Vote early please folks. It's as simple as that. If you live anywhere near a large city or if you live in an African American neighborhood or in a "swing state" please vote early. There is early voting in 46 states and it's started already. Go stand in line now and get it over with, find out now if your vote can be cast. And most importantly, DO NOT ACCEPT A PROVISIONAL BALLOT. Stand in line and wait until the poll workers can give you a real ballot and come back the next day if you need to in order to cast a ballot.

Read this fantastic article in Rolling Stone to see how voter suppression works, it's a biased article, I'll say it right here. It claims that the Republicans are actively suppressing the vote. But Robert F. Kennedy and Greg Palast give ample, legal evidence for his claims and I think everyone should see it, and decide for themselves what they think. In the very worst case scenario, you read the article and go to the poll and prove him wrong!

Now, have a great day, go vote, and rock on with our friends, Against Me! a great punk band from Gainesville, Florida (that's a swing state, by the way.)

Unprotected Sex With Multiple Partners mp3 Against Me! Americans Abroad!!! Against Me!!! Live in London!!! (2006) -- yeah it's about the music industry, ya pervs!

Reinventing Axl Rose mp3 Against Me! Americans Abroad!!! Against Me!!! Live in London!!! (2006)
buy into the system

especially on a Friday! But in the midst of this crazy election with "negative campaigning" and that crazy fucker "Joe Plumber" who is not really even a plumber at all and who is honestly just a really misguided lower-middle-class guy with pretensions of being rich, well....let's just say I'm glad the debates are over and I'm feeling in need of a hymn right now. So have a listen to this even though it is rather "churchy" for me.

You see, the strength of the Republican Party's ideology in this country lies in their ability to manipulate the "every man's" belief that he can achieve anything he puts his mind to. Self reliance, a very popular and populist notion is a powerful tool whereby politics becomes a game for "winners" and self interest and "opportunities for success." However, from my perspective, it's yet another example of what Gramsci called "contradictory consciousness," where people don't act in their own interest to get what's good for them and for their families because they believe in something that holds them hostage to doing what's good for capitalism.

Joe the Plumber believes that if the government gave him enough opportunity he could feasibly buy his employer out, (Wurzelbacher, 34, said he doesn't have a good plan put together on how he would buy Newell Plumbing and Heating in nearby Toledo), and make over $250,000 in income and he thinks that under Obama's proposed economic plan he will be punished by paying higher taxes for doing so. It's very simple in Joe's mind. By entering the "rich" class he will have to pay for all those "poor" folks who need healthcare and other social services. Joe's against socialism. The mainstream media just won't come out and put it this bluntly to you, but I bet talk radio is saying it, no?

Joe's contradictory consciousness dictates that even though right now he's making quite a bit less income than $250,000 and probably has huge health insurance premiums for his family of two, and perhaps fears for the future if he loses his job and his health insurance, he's getting ripped off because he's not owning his own business. He's limited in the amount of money he can make because he's someone's employee instead of employing others.

What he fails to take into account, because of his belief in the "American Dream" is that in employing others he will be burdened with providing them fair wages, adequate healthcare, maternity leave, .......oh wait... with the "American Dream" in power there's no need for that! All he has to do is make as much money as he can. So yes, I guess Joe is right, he should vote for McCain so that when he gets enough capital together to qualify for that Small Business Administration load to buy out his boss he can exploit workers just like he's being exploited right now. In the meantime he can suffer along with all the rest when it comes to wondering where his health insurance is coming from. Or money to pay off his car loan, his credit card debt, his mortgage.

Of course in a perfect world, employees can just go find a job where good wages, adequate healthcare, and safe working conditions are available, if Joe's boss doesn't provide them. It's a free market of competition out there for jobs afterall ;) Let me know where that world is, I'll help ya pack.

Joe the Plumber and our election seems like a small and local issue in light of the recent economic crisis. But we'd be a fool to not realize how this election plays into that. The world is watching to see what happens on Nov. 2.

Finlandia is hymn of internationalism. For me it evokes a sense of how small our "American Dream" is and should be in this globalized world. We can no longer afford to dream that dream... So if (like me) the god bits don't speak to you, just listen to the rest xoxo

Finlandia mp3 Indigo Girls Rairities
invest in it

Faith Collapsing mp3, Ministry, The Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Taste

Ashes In The Fall mp3, Rage Against The Machine, The Battle For Los Angeles

fuck it, buy the damn music folks!


There's a time and place for being really pissed off about politics and economies and newscasters and pundits and television. And today I'm deciding that time is now and that place is here. So scoot off to another happy blog if you want some cheery trip down memory lane about a great pop song from the 90s cause it ain't gonna be here folks.

