Blues on a Saturday: Horace Silver "Senor Blues"

Blues on a Saturday: B.B. King and T-Bone Walker

A rare clip of T-Bone Walker sitting-in with B.B. King at a festival in the later 1960s or early 1970s.

Blues on a Saturday: Bille Holiday "Fine and Mellow"

I recently watched Ken Burn's Jazz and was struck again by this 1957 clip featuring Bill Holiday and one the few blues she wrote and performed "Fine and Mellow" This originally aired live as part of a special telecast ("The Sound of Jazz") on a short-lived CBS Sunday afternoon "cultural program", "THE SEVEN LIVELY ARTS". The man setting the scene for the number is host John Crosby, best known as a TV critic for the New York Herald-Tribune. This was also Billie's last major appearance on network television. the first tenor solo is by Ben Webster, the second by Lester Young, and the third by Coleman Hawkins. The trumpet solo is by Roy Eldridge.

The entire show is on DVD. Well worth watching. And there's a CD as well.

How Higher Education Favors the Rich--Great Infographic

Via: onlineschools.org

Rachel Maddow on Rick Perry's Prayer Partners

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Brownback wants to save your marriage--unless you're gay

Kansas Governor Sam Brownback has already used his administration to make Kansas one of the most social conservative in the nation. Kansas has become the first state to end public funding of the arts and has narrowly missed being the first state to do end abortions. Now, Brownback is developing a plan to promote marriage. To head up this effort, Brownback has hired Robert Siedlecki. Ironically, Siedlicki is divorced, but he is an advocate of “faith-based” solutions and an opponent of gay marriage. And, he's from Florida, as if Kansas has a shortage of religious right activists.

Tim Carpenter reported recently some juicy details about a secret April meeting to design Brownback's marriage agenda. The Topeka Capital-Journal uncovered some through a Kansas Open Records request. The Kansas government spent $13,000 to bring together 20 mostly far-right marriage “experts” for the closed door meeting. Thanks to the reporting of Tim Carpenter and other public information we know something of what Brownback has in mind, even though the details of the meeting remain confidential.

Organizations represented included the Heritage Foundation, Institute for American Values, Georgia Family Council, National Center for Fathering, Stronger Families, Institute for Marriage and Public Policy, Marriage Savers, Kansas Healthy Marriage Institute, and National Center for African American Marriages and Parenting.

Governor Sam, according to Carpenter, “urged invitees to think in terms of 'Hail Mary' approaches to boosting marriage rates and slashing divorce rates in Kansas.” According to SRS secretary Robert Siedlecki, a Brownback import from Florida "The governor wants us to create a national model." Perhaps because he is not the best model as a divorced father and to begin the work on this national model, Seidlecki has hired a minister—from Florida! Carpenter also reported that Joyce Webb of Catholic Charities' Kansas Healthy Marriage Institute, recommended that SRS fund a new marriage with $1 million from federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families.

Ethics of Brownback's Experts

Carpenter points out that one invitee Wade Horn “departed the Bush administration amid reports of cronyism in awarding federal grants to the National Fatherhood Initiative he founded. According to OMB Watch, NFI received a five-year, no-bid contract for $12 million.”

But, Horn is not the only invitee with shaky ethics.

Michael McMannus, according to wikipedia

On January 28, 2005, it was discovered that McManus was one of three media figures to accept money from the George W. Bush administration for targeted public endorsements of government policy.

McManus was the third person to be implicated in an article by Tom Hamburger of The Los Angeles Times. It was revealed that McManus, who is a self-described "marriage advocate", was paid through a subcontractor of the Department of Health and Human Services to endorse a Bush-approved initiative defining marriage as strictly between a man and a woman. The payments were said to be $4,000 plus travel expenses, with an additional $49,000 paid to his organization, "Marriage Savers". McManus did not disclose this payment to his readers

Maggie Gallagher, again according to wikipedia

received tens of thousands of dollars from the Department of Health and Human Services during 2002 and 2003 for helping the George W. Bush administration promote the President's Healthy Marriage Initiative. During this time, Gallagher testified before Congress in favor of "healthy marriage" programs, but never disclosed the payments. When asked about that situation, she replied "Did I violate journalistic ethics by not disclosing it? I don't know. You tell me. ...frankly, it never occurred to me".

After the Washington Post revealed this information on January 26, 2005, Gallagher claimed significant differences between her situation and that of conservative columnist Armstrong Williams, going on to add that "I should have disclosed a government contract when I later wrote about the Bush marriage initiative. I would have, if I had remembered it. My apologies to my readers."]

Gallagher received an additional $20,000 from the Bush administration for writing a report, titled "Can Government Strengthen Marriage?", for the National Fatherhood Initiative...

