Dixie Chicks vs. Country Lemmings

I am not and never have been a fan of the Dixie Chicks. I've liked some of what they've done, but overall their music has never been my cup of tea. But I find myself rooting for their success with the release of their new album, Taking the Long Way. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of other people feel the same way.

The Dixie Chicks have faced what a lot of Americans have faced, but have done so in a very public manner. By voicing their dissent in regard to the war in Iraq and condemning President Bush, they have all but been blacklisted in Country music. What success they have enjoyed since condeming President Bush and facing the incredible over-reaction by the Country music industry has come largely from Pop cross-overs. I hope that trend continues, because I would love to see the Dixie Chicks continue. If for no other reason than to annoy the crap out of the Right-Wingers all over the country, whose typical reaction to anyone who disagrees them is to attempt to silence their voice. I hope that every time the Dixie Chicks sing a song, the Right-Wingers shiver.

Well, I don't criticize anyone for their musical tastes, but this whole thing sums up why I don't listen to country music. You must remember that I am someone who has in his CD collection music by Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson, Johnny Cash, Hank Williams (I, II and III), among many others that are considered to be legends in Country music. The problem here is that they've stopped making Country music. What exists now is a format and form that fits an ideology. It's the soundtrack to a political point of view. The Conservatives saw that Bill Clinton used Rock and Roll, and so they adopted Country music. The result was propaganda.

Frank Bell, VP of programming at independent Froggy radio, said “I think when you look at what country music and country music listeners are all about, it’s family, fun, faith and flag. I haven’t heard the whole CD, but the singles have none of that.”

That explains somewhat the incredible outpouring of emotion and propaganda that has surrounded the Dixie Chicks' latest album. The Dixie Chicks broke with formatting.

They broke away from the very things I hate about contemporary Country music. I've travelled extensively in the United States. I've been in countless truck stops where contemporary Country music was playing over the intercom. And I must say that it's virtually impossible to tell one singer or song from the next. But what makes it so grating is that on top of that incredible banality they pile on ideas such as patriotism and love of country, and somehow portray this drivel as the music of the American patriot. Rock and Roll is for anarchists. Country is for Americans.

This is not a dissection of the relative merits of Country music versus Rock and Roll, but rather a rant about how an entire genre of music has been taken over by a Right-Wing ideology. If our democracy falls to the one-party theocracy that the Religious Right and Right-Wing Conservatives are aching for, it will largely be accomplished to a Country music soundtrack.

I don't see that the Dixie Chicks have any choice but to leave behind the lemmings who constituted their original fan base. To that end I offer them the best. I believe that I may very well buy their new CD just to help them shake a fist at these charlatans in Country music who wrap themselves in the American flag and then betray American democracy by demanding that any voices that contradict their own be silenced immediately.

I have to say, given the level of discourse going on surrounding the Dixie Chicks and their latest album, they will most likely do just fine. If for no other reason than that the furor will compell a lot of people to come see what all the fuss is about.

- Watch Alert archived post

Hysteria and The DaVinci Code

First off, let me say one thing. If your faith can be shaken or challenged by the contents of a movie, your faith is weak, to say the least.

I am not one of those people who believe that the average person is a weak-minded sheep who cannot make up his or her own mind about something, and must therefore be protected from anything which might lead them in a direction certain people don't want them to follow. Simply put, if The DaVinci Code doesn't appeal to you, don't go see it.

If you are going to form groups to try to boycott this movie and prevent it from being shown in theaters, then you will certainly have no right to complain when later on someone wants to boycott and shut down a movie that you might want to see out there (such as those terrible movies based on the Left Behind series). The same people who want to shut down The DaVinci Code and prevent people from seeing it would have screamed bloody murder had someone tried to do the same thing to The Passion of the Christ.

Sorry, folks. While I understand that this movie is controversial, to say the least, and will undoubtedly offend some people, this is not a religious issue. This is an issue concerning the very foundations of our democracy. Thomas Jefferson said that freedom of expression “cannot be limited without being lost.” In other words, you cannot limit the freedoms of others without giving up the same liberties for yourself.

But greaters minds that I have had plenty to say on this subject. It would serve the boycotters well to remember some of the ones I've listed below.