See, the thing that gets me about this mess is that it's nothing new. It's nothing that no one with their eye on the financial markets didn't see coming. It's nothing that your average real estate broker didn't know about two or five years ago. It's nothing that anyone in the business of predicting retail sales didn't know, in the business of advising college students on future careers didn't know, many of us knew that we were living in a bubble. And without blame, we forgot. Like the wife with the cheating husband who brought home a great bouquet of flowers every Friday night and remembered all the kids' birthdays and was there for every holiday, we "forgot" about the indiscretions. We see what we want to when times are good folks, admit it. We see what we want to when we live lives that are privileged enough to allow us to do so.

Now, those of us who don't have that privilege, (I can't truthfully count myself in that class any longer, I have been fortunate and have benefited from others' wealth) can't choose to see life the way we want. And it becomes impossible to turn the other way when that husband cheats or it becomes impossible a lot sooner for us than for those who live in privilege. So, who's noticing that $700 Billion right now? Students whose loans aren't going through, people who soon won't get food stamps, folks who need to move to take a job in another locale and can't get a mortgage or can't get a buyer who can get one, or find their house devalued so much that they take a serious hit. That cheating husband becomes a real bastard mighty quick.

And that cheating husband is us. It's all of us who have lived with clean drinking water and free elementary and secondary public education, and a relatively safe air traffic control system, and an expectation that the food we eat won't kill us... while at the same time AND AT THE EXPENSE OF other countries (whose labor we import to maintain our privilege) who live without these standards of living. Did I lose you there? Do you feel blamed? I'm sorry, but I mean it. It's my rant, remember? We live with these standards of living because we make them live without them. Yeah, I'm making it be that simple. Politically, economically, morally, it's a zero sum game on the big capitalistic scorecard because individual competition mandates that I win at your expense. Collaboration reduces profit.

Yes, our politicians have done it to us, for us. No, it's not just an American (no -- strike that, make that US because ya know what? There's a whole continent down there that's called Central and South AMERICA and we're just the United States up here), problem/issue. It's all of the industrialized world who live at the expense of the "emerging" countries. Well they've emerged to some extent now.

This "crisis" is in most ways a realignment of financial and economic and credit markets that simply reflects the fact that we can no longer enjoy our position as a buyer of credit and a buyer of imported labor and goods at a cheap rate. We are jockeying for position and have little to no capital spend. The masses are beginning to realize that we are now in the passenger seat, we're the sellers and what product will we offer?

McCain, and his flying monkey, Caribou Barbie, hopes to sell the public on our patriotic duty of "rooting out terrorism and killing the enemy" which is an age-0ld trope, using nationalism to unify and strengthen morale and thereby increase consumer confidence as well as confidence abroad in our markets. Too bad it's a 20th century strategy in a 21th century world. And every poll (from 2005 to today) shows that the majority of people in the US want out of the war business.

Obama and Biden hopes to sell the public on our technological ability to transform our world ecologically and industrially in order to become independent of oil, and to preserve our environment. Perhaps with our country's resources they will enable us to sell that technology to the world. I support the Democratic party in this, it's the lesser of two evils right now. And I've put my money and my time where my mouth is on this. I encourage you to do the same.

At the moment, President Bush is selling our nuclear capabilities to India. That sentence alone frightens me.

As you might have guessed, I'm no Democrat, I'm no supporter of the capitalist system, and what I see happening right now is a whole lot of economists running about trying to figure out how to run most wisely, head long, into a long dark tunnel and that's all they know -- it's a long dark tunnel. Look to Social Scientists for help here, see what historians, Political Scientists, Sociologists and other people who read and study how Japan and Sweden and Russian dealt with and are dealing with financial crises. Consider why England has nationalized 8 major banks yesterday and why Russia's RTS index is down 67% year-to-date. China is also cutting interest rates on one year loans and yet the average Joe thinks Russia and China will bail us out? I'm mystified. No one will put money in our market when there's no hope of getting something back, no matter how many times McCain bellows "The American workers are the best in the world!"

The theme of this rant: people get educated. Ask some fucking questions. Don't pull your money out of the market if you are lucky enough to have any. Sit tight, and ask why these supposed answers are answers in the first place?

Oh, and have a good day, xoxo
regular Tart posting resumes tomorrow, rant over. That Ministry track has been going through my head for about two weeks, I hope this exorcism helps, it's pure, industrial genius, let it seep into your psyche and then let Rage take over ;)

In light of the Biden/Palin debate tonight wherein Sarah Palin evaded any question of substance and was not held to answer for any false statements (neither by Biden nor by the moderator, Gwen Ifill); wherein Sarah Palin purported to know something about foreign policy while at the same time making ridiculous statements about it; wherein Sarah Palin showed no emotion whatsoever except to wink (!) at the audience, at the newscasters, and at her husband, even when Senator Biden choked up (as he often does) when talking about his dead wife and daughter; and, wherein Sarah Palin expressed a sincere desire to expand the legislative powers of the vice president, I am hereby forced to revert to childhood musical taste and curl up in a corner of my bedroom, rocking myself to sleep to the sounds of horrible, fluffy, 1970s love-pop. I'm sorry. Please forgive me in advance for inflicting it on you all. (But seriously, isn't that picture awesome!, who knew if you googled "bread" you'd get *that*?)

