McCain throws Gramm under the bus - again

“You’re all a bunch of whiners!” says Phil Gramm, former U.S. Senator from Texas and John McCain’s top economic advisor.
The economic hard times are all in your head. The country is in a “mental recession” and you are all a “nation of whiners.”
That Phil Gramm is quite the character, isn’t he? Now it looks like McCain wants to distance himself from Gramm once again. It wasn’t that long ago that McCain was disavowing Gramm over his ties to the home loan mortgage industry as a big time lobbyist for UBS.
But they must have patched things up, because there was Gramm again stumping for McCain and meeting with the big shots at the Wall Street Journal on his behalf. But wait, McCain protests. Gramm doesn’t speak for me, he insists.
Right.
You whiner.



Update
I have to feel kind of sorry for some of my conservative friends who are now forced to try and defend Gramm's statement.
But maybe if he can whether this onslaught, McCain might consider that Gramm would make the ideal match for him as his vice president.
McCain-Gramm! That has a nice ring to it doesn't it? That's a winning ticket for sure!
And I know just what their campaign slogan could be:
"You're all a bunch of whiners! Now, get off of my lawn!"

Some perspective on FISA

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act or FISA was passed by Congress in 1978 in response to abuses by the Nixon administration in the use of wiretapping technology. Nixon had used wiretapping to keep tabs not just on foreign and domestic terrorists, but also on his domestic political adversaries.
FISA essentially set up a secret court system to oversee future wiretapping by intelligence agencies to prevent these kinds of abuses from happening again.
But because it was written in 1978, before the advent of cell phones, e-mail, and much more, it is now horribly out of date. It was in bad need of updating prior to 9/11. Afterwards, the Bush administration used the fact that the law was outdated as an excuse for tossing it aside and going forward with a modern surveillance program outside the realm of the FISA courts. This was wrong.
But the question now is how wrong was it? If they had ditched the FISA courts so they could go back to Nixon-style monitoring of their political adversaries, I would say that it was a very serious and possibly impeachable offense. However, if they simply did what they said they did and ditched FISA so they could more aggressively pursue foreign terror suspects in the aftermath of an attack on our country, then I think we would be hard-pressed to make the case that they deserve criminal punishment for those actions today.
The caterwauling I’m hearing about warrantless wiretapping threatening our Fourth Amendment rights against illegal search and seizure makes no sense to me. I have never had a problem with the government using wiretaps to keep track of criminal suspects and the fact that they needed to expand that effort in response to 9/11 seems like common sense to me. What I have always insisted, however, is that we have a check in place (i.e. the FISA court) to oversee these intelligence activities and make sure that they are not be abused ala Nixon.
It seems to me that the FISA bill that Obama supported satisfied that concern. The fact that it also provides things that President Bush wanted doesn’t make it automatically bad. I’m sure there are parts of the bill that are not ideal and should be changed. But we can’t get everything we want now with a Republican president and a 50-50 Senate. So we have to compromise because that is the way that government works. And the option of falling back on the outdated 1978 FISA law was a non sequitur and would have made Democrats look weak on terrorism right before the general election.
I think it is pretty clear that laws were broken by the administration after 9/11. But that could be like trying to fine somebody for speeding when he was trying to drive his sick wife to the hospital. The general public isn’t going to go along with it unless you have evidence that they were abusing the wiretapping program.
The fact that there are people who are now using this issue to say that they will not support Obama is appalling. They need to get some perspective.

