Friday, August 29, 2014

The Carter Family Wabash Cannon Ball


The Carter Family - Keep on the sunny side


Rare Hank Williams, Carter Family, Acuff Video - 1952 - Glory Bound Train


Jean Ritchie--Barbry Allen


The Chieftains with Carolina Chocolate Drops - Pretty Little Girl

Bring it all together.


Carolina Chocolate Drops - Your Baby Ain't Sweet Like Mine


Carolina Chocolate Drops "Cornbread and Butterbeans"


A Visit To "Some assembly Required"

It has been VERY HOT here in DFW  --  especially since our air conditioning has been on the fritz (not working).  We do have a window unit in our bedroom  --  it's been a very important thing to have  --  especially for an old person like me.  The room our computers are in is about the hottest.  Currently it's only 84 degrees F.   --  so I can actually sit here for a while.

Anyway, it's time for a visit to "Some Assembly Required"  --  follow link to original.
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 http://ckm3.blogspot.com/


"The relationship between those who are constantly watched and tracked, and those who watch and track them, is the relationship between masters and slaves." - Chris Hedges

About Wages: Corporate profit margins are at new highs, feeding the stock market boom which enriches the 1%


Chickens, Roosting: Nearly all of ISIS top leadership were imprisoned by US forces in Iraq in places like Abu Ghraib.

Short Form: According to the UN's IPCC, global climate change is “severe, pervasive and irreversible.” (And it may well temporarily result in extreme snowfalls.)

About Inflation: Interest rates on 30 Treasuries have fallen to 3.06%, which suggests that investors do not see any inflation on the horizon. In Europe rates have been creeping ever lower, with 10-year German notes below 0.9% and even Spain (Spain!) borrowing money for less than Uncle Sam. Must be something in the water. 

Money For Nothing: The 2012 Ron Paul's presidential campaign secretly paid one of Michele Bachmann's campaign aides $73,000 to abandon her, join Paul and badmouth Michele's chances. In that she never had a chance, seems to reflect rather poorly on the Paul campaign's smarts. On the other hand, they did appeal to the same fringe group...
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There's a lot more  --  go there.

   

Wednesday, August 20, 2014

Sweet Georgia Brown - Wynton Marsalis Quintet Featuring Mark O'Connor and Frank Vignola



Jazz in Marciac - August 1, 2010 - The Wynton Marsalis Quintet performing a swinging interpretation of Sweet Georgia Brown, featuring Mark O'Connor (violin) and Frank Vignola (guitar).

Wynton Marsalis (trumpet); Dan Nimmer (piano); Walter Blanding (sax); Carlos Henriquez (bass); Ali Jackson (drums)

JOE WILLIAMS - GOING TO CHICAGO


Live: Joe Williams with Lambert, Hendricks and Ross - Every Day I Have the Blues



Every Day I Have the Blues
written by Aaron Sparks and Milton or Marion Sparks
performed by Joe Williams, Dave Lambert, Jon Hendricks, and Annie Ross with Count Basie (piano), Freddie Green (guitar), Ed Jones (bass), and Sonny Payne (drums)
from the syndicated television series, "Playboy's Penthouse," taped at WBKB-TV, Chicago, IL in October 1959

HORACE SILVER, Doodlin'



Final track from "Horace Silver And The Jazz Messengers" album. Recorded on november 13, 1954 at Rudy Van Gelder's Hackensack studio. Horace Silver (piano); Hank Mobley (tenor saxophone); Kenny Dorham (trumpet); Doug Watkins (bass); Art Blakey (drums).

