God knows that I've criticized capitalism in my day and I'm still convinced that it is not the best economic system for humans to live by. But since we're stuck with it for the time being, let's try to reward these top 100 sustainable corporations. This came out of the World Economic Forum so I'm not entirely sure how legit this all is, but I assume it does have some validity.
I'm always on the hunt for some fine bluegrass. Sometimes that can be hard to find given the lack of exposure there is to bluegrass outside of Appalachia. O Brother Where Art Thou? did a great deal for bluegrass and traditional American music. But of course most people are lazy and didn't extend their newfound appreciation of bluegrass too far beyond the artists presented on the soundtrack. That's OK I guess. I don't know how much I should expect people to explore music. I do, but I'm not typical.
One of the benefits of this revival was a rejuvenation of Ralph Stanley's career. When I first became a fan of bluegrass, around 1998, he was playing in 100-200 seat halls for $15. Now he plays in 1000 seat halls for $30. Good for him. But he's not doing much new or interesting music. He's put out a lot of albums over the past few years but these are either him recording his old songs or live stuff. People are buying it I guess, but it's not that good. In part this is because Ralph's a contemporary of God. You can't expect a guy pushing 80 to be putting out a lot of fresh stuff. Also his son is now the lead singer in the Clinch Mountain Boys. This is not good. Ralph II has a terrible bluegrass voice. It might work pretty well for country music but not bluegrass.
But if you're into Ralph Stanley and want to hear something good and fairly new, check out his 2 albums with Jim Lauderdale. These are definitely the best albums he's put out in many years. Jim Lauderdale is a fairly well known country singer and songwriter, whose songs have been covered by many more mainstream country artists. I'm not an enormous fan of his country stuff but playing with Ralph Stanley and the Clinch Mountain Boys works amazingly well. In part it works because most of the songs are Lauderdale's. It's nice to hear Ralph singing some new songs. It also works because Lauderdale is usually singing the lead and Ralph Sr. is singing the tenor parts. This arrangement works better for Ralph's voice than him singing lead. Maybe the best part is that Ralph II is almost nowhere to be found.
Anyway, they have two albums. I Feel Like Singing Today came out around 1998. This is a short album (around 25-30 minutes) and it's hard to pay full price for a small amount of music, but in this case it's worth it. I recently bought their most recent album, Lost in the Lonesome Pines. It might not be quite as transcendent as the first album, but it's still quite good and also a little cheaper for about 40-45 minutes of music. If you want to hear some good high-quality bluegrass, you can't go wrong with these albums.
Via Yglesias, this CIA report on globalization and what could stop it. A main argument is that the onrush of globalization could be stopped by white-collar backlash against outsourcing, insecurity in different important nations, and especially disease epidemics.
All of these are possible, particularly disease epidemics. But I don't think an outbreak of disease, even one of the scale of the 1918-19 influenza epidemic is going to stop globalization. This could certainly slow it down, as could terrorist attacks. But the real long-term threat to globalization and American hegemony over the globe is energy supplies. The current supply of oil pretty well secures American dominance for the next 50 years or so, even as China and India slowly become more powerful. But with America's lack of investment in long-term and renewable energy resources we are really putting ourselves at risk. There's a time and a reason for every empire's decline and I have to think that the mid to late 21st century and the end of the petroleum-based economy will be the reason for America's.
Interestingly, I don't really see this as a good thing. I used to think that globalization should be stopped or severely controlled but at this point I don't see how this can be a good thing for either my way of life or that of the rest of the world. There are obviously gigantic problems with how globalization is done, particularly the ways that governments and corporations take advantage of 3rd world workers. But what option is there that would allow people to live as good of lives as they do now, even in places like India, Cambodia, and Honduras. It's a real challenge for the Left I think to come up with some alternatives.