Losing perspective

There have been so many issues for people to get outraged about during the past dozen years that it is hard to keep track of them all. Warrantless wiretapping is just one of them.
Ideally, I’d love to see the Bush administration and their telecom cronies get nailed for their clearly illegal wiretapping program post-9/11. But the reality is that there are not enough votes in the Congress to see that happen.
So it looks like we will end up with a bill overhauling eavesdropping regulations that lets the telecom companies off the hook.
The best thing to do in this case then is to push for the best deal we can get and then move on.
Unfortunately, there are some on the left who aren’t satisfied with that bit of reality. They are prepared to throw a huge hissy fit when they don’t get their way as if this issue - telecom immunity - was the end all most important thing in the universe.
Hogwash!
Let me put this bluntly. I don’t give a damn about telecom immunity or warrantless wiretapping if fixing it in any way hurts Democrats’ chances of winning back the White House in November. It will be small consolation indeed to have the FISA bill defeated and the telecoms tied up in court for the next decade if it also means we get four more years of Republican misrule.
But what I am seeing right now is groups of people on the left (and some on the right) preparing to throw a big stink bomb
into the race if all their demands aren’t met in full. Others are even encouraging folks to withhold funding from Obama’s campaign in protest of his nominal support for the FISA overhaul legislation.
That is so fundamentally stupid that I can’t believe politically astute people would even be considering it. Karl Rove couldn’t have dreamed up a better scheme for throwing a monkey wrench into the election prospects of Democrats this year.
You can protest the FISA bill all you want, but I think folks like Glenn Greenwald and Christy Hardin Smith have been going overboard lately with their claims that our very Constitution is hanging in the balance.
Yes, it will be irritating if some folks get away with breaking the law. But the reality is that it happens everyday and our country is still surviving.
We’ve got a big mess to clean up after a dozen years of Republican shenanigans and we are going to have to take things one step at a time. Step One is putting a Democrat in the White House! Everything else is superfluous in the long run.

Left and Right misconceptions

My conservative friend jimmyK left a lengthy comment in the previous thread that I think merits an in depth response.

Don't you reckon' Clear Channel knows how to spend their money better than you do?

No, I would not make that assumption. Companies make bad decisions all the time and I think paying Rush Lamebrain $400 gazillion in the middle of a recession when they are struggling for ad revenues may prove to be unwise.
Heck, Jay Leno only makes $25 million a year compared to the $38 million Clear Channel will be stuck paying Rush.

You know why conservatives whom you call stupid listen to Rush, they are all at work and only have radios to listen too. Liberals on the other hand have nearly all of T.V. stations, and most all the newspapers...

You harbor a lot of stereotypical misconceptions about “conservatives” and “liberals.” It is not accurate to claim that all working class folks are conservatives any more than it is to say that all university professors are liberals (How do you account for university professors-turned-politicians such as Phil Gramm, Dick Armey and Newt Gingrich?)
If liberals dominate the TV stations and newspapers then why is it so difficult to get a liberal viewpoint on TV? The networks fill their news shows with conservatives, a few moderates and apolitical reporters. They hardly ever have an outspoken liberal on the air. Keith Olbermann is currently the sole exception to that rule. Otherwise you have to go to Comedy Central to find a liberal viewpoint that isn’t “balanced” out with 2/3rds dosage of conservatism.
As for newspapers, are you referring to our own local daily, the San Antonio Express-News that never fails to endorse the full slate of Republicans in every election? I wish that liberals had more control of the media, but unfortunately that is a myth spurred on by multi-million dollar propagandists like Rush Limbaugh who dominate our airwaves.

Working class people today are suffering greatly as a direct result of the flawed policies and misrule of Republicans for the past eight years. Under George W. Bush we saw our balanced budgets vanish and replaced with record high deficits as a result of fiscally irresponsible tax giveaways to the uber-rich. Meanwhile, promises that these tax cuts would stimulate the economy have proven to be a big joke as the economy has ranged from deep recession to weak recovery and now back to deep recession again.
The only hope the GOP has to stay in power now is to use propagandists like Rush Limbaugh to brainwash enough people into voting against their economic interests and keep the current bunch of crooks and swindlers in power.

...where people who are not working can watch and read, draw welfare and set on their asses and hope to get the democrats to give them more money with the working peoples taxes.

Once again, you have misconceptions about the nature of welfare, which mainly goes to support children and the elderly, while ignoring the real scandal of corporate welfare and the billions that gets squandered in no-bid, sweetheart contracts overseen by Republican operatives funneling money to their friends and supporters. The Enrons and Halliburtons have been making out like bandits these past dozen years while Rush and Hannity distract you with bogus stories about welfare cheats. You are like someone who is obsessed with finding change under the seat cushions while lending out your credit card to a gang of mall-roaming teenagers.

