After all, he couldn't do his “we're out of here!” victory dance if they hadn't lied their way into Iraq in the first place. A little respect, please!
That's only one of the cruel ironies to be found in this week's political toon round-up:
Why aren't the middle and lower classes more receptive to Cain's and Perry's flat tax proposals, which will shift the federal tax burden down onto them?
If teachers, firefighters, etc., are destroying the economy, why are they as obscenely rich as the top cats at Wall Street?
They're called “the Super Committee,” but it's just as useless and compromised as the regular GOP-gridlocked congressional committee system it was supposedly designed to leap in a single bound.
Turns out that the worst thing you can do to America is isn't* destroying a big chunk of its wealth while pocketing fat bonuses; it's urinating in the bushes.
*(Double negatives: tricky business.)
Today's selections were taken from the p3 Trick or Treat Bag (after throwing away anything that could have razors, needles, or poisons in it) from the week's political cartoon pages at Slate, Time, Mario Piperni, About.com, and Daryl Cagle:
It's shameful, but, eh! It's a living: We're in the Halloween home stretch, and winding up our p3tribute to scary theme music by Warner Bros musical director Carl Stalling. This week's entry is “Hyde and Hare,” directed in 1955 by Fritz Freleng, written by Warren Foster, voiced by Mel Blanc, with musical direction by Himself. The Liberace joke and the Ralph Kramden joke would have to be explained to kids now, but they were Bang! Zoom at the time the short came out. (“Carry me?” is also a classic Warner Bros tag line from the 50s.)
(Note to Facebook friends: If you're reading this in FB Notes, you'll need to click here to see the video.)
It's been almost a year since we last featured the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, which is too long, I now realize.
If you're reading this in FB Notes, you'll need to click here to see the video.
This is also, I'm pretty sure, the first appearance on p3 Saturday Morning Tunes of either Richard Wagner or Hawkwind. Probably too long for that, too.
Charles Pierce examines the criterion by which Serious Republicans distinguish between “distractions” (e.g., Birtherism, an obvious political loser) and “issues” (e.g. Swift Boating, a disgusting but surprisingly effective tactic):
Make no mistake. Swift Boatism is different from birtherism only in two ways. First, the target is obviously different. But, second, and most important, there was serious money behind Swift Boatism and there is little behind birtherism. (In Republican campaigns, the difference between an "issue" and a "distraction" is whether the Koch Brothers have busted out the checkbook yet.)
Sunny and clear, but in the upper 30s. Football weather.
I'm sitting at my keyboard. The parrot, perched nearby, begins softly muttering. His head is cocked to one side. He's listening, so I listen too. In a moment, I hear it: Geese, flying in formation over the house.
“What are they saying?”
What we usually think of as a parrot's shoulders are actually his wrists. He shrugs his wrists at me.
I shrug back. “Rough translation,” I say.
He uncocks his head and looks at me. “Roughly? 'Screw this. We can try it again in April.'”
Geese don't play football.
I look at the parrot, and the parrot looks at me. Seventy million years since mammals split off from birds and lizards, but I think we're both thinking the same thing:
Mail-in ballots for the November primary hit the mail last Friday.
The Voter's Pamphlet (English/Spanish/Audio) came out a couple of weeks ago, although some more info, including OR US1 candidates, was tucked inside the envelope with my ballot. (Is that usual?)
Last day to mail ballots: Friday, November 4th. (Eligibility is based on arriving on time, not getting mailed on time!)
Absolute deadline for hand-delivering ballots to local Elections Office: 8pm November 8th.
Over the last year I have, from time to time, been sort of a buzz kill -- a political Eeyore, if you will -- in conversations with friends at DL, on FB , and such places, when talk of a “GOP dream ticket” like Bachmann/Palin for 2012 comes up. (It's considered a dream ticket from the left's point of view, of course, on the assumption that it would be so self-evidently dreadful that Obama could coast to re-election. Me, I'm not sure why we'd want to give Obama even more sense of freedom to drag his feet on issues I care about, but let that pass.)
My objection at this point usually runs along these lines:
Yes, yes, it's funny to imagine such a “dream ticket” for 2012, one that would expose the ridiculousness, the fecklessness, the foolishness of American conservatism as it currently exists in the GOP. The trouble is, the mainstream media won't treat them as foolish -- it hasn't so far, has it? And the Obama 2012 campaign won't call them out on even the craziest things they say, so the “center” point for every issue I care about will be dragged inexorably to the right -- further to the right, I should say.