I believe that it is time for the Left, and by this I do not mean the Democratic Party by any means, needs to think hard about the message that it is sending. I do not intend on using the radio show Democracy Now as a straw man here, but I think as that show is a principal outlet of leftist thought in America it's a useful, well, straw man, to discuss how negative the Left is. Has anyone ever heard Amy Goodman talk about a positive story? How does she or the others involved in the show see the world evolving? What is their political program? As far as I can tell, it's simply to criticize power for whatever it does, even if it does something that is not bad.
Perhaps this negativity comes out of the muckraking tradition in America, but at least Jacob Riis, Upton Sinclair, Ida Tarbell and the many other Progressive era muckrakers in America did agitate for positive change. I'm just not seeing Amy Goodman do this.
Let's take a hypothetical situation. Say there is a repressive government in Country A. Democracy Now will criticize the US and UN for not doing anything to stop the atrocities there. But then if they do go in and, by force naturally, overthrow that government, the show will criticize that as well. I don't really see how you can have it both ways. Now it's OK of course to criticize the US, say, for both leaving the Shiites out to dry in 1991 in Iraq and Abu Ghraib. There's lots to criticize throughout the Iraqi operation. But Left criticisms are simply knee-jerk reactions.
I suppose that it's easier to criticize than to agitate for a particular political program. Perhaps Democracy Now would lose listeners if they tried to push a certain agenda. But as a movement, such as the Left is a movement in America today, don't we need to form and push for specific programs? Don't we need to have an idea of what to do in Iraq in addition to criticizing what the American military is doing? It's my belief that we need to move beyond the kind of reactionary thought epitomized by Democracy Now and begin to formulate real agendas with plans to accomplish them. If we can do that, I feel that our ability to have a real say in the American political system will be greatly enhanced.
Here's a somewhat disturbing article about high schoolers lack of support for the 1st Amendment. In a survey conducted by the University of Connecticut that over 100,000 students took part in, only 1/2 of students believe that newspapers should be able to publish stories without government approval and over 1/3 of students think that the 1st Amendment guarantees too many rights.
This worries me greatly. I'm not sure however how much worse this has gotten since I was in high school in the late 80s and early 90s. Growing up in a very reactionary city I frequently heard these kinds of views. I would hope that at least some of these kids will change their views once they get to college.
Nonetheless, these numbers, plus the fact that students fell on the side of censorship at a far higher rate than their teachers, suggests that schools are the one place where liberal values must be taught, since churches, the media, and parents aren't doing it. It's no wonder that I consider my classes reeducation camps.
Mocking the Mariners' imminent signing of Jeff Nelson (which I don't think is too bad of a move on a minor league contract) commentors on ussmariner.com suggest other former Mariners they should pick up.
Nothing like the days of Bob Wolcott and Dave Fleming to bring back old memories. Amazingly, I didn't notice anyone mentioning Rich Amaral.
A bit of a dated discussion perhaps, but the one thing that stuck with me from Seymour Hersh's article on Iran and the Defense Department (and his subsequent interview with Jon Stewart) was being amazed that Rummy, Wolfowitz, and their minions actually believe that if we bomb Iran that it will show to the Iranian people that the mullahs are weak and they will rise up and overthrow them.
What exactly makes them believe in this outcome after they were in power on September 11? What would make the Iranian people respond differently than the American people after a terrorist strike? Just amazing blinders these people have.
I do agree with those who say that the most disturbing thing about the article was the Defense Department's lack of accountability in their covert operations. And it takes a lot to be more disturbing than the idea of bombing Iran.
I'm sure now that the Iraqis have been able to vote in an election the terrorists will disappear. Just like they disappeared after we deposed Saddam, killed Uday and Qusay, captured Saddam, and destroyed Fallujah.
Here's an interesting piece from the ancient film reviewer for The New Republic, Stanley Kauffmann, on the lack of distribution of foreign and independent films in middle America and their tendency to vote Republican and believe anything the media and Republicans tell them. He's not claiming that mass showings of Bergman and Kiarostami would produce a Democratic majority in America and neither am I, but certainly there must be some correlation between the lack of intelligent arts and well-traveled, educated and worldly people and the inward-looking, xenophobic, ultra-patriotic middle parts of our country.