Obamanation, seems to be losing some of its steam. Looks like just another liberal trying to pull the wool over his own supporters eyes. Mr. Flip/Flop.

Obama is just getting started with the general election after a long drawn-out primary race. Meanwhile, McCain has had a three-month head start and is still just spinning his wheels. Down in the polls, last week he did another overhaul of his campaign staff.
And don’t even try to start this “Flip/Flop” garbage when I know damn well that you can’t even list three things that Obama has legitimately changed his position on. (Hint: Iraq ain’t one of them).
But as Ann noted above McCain has flip-flopped so much lately he is at risk of breaking a hip. He has changed his positions on tax cuts, immigration reform, drilling moratoriums, Social Security privatization, and on and on.
In fact, one of the only things he has been consistent on is global warming and that is what has him in the most hot water right now with the wingnut crowd. They WANT him to flip-flop even MORE!

Your guy looks really scary, he is a liar to start with, he flip flops, he now throws moveon.org under the bus. Who is next ? He is dissed his own grandmother, that is weird. This guy will be a disaster for this country and John McCain would not be much better.

Like that classic Public Enemy song says, “Don’t Believe the Hype!” And that goes for both sides. Obama is not the annointed one or whatever such nonsense. Sure he is just a politicians, but at least he is not advocating the failed policies that have gotten us into the mess we are in today. A disaster for this country, you say? What do you call what we have now?? The Bush/GOP rule of the past eight years has been an unmitigated disaster from the beginning.
You are not giving Obama a fair shake. He may not be the greatest president we have ever had, but he certainly won’t be the worst like we currently have now.

Bad deals and bad ideas

In the news today I see that San Antonio-based Clear Channel Communications is betting that people will stay stupid well into the future.
They have renewed their radio contract with rightwing blowhard Rush Limbaugh through the year 2016.
I have to admit that it is probably a pretty good bet that people will still be stupid enough to listen to Rush eight years from now. But I’m not sure that it is a good bet for Clear Channel to pay Limbaugh an estimated $38 million a year for the next eight years. As the NYT points out today, that is more than twice what the highest paid network news anchor makes and it is $13 million more than Jay Leno, the highest rated TV entertainer, makes.

In other news, I see that some liberal activists who are agitated over the FISA issue are now threatening to withhold their financial support for Barack Obama until he “lives up to his promise to deliver "change we can believe in. "”
This is the kind of thing that really upsets me. People who should know better allow themselves to get all worked up over some issue and then use it to tear down the candidate who best supports their overall interests.
I’m sorry, but as bad as warrantless wiretapping may be, it is not important enough to justify risking four more years of Republican misrule in Washington. Or a chance for John McCain to pick the next two or more Supreme Court justices.
It is fine if you want to lobby your candidate over an issue such as this, but when you start talking about withholding money or withholding votes, you have crossed a line into “shoot yourself in the foot” territory.

Cornyn’s sockpuppet exposed

Congratulations to Matt Glazer for some online sleuthing that exposed a top Cornyn staffer’s sockpuppet machinations.
David Beckwith, a longtime GOP political operative whose roots go back to his work for former Vice President Dan Quayle, was using the pseudonymn “Buck Smith” to leave comments over at Burnt Orange Report.
The TV news in Austin even picked up the story:



Matt used to be in San Antonio and I met him a few years ago at the 2005 Alamo City Blogger BBQ.

We make Mormons look Liberal

It is depressing to see that according to this graph Texas is even more socially and economically conservative than Utah.

Big, Really Bad, John

John Cornyn’s promotional video for the Texas Republican State Convention was so horrifically bad that it is beyond parody. However, I still like Rick Noriega’s response above because it acts as a corrective to the most egregious lies in the piece.

In the meantime, I’m happy to note that Cornyn has lost the endorsement of the Texas Medical Association over his vote against a badly needed bill that would have kept doctors from losing Medicare payments. My only question is why the TMA ever endorsed Cornyn in the first place?