Horace Silver - Señor Blues (Horace Silver, Blue Mitchell & Junior Cook)


Tuesday, August 19, 2014

Published on Monday, August 18, 2014 by TruthDig - Rebellion in Ferguson: A Rising Heat in the Suburbs by Chris Hedges

This from "Truth Dig", by Chris Hedges  --  please follow link to original.
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http://www.commondreams.org/views/2014/08/18/rebellion-ferguson-rising-heat-suburbs

NEWARK, N.J.—The public reaction to the fatal shooting of an unarmed black teenager by a police officer in Ferguson, Mo., exposes the shifting dynamic of rebellion and repression in the United States. Spontaneous uprisings against the lethal force routinely employed by militarized police units will probably not erupt at first out of the old epicenters of unrest—Watts, Detroit, Harlem, Newark and others—but suburban black communities such as Ferguson, near St. Louis. In most of these communities, the power structures remain in the hands of white minorities although the populations have shifted from white to black. Only three of the 53 commissioned officers in Ferguson’s police department are black. These conditions, which approximate the racial divides that set off urban riots in the 1960s, have the potential to trigger a new wave of racial unrest in economically depressed black suburbs, and perhaps later in impoverished inner cities, especially amid a stagnant economy, high incarceration and unemployment rates for blacks and the rewriting of laws to make police forces omnipotent.
“We are headed into a period of increased social protest,” said Lawrence Hamm, one of the nation’s most important community organizers and the longtime chairman of the People’s Organization for Progress. POP, which has roughly 10,000 members, is based in Newark and has 13 chapters, most of them in New Jersey. I met with Hamm in a downtown coffee shop in Newark.
For a video of Lawrence Hamm speaking in Washington, D.C., in 2010 at a rally against imperialism, click here.
“The pendulum swung far to the right after 9/11. Now it is swinging back,” Hamm said. “Fear and paralysis gripped the country after 9/11 and the creation of our authoritarian police state. We are overcoming this fear. The rebellion in Ferguson was not planned. It was spontaneous. People said, ‘Enough.’ They struck out in the only way they knew how. All the other ways—and I have no doubt that the people in Ferguson and St. Louis, as we have, marched peacefully, sent letters and went to city council meetings to protest police violence—have proved ineffective. We will see other incidents like this one, but because of demographic changes these rebellions will occur in places that did not rebel previously.”
Hamm said that the declining populations of primarily black cities—Newark, where he has spent most of his life as an organizer, has seen its population drop from 400,000 to about 250,000 in the last few decades—coupled with the election of black officials and the integration of blacks into police forces mean that the old centers of rebellion are less polarized.
“These [changes] helped to ameliorate the overt racism and will probably prevent a recurrence of open rebellion in these urban areas,” he said. “In cities like Newark you no longer have a blatant apartheid structure. This dynamic dampens, to a degree, the movement for social justice. It dampens the outrage. It dampens the ability to mount opposition to ongoing institutional racism and oppression. But we have suburbs around Newark [much like the St. Louis suburb] Ferguson that were once white and are now black and that replicate the racial power imbalance. And this is where the tinder will be.”
Being the object of unwarranted deadly force by police officers is part of what it means to be black and poor in America. But, as Hamm said, no matter how much blacks raise their voices against indiscriminate police violence “the killings keep coming.”
“The police are the primary instrument of social control,” Hamm said. “But after the rebellions in American cities in the 1960s the [federal government under President] Nixon realized that the police were not enough. Nixon began to link the local police with the state police and the National Guard. During the rebellion in Detroit in 1967 the [federal] state had to deploy the 82nd Airborne. Nixon set up this seamless connection between local police units and the military. It was then that we began to see a change in training, the acquisition of military equipment and the arrival of SWAT teams in black uniforms. In April 1999 when we marched in Orange [N.J.]  to protest the torturing to death by the police of Earl Faison the police deployed SWAT teams on the roofs of the post office and department stores. These teams had their automatic rifles pointed at us. And we were nonviolent marchers. The real criminals [those who killed Faison] were within the ranks of the police.”