Of course part of this problem is that so many young progressive-minded people flee their red state or red county homes for a few cities as soon as they can rather than stick around and try to change the place they are from. I can understand this but more progressive people moving to and staying in Bristol, TN; Birmingham, AL; and Sioux Falls, SD could do wonders for changing the politics of this nation. Maybe they could even bring a few good movies with them.
Here's a reminder that the tsunami affected Africa. Like everything else, no one cares about the consequences for Africa. In all the news on the tsunami, you heard virtually nothing about Africa. Maybe it was because there are no tourists in Somalia. Maybe it was because since Somalia is the libertarian paradise and thus has no government, it wasn't very feasible to get journalists there. But maybe both of these are symptoms of the greatest problem which is that no one cares about Africa. What do you think the response to AIDS would be if it was concentrated someone else other than Africa?
I had a conversation with a fellow music loving friend yesterday about political music and whether it was usually good or not. The answer that I think we both came up with was that it could be good but usually it was bad. Songs are best when they unfold a point rather than beat you over the head with it. Merle Haggard never had to write songs about being against the death penalty. Instead he wrote Sing Me Back Home and sang the definitive version of Green Green Grass of Home. In the same vein, Tom Russell never wrote a song saying that the industrialists who moved big factories out of America should be killed. Instead he wrote U.S. Steel, a song about a guy who is just lost when the Homestead plant shuts down. Too often overtly political songs fail because they are just poorly written. I like Kris Kristofferson's albums of the late 80s and early 90s because I feel strongly about what the US did in Latin America under Reagan, but I can accept that the songs themselves aren't very good. His best songs of the past 20 years such as Shipwrecked in the Eighties (about a Vietnam Vet) and Johnny Lobo (about AIM activist John Trudell) are a lot more subtle than Sandinista and Love of Money.
That brings me to Steve Earle's new album, The Revolution Starts Now. This album epitomizes both the best and the worst of political music. Some of the songs are absolutely outstanding. Home to Houston is a great example of political music because it's about a guy who works for one of the big contracting companies as a trucker in Iraq. He's scared to death and he says "If I ever get home to Houston alive, then I won't drive a truck anymore." Or take Rich Man's War. A lot more blatant than Home to Houston but this still works because the stories he tells in the song represent real life people. You have the story of some poor kid in south Texas who joins the military because all the jobs have been moved across the Rio Grande (not the Rio Grande River) and what else is he going to do?, the story of a real patriotic guys who joins the Marines and is wandering around Afghanistan with no hope of coming home to his wife and kids soon and then his car gets repossessed and the story of a kid in the Gaza Strip convinced to be a suicide bomber buy a bunch of guys driving Mercedes. These are really wonderful songs.
On the other hand, you have his wretched "love" song to Condi. And his juvenile "Fuck the FCC." In this song he makes the point that he can say "fuck" a lot in a song. Wow, that's really saying something. Is anyone saying you can't say fuck or anything else on an album. There are countries where maybe a song like that would be saying something, but not in the US. Just because I can't see Janet Jackson's breasts on TV (which is a little disappointing perhaps) doesn't mean that the government is cracking down on you saying fuck whenever you want Steve.
There's also his embarrassing talking song "Warrior" with its weird masculine overtones but in extremely pretentious language. Finally there's The Revolution Starts Now. This is actually a pretty good song. It's really catchy and well-written. But what revolution are we talking about? Was a John Kerry victory going to lead to the beginnings of a revolution? Somehow I don't think so. There was a time when The Revolution meant something concrete, even if it's shape shifted frequently. It meant communism, or black power, or the New Left. But now that word has nothing concrete attached to it and seems to exist in the mist. The revolution doesn't start now because no one knows what it is or even what the first baby steps would look like.