Flat Tax Outpaces 9-9-9 in Poll, Notably Among Conservatives
A flat tax like the one proposed today by Republican presidential candidate Gov. Rick Perry engenders a split decision in public opinion — if not the warmest reception, a better one than the public’s broader disapproval of his rival Herman Cain’s 9-9-9 plan.
While a flat tax divides the nation overall, moreover, it resonates most strongly in a group of particular interest to Perry – “very conservative” Americans, a key GOP voting group. They hold favorable views of a flat tax by a broad 68-28 percent in this ABC News/Washington Post poll, suggesting a strategic rationale for Perry’s initiative.
More broadly, there’s greater division: Americans overall split by 47-48 percent on the notion of a flat tax – that is, removing most income tax deductions and charging all taxpayers the same tax rate, instead of charging higher rates on higher incomes. That’s almost identical to the 48-48 percent split on a flat tax in a different ABC/Post question back in August 1996.
The nub of article is the question of which flat-tax proposal would be more popular, and the polling numbers give the horse-race treatment a comforting scientific sound.
But you can read that article first-to-last and never find the word “regressive,” never find a hint of the almost certain consequences of flat-tax policies for government programs that the readers might happen to like, never find any clue that the debate between the Perry tax “plan” and the Cain tax “plan” is simply haggling over details about the best way to redistribute the federal tax burden from the top brackets onto the middle and lower class.
It's all very interesting, in a reality-TV kind of way, to read how these competing flat-tax schemes poll, but what would really be nice is coverage of what they mean.
There's a mention in the article's final paragraph that as education level increases, voters might be more skeptical of the whole flat-tax idea, but it's a stretch to equate more education with more information on the issues. So it's by no means certain that even that group's skepticism is because they've rejected the underlying framing of the issue.
If political coverage like that goes on unchallenged and uninterrupted for another twelve months (and remember: the more knavish and anti-expertise the GOP finalists next fall, the more, not less, of that kind of "even-handed" coverage you should expect to see), then a lot of voters might well think that this is what the tax reform debate is about: Which regressive flat-tax plan is better?
Incredibly, Salon.com wasted pixels today on this:
Is Will Ferrell the New Mark Twain?
Answer: No. No he isn't.
(And the same could be said for most of the other winners of the Mark Twain Prize, but that's another story.)
Hemingway said that Twain invented the American novel with “Huckleberry Finn.” Think anyone will say anything remotely comparable about Ferrell a hundred years from now?
The reality, of course, is that people like Rush, Romney and Obama are all becoming cognizant of the deep frustrations that exist across the political spectrum and are growing desperate to prevent the powder keg from blowing completely – hence the intense effort to describe OWS as a top-down manipulation.
Of course the notion that this is all a media fabrication is ludicrous. Dylan Ratigan didn’t invent four million people in foreclosure, he didn’t invent ten trillion dollars in bailouts, and he didn’t invent Wall Street’s $160 billion bonus pool the year after the crash of its own creation.
The GOP candidates and news media are going out of their way to withold credit from Obama, Democrats, or even America for the end of Gaddahfi's reign. Of course, if 2008 had gone the other way, they'd be singing the praises of John McCain . . . Oh. Wait. Maybe not.
(Awkward archival bits like this are a recurring problem for the GOP, like cold sores. Remember the videos of George H. W. Bush toasting those two bulwarks of democracy, Panamanian dictator Manuel Noriega and Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos, not long before each man was driven from power -- in Noriega's case, by US troops under Bush's command? Or the famous mid-1980s photo of Dick Cheney shaking hands with Saddam Hussein? Handy hint to third-world dictators: When a high-ranking Republican praises you publicly, the clock is ticking -- time to dig your spider hole.)
Taiwan's Next Media Animation predicts the trailer for the 2012 Avengers movie. Wasn't sure I wanted to see it before, but now I confess: I'm kinda intrigued.
Do you know who Mary Blair was? If you grew up in the second half of the 20th century in America, you probably should. Seriously. You should.
Tom Tomorrow spies the man who can save Wall Street. (And remember: If you think the US faked the moon landing, you're a crank and a loon, but if you believe an invisible hand guides the economy toward optimal outcomes, you're a Chicago School economist.)
