of Pink Floyd has some interesting comments on our President and our current elections (from an interview on this site http://www.ienner.com/pages/_rock&roll_pf.html/roger_waters_interview.html):
"Institutionalized hatred is only an expression of fear.. George Bush is obviously a deeply frightened man...and always has been his whole life...thats what he gives off. He exudes fear to me..thats why he finds it necesssary to dress up in air force uniforms and parade around on the decks of aircraft carriers. cause he's a frightened little kid.. you know..he's an infant..that politically is the problem. that you have this frightened infant you know in the most powerful position in the western world.."
"If Bush wins this election I won't just be aghast I will be struck dumb..You know..that the american people could reelect this disaster..this total disaster in every way as far as i am concerned.."
Friday, October 29, 2004
Thursday, October 28, 2004
arianna huffington
i think her current column makes some great points..
http://www.ariannaonline.com/columns/column.php?id=740
http://www.ariannaonline.com/columns/column.php?id=740
Transcript of Bruce Springsteen's Speech Earlier Today in the largest event in the history of Madison, Wisconsin
Thank you! Thank you.
As a songwriter, I've written about America for thirty years. Tryin' to write about who we are, what we stand for, what we fight for. And I believe that these essential ideas of American identity are what's at stake on November 2nd.
I think the human principles of economic justice -- just healing the sick, health care, feeding the hungry, housing the homeless, a living wage so folks don't have to break their backs and still not make ends meet, the protection of our environment, a sane and responsible foreign policy, civil rights and the protection and safeguarding of our precious democracy here at home -- I believe that Senator Kerry honors these ideals. He has lived our history over the past fifty years. He has an informed and adult view of America and its people. He's had the life experience, and I think he understands that we as humans are not infallible. And as Senator Edwards said during the Democratic convention, that struggle and heartbreak will always be with us. And that's why we need each other. That's why "united we stand" -- that's why "one nation indivisible" -- aren't just slogans, but they need to remain guiding principles of our public policy. And he's shown starting as a young man, that by facing America's hard truths, both the good and the bad, that that's where we find a deeper patriotism. That's where we find a more complete view of who we are. That's where we find a more authentic experience as citizens. And that's where we find the power that is embedded only in truth, to make our world a better and a safer place.
Paul Wellstone, the great Minnesota senator -- he said the future is for the passionate, and those that are willing to fight and to work hard for it. Well the future is now, and it's time to let your passions loose.
So let's roll up our sleeves. That's why I'm here today, to stand alongside Senator Kerry and to tell you that the country we carry in our hearts is waiting. And together we can move America towards her deepest ideals. And besides, we had a sax player in the [White] House -- we need a guitar player in the White House.
Alright -- this is for John. This is for you, John.
[Bruce launches into No Retreat, No Surrender]
Springsteen said his songs were about "who we are, what we stand for, what we fight for now. I believe these essential ideas about America (are) what is at stake on November 2. I believe Senator Kerry honours these ideas, he has lived our history for 50 years. He has formed an adult view of America and its people. The future is now and its time to let our passions loose."
John Peel can now be found spinning records for Marc Bolan, Ian Curtis, and Nick Drake on Radio Heaven
John Peel, one of the more important DJs of all time (certainly of my time), passed away earlier this week....Would I have been able to listen to much of the great music I've come across in my lifetime without the contributions of this man? I doubt it. As Bernard Sumner of New Order said: "If it wasn't for John Peel, there would be no Joy Division and no New Order. He was one of the few people to give bands that played alternative music a chance to get heard, and he continued to be a champion of cutting-edge music throughout his life."
for more information check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Peel
Quote of the week
"About a year ago, when things weren't going so well in my campaign, somebody called a radio talk show and they said, thinking they were just cutting me right to the quick, they said 'John Kerry won't be the president until the Red Sox win.' Well, we're on our way."
John Kerry October 28, 2004
John Kerry October 28, 2004
Boston Red Sox World Series Champions!
Woo hoo! Red Sox win their first World Series since 1918.. goodbye curse..hello nightclub
I don't have the time to provide an exhaustive analysis of the World Series... my earlier post on the Curse of the Bambino provides some background (scroll below).. but i thought i'd jot down a few post-euphoria notes:
The Red Sox outplayed, outpitched, outhit, outran, outsmarted, outcoached and just about did everything better than the Cardinals who put forth an embarassing performance uncharacteristic for a great baseball franchise..
its interesting that before the season started way back in april conventional wisdom held that the Red Sox starting pitching made them a prime candidate to win the World Series while the Cardinals starting pitching would hold them back....well it took the entire season for the Red Sox pitchers to pitch the way they were expected to and they picked a great time to do so.. from game 4 of the American League Championship Series the Red Sox starters were phenomenal (with the exception of Game 1 of the World Series).. meanwhile the Cardinal pitchers proved ineffective...