One thing that Earle doesn't do at all that you wish he would is to have a good comical political song. I guess the Condi song is supposed to be this but it's brutally bad. For really funny political stuff I can't say enough about Jello Biafra and Mojo Nixon's Prairie Home Invasion which includes a classic update of Phil Ochs' Love Me I'm a Liberal and their original Will the Fetus be Aborted?
In a recent speech on immigration, W said, "Family values don't stop at the Rio Grande River."
In a response to a comment about my listing of bad presidents, it was asked who I thought the good presidents were. This is a tricky question. Generally I believe in the power of individuals to make things bad rather than good. I believe much more strongly in government bureaucrats than the president. That said there are some presidents that we can admire on one level or another.
George Washington--for not making America a constitutional monarchy and for leaving office after 8 years, thus setting a precedent.
John Adams--not a great president and did sign the Alien and Sedition Acts. But he also set the precedent for a losing party in power to peacefully give up that power.
Thomas Jefferson--Really for everything he did when he was not president. His own two terms were not that great, especially in foreign policy. Much the same can be said for James Madison and John Quincy Adams.
Abraham Lincoln--For fairly obvious reasons I think. Great pragmatist when the country really needed a great one. Could have come out stronger for the rights of ex-slaves toward the end of the war though.
Franklin D. Roosevelt--I love the New Deal and most of what it stood for. Did nothing at all for blacks but in the 1930s and 1940s this is not too surprising. Did a great job of wartime leadership as well.
Lyndon Johnson--With the exception of Vietnam (obviously enormous) one of our very finest presidents. Much better than JFK who people over the age of 40 or so have an absurd fascination with. Great Society had wonderful programs. Johnson really cared about helping people and he pushed through Civil Rights legislation. Our most tragic president.
That's really about it for me. TR and Wilson were bastards in so many ways that I can't say I like them even if I like some of their policies. Truman was OK but he did little to fight McCarthyism. He did push through some early Civil Rights legislation though. Eisenhower deserves some limited credit for not trying to repeal the New Deal legislation. I don't think I can go any farther than this for him or any other president. Most of the rest have either been bad or mediocre.
Strong words, I know. After all there has been so many just sickening reality shows that what could beat them to be the worst one?
How about a new reality show to pick a new lead singer for INXS? For all the basically immoral reality shows about who gets the inheritance or who is my dad or what not, this seems truly unholy. Not that I was or am the biggest INXS fan in the world. But for God's sake, for the 80s they were a pretty good band, and one defined by their lead singer who became one of the biggest music stars in the world. To try and replace him through a reality show just makes me want to retch.
If it was you telling me this was true, I would want some evidence. So I assume you may not believe that such a thing could be true either. Here's the evidence.
As we have reached the 60th anniversary of ending the German concentration camps I keep hearing about not forgetting the lessons of the Holocaust now that the WWII generation is dying out. It made me wonder, what lessons have we learned.
Here's the lessons I think we want to have learned:
1. We will never let such a horrible thing happen again.
2. Racism is evil.
3. By teaching our children about the Holocaust we will take a big step in ensuring that it won't happen again.
Here's the lessons I think the Holocaust have really taught us:
1. We will never let such a horrible thing happen again so long as it's in our geopolitical interests to do so. Rwanda, Sudan--too bad. We don't have any economic or strategic interests. Bosnia, Kosovo--I guess they're close enough to do something about it at some point.
2. Racism is evil if it's mentioned in public. But in private, well, what are you going to do?
3. Any criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism.
Don't get me wrong. I think that we need to teach about the Holocaust and to do all possible to stop genocide. But all of this talk about lessons learned seems not grounded in reality. I'm not sure that we have learned any major lessons. We have shown horrifying films of the concentration camps to our children for decades. But many of these same children will fight in any war that the president tells them to, especially if it is couched in patriotic rhetoric. Does anyone doubt that a significant percentage of Americans would support the mass killing of people declared our enemies?