“You can only protect your liberties in this world by protecting the other man's freedom. You can only be free if I am free.” - Clarence Darrow

“When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by default it can never be recovered.” - Dorothy Thompson

“The only way to make sure people you agree with can speak is to support the rights of people you don't agree with.” - Eleanor Holmes Norton

“If we do not believe in freedom of speech for those we despise we do not believe in it at all.” - Noam Chomsky

Long story short, folks, the point I'm trying to make is that you can't have it both ways. What's so difficult to understand about that? If you sell your neighbor into slavery, what gives you the right to complain when they come to enslave you?

I'm certainly not saying that people who disagree with this movie should remain silent. I don't have a problem with people speaking out about The DaVinci Code (or anything that they disagree with). But when they form groups and try to prevent other people to see it, they have betrayed our Foundating Fathers and the sacrifices of our American ancestors, who spilled their blood and gave their lives defending the freedoms that too many Americans are so eager to just give away.

I understand why Christians would be upset with the premise of The DaVinci Code. But the same people who made fun of Muslims when they were outraged by the depiction of the prophet Mohammad in cartoons are largely acting in the same fashion.

Is The DaVinci Code blasphemous? Yes. To most Christians, it is indeed blasphemous. The problem here is that when Dan Brown wrote the book that this movie is based upon, he never contended that it was factional. It's been marketed as fiction. It's been accepted and read by people who understood that it's fiction. I've known many Christians who read the book, thought it was great, and walked away from it without any doubts about their faith. One has to wonder why so many other people simply cannot do that.

I'll tell you why. The majority of Americans practice what I call a shallow faith. As long as they go to church on occasion, play at being religious, and call themselves Christians, they believe that they are “what they should be.” These are the people who protest the loudest when their shallow faith is challenged by a movie or a book, or are offended by a logo on a bottle of shampoo or a phrase on a can of Pepsi.

These are the people who are potesting the loudest now, because their shallow faith has been challenged by a movie. The reason their faith can be challenged so easily is that Jesus Christ and his teachings has very little to do with how they conduct their daily lives. Somewhere deep in the recesses of their minds, they know that they are not what they should be. They believe that by protesting louder than anyone else, they can somehow prove to God (as well as their neighbors) that they are, indeed, “the real deal.”

In summation, it seems to me that the story of Jesus Christ and the depth of his teachings has survived for two thousand years. I imagine Jesus will weather The DaVinci Code just fine, without the help of these charlatans who are standing on every rooftop and shouting that the world is coming to an end.

I say come down from there. Buy youself a ticket to The DaVinci Code and go sit in that theater and watch this movie. If you then leave that theater doubting your belief in Jesus Christ, then you were never a Christian to begin with. The sooner you accept it and move on with your life, the better off you will be.

- Watch Alert archived post

First Lady: Don't Politicize Marriage Amendment

Yes. Read that again.

“First lady: Don't politicize marriage amendment.” That's what it says.

First Lady Laura Bush said Sunday that Americans want debate on a proposed constitutional amendment against gay marriage, but “I don't think it should be used as a campaign tool, obviously.”

:: blink ::

I had to read that several times to wrap my brain around it. My first thought was “you're f**king kidding me.” Not use it as a campaign tool? It is a campaign tool! The proposed amendment itself is nothing but a political stunt engineered by the Republicans to shore up their quivering base of support with the ultra-conservative Right-Wing nutjobs who continue to supply bodies to the Republican war machine. Well, okay. Not so many bodies. That's what the poor are for. But they supply money to keep it all churning away.

Naturally, Laura Bush couldn't stop there. Just like her husband, the more she talked, the more bizarre it got.

“It requires a lot of sensitivity to just talk about the issue -- a lot of sensitivity,” she said on Fox News Sunday.

Sensitivity to whom, exactly? Those gays and lesbians who are in danger of having a basic right stripped away from them by an amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America? Or are we talking about sensitivity to those right-wing nutjobs who find it offensive that gays and lesbians exist?

Here's the issue. Early next month, the Senate will debate legislation that would have the Constitution define marriage as the union of a man and a woman. This was revealed by Majority Leader Bill Frist on CNN's Late Edition.

President Bush supports the amendment, but Vice President Dick Cheney does not. Cheney's daughter Mary is a lesbian and has been speaking out against the marriage amendment as she promotes her book, Now It's My Turn. She said on Fox (oddly enough) that the proposed amendment “is a bad piece of legislation. It is writing discrimination into the Constitution, and, as I say, it is fundamentally wrong.”

