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Up to the minute notes on the current state of free thinking and free living: Kentucky moonshine - original analysis and reporting from MoreThings, and all round pop culture museum of sight and sound - photo galleries, mp3 and video downloads.
Al Barger and MoreThings - getting people's goats since 1998.
Live free or die!
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August 24, 2002
The original celluloid hero
On August 24, 1891 Thomas Edison patented a motion picture camera.
posted by Al at 8/24/2002 01:21:00 AM
August 23, 2002
The Clash sell out [Say it ain't so Joe!]
I'm both viscerally pleased and highly amused by the new Jaguar ads featuring the classic Clash song "London Calling." From the corporate point of view, it's a cool hip hard rock song with an English theme to sell their English cars.
 and the Jaguar's new whores
However, it is more than a little funny to hear THIS song from THIS band in THIS context. The Clash, you see, billed themselves as "the only band that matters." By this, they meant they were left-wing political leaders calling the youth of the world to action. They were self-styled communist revolutionaries. They even named the Sandinista! album in honor of their South American comrades. They were the precursors and models of self-styled revolutionary musical crusaders from Public Enemy to Midnight Oil to Rage Against the Machine.
The specific song "London Calling" was 1)their best song, and 2)a communist revolutionary call to arms.
"London calling to the faraway towns
Now that war is declared-and battle come down
London calling to the underworld
Come out of the cupboard, all you boys and girls"
Cheesy commie posturing aside, this is a great song, a thrill to any true rocker. It's the greatest commie anthem in all of rock music.
And it's all the better now that they have become prostitutes for a big corporation pimping luxury cars. How much more precise a sell-out could they have possibly made?
Strummer and Jones, welcome to the trough, you corporate swine:)
THE CLASH'S PINKO PHOTO GALLERY
"POLICE AND THIEVES" PICTURES - 1977 in Munich
THE CLASH'S MINDLESS GRAFFITI POLITICS
"THIS IS RADIO CLASH" PICTURES - 1981 on the Tomorrow Show with Tom Snyder
TOM SNYDER INTERVIEW IMAGES 1981
THE CLASH WALLPAPER IMAGES
HALL OF FAME 2003
posted by Al at 8/23/2002 06:37:00 AM
August 22, 2002
Bouncing Barr a net plus for liberty
Republican Bob Barr was beat in Tuesday's Georgia primary in his congressional re-election bid by fellow incumbent John Linder, whom he had been thrown up against because of re-districting. Some sliver of credit should go to Libertarian Party members running ad campaigns against him on the basis of his fanatical opposition to medical marijuana patients, or any other drug law reform.
On the other hand, some libertarian types, such as Jacob Sullum at Reason magazine, have lamented his loss on the grounds that -other than on the drug war- Barr was noted as one of the more conscionable members of congress on civil liberties issues. For example, he was skeptical of the big post 9-11 "USA Patriot Act," pushing for at least some modest consideration of constitutional liberties.
This does bear giving him some credit. Also, he should get at least a couple of points for pushing the Clinton impeachment.
However, the net damage of his drug war insanity pretty much neutralizes whatever benefits he brought to protecting constitutional liberties. About a wash.
Moreover, consider the other side. John Linder may not be the most vociferous exponent of guarding civil rights generally, but he's made a signature issue of opposing the income tax. Not that he wants to reform or streamline it, but actually ELIMINATE it. I could do without the national sales tax he'd like to replace it with, but it would still be a huge improvement. Income taxes are a greater evil even than the drug war. Income taxation may be the one federal program that wreaks more destruction on our privacy and liberties than the war on drug users.
Congressman Linder's proposal to eliminate income taxes would do more on a wholesale level to relieve our constitutional suffering than anything Barr has done.
posted by Al at 8/22/2002 03:31:00 AM
This looks like a job for Dean Wormer
The Princeton Review [no relation to Princeton University] put out rankings of the nations colleges that named Indiana University the #1 party school in the nation. Congratulations! It's good that us Hoosiers are winning something.
I would have preferred to see my alma mater Ball State University take the prize, but their partying reputation has only gone downhill in the years since I graduated. It was sad, but inevitable. As Eminem says, "It feels so empty without me."
Meanwhile back in the modern era, IU administrators and decent citizens are unhappy. Bill Stephan, IU vice president for public affairs, said, "I think there are some serious questions about the methodology of the study and it really calls into question the credibility of the ranking." He says this as if this were some kind of scientific study, rather than bragging rights for the frats and a bit of publicity for the reviewing organization. The American Medical Association likewise found some humorless flak to cluck his tongue about the whole idea of having any such ratings.
