keep her from saying anything that would grievously antagonize anyone. Things have been heading that way for a while, but is it in the public interest to perfect it. is it in the public interest to reduce advise and consent to Stare Decisis on nothing much. All the legislature - and the american people are left with is a few minutes alone with a candidates temperament and personality. It isn't enough. It isn't really anything at all.


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Thursday, September 15, 2005
 
Operation Ceasefire

In case anybody hasn't noticed: Eric Boucher aka Jello Biafra is bringing his latest circus to ground this Saturday (24 September). Billed as Operation Ceasefire : 4 days of Action for Peace and Justice here in Washington DC. There is a gathering at 11am, a march at 1230, and a concert starting at 3:00pm near the Washington monument. Probably there will be several episodes of random wandering around in amongst and after each of these. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists will go on stage around 7:54, previous to that the Evens (ian mackaye, amy farina) at 7:09 and Sweet Honey in the Rock at 6:23, Steve Earle about 4:40, and Thievery Corporation at 9:37.
A wide range of speakers including Cindy Sheehan will be on hand as well. Plus some sort of bicycle agitprop on Friday.

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Wednesday, September 14, 2005
 
Boston English

My father, Hugh Bushmiller, is heading off to his sixtieth High School re-union.

I can't say with 100 percent certainty, but this may the first High School reunion he has gone to. First one since I've known him. June 1945 is when he graduated from Boston English. Also known simply as The English High School ! There have been a number of buildings and address in the English Schools history the alumni subsite from link above has pictures of all of them. I tried to find a link for this event - the reunion. I don't know what I might have been thinking. People of my fathers generation think the internet is something used in the cod fishing industry. "Somebody oughta take care to tie those internets to the boats better, the stray ones are so thick in some places I hear of kids surfing on them." My father will have nothing to do with PC's, just doesn't care, too much trouble. Fortunately this means he is probably not reading this, but if he is... Hi Dad.

I think he said a while ago the plan was for some of the re-unionites to catch a Red Sox game. Robert doubts this because he claims Sox tickets are impossible to come by.

Wikipedia has a stub article up for Boston English put up a year ago and left to twist in the wind since English High School of Boston - Wikipedia. I added a link for the official boston/k12/english site (the link above) and noted one additional alum - class of '52. Remind me to ask my Dad why both English and Latin claim to be the oldest public school in the country, somebody must be invoking a technicality. I see that it lists Leonard Nimoy as having gone to English. Nimoy might have been a freshman there when my Dad was a senior, I'm surprised he hasn't mentioned this before. Maybe he did and I forgot. I forget a lot of stuff.



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Sunday, September 11, 2005
 
Following Up

Somebody asked me why I titled that last post Katrina Ballerina. I dunno, it's a Woody Shaw song. One of the radio stations I listen to played it and it stuck in my head.

I was surprised just how fragile the Telecommunications grid proved to be. I mentioned this last time, then I read another Washington Post article on this Telecom Damage Tops $400 Million. Wireless ain't always that wireless. I had the mistaken impression that cell phone networks were entirely propagated by microwave -- from a central area location to individual cells in a multiplex trunk feed then out to individuals. Apparently though land lines are routinely used to get the data to a cell's signal tower. If the land lines are damaged that cell gets no feed. Possibly failed communication played a sizable role in the confusion of those first days.

Burning the players in effigy. Why would FEMA attempt to block photographs of bodies, bodies that were allowed to sit out in the open for days on end or try to block journalist working inside the city. This is a indefensible recourse to censorship by political hacks masquerading as bureaucrats to maintain a favorable spin on a disaster. However, my sister Susan was in favor of this, because she does not want her two young sons (my nephews) to encounter these photographs in the daily newspaper, a defensible position. A newspaper editor on last Friday's Diane Rehm show answered that question by saying that in normal circumstance he never would, in a paper he ran, but for a period that first week it seemed like the various levels of government were close to failing to get abreast of the events. The situation became extraordinary and it was necessary to overcome attempts by people to manage coverage of what they did not truly comprehend. In the end censorship is bound to fail, it can only make FEMA look like fools ( Director of FEMA Stripped of Role as Relief Leader - New York Times) caught in a regenerative partisan loop.

Another key point focusing on local government is the evacuation. At work, Tuesday 30 August, before the full scale of the disaster was apparent, my friend Robert and I hit up the Tulane Univ. website to see if their library was in danger (we work in a University Library). Tulanes main server was down they had only some web log like posts on a back up [see sidebar: messages from the president]. One of them from  the university's president read in part:

August 27, 2005 - 10 a.m.
Message regarding university closure...Everyone should begin implementing their personal hurricane plan now.


