Listen to your rock stars, not your politicians.
And not those at wholesome or not, rally-around-the-flag hometown fests.
Or seen on the city streets and federal freeways when Old Glory is shown in all its glory everywhere.
And I walk and talk, and bawk and squawk, gingerly among them all.
This as 9/11 is still all the rage, and at times being used not for glorifying the many fallen, but for gain, mostly political, whether in online forums or the hallowed halls of government, or by those who will take the opp to make a racial or culturally based point.
And Tom Tiffany might as well be a martyr after he partly crashed the plane he was rich enough to own following, hey what, a La Crosse Lincoln Day Dinner. We’re guessing somebody wasn’t being paid enough overtime to check its mechnical bearings, as there seems to be a lot of that even in the general traveling public these days. Reported in the local paper under the heading of, what, elections.
To be clear:
Many people lost a lot of loved ones during the plane-crashing-based bombings of 2001, and no one wants to disparage their sorry and continued grieving. Which makes it all the more damning to see those exploiting the tragedy — which made the hay, and was the only thing to do so, of the second George Bush presidency — for political purposes.
To wit:
To those who put up a show of force in their post-25-year 9/11 run and parade of fire and emergency vehicles down an area freeway, three-wide mostly … enough already. We know. We get it. We always did. All you did was completely block highway traffic for what, a whole minute, while no one but displaced drivers watched. Not of course the rest of the world, as global events impact us all, and that’s the point. One that’s frequently missed. They’re too busy being bombed to sit up and watch on their then often-tiny TV screens.
Meanwhile, back in little ol’ Hudson, the local GOP offices recently were open what seemed to be overtime at 7:40 p.m., no doubt taking advantage of the ongoing 9/11 furvor. OK, they had closed their doors for the night come quarter to eight.
Jars could be seen all around area convenience stores trying to raise funds for disabled vets, using 9/11 and its power to accomplish some good, and this cause is very good, but why are so many of these tips jars finally showing up now?
All the while, the fires still rage over the alleged — and we use that term because nobody can still come even close to agreeing on a dollar amount — Somali child care center fraud in the Twin Cities. Finally, somebody is talking about, even in a reverse way, a vital and underfunding industry. One that public servants in government may lose jobs over, who are now despised when there’s the inconvenient fact that they asked for and were denied extra dollars for enforcement, and the added one that it was the federal, not state, government who was responsible for such oversight in the first place. I did my own analysis that revealed the average Minnesotan was out all of the cost of a small hamburger over the fraud — which oh yeah is more vital since that cost has risen so much during a Republican administration.
Minnesota fraudster watchers say look at stats carefully, and how they are used, especially in the vein of if the poster was an alleged imposter when using the stat to support a particular claim. With that said, the Gopher State was found to be only 39th in fraud numbers among the 50, with notably the District of Columbia not mentioned. This was said to be involving the fraud number of claims — most allegedly found to be illegitimate — among the damage to businesses caused by ICE insurrections and protests. Noted was that the state rankings, receiving the allegations reported by main agencies, were based on those number of complaints gotten per capita, not the overall state population, but I’m not sure that matters. It is interesting to note that in this way too long tirade, typical when people seem to be just cutting and pasting sections of info, it was not fully revealed what point the poster was trying to make, although it seemed to be pointing fingers! This response to a couple of online responses about a state government action is merely a summary of what especially in one of the cases was a long manifesto.
We ignore the fact there are REAL and legal (granted parttime) fraudsters that illegitimately generate REAL dollar amounts and yes, they’re called corporations — and God forbid, they aren’t even good at fraud, as they don’t do any real work to get their dough, and more on that later — as people continue to call for the heads of Walz and the like, when they turn a blind eye to what’s causing REAL damage.
But maybe not a blind ear. As the machine rages. Musician Tom Morello’s new fall project, where he again goes after the rich and powerful, named Power to the People has in the lineup members of Pearl Jam (old in Mike McCready) and Black Sabbath (older in bassist Geezer Butler), among loads of other other noteworthies that are listed in a curious desending order on the actual paper version of the bill, going from using big alphabetical letters to smaller ones and the choices of who got what billing are even more curious. Butler is arguably the biggest name and he is midway down in the ranking. But this goes to show that the potency of this and other such peace and justice-based projects has legit supergroup status, several times over, after which anything that can be put together by true conservatives such as Kid Rock is mere peanuts, or maybe even a smaller and lesser variety of nut such as petitas, gauging the actual mood of the country. In Morello’s frenzyfull activist fest, Bruce Springsteen gets honorary mention, listed as a special guest on the bottom of the bill, and originals signed on board included power-wielders Foo Fighters, Joan Baez and Dave Mathews, with recent additions being among the likes of Stephen Stills, Nathaniel Rateliff and Scott Ian of Anthrax metal fame. Others on the massive intergenerational and multicultural and multicountry bill that spans the decades of rock, punk, alternative and hiphop include Public Enemy, Jack Black, Serj Tankian of System of a Down, Cypress Hill, Dropkick Murphys, Taylor Momsen and Darryl “DMC” McDaniels. By comparison, at this point the biggest contrary act the likes of Kid Rock could put together would have all the potency of your grade school choir, or put another way, a couple of dozen skinheads in the basement of a single mansion. I think it’s time to say it, Morello’s peace project eclipses Woodstock by severalfold, comparatively and summarily and regarding talent reducing the latter’s impact to a few hundred kids singing gravally or prettily in the street. Country could never pull together this kind of single-night bill. Not even close.
The people who comprise the bill are important for what they sing about. Rage Against The Machine were among the first to take on crooked cops (such as their rape of an immigrant man during a stop) and other such corruption, and Public Enemy too. Likewise, Stills and Baez were legendary for taking on war and injustice, as was, famously, Sabbath’s Butler. Cypress Hill led the fight for legalizing, God forbid, marijuana, related to battling a badly conservative culture. And on and on.
Morello it seems just got done the Black Sabbath farewell show, and Black will go on with the same super-group of super-kids as at Ozzy’s farewell, including Morello’s own kid on guitar.
The tone is set by the art backdrop on the flyer for the music event. Shown prominently are, all in red, a Capitol building, liberty torch and flag of the world. Their website offers a face value ticket exchange and register to vote button. The show is Oct. 3 in Columbia, MD.
Still, getting back to it, the order in which bands do appear is to use a word curious, when a group named Cactus gets much billing at all, and Sabbath is partially buried. Such was the case in a band list for a festival in the early 1970s. Here they are, in order of appearance on the flyer: Three Dog Night, Faces, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Humble Pie, Black Sabbath, J. Giels Band, Badfinger, Cactus, Edgar Winter (no relation) and more. And a prefix, ranking the members of Faces who would appear, had Rod Stewart fourth and Ron Wood fifth, (not named Ronnie, as that would be with The Stones), and another Ron third, Ron Lake. Better get someone from marketing up to speed.