In the 1970s Hamm obtained a scholarship to attend Princeton and when he graduated began work on a doctorate at the university. But he abandoned his doctoral work to return to Newark, where he had grown up. In 1983 the organizer co-founded POP, one of the nation’s most impressive grass-roots radical movements. He can routinely pull thousands of people into the streets and is one of the most rousing orators in the country. He was always an agitator, organizing a student walkout in city schools when he was in high school, but he credits his political maturation to the playwright and poet Amiri Baraka, also from Newark. They met in 1971 and remained close friends until Baraka’s death last January. It was Baraka, he said, who inspired him to commit his life to political struggle on behalf of poor people. And he carried that commitment to Princeton University, where he mobilized students to carry out sustained protests against the numerous ties between the university and the apartheid regime in South Africa.
“Groups like POP come out of the black liberation movement,” Hamm said. “They are led by people who were deeply involved in that movement and who are committed to a lifetime of struggle. Many of the organizations that existed in the ’60s don’t exist anymore. POP is one of the few survivors. But POP is also consciously anti-sectarian. One of the pitfalls of the movements of the ’60s was ideological sectarianism, that if you’re not of a particular ideology you’re wrong. Groups spent more time attacking each other than attacking the forces of oppression. We avoided that. That’s why we’ve lasted [more than 30] years.”
“There is an historical ebb and flow of social movements, and that’s true of the black liberation movement,” he said. “You don’t have an ever increasing radicalism. You have highs and lows. There was a conscious effort to destroy the black liberation movement of the 1960s. The state had great success in that regard. But it did not totally end. People continued to fight, even though we had COINTELPRO and the assassination of black leaders, as well as the incarceration of other black leaders.”
“It’s easier to fight the external aggressor than it is to fight someone who looks like you [Barack Obama],” he said. “We have to grapple with this until enough people become convinced that it’s not about individuals and that it’s about institutions and systems of oppression. I don’t think most people yet see it that way. We struggle to try to help people understand that it’s not about individuals. It’s about white supremacy, capitalist oppression and imperialism. But the majority does not share the radical consciousness we try to imbue. Black consciousness is oppositional, but oppositional does not necessarily mean radical. Oppositional means that people have a clear enough perspective that allows them to see an injustice and maybe a set of injustices and the desire to change those injustices. A radical consciousness requires a change of an entire system. And people in general, not just black people, people in general are not born with radical consciousness. We have to bring that kind of consciousness to them through education and persuasion. Black people see the election of Barack Obama as oppositional in terms of opposing white supremacy. But we want to tell people that just electing a president, even from a very conventional political point of view, is not enough.”
“There’s a difference between prophetic tradition, which we need, and political movement building,” Hamm said. “Many of us knew when Obama was running for president that if elected he would be the CEO for U.S. imperialism. But if the very people we purport to serve and represent are going in a particular direction, then we have to look very hard at how we operate in that given environment. Our struggle is to build a politically potent movement. We’re not going to be able to build that movement only with the people who have the most radical consciousness. When Obama is wrong, we criticize. But when the choice is between Obama and something worse, we do not tell the people to go out there and choose something worse. We don’t want to alienate ourselves from our own base. We have to accurately assess and be truthful about what’s happening, but at the same time we have to do that in a way that doesn’t alienate us.”
“After all,” he went on, “the problem confronting the left—black, white and otherwise—is that we’re weak. We don’t have enough people. We’re weak because of the state of the labor movement in the United States. There needs to be a symbiosis between the struggle for racial equality and the labor movement. You see that in countries such as Jamaica, but not here.”
Three decades after he co-founded POP, Hamm, 60, admits to some frustration.
“POP is a great organization,” he said. “I’m proud of our accomplishments. I’m proud of our members. But I have to say, as a criticism of myself, that after 30 years we should be stronger than we are.”
“I’m growing increasingly skeptical of the ability of electoral politics to bring about the kind of social change that not only African-Americans need but that working and poor people in general need,” he said. “We made the most progress when we were in the streets in the ’60s. There were more than a thousand urban uprisings. And that is what we need to do most—put people in the streets.”