That pretty much says it all.

I don't think any one ever tried to evacuate a major city before The Steady Buildup to a City's Chaos .. I see in many articles that this is part of disaster planning scenarios as the primary way they are going to deal with radiation dirty bombs, chemical or biological warfare attacks or even certain pandemics. I hope they will now include in such plans some way of dealing with the 5 to 10 percent of the population which has never paid an attention to authority or laws at any point in their lives. As well as those, like myself, who do not have their own personal automobile. Or should I understand that if I have not bought that far into the American dream that I am simply expendable?

The Sunday papers seem to have covered this pretty thoroughly. So I just see a couple of distinctions to make in all this. One deals with questions about the size of the storm vs event space. Event space is just my own term for the risk analysis notion of the statistical likelihood of a storm of a given size to come to a given area in a given period of time. Katrina was in fact an extraordinarily powerful storm (see NWS definition of their Saffir-Simpson wind rating scales). However as one looks at the steadily increasing costs of hurricanes, are we seeing bigger storms or brittler coasts?

Another facet to distinguish is Political vs Governmental. The administrations current predicament revolves around their failure to hit the right note in political damage control and resulting falling polling numbers washingtonpost.com Bush Losing Support From His Base. Part of this is not correctly reading the essential nature of 11 Sep 01 against Labor Day '05, given the Indian Ocean tsunami in between. It didn't have a fiends face - nor was it elsewhere.

Politics also involves management, putting competent people in critical positions -- before disaster strikes, and after. One of the first thoughts that came to me when the negative impact of the FEMA/DHS bureaucratic reorganization The Aristobureaucrats became apparent, was the recent national intelligence reorganization. My four years as an Intelligence Specialist rating in the Navy, and subsequent years as a political science major give me only a small narrow view into that world. Still the doubts I have about that certainly increased in this last week. So should yours

The political, irrespective of their left/right stylings, stand in a permanent position before the public; that their prejudices and nostrums on the correct size of government, effective management, etc. add up to competency and service to the general welfare. Politics is not media advertising where demographics with currency mean everything, and demographics without currency, mean nothing. This distinction is preserved whether that currency is money or massed political (opinion) Everyone matters because your mandate is everyone Katrina Pushes Issues of Race and Poverty at Bush , not simply who you choose to lead.

---
Addendum: fate of a political liability Embattled FEMA Director Michael Brown Resigns, see also Josh Marshall's TPM

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Thursday, September 8, 2005
 
Antony and the Johnsons

Antony and the Johnsons win Mercury I love this little news item; because I like pointless controversy.

Antony Hegarty despite growing up in California and having a career based in New York somehow won the Mercury Award -- the award for best Brit pop album. I've heard a little bit of Antony and the Johnsons I guess going back a year, and only a little. Even on the stations I listen to he wasn't getting played that much (it has been pointed out they are essentially still on an indie label). I like them largely because they are very different from everything else I hear, very very different. The only thing I might think to compare him to was Tim Curry's cover of Jay Hawkins I put a spell on you, or imagining what Klaus Nomi might have sounded like doing jazz blues. Salon had a review of of a New York show earlier in August with some background Salon.com Arts & Entertainment | Audiofile Antony and the Johnsons, Lou Reed likes him so....

The favorites to win the Mercury had been the Kaiser Chiefs, they're not happy. I predict a riot.


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Tuesday, September 6, 2005
 
Katrina Ballerina

Not to seem harsh or negative minded but: any narrative of the whole event has to admit of a comprehensive failure. The first failure would be to adopt a mind set that would seek to deny failure in order to avoid blame White House Backpedals on Flood Control, or to only look for problems once Katrina swirled into the Gulf of Mexico and headed north. It was a failure to follow through from problem identification and planning The Man-Made Disaster - New York Times. Reports and warnings were written and issued at all conceivable levels: University studies, Corp of Engineers studies, City Government Studies, environmental studies, journals Scientific American: Drowning New Orleans and the popular press THE SUNKEN CITY The New Yorker, newspapers Feds' Disaster Planning Shifts Away From Preparedness, FEMA knew storm's potential, Mayfield says, and television.

In the face of some of what is now being said, this was not a "100 year event", a monster storm. Just a cat. 4 hurricane, that was reduced to a cat. 3 shortly after crossing the gulf coast on the center of the gulf's northern perimeter. It was down to a tropical storm by the time it was 160 miles inland. There are formal parameters, I imagine, on which such prediction is based, but it seems to me it might be wiser to see this as a 50 or even 25 year event. Even less as New Orleans situation becomes ever more precarious. This may not seem like much, but it makes a tremendous difference to the final figure in a risk/cost-benefit analysis.