AT&T spurns San Antonio

The news Friday that AT&T is moving its corporate headquarters to Dallas is a huge blow to San Antonio’s self esteem. AT&T was San Antonio’s crown jewel upon which all of our corporate expansion and promotional efforts were built.
This is a black eye that will haunt our community for years to come. We have been used, spurned and cast-off. It will take a long time for us to get our confidence back up again.
The spin right now that it is only 700 jobs that will be leaving while 5,300 are staying is ridiculous. First off, only a fool would still believe a damn thing that AT&T has to say anymore. There is no guarantee that those 5,300 jobs will stay here permanently. The queen bee is leaving the hive and you can expect that the worker drones will be migrating to follow very shortly.
AT&T’s new CEO Randall Stephenson has made it clear that he does not think San Antonio is good enough for the suits that run his company. All the high-paying corporate executives are moving to the bourgeoisie city of Dallas leaving just some worker drones behind in the proletariat city of San Antonio. That is the message we got on Friday.
This may just be wishful thinking, but I think this may turn out to be a bad move for AT&T in the long-run. Their carefully crafted image as a “good ol’ boy” company from West Texas (with the voice of San Antonio-native Tommy Lee Jones in all their ads) has just been shot full of holes. Now they are just another vagabond corporation with no roots looking for the biggest tax abatements from the city most willing to kiss their rearends.
Good riddance and here is hoping that the Alamo City can recover quickly.
To paraphrase Davy Crockett:
"AT&T can go to hell, I'm going to Texas"

Bang, Bang, Shoot, Shoot

I’m actually kind of relieved that the Supreme Court ruled the way it did on the D.C. gun ban.
If the decision had gone the other way, it would surely have thrown every rightwing gun nut into a state of hysteria and would probably have devolved into a huge, ugly issue during the fall campaign.
Instead, guns will probably become a non-issue in the campaign now that the court has basically affirmed what most people already accepted - that the 2nd Amendment gives people the right to own a gun.
That has never been an issue with me. Instead, it has been about how far out of whack some extremists try to push that “right” to the point where we have people walking the streets with sub-machine guns and cop-killer bullets.
I don’t know anything about the D.C. crime situation, but I doubt that the gun ban was very effective in reducing crime and I don’t think that the court’s decision today will make much of a difference in that respect one way or another. Rather, it will take some of the pressure off of gun control advocates who never wanted a complete ban in the first place, and it takes some of the steam out of the extremist faction of the NRA which has used the specter of the government taking people’s guns away to fool them into voting against their social and economic interests.

The Big Payoff

Exxon-Mobil’s political investments these past 18 years paid off in spades today as the Republican-dominated Supreme Court slashed the oil behemoth’s punitive damages from the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill by $2 billion.

The Supreme Court on Wednesday reduced a $2.5 billion punitive damages award against energy giant Exxon for its role in an infamous 1989 maritime oil spill off the coast of Alaska.
The high court concluded punitive damages should roughly match actual damages from the environmental disaster, which were about $507 million.

Since 1990, Exxon has made nearly $10 million in political contributions with about 86 percent of that going to Republicans.
That means a $10 million investment just got a $2 billion payoff today. That’s a pretty good ROI (return on investment). And that is not counting any of the other benefits that Exxon-Mobil has soaked up these past dozen years of Republican rule with their tax breaks and stratospheric gas prices.

Here is a reminder of what the Exxon Valdez oil spill wrought:

Thousands of animals died immediately; the best estimates include 250,000 to as many as 500,000 seabirds, at least 1,000 sea otters, approximately 12 river otters, 300 harbour seals, 250 bald eagles, and 22 orcas, as well as the destruction of billions of salmon and herring eggs.

The Terror Advantage

Charlie Black, a prominent McCain campaign advisor, recently acknowledged that a terrorist attack on the United States would benefit Republican efforts to hold onto the White House this fall.

An adviser to Sen. John McCain apologized Monday for saying a terrorist attack on the United States would be "a big advantage" for the Republican presidential candidate....