Thursday, August 14, 2014

Duke Ellington Diminuendo And Crescendo In Blue


Antisemitism

Once again, I'm sick and tired of antisemitism masquerading as "anti-Zionism".  Heck, Jews have as much of a claim to that territory as anyone else.  "Driving them into the sea" is pure antisemitism.  Claiming "they" run the USA/banks/government/etc., etc., etc., is good old fashioned antisemitism.  Saying "they" have no right to self defense is antisemitism.

The supposed "progressives" who are anti Israel are either bigots or fools.  I wonder how they would fare under radical Muslim rule.  Lets us hope we never have to find out.

Tuesday, August 12, 2014

The Rebirth of Stakeholder Capitalism?

From Robert Reich
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http://robertreich.org/


In recent weeks, the managers, employees, and customers of a New England chain of supermarkets called “Market Basket” have joined together to oppose the board of director’s decision earlier in the year to oust the chain’s popular chief executive, Arthur T. Demoulas.
Their demonstrations and boycotts have emptied most of the chain’s seventy stores.
What was so special about Arthur T., as he’s known? Mainly, his business model. He kept prices lower than his competitors, paid his employees more, and gave them and his managers more authority.
Late last year he offered customers an additional 4 percent discount, arguing they could use the money more than the shareholders.
In other words, Arthur T. viewed the company as a joint enterprise from which everyone should benefit, not just shareholders. Which is why the board fired him.
It’s far from clear who will win this battle. But, interestingly, we’re beginning to see the Arthur T. business model pop up all over the place.
Pantagonia, a large apparel manufacturer based in Ventura, California, has organized itself as a “B-corporation.” That’s a for-profit company whose articles of incorporation require it to take into account the interests of workers, the community, and the environment, as well as shareholders.
The performance of B-corporations according to this measure is regularly reviewed and certified by a nonprofit entity called B Lab.
To date, over 500 companies in sixty industries have been certified as B-corporations, including the household products firm “Seventh Generation.”
In addition, 27 states have passed laws allowing companies to incorporate as “benefit corporations.” This gives directors legal protection to consider the interests of all stakeholders rather than just the shareholders who elected them.
We may be witnessing the beginning of a return to a form of capitalism that was taken for granted in America sixty years ago.
Then, most CEOs assumed they were responsible for all their stakeholders.
“The job of management,” proclaimed Frank Abrams, chairman of Standard Oil of New Jersey, in 1951, “is to maintain an equitable and working balance among the claims of the various directly interested groups … stockholders, employees, customers, and the public at large.”
Johnson & Johnson publicly stated that its “first responsibility” was to patients, doctors, and nurses, and not to investors.
What changed? In the 1980s, corporate raiders began mounting unfriendly takeovers of companies that could deliver higher returns to their shareholders – if they abandoned their other stakeholders.
The raiders figured profits would be higher if the companies fought unions, cut workers’ pay or fired them, automated as many jobs as possible or moved jobs abroad, shuttered factories, abandoned their communities, and squeezed their customers.
Although the law didn’t require companies to maximize shareholder value, shareholders had the legal right to replace directors. The raiders pushed them to vote out directors who wouldn’t make these changes and vote in directors who would (or else sell their shares to the raiders, who’d do the dirty work).
Since then, shareholder capitalism has replaced stakeholder capitalism. Corporate raiders have morphed into private equity managers, and unfriendly takeovers are rare. But it’s now assumed corporations exist only to maximize shareholder returns.
Are we better off? Some argue shareholder capitalism has proven more efficient. It has moved economic resources to where they’re most productive, and thereby enabled the economy to grow faster.
By this view, stakeholder capitalism locked up resources in unproductive ways. CEOs were too complacent. Companies were too fat. They employed workers they didn’t need, and paid them too much. They were too tied to their communities.
But maybe, in retrospect, shareholder capitalism wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Look at the flat or declining wages of most Americans, their growing economic insecurity, and the abandoned communities that litter the nation.
Then look at the record corporate profits, CEO pay that’s soared into the stratosphere, and Wall Street’s financial casino (along with its near meltdown in 2008 that imposed collateral damage on most Americans).
You might conclude we went a bit overboard with shareholder capitalism.
The directors of “Market Basket” are now considering selling the company. Arthur T. has made a bid, but other bidders have offered more.
Reportedly, some prospective bidders think they can squeeze more profits out of the company than Arthur T. did.
But Arthur T. may have known something about how to run a business that made it successful in a larger sense.
Only some of us are corporate shareholders, and shareholders have won big in America over the last three decades.
But we’re all stakeholders in the American economy, and many stakeholders have done miserably.
Maybe a bit more stakeholder capitalism is in order.