All this represents a failure of society's, of our government's, task of identifying problems and organizing resources towards solution. It is an indication that some of the nations fundamental priorities have gone astray. Large scale community wide projects, particular for the public safety, such as defending major urban areas inhabitants against disaster - this is why governments exist. I've read some articles that suggested, that the inundation of New Orleans was too much, on too large a scale to be seriously contemplated. Too expensive too entrenched a problem to guard against, evacuating too complex to organize. The costs of recovering too immense to be imagined. I've read that there is super-fund site (a special federal category of toxic waste site) in downtown New Orleans. It's been soaking in water for a week. Information like this lends credence to the idea that the disaster that happened, while not unforeseen, had an ability to defeat practical consideration.

There was a failure to react in the face of immanent catastrophe. A hesitation, an unpreparedness, a blase attitude when decisions had to be made on natures timetable, not mans. The speed at which water flows, a hurricane move; hours not days. Here was crisis, a threat to human well-being, human life. The human ingenuity of extreme moments, which can produce extraordinary efforts to create order in the face of yawning chaos, was not seen for days. Arnold Toynbee had an idea in his mid century work "a Study of History" that moderate adversity will prompt a culture to new heights while extreme adversity will paralyze or break it. With no solid institutional back-bone no leadership AlterNet: What's Bush Got To Do With It?, it was difficult for a response to coalesce The Gulf Between Rhetoric and Reality. The institutional backbone should have been government Newsview: Politicians Failed Storm Victims - AP. At the local level it was seen there is a difference between ordering an evacuation and having one happen. Aside from transportation problems (studies had identified what portion of New Orleans residents did not have access to automobiles). No one seems to have asked about the alcoholics, drug addicts, criminals or the merely ornery, anti-social and non-cooperative who would not leave. Training exercises which are where the various levels of first responders (for whom it is practice not theory) learn their roles, learn who they interact with, and identify coordination problems. These across the nation have tended to be focused on terrorism scenarios. Apparently in 2000 and 2004 such exercises that dealt with storms were held but did not include levees failing in their scripts. The extremity of the situation overwhelmed local police fire and rescue departments.

At the Federal level as many have commented on bureaucratic reorganization seems to have hamstrung FEMA by folding it into the Dept. of Homeland Security Department of Homeland Screw-Up - What is the Bush administration doing? By Tim Naftali and saddling it with the burden of being a patronage outpost Destroying FEMA. Many critical projects were said to be starved of funding to feed the war in Iraq. This is unlikely to be disproved by facts. On NPRs Weekend Edition a person being interviewed complained that on FEMA's first list of authorized emergency organizations new and untested "faith-based" humanitarian subcontractors seemed to have displaced many regular and experienced ones (she did say it was quickly expanded, thereafter). As well two thirds of the national guard not just in Louisiana, but in Texas Mississippi, and Alabama are out of country. these national guard troops traditionally a Governors main line of defense in restoring order also represent significant portions of police and fire departments in many municipalities affected.

What worked: the success of the National Guards and the U S military when they arrived on the scene in sufficient numbers. These are remarkably efficient and robust instituions. This underscores the need that existed for a national response. Our federal system jumps from national to states, then to county and municipal. Only about half the states are large enough to qualify as regional entities with multiple major municipal areas. Katrina's hurricaine force winds spanned over 200 miles wide and spread across the coastlines of three states. The Multi state assistance compact was created specifically to deal with such phenomenon, Though in the moment of emergency it being a cooperative program, there was confusion and hesitation in invoking it.

There was a particular failure of technology in the collapse of the telecommunication grid, which was surprising fragile Communications Networks Fail Disaster Area Residents. Microwave telephony was more robust, power for cell phones was its weak link. Consumer internet dependant on electrical power as well as phone or DSL lines was not a factor in the affected areas which seemed starved for information throughout the week, though it did play a role in disseminating infornmation to and from the periphery (first rule of hurricanes, buy batteries).

The disaster also revealed to the whole world America's failure to deal with poverty and racism BBC NEWS | World | Americas | New Orleans crisis shames Americans. A great deal has been said about the implicit deap and embedded racism, not only in how the response has organized itself in fits and starts, but more in the the weight of the impact falling among the social classes Anger rises among Mississippi's poor after Katrina and color line Katrina's Unequal Toll. One of the least but most telling incidents were the book-end comments by the President in Mississippi talking in light upbeat tones about he will sit on the porch of good ol' boy Trent Lotts house - when it gets rebuilt. And Dennis Hastert (R-IL), Speaker of the house, questioning why anyone would think that New Orleans was going to be rebuilt Denny Hastert's Dark Calculus.