There's been a lot of talk on the left about how bad a president Bush is historically. Many say he's the worst since Hoover or Coolidge for instance. I've been thinking about these discussions and I believe I have something to offer here. I think that we need to split our bad presidents into two categories: the bad and the reprehensible. For example, Hoover and Coolidge were bad presidents. But they didn't take actions or not take actions that led the country into a morass. Bush has. Here's a short list splitting the bad presidents into these two categories.
The Bad
John Tyler--A president without a party. Didn't have the chance to do much.
Millard Fillmore--Basically irrelevant at a time when the Senate was the most powerful body in America. Didn't do anything to stop the union coming apart, but he didn't further that either.
Andrew Johnson--OK, he sabotaged Reconstruction so maybe he should be on the reprehensible list. But a)he wasn't elected president and b)his views represented the large majority of white Americans in 1865. Even if he supports Reconstruction, I don't know how different the ultimate fate of African-Americans in America is. However, perhaps it would have been different. America really needed a president who would stand up for the rights of the ex-slaves. At the same time, he was Lincoln's fault. Lincoln chose him.
Ulysses Grant--Terrible president but mostly because he was incompetent and trusted his corrupt advisors.
Warren Harding--Really the exact same as Grant. Had the best presidential sex scandal though. Even better than Clinton.
Calvin Coolidge--Silent Cal was also Do Nothing Cal, but nothing really worse than that I guess. Kind of a bastard as a person.
Herbert Hoover--Wrong Man at the Wrong Time. Really a good man and did a lot of good before he became president. But he was a progressive at a time when the nation called for more government intervention. He became very bitter, which was too bad.
The Reprehensible
Franklin Pierce--Presided over the Kansas-Nebraska Act which did a lot to push the nation toward Civil War. Not only incompetent, but party to bringing on the war and appeasing the South.
James Buchanan--After the election of Lincoln but before he took office, South Carolina left the union. Buchanan's solution--do absolutely nothing and let Lincoln deal with it. Enough said.
George W. Bush--Don't really need to go into his misdeeds, do I.
I think Pierce and Buchanan are the only presidents as bad or worse than W. W's policies have left the country more financially insecure, economically unstable, physically unsafe, and just stupid.
Finally, three special cases.
James K. Polk. Often seen as one of our more successful presidents. He brought Oregon and the Southwest into the union. However, he lied to Congress to get support for his imperialistic campaign to invade Mexico. Sounds kind of familiar, don't it.
Richard Nixon. In some ways very successful. On the other hand, he hurt the prestige of the presidency 30 years ago and it still hasn't recovered.
Ronald Reagan. His actions weren't really that bad unless you were a union member or lived in Latin America. But he is the father of the movement that has led to W in the White House. And that is pretty damn bad.
These three are hard ones to decide. They don't quite fit into either category, but they were certainly among our more disturbing leaders.
Johnny Carson was not a genius of a comedian. But he was really good. He managed to become an icon of America, not one demographic or another, through his topical, but not too harsh comedy. There was something in Carson for just about everyone. The show remained pretty good almost until the end, except for the music. It was hard to watch big-band music on late night TV in 1991. And in the last few years it got pretty stale. But even in those later years, it wasn't much worse than Letterman is today. And it was infinitely better than Leno has ever been.
And in a slight paraphrase, my favorite Carson line.
Actress comes on (don't remember who but I think it was in the mid to late 70s) with a cat. She sits down and puts the cat on her lap. She then turns to Carson and asks, "Would you like to pet my pussy?"
Carson: "I'd love to, but you'll have to move that damn cat first."
I wonder if the legacy of the NFL playoffs this year will be to show that conservative coaching is usually bad.