In a Fortune interview, posted on the magazine's Web site Monday, Black said the Arizona senator demonstrated his fluency in foreign policy and security matters following the assassination of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in December.
Bhutto's killing was an "unfortunate event," he said, but McCain's "knowledge and ability to talk about it reemphasized that this is the guy who's ready to be commander-in-chief. And it helped us."
Asked if McCain would stand to benefit from a terrorist attack on U.S. soil, Black answered, "Certainly it would be a big advantage to him."

One has to wonder then, in light of this, as to the real reason why the Bush administration has failed so miserably at capturing Osama bin Laden. If, as Charlie Black says, it would boost Republicans’ electoral prospects to have another terrorist attack, or even the threat of a terrorist attack, then it would seem to be awfully convenient to still have the No. 1 international terrorist on the loose as the election is underway.

It has been noted that “fighting terrorism” is the only remaining issue where polls show that Republicans still have an advantage over their Democratic adversaries. Do you think that might have raised some concerns high up in the administration that if bin Laden were to be captured and/or killed that it would become that more difficult to make “terrorism” a top concern for voters?

I’m reminded of these lyrics from Weird Al Yankovic’s Star Wars parody song “Yoda”:

I know Darth Vader’s really got you annoyed
But remember, if you kill him, then you’ll be unemployed

Personally, I like to believe that the Bush administration isn’t really that twisted. It is much nicer to just continue believing that their failure to capture or kill bin Laden is due to their gross incompetence.

George Carlin

Along with Steve Martin, Robin Williams and Richard Pryor, you can blame George Carlin for the evolution of my sense of humor. Even though I’ve never been a big fan of foul language, you couldn’t help but crack up when Carlin went through his expanded list of “the words you can’t say on TV” in one of his HBO comedy specials back in 1983-84.
Those early 80s HBO specials are what I remember most about Carlin. I was too young to have appreciated his breakout in the early 70s, so I caught him during one of first revivals when I was in high school and college.
I still have a cassette tape recording I made of one of his HBO specials using a handheld tape recorder held up to my TV. Funny stuff. He will be missed.
Update
Ann has a video from one of his most politically charged routines. Wingnuts beware!

Term Limits are Teh Stupid

San Antonio has the most insane term limits restrictions of any municipality in the nation, to the best of my knowledge. Two two-year terms and you’re out. That means the entire city council is automatically rotated out every four years whether they are doing a good job or not.
Thus we are always stuck with an inexperienced city council with no collective memory of things that have gone on before. Therefore, council members have to rely on the city staff for its experience and collective memory to get things done.
Why would we do this to ourselves? Do we like having a city government run by entrenched bureaucrats who do not have to answer to the voters? Because that is effectively what we have now. Whose bright idea was this?
Well, it was partly this reactionary group that got the ball rolling at the behest of this looney bird.

But the real question is whether we are going to continue to listen to these knuckledragging morons, or are we going to at least take some minimal steps to correct the situation.
I think having four two-year term limits is ridiculous, counter-productive and undemocratic. But at least it is better than what we currently have.
The term limits rule has been disenfranchising San Antonio residents by making our elected council members weak and unresponsive to their constituents.
And as this study noted it has even depressed voter participation in city elections.

The implementation of city council term limits in San Antonio since 1991 is clearly associated with lower voter participation in municipal elections turnout. Lower voter participation rates are particularly evident in inner city council districts, while council districts 8, 9 and 10 voters participate in high numbers. In addition, over the period examined, voter registration rates have increased while Spanish surname rates have remained relatively consistent. Overall levels of political efficacy have increased but rates for Mexican Americans and African Americans remain low relative to Anglos. Finally, some members of council have resigned from office to pursue other private and public sector interests rather than complete terms.
The relative competitive nature of city council and mayoral elections in the 1980s called for a greater mobilization of voter effort ("get out the vote" campaigns) and, as a result, seem to have produced a higher turnout rate. With terms limits, municipal elections in the City of San Antonio have witnessed fewer intensive voter mobilization efforts and subsequently lower turnout. Less competitive elections are also associated with less interest, lower levels of participation and lack of political efficacy.