In the middle of last week John Edwards wrote a post on Josh Marshall's still somewhat new community site Talking Points Memo Cafe (TPM Cafe). It was a reprise of his main campaign theme Two Americas- John Edwards - TPM Cafe. In the comments to the post someone noted that salient feature of wealth in this society is the extent to which at both extremes it is largely hidden - invisible. To which I would add distant. Beyond the reach of the middle class of bureaucratic mangers, and law enactors to change easily. There are those who welcome this who welcome the burden lifted by invisibility of poverty, the clock of vast wealth, and the ease with which both can be forgotten.

There is a failure that can be seen in our fundamental approach to nature. To always attempt to subdue or defeat nature to treat it as the an-ethical to our progress. Entropy is the dissapation of order and energy. It is the philosophical point against which mankinds energy is directed. Nature is seen as, at best, the rival of mankind against entropy, and at worst the face of chaos itself. Nature has never been regarded by the American charactor as an ally, but as a challenge, an affront.

There is hope through the failure. The media lately the laughable shadow of a free press, seems to have rediscovered its mandate and purpose The Rebellion of the Talking Heads. The political culture will not be able soon to pretend it does not know the extent of the United States enduring problems OUR OPINIONS An open letter to the President. A key difference between this and 11 Sep.t 2001. Is the lack of a role for manichaean good and evil, and subsequant political use in removing the problem from the constructive realm of human affairs. It will lead to a deeper more honest understanding of ourselves. We may rediscover the Organizing priniciple of a true community. One of the last things I read on this before starting to write this was David Brooks second column on this (first was The Storm After the Storm) NYT column on Sunday The Bursting Point - New York Times: "The first rule of the social fabric - that in times of crisis you protect the vulnerable - was trampled[.]" I agree David, but why wait til there is a crisis?


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Sunday, September 4, 2005
 
Daddy Yankee is Globalism

This I decided while watching Pepsi Musica over the last few weeks. Globalism is about flows. Flows across borders and boundaries and oceans. To a banker it's about the flow of funds, transactions. To a Hollywood mogul or committees that make such decisions these days it's about whatever set of intangibles (not that they believe that they are intangible) will make people spend money to watch Transporter ii in Lichtenstien, Uzbechestan, Balikpappan and every point in between. To Karen Hughes (and Martha Bayles) it's about reminding people everywhere, but particularly in the arab world, that America is about spreading freedom. Martha Bayles wrote a column about this in the Washington Post's Sunday outlook section last week Now Showing: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly Americans. If anyone remembers she wrote a book (which I read at the time) called Hole in Our Soul: The Loss of Beauty and Meaning in American Popular Music. Which was dedicated to the proposition that while some pop culture music was life affirming, much of it was nihilistic and life denying. I never saw that her thesis ever got beyond taste, but I guess its all a matter of subjective aesthetics. Lastly; globalism is going to be Daddy Yankee on the inevitable European tour (after the US "who's your daddy" tour, singing reaggeton to Germans.

I had a hit on my referer logs sometime last week: search=Karla+blogs+pepsi musica... or something along those lines. Karla Blogs? Well I can't say I'm surprised. I like the show. I don't understand a word of it, but it's a tightly put together well paced show. Karla has one of the effusive personalities in all television. Up there with Ty Pennington. It's a music show, You don't have to understand the language to appreciate a good song. When Karla interviews a singer or musicians it's easy enough to tell if they're sincere, or assholes. Occasionally you see characters who seem to like to talk about themselves, but seemed bored or uninterested taking about their music. Music flows across cultures easily - it's a very global medium. Being someone who likes rock and roll genre songs I've taken to the band Natalia Y La Forquetina. JD Natasha is similar. I'm at a loss as to why Natalia Y Forquentina isn't being played on the college stations I listen to, WMUC or WZBC. I guess they might have to play Interpol one less time or something. Verizon is trying to hawk a new line of cell phones n' network on the selling point of being able to view the Shakira (who no longer needs introduction) video to La Tortura over them. I should coco. Can't beat that voice on the song No though.

I have determined that the singer Thalia has a last name, it's Sodi (born ThalÌa Ariadna Sodi Miranda) She has a page of her own in Wikpedia Thalia Sodi - Wikipedia. She's been singing profesionally since she was six. Was in a Mexican production of Grease, is she reprising this with the new song Amar sin ser Amada. It says in the wiki that she has her own brand of Hersheys chocolate La DulcerÌa ThalÌa. I wonder where one goes to get a hold of some. Tran likes chocolate.


10:56:45 AM    comment [];trackback [];


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