Enter the inevitable amorous babe who's just ca-razy about us hard-boiled gumshoes! We're rolling up to Halloween with a tribute to Golden Age Warner Bros musical director Carl Stalling's creepy music. “The Super Snooper” (1952) was directed by Robert McKimson, written by Tedd Pierce, voice work by Mel Blanc (not sure who voices the femme fatale). Musical puns in the score include “Little Brown Jug” and “It Had to Be You.”
If you're reading this in FB Notes, you'll need to click here to see the video.
I've never made my peace with synchronicity, but when the same song pops up in three different contexts within as many hours, it'd be silly not to wonder if something's going on.
From 1989, this shot across the bow of 1980s go-go capitalism as well as an homage to the Magical Mystery-era Beatles:
If you're reading this in FB Notes, you'll need to click here to see the video.
There's a great moment in Douglas Adams' Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (the company motto: “We solve the whole crime. We find the whole person.”) when a protagonist finds himself face-to-beak with one of the last of the dodo birds, on the island of Mauritius not long before the poor creatures were finally clubbed into pointless anthropogenic extinction near the end of the seventeenth century:
A large cross bird was looking and Richard and Richard was looking at a large cross bird. Richard was looking at the bird as if it was the most extraordinary thing that he had ever seen in his life, and the bird was looking at Richard as if defying him to find its beak even remotely funny.
Once it had satisfied itself that Richard did not intend to laugh, the bird regarded him instead with a sort of grim irritable tolerance and wondered if he was just going to stand there or actually do something useful and feed it. It padded a couple of steps back and a couple of steps to the side and then just a single step forward again on great waddling yellow feet. It then looked at him again, impatiently, and squarked an impatient squark. It then bent forward and scraped its great absurd red beak across the ground as if to give Richard the idea that this might be a good area to look for things to give it to eat.
“It eats the nuts of the calvaria tree,” called out Reg to Richard.
The big bird look sharply up at Reg in annoyance, as if to say that it was perfectly clear to any idiot what it ate. It then looked back aty Richard once more and stuck its head on one side as if it had suddenly been struck with the thought that perhaps it was an idiot it had to deal with, and that it might need to reconsider its strategy accordingly.
“There are one or two on the ground behind you,” called Reg softly.
In a trance of astonishment Richard turned awkwardly and saw one or two large nuts lying on the ground. He bent and picked one up, glancing at Reg, who gave him a reassuring nod. Tentatively he held the thing up to the bird, which leaned forward and pecked it sharply from between his fingers. Then, because Richard's hand was still stretched out, the bird knocked it irritably aside with its beak.
Once Richard had withdrawn to a respectful distance, it stretched its neck up, closed its large yellow eyes and seemed to gargle gracelessly as it shook the nut down its neck into its maw. Whereas before it had been a cross dodo, it was at least now a cross, fed dodo, which was probably about as much as it could hope for in this life.
It made a slow, waddling, on-the-spot turn and padded back into the forest whence it had come, as if defying Richard to find the little tuft of curly feathers stuck up on top of its backside even remotely funny.
“I only come to look,” said Reg in a small voice, and glancing at him, Dirk was discomfited to see that the old man's eyes were brimming with tears that he quickly brushed away, “really, it is not for me to interfere -- “
Richard came scurrying breathlessly up to them.
“Was that a dodo?" he exclaimed.
“Yes,” said Reg, “one of only three left at this time. The year is 1676. They will all be dead within four years, and after that, no one will ever see them again. Come,” he said, “let us go."
Part of the problem for dodos is -- or, I suppose, was -- that they just weren't shrewd enough to realize the vital importance of keeping their distance from the big featherless bipeds. A bad move, it's true; but there's a reason that “dodo” isn't much of a compliment nowadays.
While Adams was researching dodoiana for that scene, he became interested in learning more about those other creatures teetering on the brink of extinction in our own time. The result was a fascinating, wistful travelog called Last Chance to See.
In 2009, the BBC launched a television series of the same name in which Stephen Fry, as stand-in for his late friend Adams, travels to remote spots on the globe to record some of the creatures still barely hanging onto existence by their toes, claws, talons, or prehensile tails.
(One of the ironies that Adams discovered while researching Last Chance is that some endangered species, such as the komodo dragon, may be able to survive only to the extent that they can be made into a spectacle for public broadcasting documentarians and ecotourism marketers. The fanciful notion that they might deserve to survive simply on their own ontological merits, apart from their place in anyone's business model, has never really seemed to catch on.)
