(from Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original by Robin D.G. Delley)
". . . Monk walked away to another part of the studio where Weller's props lay. He saw a little red wagon and decided to park there for a moment. The image was striking. There was Monk, sporting a clean dark three-button suite, dark tie, crisp white shirt, handkerchief, bamboo-framed sunglasses and plaid driving cap. Bacon reluctantly asked Monk if it was OK to shoot him sitting in the wagon. Thelonious agreed. "I told them I would pose in a wagon, because I have actually composed while sitting in my kid's wagon on the front sidewalk." To further underscore the point, Thelonious added his own props-his brief case, a sheet of staff paper and a long pencil. . . "
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It post-election cheating that causes more problems. . .
(from http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2012/10/05/no-mitt-romney-did-not-bring-cheat-notes-to-the-debate)
". . . The Commission on Presidential Debates, which runs the debate logistics, did not release its contract of rules to the public this year. And it has not responded to request for comment on the 2012 debate rules. But a copy of the 2004 contract of rules reads: "No props, notes, charts, diagrams, or other writings or other tangible things may be brought into the debate by any candidate." The candidate can take notes, but only on a pad provided by commission staff.
As far as the rule on "tangible things," hankies appear to be an exception.
A forensic video analyst, who did not wish to be named because of pending state and federal cases he’s working on, says he also believes the white object was just a handkerchief.
“The size, thickness, and overall dimensionality when he first walks up to the podium is consistent with a handkerchief, and not with a single note card,” he tells Whispers. “The elemental movement and mechanics [later on in the video] also suggest it’s absolutely a handkerchief he picks up around his face.”
A number of commenters (sic) have pointed to a later part in the video, when Romney collects sheets of paper from the podium at the end of the debate instead of leaving them behind. It’s worth noting that candidates do receive paper from the commission to take notes on, so it was likely those papers Romney was collecting. . . "
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(from http://www.voterocky.org/corporate_welfare)
". . . The U.S. federal government is facing the largest debt in its history – over $15.5 trillion. (How much is that? If you had $15 trillion and spent $15 million every day since Jesus was born, you would still have $4,500,000,000 today.) The interest on that debt is crushing. The annual interest payment on the debt is now $474 billion – more than it costs for the Departments of Commerce, Education, Energy, Homeland Security, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Justice, State, Transportation, and Treasury, and the Environmental Protection Agency, combined. Imagine what could be done with that money were it not being wasted as interest payments on debt irresponsibly built up over the years.
Politicians proclaim to be concerned about the debt, while in the next breath they defend the creation or extension of policies that actually add to the outrageous debt burden. Much of that addition is for corporate interests which are being provided favors by the recipients of their campaign contributions or the targets of their lobbyist blitzes.
Corporate welfare is not need-based and is largely embedded in the tax code. It manifests in the form of tax expenditures, deductions, credits, bail-outs, guaranteed and low interest loans, and subsidies. Corporate welfare benefits the wealthiest corporations, which also happen to be among the biggest campaign donors to candidates of both Republicans and Democrats. Many of these benefits continue in perpetuity until Congress votes to end them, which is not likely to happen because to end the benefits would be adverse to the interest of corporations to whom members of Congress and the President often feel indebted.
Some of these corporate welfare programs actually promote degradation of the environment while privatizing profits and socializing risks. The following are examples of wasteful and, in some instances, environmentally harmful subsidies.
The 1872 Mining Act allows companies to extract billions of dollars worth of resources from public land at $5 per acre while paying no royalty fees. (See Rocky Anderson’s column on this issue, published in The Enterprise in February 1998. http://www.voterocky.org/the_mining_law_of_1872)
The Department of Agriculture’s Commodity Crop subsidies waste billions of dollars annually supporting a small number of corporate farming operations that encourage over-production and in some cases harm the environment.
The Market Access Program subsidizes overseas ad campaigns that benefit profitable multinational corporations.
The Department of Agriculture’s Crop Insurance program benefits the largest agricultural producers and guarantees a return on even marginal land, providing an incentive to plant in environmentally sensitive areas. Claims are projected to rise due to weather issues related to climate change.