Saturday, August 9, 2014

JATP Blues-Oscar and Roy 1980.




Flip Phillips & Roy Eldridge Flip and Jazz



Live recording from WNEW Saturday Night Swing Session, March 1947
Roy Eldridge - trumpet
Flip Phillips - tenor sax
Mike Colicchio - piano
Al Casey - guitar
Eddie Safranski - bass
Specs Powell - drums

Fats Navarro, Charlie Ventura, Buddy Rich High On An Open Mike



Live recording from WNEW Saturday Night Swing Session, May 1947
Fats Navarro - trumpet
Charlie Ventura, Allen Eager - tenor sax
Bill Harris - trombone
Ralph Burns - piano
Al Valente - guitar
Chubby Jackson - bass
Buddy Rich - drums

Thursday, August 7, 2014

MISSOURI: Baptist Church Leader Charged With Attempting To Fuck A Dog

It's been hot, our AC is out, cannot afford to fix it now, etc., etc., etc.  ---  BUT I just HAD to post this.  It is from Joe.My.God - please follow link to original.

There's a very old joke about a member of a ritzy men's club who was caught fucking a GOAT.  The punch line goes, "was it a male goat or a female goat?"  --  "Female, of course, there's nothing queer about Higgenbotom".       
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http://joemygod.blogspot.com/

The president and CEO of Missouri's Windermere Baptist Conference Center has been busted in a Craigslist sting after posting a message in which he solicited sex with a dog and another animal of an undisclosed species.

Jerald L. Hill of the 500 block of Forest Circle in Roach was arrested in Columbia at 11:35 a.m. yesterday on suspicion of attempted unlawful sex with an animal and attempted animal abuse, Boone County sheriff’s Detective Tracy Perkins said in a news release. Hill was released from the Boone County Jail after posting bond totaling $1,000. The investigation began last week when the task force got a tip that someone had posted an ad on Craigslist looking for two types of animals with which to have sex, Perkins said. One of the animals he sought was a dog. Perkins declined to say what other type of animal Hill sought. A detective with the task force exchanged emails with Hill under the guise of offering a dog that Hill could have sex with, Perkins said in a news release. Hill made arrangements to travel to Columbia to have sex with the dog. Hill was arrested without incident in the 1600 block of Business Loop 70 West, where he met the deputy.
Windermere Baptist's board of directors met yesterday and decided, hey - maybe it's time for a new president.
Windermere board members discussed the arrest by telephone on Aug. 6, Chairman Arthur Mallory said Aug. 7. “The board is very supportive of him and grateful for his work at Windermere,” he said. Mallory added the board sees the action as “a personal issue with Jerry” and that trustees are concerned about both Hill and the conference center. “We are concerned for the well-being of Jerry...and we are also concerned with the well-being of Windermere,” Mallory said. “Windermere will continue to function in a good way.... It is a significant piece of God’s kingdom’s work.” The board will meet next week on the center’s campus on the Lake of the Ozarks. “We will be in the process of looking for a new president and CEO,” Mallory said.
Windermere Baptist's sprawling facilities include a church, a water park, a marina, a paintball course, auditoriums, convention space, and several lakefront lodges. There is no petting zoo.