I loved the group, Bread. They sang all the love songs that 8 year old me wanted to believe defined love. Back then no one sang about "fucking" or "sex" or even "shoop"ing. "Make It With You" was explicit enough for 8 year old me. That's how people said it back then, "Do you wanna make it?" or "Did you make it last night?" It seems so odd now to think about that, so 70s! Anyway, if you've not heard Bread, you really should have some sugary sweet 70s love pop for your Friday groove, and get out there and Make It this weekend folks, xoxoxo

Make It With You, mp3 Bread, On The Waters ..... Buy it
It Don't Matter To Me, mp3 Bread, Bread ..... Buy it
If, mp3 Bread, Manna ..... Buy it

Sometimes it's better not knowing... I'd rather not know how much the stock market fell today (almost 800 points, ouch!). I'd rather not know how ill equipped Sarah Palin is for the White House (that SNL skit was all too close to the real thing, eh?) And today as I was browsing through some music I've not heard in a while I looked up this song and found that no, I didn't need to know the meaning behind "Monkey Gone To Heaven" by The Pixies. It's a great song, a catchy song, a song that brings back happy memories and if it's truly about environmentalism, as wikipedia says, well I'm better off not knowing it, it's just a great tune. So, I'm sorry if you didn't know, just erase that from your mind and enjoy the tune. More Pixies to come, I'm refreshing my knowledge of this great American band.

Monkey Gone To Heaven mp3 The Pixies Doolittle

buy Doolittle

photo credit: eightdaysjet

No crap post from me today! Nosiree! I've been up to my eyeballs in some good old-fashioned punk and it's got me out of my Saturday funk. Lucky you!

Someone please tell me, why are the Dead Kennedys still so completely a propos? Hmmm, ten bonus points for naming the country Bush will invade by January!

Kinky Sex Makes The World Go Round Dead Kennedys Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death
Macho Insecurity Dead Kennedys Bedtime For Democracy

Buy the Dead Kennedys!

I'm trying very hard to not get too partisan on this here music blog; the Puppet Show and I never have any trouble at all finding common ground and sometimes agreeing to disagree when we are at odds. We're both generally uber-rational and only get more so when things get feisty, but I have to beg your indulgence here for a second while do some partisan romping. Regular programming will return in just a bit, I promise.

Actually I was fuming and fussing in my head for most of the day over "Caribou Barbie's" speech last night. I do give her kudos for making a hell of an impression on people! She gave a great performance. And I feel she will win many over. And in the interest of full disclosure I'm not much of a Democrat, honestly (Not to say I'm a Republican either, don't believe that for a second!) I do support Obama this time around out of desperation to stop what I see as some kind of death spiral in my country's political arena.

Now, before you go about crucifying me, yes, I agree, it is SO WRONG to criticize Sarah Palin for being a woman. And any comment about her family or her maternal duties are off limits, I agree. But I think it is fair to admit that she was chosen, in part because of her gender. So let's agree on that and enjoy the music.

Honestly, I was gonna leave Sarah alone today on the blog. But I had this song in my head all day and knew I'd find it on YouTube. Well, I found this instead, and it's oh so much better:


and just because I can't be subtle!

Ain't Nothin' But A Woman Robert Cray Strong Persuader ..... buy it

Crazy Woman Magic Slim and The Teardrops Black Tornado ..... buy it

Pipeline Stevie Ray Vaughn and Double Trouble Real Deal: Greatest Hits Vol. 2 ..... buy it

but I am such a sucker for Steve Miller. And today over on The World Forgot, Billy muses about Obama's campaign choice in music. I suggested (with a smirk on my face, I admit) they use this:



And, yeah that song is a real ear worm, isn't it?

But any who.... back to my childhood and the really good music of the seventies! The song that Obama's political campaign should choose is obviously Steve Miller's Don't You Let Nobody Turn You Around recorded in 1970. This song however, is much much older, stemming from a Negro Spiritual and recorded as early as (maybe earlier) 1935 by Blind Willie McTell. Give it a listen and you'll see why no politician but Obama would dare to use it or maybe get away with using it today.

from Steve Miller's Anthology Don't You Let Nobody Turn You Around mp3
and one more that you really should have
from Steve Miller's Greatest Hits Rock 'N Me mp3
buy them both
visit his site