Gays No, Polygamists Maybe

It should surprise no one that Sedlieki made it clear to the TCJ that there would be “ no room in the state's program for gays and lesbians interested in marriage or parenting.” What is surprising is that some of Brownback experts think polygamy isn't so bad.

Gallagher has said that gay marriage is worse than polygamy, which, "for all its ugly defects, is an attempt to secure stable mother-father families for children".

Another invitee founder of the Institute for American Values Daniel Blankenhorn

was presented to the court as an expert witness in Perry v. Schwarzenegger by the proponents of California Proposition 8 (2008), a constitutional amendment stripping same-sex couples of the right to marry. On cross-examination by David Boies, Blankenhorn stated that marriage's "rule of two people" is not violated by polygamy, because "Even in instances of a man engaging in polygamous marriage, each marriage is separate. He — one man marries one woman." (source)

The Agenda?

We can't know what the Brownback marriage  agenda will  look like, but there here are some possibilities.

Mike McManus of Marriage Savers wants to get rid of no-fault divorce, limiting it to only cases of physical abuse or adultery. Gallagher not only want to end no-fault divorce, she want to prosecute spouses for adultery.

 And, a definite--no room in the state's programs m for gays or lesbians interested in marriage or parenting.

Blues on a Saturday: Tracy Nelson "Down So Low"

In April, Tracy Nelson released her 26th album Victim of the Blues. She's done not only  blues,  but also country  and rock, and in-between. She got her start in the folk and blues revival of the sixties and was part of the San Francisco rock scene in the late sixties., where she helped lead the under-rated  Mother Earth.  I bought their first LP Living with the Animals back in the day and it has long been one of my favorites.  it is out on CD from Wounded Bird records and is recommended. There are those, myself included, who ranked her as as superior to Janice Joplin

BluesWax recently published Don Wilcox's two part interview with Nelson--part one and part two

Here is Nelson in 1987 doing her 1968 song Down So Low.  It seems to be a modern blues standard, having been covered by Cyndi Lauper, Linda Ronstadt, and others.

Bachman's Third Try at a Theme Song

Far right Presidential candidate Michele Bachman has had almost as big a problem with theme songs for her campaign as with American history.

First,  Tom Petty send a cease-and-desist letter to stop Bachman from using American Girl. Next, Katrina Leskanich announced that she wasn’t cool with Bachmann’s “misuse” of Katrina and the Waves’ hit song “Walking on Sunshine.”

Today, it is reported that Bachman, apparently rejecting an offer from Ted Nugent,  is using Elvis Presley's recording of "The Promised Land."

It is interesting that Bachman picked an Elvis cover of a song written by the still-living African-American Chuck Berry, which in turn is a reworking of  Wabash Cannonball, most famously recorded by Roy Acuff, and dating back to at least 1882.

Even more interesting is that Berry's original lyrics referred to the 1961 Freedom Ride. Presley completely omitted the second verse where Berry says he bypassed Rock Hill, the place where future Congressman John Lewis and other riders were attacked by a white mob.

We stopped in Charlotte,
We bypassed Rock Hill
We never was a minute late
We was 90 miles out of Atlanta by sundown
Rollin' out of Georgia state

The next verse goes like this and seems to also refer to another key Freedom Ride site.

We had a little trouble,

Turned into a struggle

Half way across Alabam

Our 'hound broke down

Left us stranded
In downtown Birmingham

I'm not saying that Chuck Berry was transformed into Woody Guthrie, although Woody also borrowed the Wabash Cannonball tune for the Grand Coulee Dam. But the background of the segregation and Freedom Rides ought to inform the performance of this great Chuck Berry tune.  Sadly, many  versions of the "Promised Land" mangle the words, leaving out key lines.

Here's nice version of Chuck Berry doing the 'Promised Land", probably in the UK.

I kind of hope that Chuck Berry as composer of the Promised Land can and will bar the crazy lady from the North Country from using his song.

Who Needs a Pension When You Can Have a Pizza Party?

Blues on a Saturday: Junior Wells and Buddy Guy

Junior Wells performing Cryin' Shame, with Buddy Guy, guitar, and David Myers, bass, from the movie Chicago Blues, in 1970.

Why Is Everyone So Down on Child Labor?

Negotiating Like It's 1999

The AFL-CIO has a new, informative, clever website on Collective Bargaining. It features three entertaining, funny videos by director/writer Negin Farsad, producer Justin Krebs, writer Lee Camp and punchup artist Katie Halper of Vaguely Qualified productions. Here's  the first one.  Others will follow in coming days.

Blues on a Saturday: Otis Rush and Eric Clapton--"Double Trouble"

Performing Rush's classic "Double Trouble" --the song that Stevie Ray Vaughn named his band after.