I bring all that up because of this cult-following incident which, at first, reminded me of Adams' fictional human-dodo encounter. An example of an almost-extinct species, sporting a bizarre-looking beak, more grumpy and irritated than alarmed about the presence of these ridiculous looking creatures without feathers, stalks out of the cover of the forest, waddles directly up to a fascinated human, and stares him down, clearly expecting, feeling entitled to . . . something.
Then it all goes terribly, terribly wrong:
(If you're reading this in FB Notes, click here to see the video.
And believe me -- you really want to watch the video before going any further.)
Oh, dear. Talk about taking one for the team. Zoologist Mark Carwardine, for whom the epithet “the ultimate wingman” does not seem extreme, was an astonishingly good sport about that experience, although he clearly didn't find the whole thing nearly as amusing as (the unmolested) Fry did.
(Before looking it up, I had deduced that the poor fellow must be an extremely dedicated zoologist rather than, say, a mere production assistant or a co-host. The latter groups would surely have contractual protections against that sort of on-camera treatment by the talent.)
Looking at the incident from the point of view of the bird (a male kakapo dubbed Sirocco), though, I suppose we should be at least a little forgiving. A seldom-considered down-side of borderline extinction must surely be the severely limited opportunities for makin' whoopee. And unlike the hapless dodo, this fellow was not about to march blithely into extinction without putting up a fight. No going gentle into that good night for Sirocco. He rode that poor man's head like a rented mule -- a little feathered Slim Pickens astraddle his own H-bomb.
(Of course, why the zoologist allowed the bird to begin a second ascent into the saddle is another and altogether more disturbing question.)
All that being said, though, I should assure p3 readers that my own parrot, Pardoe, has never behaved like this. But I'm also not letting him watch this clip. No sense putting ideas in his head at his age.
This isn't really about taxes. It's about establishing a permanent plutocracy and about locking in income inequality. And "starving the beast." Oh, and about looking tough for the mouth-breathers.
Yup, this week marks the sixth anniversary of the launch of The Colbert Report.
I didn't completely get it. That's painful, because I'm a major fan and student of satire and irony. But I didn't get it. I accept that now. I do.
I wanted it to be good, and while I couldn't ignore some of the shakedown problems, I could certainly excuse them.
My main problem was that I never watched Bill O'Reilly, so I wasn't prepared to recognize -- let alone appreciate -- a pitch perfect parody of him.
Also I was slow -- as were a lot of right-wingers like Dinesh D'Souza, Bill Kristol, and Tony Perkins, I'm delighted to remind you -- to realize that Colbert's character could be lethal as an interlocutor. Many are the irony-challenged interviewees who thought that Colbert was a safe haven, only to find them unwittingly led by his siren call to make even worse-sounding claims than the ones in the book they were there to promote.
So yeah. My bad.
A Peabody, one-and-a-half-Emmys, and countless nominations and special recognitions later, the Report is going strong. And with gambits like his characters absolutely-real superPAC, he's taking satire into the highwiare, wait-is-this-a-joke? regions that nobody's quite sure what to make of.
He has the thanks of a grateful nation, and Nation.
It's been some time since I've posted anything about my one of my minor passions, the love of a good first sentence. I've said before that the search for a good closing sentence may blind you to the fact that you've already written it.
Here, via Bryan Garner (not to be confused with Brian Gardner), is advice that feels somewhat familiar:
The best practical advice that can be given [on how to frame the opening sentences] is don't start. That is, don't start anywhere in particular. Begin at the end, begin in the middle, but begin. If you like you can fool yourself by pretending that the start you make isn't really the beginning and that you are going to write it all over again. Pretend that what you write is just a note, a fragment, a nothing. Only get started.
The greatest achievement of 1992: Not the announcement by Boris Yeltson that the Russia would no longer target US cities with their nukes. Not the end of apartheid in South Africa. Not even the 1 billion people watching the Freddie Mercury tribute live from Wembley Stadium, raising millions for AIDS research. (Although those were all pretty good. I mean, come on.) No, the high-water mark of 1992 was the launch of the MTV for the celluloid crowd, the Cartoon Network.
Portland homeboy Jack Ohman gives us those two words that should make every American (not to mention every Republican) cringe: Refried Newt.