Lack of political efficacy. What does that mean? It means the power or capacity to produce a desired effect (i.e. effectiveness). So our city government is less effective as a result of term limits. I guess there are some who would think this is a good thing, but they would be wrong.
Can you imagine anyone advocating that a business be run in this fashion? Every four years the CEO and his entire executive team is kicked out and replaced with new people who have no experience. Sound like a good plan? Would you invest in that kind of company?

McCain the stealth candidate

John McCain slipped into San Antonio the other day for a private fundraiser at the San Antonio Country Club and raked in a reported $1.3 million.
It never ceases to amaze me that there are people out there who can drop $10,000 in a moment’s notice for something like this. But San Antonio is a big city (7th largest in the U.S.) and all you have to do is drive around some of the ritzy neighborhoods to get an idea about just how much wealth is out there.
So I’m not sure if $1.3 million was a good haul for McCair or if it was just chickenfeed. But one that is sure is that if you couldn’t afford to drop $10,000 in McCain’s hat, then you were probably unaware that he was even in San Antonio. There was no advance notice, no public appearances and the McCain campaign gave short shrift to the local media.
That was evident from the story that ran this morning. It was a fine story considering the reporter had no access to the candidate or any of the people attending the fundraiser. The only person quoted in the piece is John Larson, the Republican county commissioner who is running for Congress against Ciro Rodriguez. At least he respects the power of the local media.
Since the McCain folks wouldn’t acknowledge the local press, they got a crappy story, at least from their perspective it was crappy.
Since the reporter had 25 inches to fill and no one to talk to, she filled it with whatever she could find. That turned out to be a YouTube video blasting McCain for flipflopping on the windfall profits tax and an interview with Democratic State Sen. Leticia Van de Putte blasting McCain for associating with poor old Clayton Williams who is still getting grief over his stupid rape joke 18 years after it blew the tires off of his gubernatorial campaign.
She also took the time to note that McCain’s moronic anti-earmarks stance would leave the San Antonio River Improvements Project high and dry.
I’m sure the McCain people probably weren’t happy with the story, but that’s what you get when you fail to take advantage of the local press. If they had given the reporter just a smidgen of access to the candidate, I’m sure she would have filled the story up with his quotes and the story might have had more prominent play to boot.
Maybe next time they’ll learn.

The Vanquished

As commenter IK noted in the previous thread, I have recently taken to commenting at BeldarBlog, a right-wing blog run by an attorney based in Dallas. Beldar has been a most gracious host so far. At least, he hasn’t banned me from the site yet.
It is kind of sad that I am forced to go to a Dallas-based blog to find someone to debate the issues with, but alas it seems that I have vanquished most all of the conservative blogs here in San Antonio. (With the exception of But, that’s just my opinion. Hang in there, JimmyK!)
There once was a thriving rightwing blogger community here in the Alamo City. We had Insane Antonio, now abandoned. Another site called Raving Heretic, also abandoned. There was the Ranting Raven’s A View From the Nest, now in retirement. There was Ben’s World, by a St. Mary’s University law student who I presume has now graduated. There was Tex the Pontificator, also retired. And, of course, there was Bill Crawford (aka Alamo City Commando) and his All Things Conservative site, the big daddy of them all. The Commando is now AWOL and no one will acknowledge what happened to him. I like to think that he finally got the courage of his convictions and volunteered for military service in Iraq.
Finally, there is Conservative Dialysis by my friend Nick, but his last post more than a week ago may have been his coda. A comment I left there a week ago has yet to be approved.

Fortunately, the liberal blogging community in San Antonio is thriving. In addition to my humble abode which has been around for more than five years now, we still have the The Agonist, the longest running blog in San Antonio, which is run by Sean Paul Kelly. There is also B and B by Pete Bryant. Pete represents San Antonio on the board of the Texas Progressive Bloggers Alliance.
And now we have two ATC outcasts who have launched their own blogs: Beginning To Wonder by AnnPW and
Happiness, Anyway by Donna, as well as Maximum Volume by Voice of Reason.
Then we have Dig Deeper Texas; Pulp Friction; Ablogistan; Harman on Earth and probably some more that I’m missing.

