A new exhibition and study center dedicated to Woody Guthrie is being built in Oklahoma, by a billionaire. Ron Radosh reflects on this news and on the record regarding Woody Guthrie’s political beliefs in a very interesting piece indeed: Hey, Hey Woody Guthrie — We Celebrate Your Music, But We Do Not Celebrate Your Politics.
… is a rare commodity these days. I thought the irony—or even sarcasm—would be pretty obvious in my previous post, “Bill Kristol calls for Sarah Palin to jump into the Republican race for the presidential nomination,” and I thought including a picture of Chris Christie would kind of nail it, but I’ve come to understand that I was mistaken.
No, I don’t believe that Bill Kristol actually wants Sarah Palin to enter the race. (Did Jonathan Swift have these kinds of problems?)
In advance of the Iowa caucus—the first chance for votes to be cast in the GOP presidential nomination contest—Bill Kristol has an editorial in “The Weekly Standard,” titled “A Time for Choosing.”
Those who have stood aside—and who now may have concluded, as they may not have when they announced their original decision, that the current field is lacking—will surely hear the words of Thomas Paine echoing down the centuries: “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.” Now is not a time for leaders to engage in clever calculations of the odds of success, or to succumb to concerns about how they will look if they enter the fray and fall short. Now is a time to come to the aid of our country.
Well, Bill Kristol and his inside-the-beltway ilk have been holding out for Sarah Palin to come rescue us for a long time. They are irresistibly charmed by her outside-the-beltway ways; they adore her bluntness, her ability to effortlessly connect with the values of everyday Americans in the heartland, her comfort in her own skin, her fearlessness in confronting the 24-hour liberal-media-attack-machine, her obvious and deep Christian faith, and her impatience with the oft-repeated lies and presumptions that rule a place like Washington D.C. [Read more →]
It just struck me that this is a great Christmas song, but strictly in the religious sense. It’s “Who Cares?” by George and Ira Gershwin. I was listening to Ella Fitzgerald’s immaculate version (from her unmatched collection of Gershwin tunes)
A holy and merry Christmas to all who will be celebrating, and a very happy Chanukah to those observing that festival.
The small group of close relatives, friends and world leaders on my snail-mail-Christmas-card list received a custom made card this year featuring the photograph of our dog Billie below, and the Bible verses beneath it.
“But ask the beasts, and they will teach you;
the birds of the heavens, and they will tell you;
or the bushes of the earth, and they will teach you;
and the fish of the sea will declare to you.
Who among all these does not know
that the hand of the LORD has done this?
In his hand is the life of every living thing
and the breath of all mankind.”
Job, Chapter 12, verses 7 through 10 (English Standard Version).
I did not write, after last Wednesday night, what has otherwise become my habitual post-mortem of Republican debates. There could have been plenty to say, I suppose—and certainly others found plenty to say—but in my case it seemed like a place-holding debate. It didn’t change my own mind on anything, and I’m not sure it really made a significant difference to the horse race in and of itself, although the horse race has certainly been in flux overall.
I’m personally right where I was before that debate. There are two candidates I find worthy of support, on the substance: Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich. I am not yet ready to decide for which one I would cast my vote, given the necessity of choosing. I expect to make up my mind, for the sake of good form if nothing else, immediately before the Iowa caucuses begin.
I have settled on Rick Perry and Newt Gingrich because they seem to me to be the candidates with the best records of actually getting good things done in office. I believe that both would shake up Washington, in a generally conservative direction, if elected president. Both have quite detailed and dramatic plans on the economy, regarding taxes and energy and entitlements and other matters. Both, of-course, are opposed and despised by the current Republican establishment in Washington. (Clearly, Romney is the favored “business-as-usual” candidate.) [Read more →]
It’s on the enormous Amnesty International collection of Bob Dylan songs, titled Chimes of Freedom.
The Amnesty International collection of eighty different cover versions of Bob Dylan songs, Chimes of Freedom
I can’t say that I’m very familiar with the body of musical work produced to date by these ladies, so in a way that’s good: I hear these performances strictly on their merits. They’re both interesting in their way. [Read more →]
When the payroll tax cut (from 6.2% down to 4.2%) was first proposed by President Obama around this time last year, as part of a deal to extend the Bush tax cuts, I don’t recall hearing a lot of objections being raised, or anyone being particularly perturbed. One exception, however (that I would be extremely remiss in not mentioning) was that of myself, writing in another space.
I pointed out then that this particular kind of tax cut was “fundamentally dishonest” and indeed “the most craven kind of gimmick that could be conceived,” coming as it did from the Democratic side, which generally opposes tax cuts on principle. (That principle being that everybody’s money really belongs to the government.) To propose a cut in the very tax that is supposed to fund Social Security, when everyone is aware that that program is well on its way to insolvency, and in the absence of any larger plan to fix the program, simply made no sense. And this was from the party that is always accusing Republicans of wanting to dismantle Social Security! The fact that allowing Americans to keep this much more money in their pockets would be stimulative to some extent seemed beyond argument, but the form which this cut took seemed exactly the wrong one. As I said then, it would be better “to just send everyone a once-off check: ‘HERE’S YOUR FREE MONEY’ – signed, your friend, Barack H. Obama.” Even that would be better, in other words, then sending the message that it was OK to slash Social Security taxes without doing one single thing to fix what is otherwise a doomed Ponzi scheme. [Read more →]
Just a few quick observations on this: The debate was clearly choreographed by Stephanopoulos and Diane Sawyer to turn Newt Gingrich into the latest Republican piñata. It’s difficult to look good when you’re being attacked from all sides, and in particular it threw Newt off of his game of being positive and focusing his criticism on the Obama administration. The prearranged set-piece where they questioned each candidate on the importance of “marital fidelity” and then deliberately ended with Gingrich was especially nauseating—perhaps the most nauseating interlude in any political debate I’ve ever seen, and that would truly be saying something. [Read more →]
