Looking Ahead

It's likely that Jeb Bush will be running for President in 2016, against Hillary Clinton. This is a strange state of affairs, but then the U.S.of A. is a pretty strange place, in many way cut off from plain common sense and reason. Who would expect representatives of the police in large American cities to act as though any criticism of the police was tantamount to calling for vigilante action against them. Just for example.

Charles Pierce wrote most of this piece a few years back, an account of the horrible politicization of a dying woman's last weeks at the hands of Jeb Bush, Governor of Florida. The account is an antidote to those who might think that the Clintons don't need another chance at power, and for those who think voting for the likes of Ralph Nader is actually a moral choice in the real world.
Read it and weep, it's all true:

http://www.esquire.com/blogs/politics/charlie-pierce-terri-schiavo-jeb-bush-idiot-america-excerpt

Meanwhile, in the early months of 2015, we can only pray that the Supreme Court will not make a disputable academic decision which will result in several million people losing their health insurance due to their inability to pay for it.

Merry Christmas, ya'll. Here's the best song I've heard in a long time:



(You can buy the CD, it's the Austin City Limits concert of 2003.)

Since we have easily traversed the vast distance from the pig stye to the sublime in but a few paragraphs, here's a beautiful post by the best blogger out there, on the sublime:

http://www.sheilaomalley.com/?p=46059

________________

Long ago (well, 1979 I think it might have been) the band I used to be in, that shares a name with a current local corporate entity, toured the upper peninsula of Michigan, including stops at the Calumet Opera House, and the town of Hancock. It was one of the nicest tours I've ever experienced, and I still have good friends who live up there in the "UP," and our current outfit, the Craver Hicks Watson Newberry Combo, played their great local festival, the Hiawatha Festival, in Marquette, a couple of summers back. Here's a piece of the history of the UP I found today on the tubes:

http://www.lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2014/12/day-labor-history-december-24-1913

It's nice to hear Ramblin' Jack again. I first saw him play in September of 1961, in Chapel Hill. He got mad when some frat boys from UNC asked him repeatedly to play Ghost Riders in the Sky. In the late '70s I got to play on a festival venue with him, which I took as a high mark in my touring life on the road.