Best Rock Bands

It is funny the things you come across with Google. Today I typed in “Rock Bands” and came up with MSNBC’s list of the10 best rock bands ever from 2004. OK, I’m a sucker for lists so I had to check it out:
It started out fine enough...

The Beatles
The Rolling Stones

No arguments there. Those would be my first two picks too.

U2

OK, not my No. 3 choice but definitely in my top 10

The Grateful Dead

Um, No. While I can appreciate them, I’m not a Deadhead and they would not be on my top 10 list.

Velvet Underground

Whoa!! Hold on! Now we are way off course. No way! Who can name even one song by the Velvet Underground? I’ve even tried to listen to some of their albums. Absolutely not.

Led Zepplin

All right, now we’re back on track again. Good choice.

The Ramones

Screech!! Blam!!! Back in the ditch again! I hate punk music. Yuck!
This list just won’t do. I have to make my own.

The rest of their list includes
Pink Floyd
Bob Marley and the Wailers
Sly and the Family Stone

Good bands but not good enough to make my Top 10 (except maybe Pink Floyd).

So here goes my list of the definitive Best Rock Bands:

The Beatles
The Rolling Stones
The Who
The Beach Boys
The Doors
Led Zepplin
Pink Floyd
U2
Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band
The Police

And my list of runner-ups (or the second top 10)

Creedence Clearwater Revival
The Band
Van Halen
REM
The Eagles
Aerosmith
Santana
Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers
Heart
Rush


Of course this leaves out a lot of “solo” artists who no doubt have very capable and talented backing bands. A top 10 list there would include:

Elvis Presley
Chuck Berry
Buddy Holly
Bob Dylan
David Bowie
Elton John
Billy Joel
Rod Stewart
Jimi Hendrix
Prince

UPDATE

OK, I’ve reworked my Best Rock Bands list into per decade categories. (Yes, I know I have 11 in the 80s category. So sue me.)

50s
Buddy Holly and The Crickets
Bill Haley and The Comets
The Coasters
The Drifters
The Platters
The Clovers
Frankie Lymon and The Teenagers
The Moonglows
The Flamingos

60s
The Beatles
The Rolling Stones
The Who
The Doors
Pink Floyd
The Beach Boys
Creedence Clearwater Revival
The Band
Buffalo Springfield
The Faces

70s
Led Zepplin
Queen
Boston
Aerosmith
The Eagles
Heart
Santana
The Bee Gees
Deep Purple
ELO

80s
U2
The Police
Van Halen
Rush
Prince and The Revolution
Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
The Cars
Cheap Trick
J. Geils Band
ZZ Top

90s
Guns N Roses
Red Hot Chili Peppers
Smashing Pumpkins
The Black Crowes
REM
Stone Temple Pilots
Pearl Jam
Rage Against the Machine
The Offspring
Green Day

2000s
The White Stripes
Los Lonely Boys
JET
Maroon Five
The Foo Fighters
Limp Bizkit
Velvet Revolver

Habeas Corpus is not a right, it’s a responsibility

The Supreme Court, by a slim margin, has once again confirmed the responsibility of the U.S. government to assure that all people under our control are treated humanely and responsibly. Part of that responsibility is to assure to the best of our ability that those who are in our custody are there for a legitimate reason.
That is what the writ of habeas corpus is all about. It is not a “right” bestowed on American citizens at birth. It is a responsibility that we have assumed as a nation. It does not benefit our society to incarcerate people without good reason. It is morally and ethically wrong and it places an undue financial burden on taxpayers. So why shouldn’t we do everything within reason to assure that we are not incarcerating innocent people? The purpose of Habeas Corpus is to keep innocent people from being detained, not to let guilty people go free.
A lot of the outrage on the right centers around the perception that we are granting “terrorists” a special privilege that is usually reserved just for American citizens. But the right to not be incarcerated when you are innocent should not be just for American citizens, it should be for everyone. And thus it is our responsiblity to make sure that is so with the people under our authority.

Immigration idiocy

Our U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service is about to deport a kid who has been in this country since he was a toddler and who just graduated from high school as valedictorian.