The big Cardinals surprise was their woeful hitting (What happened to you Rolen? 0-15?? Edmonds?) and poor baserunning....no spark
on the Red Sox side Manny Ramirez and David Ortiz provided some quality hitting but key efforts from a number of Red Sox were the difference...Cabrera and Bellhorn provided some quality clutch hitting while Johnny Damon's home runs in game 7 against the yankees were critical....even Trot Nixon managed to get an important hit in Game 4 after looking like he had lost his swing following his comeback from injuries
Schilling.. what can I say that has not been said... workhorse....stud... an unbelievably gutsy performance...a tremendous ballplayer.. a winner.
its nice Pedro managed to settle down for uncharacteristically smooth sailing in Game 3.... my feeling is he's on a downslope of his career and should not be re-signed by the Red Sox.. the guy is a trubblemaker and unless he is expected to regain his Cy Young form of a few years back there is no point to resigning him.....Lowe however gave me reason to pause before letting him go
the only positive for the Cards? Larry Walker did just about everything he was supposed and expected to.. what a solid performance.... he put it all on the line..
Larussa: never liked him and I ain't going to start now... I don't know what his problem is .. does he get too tense at playoff time? whatever the reason Larussa and post season wins go together about as well as unbiased reporting and Fox News... and if you can't win when it counts what good are you?
it seemed during this World Series that everything went Boston's way.. in fact since Game 4 of the American League Championship Series against the Yankees its been a dream ride.. 8 straight post season wins establishing a playoff record!
although Manny got the World Series MVP I think the Red Sox relief pitcher Kevin Foulke may have been more deserving what with critical saves in all Red Sox World Series victories...
Nomar Garciaparra??? who dat??? the heart and soul of the Red Sox (and my favorite ballplayer over the past few years) was jettisoned 50 or so games before the end of the season in THE key decision by the Boston brass... after that move, for whatever reason (is Nomar a bad apple??) the Red Sox clicked and made a run at the Yankees for the division...basically they never looked back with the exception of the momentous hiccup against the Yankees in the ALCS...
Red Sox victory ----> John Kerry victory!!!!!!!!!!
the key plays if there were any to the World Series? the home run by Bellhorn in Game 1 after the Cardinals had finally managed to claw their way to a tie ballgame or the Manny Ramirez (yes manny!) throw to home plate to get Larry Walker out (on a momentous cardinals baserunning miscue) with the bases loaded and pedro about to crumble
Monday, October 25, 2004
Pick of the week
The little more than a year between Miles Davis' classic "Milestones" and "Kind of Blue" sessions has to be one of the more rewarding in jazz. Some of my favorite jazz recordings of all time were made in this brief period. Namely:
Milestones (February and March 1958)
Somethin' Else (March 1958)
Miles and Monk at Newport (June 1958)
Porgy and Bess (July and August 1958)
Miles 58 (May and September 1958)
Jazz at the Plaza (September 1958)
Kind of Blue (March and April 1959)
This was the period when Miles Davis was transitioning from his original great quintet which featured Coltrane on sax, Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Philly Joe Jones on the drums. Over the course of a few months Bill Evans would play a couple of historically crucial sessions, Cannonball Adderley would join as a second saxophone player and Jimmy Cobb would replace Philly Joe Jones. The lineup, which began exploring so called modal jazz, proved unstable but managed to cut perhaps the greatest jazz record of all time: Kind of Blue. As Miles himself would write in his autobiography "I don't think any group ever had two saxophone players who could compare with Cannonball Adderley and John Coltrane."
Sometimes lost in the mix is the Cannonball Adderley Blue Note recording "Somethin' Else." I say lost in the mix because it is a recording credited to Cannonball. However, and while I am taking nothing away from Cannonball I believe this record is in actuality a Miles Davis project. From the selection of tunes which includes "Love for Sale" of which Miles led his own recording a mere two months later, to Miles in his patented gruff manner saying right after the performance of One for Daddy-O "Is that what you wanted Alfred?" (i.e., Blue Note label chief Alfred Lion), to "Autumn Leaves" which is all about Miles, to his decision to sit out the fifth track as recounted in Leonard Feather's liner notes: "'I made him play this,' says Miles, 'because I remembered hearing Sarah Vaughan do it like his.'", to titling the album after the Miles original recorded especially for this album (and which Miles never recorded again), etc.