Surveying the Democratic Left

Judie Newman "Bellow and Trotsky"

The later Bellow’s reputation as a neoconservative has obscured the centrality of his early enthusiasm for Trotskyism to his life and writings. The 2010 publication of a selection of his letters opens with Saul Bellow aged 17 writing to Yetta Barshevsky, a fellow high school student who introduced him to Trotskyism, and for whom he wrote a eulogy more than sixty years later. Bellow was still thinking about Trotsky in the 1990s as his correspondence with Albert Glotzer, his lifelong friend and (at one point Trotsky’s secretary) indicates.

Gus Tyler--Labor Activist and Forward Columnist, Is Dead at 99"

Commemorating the Forward’s 110th anniversary in 2007, Tyler, in this column, recalled his mother’s anger when a fishmonger handed her a purchase wrapped in the newspaper. “My mother literally threw the package back at the fish handler. Startled, he said, ‘What’s the matter, lady?’ ‘It’s the Forward,’ she shouted. `If you have to wrap the fish in a paper, use The Times.’”

Bill Fletcher Obama, Progressives, and the White Nationalist Backlash




To borrow from a comment offered by television commentator Tavis
 Smiley, the 2012 elections are likely to be the most racist that most
 of us have seen in our lifetimes. Given this, what are the
 implications?

 It has been striking that many progressives, particularly those who 
have not only written off President Obama but also written off all
 those who offered critical support to the Obama campaign in 2008, have 
said so little about race, racism, and the discourse of right-wing
 populism in the context of the upcoming elections.
  ...

Despite our knowledge of history and awareness of the antics of white
 right-wing populism, few progressives are discussing the implications 
of any of this for the 2012 elections. The implications, it would seem
 to me, are quite profound, and range from what this means about HOW to
criticize the Obama administration, to how to ensure that the
 elections are not outright stolen by the white Right.


Devin Burghart and Leonard Zeskind , Tea Party Nationalism: A Critical Examination of the Tea Party Movement and the Size, Scope, and Focus of Its National Factions

     Prepared for the  NAACP, an excellent website, and a 94-page PDF report here for those so inclined.
Must reading.

Matthew N. Lyons, "Liberalism’s Limits: A review of Burghart and Zeskind’s Tea Party Nationalism " Three Way Fight

Political Research Associates, "

Jon Stewart on Fox bias

The Daily Show
Tags: Daily Show Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,The Daily Show on Facebook

Blues on a Saturday: Jimmy Rushing--"I Let My Baby"

The great Kansas City blues shouter Jimmy Rushing at the 1957 CBS "Sound of Jazz" television special. It is a great CD and DVD. Shouter is the traditional way to describe Rushing and Big Joe Turner, but it is not adequate. Towards the end of this cut, catch how Rushing sings back to back verses, boldy and then gently. Wow!



How many greats can you identify? Here is who I noticed. Count Basie, Freddie Green, Ben Webster (first tenor solo), Coleman Hawkins (second tenor solo), Jo Jones (drums--not Phiully Joe, but Jo), Stan Getz. Who else?

We've got a winner: LabourStart Video of the Year contest

From the IBEW



LabourStart is one of the best sites around,anyone interested in unions, workers struggles, and solidarity should take a look.

Democratic Left Roundup: Economics Edition

Matthew Forstater, The Freedom Budget at 45 Levy Institute (PDF)

Discusses the Freedom Budget and its continuing relevance and presents a functional finance primer.

Pat Garofalo.Failing To Raise The Debt Ceiling Would Wipe Out All Of 2011′s Estimated Growth In 95 Days Think Progress

allowing the U.S. to default on its debt would have widespread consequences for the U.S. and world economies, including potentially pushing the U.S. back into a recession or, in the words of Princeton Professor Alan Blinder, “reignit[ing] the world financial crisis.” And as the Wall Street Journal noted today, failure to raise the debt ceiling would force draconian spending cuts that would wipe out all of the anticipated 2011 economic growth in just 95 days

“Exiting from the Crisis: Towards a Model of More Equitable and Sustainable Growth” is a new book (over 270 pages) now available on line.

This volume of essays from global trade union leaders and economists is the product of the Global Unions Taskforce on a New Growth Model, a joint project of the Trade Union Advisory Committee (TUAC) to the OECD, the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), the International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and the Global Union Research Network (GURN).

The task force involved more than 30 global trade union economists .... from a wide array of advanced, emerging and developing countries. The report includes a Preface by Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz, and fills a long-standing need to set out the global labour movements economic alternatives in a systematic fashion.