In the classic words of Grouch Marx at his coronation in Duck Soup,
"If any form of pleasure is exhibited
Report to me and it shall be prohibited
I'll put my foot down, so shall it be
This is the land of the free"
In any case, something has to be done. I think Dean Wormer should immediately have all the fraternities at IU put on Double Secret Probation.
posted by Al at 8/22/2002 03:29:00 AM
So maybe he's not father of the year...
Steve Earle went On the Record with Greta Van Susteren Monday night to premiere his much talked about song "John Walker Lindh's Blues" from his upcoming Jerusalem album. He wrote it sympathetically in the voice of the infamous American Taliban.
The good news is that it is at least a somewhat better song than Bruce Springsteen's contemptible "Paradise." It is also probably more realistic emotionally, being built on some of Lindh's own words.
The interesting thing to me was that in the course of five minutes talking, he explained probably at least six times that he was motivated to write this song because he has a son Walker's age [20]. Granted Earle the elder has been a heroin addict and convicted felon, but does he really feel that he has been that bad a father? I could see how he might imagine himself having a son getting busted for dope or a DUI, but how bad would his boy have to hate him to go take up arms against his country with the Taliban to get back at him?
posted by Al at 8/22/2002 03:28:00 AM
Is Al Barger a crazed conspiracy freak?
I may as well set the tone for this blog by beginning with some crazed left-wing conspiracy paranoia. A thought has been brewing in the back of my mind since the Y2K election debacle, but I haven't given it voice even in private conversations because it sounds nutty even to me. Nonetheless, I can't help but notice a set of data points that seem to call for a conclusion. Therefore, I'll just present the idea, and maybe y'all can tell me if there is evil afoot - or if I've just been down on the farm without a date for too long.
Thinking back, it sure looks as if people in the news divisions of the major broadcast networks purposely tried to throw the 2000 presidential election to Al Gore on election day by conscious force of fraud. There, I've said it.
I don't mean simply that their reporters, anchors and editors were liberal partisans during the election season, trying to make Dubya look bad and Gore look good. That much is obviously true. It is also perfectly legitimate function of a free press, even if I think they're fools.
No, it looks as though all through the election night, network election services were systematically looking for ways to make it look like Gore was winning, and Bush was losing, in order to encourage Democratic turnout and suppress Republicans. You could make yourself crazy punching and crunching numbers, but there was an unmistakable pattern of quickly calling states for Gore, within minutes - even ones that he won by small margins. Gore is getting called for winning Maine by 5 points within 10 minutes of polls closing. Bush, on the other hand, had to wait two hours and forty-one minutes to get called for winning Colorado by 9 points. There are a thousand and eleven ways of slicing and dicing the numbers, but there sure seems to have been a lot of leaning one way for it to be purely co-incidental.
The classic example of this, naturally, was in Florida where the networks were all calling the state for Gore even while the polls in the Republican-leaning panhandle were still open. There were claims that the polls were closed, and Gore had already won the state. Hey, might as well turn the car around and go home. No need wasting your time to vote for Bush: he's lost, and the polls are closed anyway.
I'm not saying that Dan Rather et al thought they were going to sway the election in Florida itself this way. They had no way to know that it was close enough that encouraging a couple of thousand voters to stay home in the panhandle might actually change the whole election outcome.
However, you don't have to go that far to accuse the media of skullduggery. Calling a couple of big states for Gore right away could be expected to help ongoing Democratic get out the vote efforts in the middle and western parts of the country. Hey, you've still got time to jump on the winning bandwagon! Western Republicans, why bother? Dubya has already been beat. The fact that this might actually sway the election in Florida itself was just gravy.
However, I find it difficult to believe that the networks were so stupid as to accidentally be calling Florida for Gore with polls still open. A local reporter following county returns in a small town might overlook some incoming last minute precinct reports. The networks, however, individually and collectively through the Voter News Service [VNS] spent tens of millions of dollars setting up reporting of hard incoming numbers, their own exit polls, and statistical analysis for all this. None of them even knew that the humpin' polls were still open? Hmmm.
In fairness, Florida was only being called for Gore about 10 minutes before polls were closed, and Dan Rather probably couldn't have known that their monkey business might actually change the outcome in Florida itself.
Nonetheless, there were a LOT of damned convenient errors and assumptions sliding helpfully Gores way -an awfully damned big lot of them for it to be accidental.
Don't get me wrong: I for one greatly enjoyed the extended election debacle. I didn't vote for Dubya [my guy Harry Browne "missed it by this much" as Maxwell Smart would say], so I certainly wasn't feeling cheated that way. The whole thing was a fascinating historical moment, and a great national civics lesson.
Still, after pimping for Al Gore through the whole season, the broadcast networks were pretty clearly trying to put their thumb on the scales on election night. I don't see how you can put much stock in the credibility of their reporting, ever.
Or am I missing something?
posted by Al at 8/22/2002 01:24:00 AM
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