How did Miles Davis come to record this album anyways? After all this must be the first session he did not get top billing in a while and the last one I can think of. Miles writes in his autobiography (after mentioning how he and Cannonball used to hang out as opposed to Coltrane who was "..only really concerned about playing his music and growing as a musician"), and it truly is amazin how little he has to say about it: "Back in New York, Cannonball, who had signed a deal to do a record for Blue Note, asked me to play on the date, which I did as a favor. The record was called 'Something Else' and was very nice."
Curiously enough the spines on the album read "Cannonball Adderley - Miles Davis." Another interesting fact about this record is that in addition to Miles providing support, Art Blakey plays the drums in one of his last appearances as a session musician.
review of record to follow
Wednesday, October 20, 2004
And the numbers are in!
Transparency International's annual "Corruption Perceptions Index 2004" was released today. What does it measure?
From www.transparency.org (check it out for the details/methodology/notes)
"The Corruption Perceptions Index is a poll of polls, reflecting the perceptions of business people and country analysts, both resident and non-resident. This year's Corruption Perceptions Index draws on 18 surveys provided to Transparency International between 2002 and 2004, conducted by 12 independent institutions."
Transparency International notes that it includes only 146 countries as there is not enough data for many countries. It is interesting to observe the listing of the least corrupt countries:
1. Finland
2. New Zealand
3. Denmark & Iceland
5. Singapore
6. Sweden
7. Switzerland
8. Norway
9. Australia
10. Netherlands
11. United Kingdom
12. Canada
13. Austria & Luxembourg
15. Germany
16. Hong Kong
17. Belgium & Ireland & USA
20. Chile
21. Barbados
22. France & Spain
24. Japan
25. Malta
26. Israel
27. Portugal
28. Uruguay
29. Oman & UAE
31. Botswana & Estonia & Eslovenia
and let us look at Latin America in particular
20. Chile
28. Uruguay
41. Costa Rica
51. El Salvador
59. Brazil
60. Belize & Colombia
62. Cuba & Panama
64. Mexico
67. Peru
87. Dominican Republic
97. Nicaragua
108. Argentina
112. Ecuador
114. Honduras & Venezuela
122. Bolivia & Guatemala
141. Paraguay
I don't know if one would go so far as to call it a correlation but it does seem that the less well off, the poorer a nation is the more corrupt it is...Chile's position is a remarkable achievement in a continent rampant with cronyism...
And whats with the United States? I thought the US was tops at everything.. the "envy of the world" as Bush said with respect to our health care "system" (45 million uninsured...oh, i guess they do not count!)
It might be interest to correlate GNP per capita with the corruption indices and see what happens....
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Presidential Election Forecast
our model is churning out the following based on all available information.. we believe that give or take the die is cast:
Popular Vote
John Kerry 51.23
George Bush 47.34
Ralph Nader 1.09
State by State
For Bush:
Alabama (9), Alaska (3), Arkansas (6), Arizona (10), Georgia (15), Idaho (4), Indiana (11), Kansas (6), Kentucky (8), Louisiana (9), Mississippi (6), Montana (3), Nebraska (5), Nevada (5), North Carolina (15), North Dakota (3), Oklahoma (7), South Carolina (8), South Dakota (3), Tennessee (11), Texas (34), Utah (5), Virginia (13), West Virginia (5), Wyoming (3)
Bush Electoral Votes: 207
For Kerry:
California (55), Colorado (9), Connecticutt (7), Delaware (3), Washington DC (3), Florida (27), Hawaii (4), Illinois (21), Iowa (7), Maine (4), Maryland (10), Massachusetts (12), Michigan (17), Minnesota (10), Missouri (11), New Hampshire (4), New Jersey (15), New Mexico (5), New York (31), Ohio (20), Oregon (7), Pennsylvania (21), Rhode Island (4), Vermont (3), Washington (11), Wisconsin (10)
Kerry Electoral Votes: 331
Turnout: 56.8%
Note: Our Model has the most difficulty predicting the behavior of the State of West Virginia.
Note2: We may elect to provide an update...
47west63rd calls Presidential election!!
we know the readership of 47west63rd counts on us for something special..something extra it can't get elsewhere:
after extensive analysis and use of our Election Forecasting Model 2004 we are now able to call this election in favor of Senator John Kerry.
John Kerry will become the 44th President of the United States
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