William K Black on cost-benefit analysis and Mitch Daniels on the New Economic Perspectives from Kansas City blog

Daniels warmed up his global warming denial audience (pun intended) with this joke, which he said he often shared with his daughter. Many of us who are parents look for these opportunities to mix family meals and an opportunity for moral instruction. This is how Daniels relates his efforts at teaching moral reasoning:

'If James Carville and Geraldo Rivera were both drowning, and you could only save one [laughter], would you read the paper, or eat lunch [laughter and applause]?'

Altruism is, as Ayn Rand stressed, a grave error. To be a Good Samaritan, particularly to save the life of someone who disagrees with you, is not a mitzvah but an unpardonable sin. It follows that one should teach their children that the correct response to learning that a person is drowning and only they can save a life – is to let them drown – while noshing. The death of those who disagree with us is a cause for celebration [“laughter and applause”].

One of the nice things about this post from Black is a list of 15 cases that undermine the argument that any economic regulation harms consumers.

Doug Henwood "What Financial Emergency"

Close examination of the CBO's projections cannot support anything resembling hysteria. The two things that have everyone terrified, Social Security and Medicare, actually look quite unthreatening.

In 2010, Social Security spending was 4.8% of GDP. In 2021, the CBO projects it will be 5.3%, an increase of 0.5 point. In 2010, Medicare spending (less premiums paid by beneficiaries) was 3.1% of GDP. In 2021, the CBO projects it will be 3.6%, also an increase of 0.5 point.

In other words, the budgetary monsters that are supposed to be the ruin of the American way of life will increase their share of the national economy by about 1%. That's a bit less than what the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing us, and less than half the cost of the Bush tax cuts.

Ron Baiman explains how tax increases on just the upper 10% offamilies, restoring their income to 1973 inflation adjusted levels,would immediately erase the federal deficit.

Kathy Ruffing "What the 2011 Trustees' Report Shows About Social Security" Center for Budget Policies and Priorities

“The revenue loss over the next 75 years from making all of those [Bush]tax cuts permanent would be two and one-half times the entire Social Security shortfall over that period. Indeed, the revenue loss just from extending the tax cuts for people making over $250,000 — the top 2 percent of Americans — would itself be almost as large as the Social Security shortfall over the 75-year period. (See Figure 1.) Members of Congress cannot simultaneously claim that the tax cuts are affordable while the Social Security shortfall constitutes a dire fiscal threat.”

Gar Alperovitz "The New-Economy Movement" The Nation

Blues on a Saturday: Bob Dylan and Miles Davis

This week marked the 70th birthday of Bob Dylan and the 85th anniversary of Miles Davis' birthday. So, our first double header. We'll get bak to hard core blues next week and, perhaps, come up with a post on Rolling Stones list of Bob's 70 greatest songs.

Best of the Democratic Left

David McReynolds, "The View from Over the Hill"

 On April 26, 2011, there was a book party in New York City for Martin Duberman's double biography of Barbara Deming and David McReynolds, titled A Saving Remnant.
This is McReynolds expanded version of his remarks.  He is a former chair of War Resisters International, and was the Socialist Party candidate for President in 1980 and 2000. 

Dissent writers on the killing of Osama Bin Laden  

Michael Walzer and four others. 

Russell Fox on "The History and Legacy of Kansas Populism" 

Alan Johnson, "The Mind of the Pro-Tyrant Left" 

This pro-tyrant left thinks it holds the key to the entire world in the palm of its hand. If America is opposed to a tyrant, then—there is some dubious logic here, but this really is the crucial move—the tyrant must be opposing America. And—this is the last stretch, stay with me—therefore the tyrant is an “anti-imperialist” and, objectively, “progressive.”

And these ideas have been adopted in softer forms throughout the culture—we see it in the refusal of emotional commitment to the West in its battles against dictators and terrorists, the refusal to credit the West with anything but malign intent, the tendency to blame ourselves when we are attacked, the demonization of Israel, and the pathological refusal to see plain the nature of forces such as Hamas and Hezbollah, who were defined by the leading American academic Judith Butler as “part of the global Left.”

When the 17th-century English revolutionaries dreamt of “a world turned upside down” it was not this they had in mind.

 David Osler, Rawanda: test case for absolute anti-imperialism

The more I think about it in retrospect, the more I am convinced that the UN should have gone in. Rwanda was hardly a purely academic question, and moral stances taken at the time had discernible outcomes. If there are any good counterarguments, they do not immediately occur to me.

This is not to say that the left should cheerlead the use of armed forces in every situation of humanitarian concern; opposition to the demands of the military-industrial complex rightly remains very much the default position. Nor should we back any old intervention; the risk of making a hash of it are invariably huge. Minimum preconditions include careful planning, thoughtful execution and widespread regional support.