Essential Air Service provides a subsidy to airlines that operate flights from non-hub airports that are 90 miles or more from the nearest large or medium hub airport. It essentially subsidizes flights for a relatively small number of passengers and contributes to air pollution.
It appears American citizens actually pay corporations to log on public lands. However, because of the reporting system implemented by the Department of Agriculture, it is impossible to evaluate the cost to taxpayers.
The Forest Service and BLM Public Land Grazing Program benefits only 2% of the nation’s livestock producers, yet cost taxpayers approximately $136 million in 2004 to operate. The program earned only $21 million. The below-cost grazing fees encourage overgrazing and result in extensive and severe environmental damage.
The Department of Agriculture’s Wildlife Services Program spends millions of dollars each year to kill predators at the request of ranchers, which leads to the degradation of ecosystems that rely on healthy predator populations.
The Army Corps of Engineers is often involved in projects that are not based on national priorities and are often economically unjustified and environmentally harmful.
Taxpayers subsidize lending for American corporations that export and foreign firms that import through the Export-Import Bank, leaving taxpayers at risk for potentially bad loans.
Subsidies to coal, oil, and gas companies totaled approximately $72 billion from 2002-2008, notwithstanding that the fossil fuel industry is a mature, developed industry not in need of government assistance.
General Electric, which made $14.2 billion in profits in 2010, paid no corporate income taxes in 2011 as a result of “innovative accounting” and fierce lobbying. . . "
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OHO? Aha! That's a name that rings bells. Baltimore's answer to Pink Floyd, an American underground icon, a band that came out of nowhere playing music the chroniclers swore was years ahead of its time. OHO sneaks around the musical conventions that have mummified so many others, unleashing sliders where you'd expect curve balls, fast balls where you'd expect change-ups. Part of its their sense of humor, part of it their unerring humanity.
. . . that may never, and possibly should never, be told. It's not a story of a long lost love newly found. Nor is it the hear-wrenching tale of a family's struggle to survive or to cope with the loss or illness of one of its members. Not a love story or an account of injustice righted or never righted. It's actually a story of a fungus.
The story is also one about integrity, honesty, enthusiasm, communication, timing and ignorance. It began innocently with curiosity at the sighting of an unusual fungal growth which produced a much larger physical manifestation than one normally encounters on a lawn, wood or otherwise green area. And since there was sincere doubt as to the true identity of the specimen, a curious (have I used the word innocent yet?) the layman which encountered it chose to physically probe or otherwise accost the specimen in question out of sheer curiosity. In so doing, the uninitiated soul, without malice or intention of destruction, put an abrupt end to the life of the initially-mentioned fungal being without realizing the full range of implications, mainly as the result of past encounters with such earthly phenomena, albeit of much smaller stature and girth, which were clearly, or practically obviously, not beneficial to humankind as either nourishment or ornamentation.
Not long after the above described encounter, the party involved discovers through casual and friendly discourse, that someone possesses an enthusiastic and affectionate fascination with the very fungus by whom the former was confronted the very day prior. Turns out the specimen is (most likely) beneficial to humankind as nourishment and may also, in the individual matter of one's own subjective opinion, be perceived as quite beautiful. In fact, the subject of the confrontation was brought up by the very one that accosted the fungus. After conversationally mentioning the encounter with the object and it's particularly impressive dimensions, the culprit learned that the appearance of this particular species had been eagerly anticipated by another party close to the situation and that he would be absolutely thrilled to learn of its whereabouts so that it could be further nurtured and possibly soon harvested.
Due to the phrasing of the initial casual observation and impression, as well as the ardent response that revelation prompted, the culprit was at a loss to relate the details of the complete encounter, i.e. the disengaging of the life form from it root/base. And that inability haunted the culprit for an indeterminate amount of time with its accompanying feelings of guilt, dishonesty, disingenuousness and lack of integrity.
In hindsight, the best clear, concise, honest way the culprit could and should have related the original thought would have been to include the part about disengaging the thing from its trunk at the very beginning. But, after all is said and done, a simple and heartfelt apology, although the dastardly deed was done innocently, would certainly not have hurt a thing.
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