The family arrived in the United States in 1995 on six-month tourist visas, said Virginia Kice, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Settling in Fresno, Arthur's father, Ruben Mkoian (he and his son spell their last names slightly differently), worked as a truck driver. The teen's mother worked in a jewelry store, and the family set about living their lives, which soon included a younger brother for Arthur.
Mkoian believes that if they were to return to Armenia, his family would be subject to reprisals because of his attempts to expose corruption at the government agency where he worked.
After the family's visas expired, they applied for U.S. residency. That application was denied, Kice said.
Immigration wheels turns extremely slowly. An immigration judge finally ruled in 2002 that the family had no legal right to remain in America.
The family tried again by applying to the Board of Immigration Appeals; that was rejected, also. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year denied their petition for a hearing.
"I would remind people that this family had ample access to due process," Kice said. "The case has been in litigation for more than 10 years. Immigration experts on every level determined that they had no legal basis to be in the United States."

This is nuts. Why even have these courts and judges if they take this long to make decisions like this? If they had nabbed them within a year or two of their arrival that would have been one thing. But 13 years later we are going to uproot them and send them packing after they have caused no problems and, in fact, are contributing positively to our society?

Fortunately, a bill sponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein could resolve things by granting the family citizenship.
This is the common sense thing to do in this case, but unfortunately common sense is something that is sorely lacking in many parts of our country.
I first learned of this case this morning by reading this dreadful column by Ruben Navarette who essentially applauds the decision to deport the kid and his family. Why? The law is the law, he states flatly. But the real reason is darker than that as he goes on to admit. It turns out that Navarette can recall a case a few years ago where a Hispanic kid may have been deported under similar circumstances, so now he thinks this kid is getting special treatment because he is not Hispanic (he is an Armenian.)
In other words, Navarette is being a racist jerk. The San Antonio Express-News should quit giving this jerk a forum and drop his syndicated column.

Wall Street Journal slanders John Lennon

The headline on the column catches your attention right away.
The Case Against John Lennon
And then there is the pull quote that highlights the column:

Nothing to live or die for — what a nightmare.

It makes you immediately start singing John Lennon’s song “Imagine” in your head. “Nothing to live or die for... hmmmm hmmmm hmmmm hmmmm hmmmmm.”
My gosh, you think, how awful! John Lennon said there is nothing to live for?!? That is so wrong!

Well, yes, it IS wrong, because it is a misquote. Intentional or not, I’m not sure, but the actual lyrics from the song say “...nothing to KILL or die for....” Not nothing to live for.

So what is going on here? Why is the WSJ promoting a column with such a provacative title and using a misquote to mislead readers into a negative reaction against John Lennon?
The column itself is a mess. It is poorly written, jumbled and fails to adequately explain how John Lennon or his song “Imagine” has anything to do with what the column appears to be about.
Here is the pertinent section that mentions Lennon:

Mr. Sharansky has a new book, titled "Defending Identity." It would be equally accurate to call it "The Case Against John Lennon."
Or, more specifically, the case against "Imagine," Lennon's anthem to a world with "no countries . . . nothing to kill or die for/And no religion too." For Mr. Sharansky, a nine-year resident of the Perm 35 prison camp, that's a vision that smacks too much of the professed beliefs of the ex-Beatle's near namesake, Vladimir Ilyich.

What the hell? Does he think he’s being clever or something? Lennon sounds like Lenin. Get it? So obviously they must be related or they must think alike or something right?
Nevermind that “Lenin” was actually an alias for Vladimir Illich Ulyanov, while the surname Lennon dates back hundreds of years to old Ireland.
No, they sound alike so there must be a connection. Right? Kind of like how Obama sounds like Osama so they must be related too. Yeah. That’s the level of reasoning that the column sinks to.
Absolutely pathetic.
And of course he never goes back and explains how V.I. Lenin’s brutal and dictatorial ways have any similarity or correlation to Lennon’s ode to world peace.
But fortunately for the cretins who run the WSJ editorial pages, John Lennon is dead and can’t defend his classic work against their asinine columnist’s offhanded smear.