Okay, I agree with Mary Chaney on this much. But she can still kiss my ass. This is the woman who kept a low profile during her father's re-election campaign and who was kept essentially under wraps during the Republican convention. But now that her father isn't facing re-election, she decides to stand up and be counted? She could have made a difference for gays and lesbians in 2004 when the Republicans were ranting their usual homophobia. It's a bit late now for anyone give a damn what Mary Chaney thinks about anything.

Bill Frist said he would defend the amendment even to Dick Cheney.

“I basically say, Mr. Vice President, right now marriage is under attack in this country,” Frist said on CNN. “And we've seen activist judges overturning state by state law ... and that is why we need an amendment” to the Constitution.

I still can't believe what's going on here. The Republicans want to amend the Constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman? I dunno. I keep thinking about the Constitution, and all of the incredibly important issues addressed in it. Oh, you know. The right of be free of unreasonable search and seizure. The right to recourse to a court of law. The right to speak freely without fear of being thrown into Guantanamo Bay. You should know what's on the list. Somehow, I have trouble comprehending how any group of Americans could hope to amend the Constitution to limit the rights of another group of Americans. I don't see how that bit of legislation could possibly fit in with the lofty goals and ideals of the rest of the Constitution.

Look, folks. It's simple. If the United States Government expects gays and lesbians to pay taxes and to pay money into FICA and Social Security programs just like every other American, how then can it tell them that they're not just like every other American, but are instead part of a separate group that does not deserve the same rights? If you won't allow them to marry like every other American, why do you still expect them to pay those taxes?

I'm not worried about activist judges. They're the least of our troubles. It's activist legislators that are creating all of the havoc in this country. It's a bunch of Right-Wing Republicans who believe that the Founding Fathers didn't know what they were doing, and are trying to refashion the very foundations of our country to fit their extremist right-wing ideology. People like Bill Frist and George W. Bush are the enemies of American democracy.

I'm sure Bill First and George W. Bush don't mind lesbians as long as they're featured in a backroom video that they and their buddies are watching while their wives are away. But God forbid that their daughter should bring home another woman and declare her love for her. Oh, wait. That would be different, wouldn't it? It is for Vice President Dick Cheney in regard to his daughter, Mary, anyway.

One has to wonder how Dick Cheney sleeps at night knowing that he and his Republicans buddies have done everything they can possibly do to limit the freedoms that his daughter may enjoy as an American. Mr. Cheney, how can you do that to your own daughter?

- Watch Alert archived post
- Original Article

The NSA and King George

Well, you knew I had to get to this issue sooner or later.

For anyone who's been hiding under a rock, it was revealed early last week that the National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth.

“It's the largest database ever assembled in the world,” said one person, who declined to be identified by name or affiliation. The agency's goal is “to create a database of every call ever made” within the nation's borders, this person added.

For customers of those companies, this means that the United Sates government has detailed records of calls they made, whether the call was across town or across the country, to their family members, co-workers, business contacts and others. And since all things loop back upon itself with the Bush Administration and their cabal of incestuous cronies, it's worth noting that Air Force Gen. Michael Hayden, who has just been nominated by President Bush to become the director of the CIA, headed the NSA from March 1999 to April 2005. That means that Hayden would have overseen the agency's domestic call-tracking program. Hayden had nothing to say about it. Oddly enough.

Well, President Bush and the Administration scrambled quickly to put out this particular fire. Essentially King George was trotted out before the cameras to do his usual redirection by raising the spectre of terrorism, insisting that the NSA program is necessary, and reassuring Americans that they can trust their government. According to the President; “We're not mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans. Our efforts are focused on links to al Qaeda and their known affiliates. So far we've been very successful in preventing another attack on our soil.”

Yada yada. Do you feel reassured? Well, here's the problem. With access to records of billions of domestic calls, the NSA has gained a secret window into the communications habits of millions of Americans. Customers' names, street addresses and other personal information aren't being handed over as part of the program. But the phone numbers the NSA collects can easily be cross-checked with other databases to obtain that information. Bush & Company raise the spectre of al Qaeda to scare us into thinking this is perfectly reasonable.