Carl Stalling scary music, take two:Last week we saw “The Hair-Brained Hypnotist,” a Bugs-and-Elmer outing with great scary opening theme music, by Carl Stalling. As we move closer to Halloween, why not milk it? Here's “Hair-Raising Hare” from 1946, directed by Chuck Jones, written by Tedd Pierce, voiced by Mel Blanc (even the Peter Lorre character), featuring more creepy Stalling music, plus such musical puns as “Oh, You Beautiful Doll” as the theme for the mechanical rabbit fem-bot, “California, Here I Come” for the suitcase-packing scene, and “Shuffle Off to Buffalo for the lampshade exit bit.
(Note to Facebook friends: If you're reading this in FB Notes, you'll need to click View Original Post, below, to see the video.)
Nineteen years after it was originally recommended to me, I'm finally working on Umberto Eco's Foucault's Pendulum. In a note file on a floppy disk, on the computer of a man who has gone missing under increasingly worrisome cirumstances, is the following:
If you can't even decide what the story is, better stick to editing books on philosophy.
“Wake Up, Little Susie” was the first single by the Everly Brothers to hit #1, and it did it 54 years ago yesterday.
If you're reading this in FB Notes, you'll need to click View Original Post to see the video.
Everly Brothers Story #1 (apocryphal): Billy Joel, at some point after his career took off in the 1970s, met Paul McCartney. Feeling a little sheepish, Joel thanked McCartney, saying, If the Beatles hadn't done the things they did, I couldn't have done the things I've been able to do.
McCartney, as the story goes, shrugged politely. Don't worry -- I said the same thing to Phil Everly.
Everly Brothers Story #2 (I was there): Sometime in the late 1980s -- roughly 30 years after this song topped the charts -- I saw the Everly Brothers perform in the campus auditorium at Ball State. (Long story. Don't ask.) About halfway through the first set, a couple who'd been sitting near me -- I'd have guessed them to be younger than me, but certainly no older -- got up and left, their irritation evident. I didn't think this was going to be rock and roll, one of them huffed as they threaded their way out to the aisle.
1. In 2008, John McCain got the GOP presidential nomination not because he was the most popular, or had the right policies; he got it because he was the last man standing at the end of the primary season. In 2011, the uneasy alliance of the GOP establishment, the mainstream media, the GOP's Tea Party Base is gradually coming to an ugly conclusion: They've created a candidate selection system where that's a feature, not a bug. The person who takes the podium on Thursday night next September in Tampa Bay may very well be the one who simply happened to be ahead in the polls when the music stopped. They're burning through “next big thing” candidates at the rate of about one every three weeks. Good luck with that.
2. The mainstream corporate media has also begun to give more than merely dismissive coverage of #OccupyWallStreet (now starting its fourth week) and its siblings around the country (including Occupy Portland). The demonstrations themselves are important, arguably historic, but I think I'm more astonished that the corporate media is finding itself having not only to acknowledge their existence, but having to give them a measure of respect. That's gotta sting.
(*If you are an Apple product owner, there were three top stories this week.)
Taiwan's Next Media Animation in one of their more wonderfully odd pieces, asks: Can Herman Cain deliver for the GOP? (Deliver. Pizza. Get it?).
Tom Tomorrow presents the GOP's newest -- or oldest? -- energy policy. (Hint: According to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: “There is a theory which states that if ever anyone discovers exactly what the Universe is for and why it is here, it will instantly disappear and be replaced by something even more bizarre and inexplicable.
There is another theory which states that this has already happened.”)
The K Chronicles considers Stuff I Believe (Since Becoming a Parent).
#OccupySpringfield! In a show of solidarity with the demonstrators at #OccupyWallStreet, Comic Riffs counts down the fifteen best “Simpsons” quotes about labor and greed. (Note: “The Simpsons” has been renewed for its 24th and 25th seasons on FOX, although it hadn't yet at the point that the 15-quotes piece was posted.)
Unbe-wiev-able! “The Hare-Brained Hypnotist,” directed by Fritz Freleng, written by Michael Maltese, and voiced by Mel Blanc, was released on Halloween, 1942. (The cool scary opening theme music, by Carl Stalling, was used again in “Hair-Raising Hare” (1946), “The Super Snooper” (1952), “Hyde and Hare” (1955). The musical theme we hear when the bear and Elmer start flying is the piano-bench classic from 1855, “Listen to the Mockingbird.”)