We had the Chargers lose when Marty Schottenheimer settled for a longer field goal than need be because he didn't want to risk a play where they might actually gain yards and because a 40 yard field goal with a rookie kicker is such a chip shot in the playoffs. Then Herman Edwards and the Jets lose because not only are they too afraid to run a play that might gain yards, they are so afraid they will have to kickoff that they run a play intended to lose yards, again because a 35+ yard field goal, on the road in Pittsburgh, is such a chip shot.
Now today we have Bill Cowher kicking a field goal down by 14 on the Patriots in the 4th quarter rather than going for it from the 2. Did he really think they would score another 11 on that defense in less than a quarter without allowing another point. Just incredibly stupid. Had the Steelers scored a TD, it would have been a 7 point game. Instead the Patriots stayed in control for the rest of the game.
On the other hand, Belichick runs a reverse for a touchdown to ice the game. OK, if that play fails or if there is a fumble, maybe he looks bad. But you win by being bold and smart. Smart and conservative rarely wins you games when you are tied or behind.
Cowher's a really good, if not great, coach and should be lauded for an excellent job coaching a team with a rookie QB to a 15-1 record and the AFC championship game. And his move is not in the same class as Edwards, who borderline deserves to be fired for it.
Nonetheless, I wonder if coaches will being to rethink their 4th quarter strategies after 3 significant playoff failures.
I had one of my most frustrating and worst movie experiences ever today when I went to see House of Flying Daggers. It wasn't the movie (more on that at the bottom). But the people surrounding me were intolerable. First of all the woman to my left was munching on something the entire movie that she brought from home evidentially wrapped in cellophane or some other material so loud and crinkly that it annoyed all the people around her. Then there were phone problems, including a woman who got up in the middle of the movie and then came back and plopped down in front of my wife, who is not a tall woman making it very hard to for her to read the subtitles. If that wasn't worse, sitting two rows in front of me, right in middle of the theater was a white guy who is a Sikh and his damn turban got in the way of the subtitles. Now I'm not going to make fun of white Sikhs here. There are lots in New Mexico. But somehow it bothered me a lot more that it was some aging hippie trying to get in touch with his spirituality than someone from India. Call me intolerant if you want.
So here's some rules that I think they should post in every theater.
1. If you're going to bring food from home, take it in tupperware or some other solid, noiseless plastic.
2. Watch where you sit. If you're tall, don't sit in front of someone else unless you absolutely have to.
3. If you are going to convert to a religion that requires big hats or other types of headgear, of if you are inclined to wear large things on your head for some other reason, please sit on the side or way in the back where no one will be behind you.
As far as the movie itself goes, I was a little disappointed. I thought it was far weaker than Hero or Crouching Tiger. Beautiful of course and the acting was fine but the story really fell apart at the end. I don't see how making it a love triangle 2/3 of the way through the movie really helped it out. It was pretty damn interesting as it was as a battle between the government and rebels. And then to not show the final battle between the soldiers and the Flying Daggers was just insane. I simply didn't understand what Zhang was doing at the end of this movie. That said, it's better than most other movies of course, but not Zhang's best.
This is not good.
Bolivia may be beginning to fall apart. The wealthiest province in the state, and accordingly the most European and conservative is demanding independence from La Paz. On the other hand, you have the poor protesting because of a Bechtel water contract that would force them to pay high rates for water and make collecting rain water a crime. Originally these two groups allied themselves in protest but now that the president has sided with the poor against Bechtel and has lowered the cost of fuel, the wealthy of Santa Cruz province have announced plans to create a separatist government.
What will the US policy be on this? My own belief is that W and the boys will side with the wealthy of Santa Cruz because a)they clearly identify with wealthy conservatives and b) it seems likely that the push from the right to secede may send the president left. Perhaps he becomes very conciliatory, but threatening to secede is a good reason to tell the rich to go to hell. Plus it's likely President Carlos Mesa will have allies in Venezuela, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, Cuba and other important Latin American nations.
In any case, check out the story yourself.