“Are you telling me tens of millions of Americans are involved with al-Qaeda?”" Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy complained. “These are tens of millions of Americans who are not suspected of anything.”

Maybe we should put this in perspective. In 1975, a congressional investigation discovered that the NSA had been intercepting, without warrants, international communications for more than 20 years at the behest of the CIA and other agencies. The spy campaign, code-named “Shamrock,” led to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), which was designed to protect Americans from illegal eavesdropping. So the very agency that President Bush is asking us to trust is the agency whose activities led to the legislation that specifically limits the surveillance activities of the NSA, CIA and FBI, and was designed to provide oversight and some sense of accountability.

As for what Americans think of all this, it looks like it's all coming down to party affiliation once again. By 51%-43%, those responding to a poll disapproved of the program (disclosed Thursday in USA TODAY). I'm astounded that the numbers are that close. What in the world could make someone think this is a great idea? Most of those who approve of the program say it violates some civil liberties but is acceptable because “investigating terrorism is the more important goal”

Does this sound remotely familiar to anyone else? Every time it's been discovered that the government is up to something else no good, all of the Conservative Republican media outlets start spewing forth this rhetoric about how in a time of war certain sacrifices must be made. It looks like a lot of people agree with that. They're willing to see their children and grandchildren in chains, just as long as they don't have to be frightened by the spectre of al Qaeda.

Yeah, these handcuffs chafe, but we're keeping the terrorists are bay, man.

Out of all this mess, one bright spot has emerged. There's at least one company that did not go ass-up the first time the NSA laid a $50 bill on the table. Americans were betrayed by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth. But one major telecommunications company refused to participate in the NSA spying program: Qwest.

I'll quote verbatim below from an article in USA Today.

According to sources familiar with the events, Qwest's CEO at the time, Joe Nacchio, was deeply troubled by the NSA's assertion that Qwest didn't need a court order — or approval under FISA — to proceed. Adding to the tension, Qwest was unclear about who, exactly, would have access to its customers' information and how that information might be used.

Financial implications were also a concern, the sources said. Carriers that illegally divulge calling information can be subjected to heavy fines. The NSA was asking Qwest to turn over millions of records. The fines, in the aggregate, could have been substantial.

The NSA told Qwest that other government agencies, including the FBI, CIA and DEA, also might have access to the database, the sources said. As a matter of practice, the NSA regularly shares its information — known as “product” in intelligence circles — with other intelligence groups. Even so, Qwest's lawyers were troubled by the expansiveness of the NSA request, the sources said.

The NSA, which needed Qwest's participation to completely cover the country, pushed back hard.

Trying to put pressure on Qwest, NSA representatives pointedly told Qwest that it was the lone holdout among the big telecommunications companies. It also tried appealing to Qwest's patriotic side: In one meeting, an NSA representative suggested that Qwest's refusal to contribute to the database could compromise national security, one person recalled.

In addition, the agency suggested that Qwest's foot-dragging might affect its ability to get future classified work with the government. Like other big telecommunications companies, Qwest already had classified contracts and hoped to get more.

Unable to get comfortable with what NSA was proposing, Qwest's lawyers asked NSA to take its proposal to the FISA court. According to the sources, the agency refused.

The NSA's explanation did little to satisfy Qwest's lawyers. “They told (Qwest) they didn't want to do that because FISA might not agree with them,” one person recalled. For similar reasons, this person said, NSA rejected Qwest's suggestion of getting a letter of authorization from the U.S. attorney general's office. A second person confirmed this version of events.

In June 2002, Nacchio resigned amid allegations that he had misled investors about Qwest's financial health. But Qwest's legal questions about the NSA request remained.

Unable to reach agreement, Nacchio's successor, Richard Notebaert, finally pulled the plug on the NSA talks in late 2004, the sources said.

As far as I'm concerned, all you need to know about this issue can be summed up by this last part about Qwest. Simply put, if the NSA was operating totally within the boundaries of the law, as President Bush and his cronies have been asserting, why was it so afraid to go before the FISA court or the U.S. Attorney General?

Well, at least one company didn't sell us out. Thanks Qwest. Perhaps there is hope for our democracy, after all.

And as for AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth?

They can all kiss my all-American ass.

- Watch Alert archived post