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Paul Krugman began his most recent NYTimes column with these words:
There’s something happening here. What it is ain’t exactly clear, but we may, at long last, be seeing the rise of a popular movement that, unlike the Tea Party, is angry at the right people.
When the Occupy Wall Street protests began three weeks ago, most news organizations were derisive if they deigned to mention the events at all. For example, nine days into the protests, National Public Radio had provided no coverage whatsoever.
It is, therefore, a testament to the passion of those involved that the protests not only continued but grew, eventually becoming too big to ignore. With unions and a growing number of Democrats now expressing at least qualified support for the protesters, Occupy Wall Street is starting to look like an important event that might even eventually be seen as a turning point.
What can we say about the protests? First things first: The protesters’ indictment of Wall Street as a destructive force, economically and politically, is completely right.
If you're reading this in FB Notes, you'll need to click View Original Post to see the video.
Answer without thinking: What's your opinion of your local DMV? (Really, young lady, such language.) Now realize that those are the people who will determine whether you get to vote.
As all fans of the lamented “Reaper” remember, the Gates of Hell are just as close as your nearest DMV Branch. Say hi to Gladys.
To fully comprehend the sad spectacle that has become American politics since the 1980s, you need not peruse the politics section of major periodicals. Or the opinion, news or business pages of illustrious publications.
No, lately you’d be best served by heading on over to the obituary section.
For example, this past week, a legislative giant from an earlier and more evolved Republican Party - that is to say, one in which dazzling audiences with tales of cantering saddleback on the family T-Rex was not considered “reaching out to the base” - former Senator Charles Percy, passed away. This sad news has come not long after the passing of another Republican legend, former Oregon Senator Mark Hatfield.
But don't say goodbye to America's Tahrir Square, 'cause it ain't gone anywhere yet. (Not sure what to think about how under-represented -- make that non-represented -- the third week of the #occupywallstreet demonstrations has been in this week's political cartoons.)
Portland homeboy Jack Ohman looks at the point where reality show and political reality meet. (By the way, no way Christie will get in the race for 2012. He has everything to gain by trailing his skirts for the media and the beltway pundits, but nothing to gain by actually becoming a candidate. By Thanksgiving he'd be the next/last Rick Perry.)
A tribute to the insanely fast Patrick Makau of Kenya: Here's the 1942 Disney short “The Olympic Champ,” starring that blithe everyman (everydog?) Goofy, directed by Jack Kinney and narrated by John McLeish. Roger Rabbit was right: Goofy was a GEEEE-nius! (And a dash of Tennyson, all for the same low-low price!)
(Note to Facebook friends: If you're reading this in FB Notes, you'll need to click View Original Post, below, to see the video.)
p3 Bonus Toon:Jesse Springer isn't sorry to see Oregon opting out of NCLB.
This is not exactly “Garbo Speaks!”, but it's nevertheless pretty rare to find my voice and moving image online. But I figured this was an exception worth making.
If you're reading this in FB Notes, you'll need to click View Original Post to see the video.
Update: On the same subject, here's a happy-ending story about an attempt to ban Slaughterhouse-Five in Missouri, on the silly grounds that it creates "false conceptions of American history and government" and "teach[es] principles contrary to Biblical morality and truth." Kudos to the folks at the Vonnegut Library. (Are you taking applications?)
Or at least that's what it says on the cover of the late 1990's Blue Stingrays' “Surf-N-Burn” album -- which Wikipedia outs as the work of The Heartbreakers, Tom Petty's band, taking a surf-rock during the off season.
Which explains why the band is so amazingly tight This is a slick surf medley of "Goldfinger" and the "James Bond theme" written for the very first Bond movie, both composed by John Barry.
Hat-tip to June at my favorite coffee shop, who declared this whole week to be “Surf Music Week.”
If you're reading this in FB Notes, you'll need to click View Original Post to see the video.
This is the second appearance of “Goldfinger” on p3 Saturday Morning Tunes. The first was a great live performance by Shirley Bassey -- which I can no longer find on my own friggin' blog.(Not this one, although it's awfully good.) Ah well. Almost 7 years ago, when p3 was launched, tags and such indexical luxuries were the equivalent of the Jetsons' moving aerial sidewalks.
"A good cause is often injured more by ill-timed efforts of its friends than by the arguments of its enemies. Persuasion, perseverance, and patience are the best advocates on questions depending on the will of others." -Thomas Jefferson (1826)
Charles Pierce 
Incredibly, Salon.com wasted pixels today on 
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