"Where else would you go when you have an ax to grind?"

Showing posts with label great americans. Show all posts
Showing posts with label great americans. Show all posts

Wednesday, August 12, 2009

he's not sayin', he's just...you know...sayin'

Sure, he's a block away from where the president is speaking, and he's carrying a sign suggesting the need for violent revolution/assasination and bloodshed while packing heat, but it isn't a threat. He's just a patriotic American exercising his legal second amendment rights.

Remember when George Bush was president and pacifist peaceniks were getting jailed for wearing the wrong T-shirt to town hall meetings and protestors were kept penned up in "Free Speech Zones? I never thought that would seem like the good old days. If this guy can get through a 30 second TV interview, he's going to be the new poster child of the gun-toting angry right. Imagine Joe the Plumber with a 9 mm instead of a monkey wrench.

Update (or should I say reload?)
Yup, a gun nut for certain. Chris Mathews, as usual, acts like a dick, rattling on and making the whole process about his questions rather than the guest's answers, but the answers are there. This nimrod thinks people should pack heat at all times. Yeah, that's a good idea, look how well it's worked out elsewhere in the world, like say, Ethiopia or Afghanistan. And notice he has nothing to say about health care. He says he knows history when it comes to assassinated presidents and yet still brought a gun to a public meeting, supposedly to make a point about standing up for people's rights. Funny how no one ever thought to bring a gun to public meeting during the eight years that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were shredding the Constitution.

Until someone finds out that this guy has a criminal record of shooting people or molesting goats or some such crap, I think we can count on seeing him on FOX at least once a week as their new "Second Amendment expert" or some such nonsense.

Friday, May 01, 2009

"This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender"



Seeger has long been one of my heroes and he was the first Spiritual Leader of the Moment back when I had my first webpage on Geocites over a dozen years ago.







This 1967 performance was Seeger's first appearance on television in years following his blacklisting in the 50's -- and they still censored him, chopping out his mid-set rendition of "Waistdeep in the Big Muddy" and sparking a controversy. He was invited back to perform the song, which did finally air, but the show was cancelled soon afterward, despite high ratings, and replaced with HeeHaw.






I've had the privilege of seeing Pete Seeger perform twice and as I've often said, I'm glad he's on our side. Give him five minutes in front of a crowd and he can make them do just about anything he wants. Thankfully, he has always used this power for good. While Woody Guthrie was a rambling, gambling, hard-travelling, hard-drinking guy who collected a handful of wives in his time and whose guitar "killed fascists", his travelling partner, Pete Seeger was a teetotalling, pacifist who married a Japanese girl during World War Two and did time briefly for refusing to name names to Joe McCarthy. The insigna on his banjo said "this machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender."
As I reckon these things, he's probably one of the greatest living Americans. Happy Birthday Pete!






More interviews here, and knowing all his history, if this latest work of his doesn't bring a tear to your eye, then the problem is with you, not Seeger. For more music, tune into Radio Woodshed, where I'll be playing Pete Seeger stuff all day long.