Merry Christmas!

Huge Drumspot: My Top Five

My top five drummers - enjoy!

Jojo Mayer with Depart:



Ari Hoenig - The Painter (in two parts):





Tony Williams with Miles:



Elvin Jones tearin' it up:



Danny Carey hittin' it hard:

Seriously?

"Obama wants to spend much of the stimulus on transportation infrastructure and schools. Fine, but lots of schools and airports seem to me to have been refurbished more recently and more generously than military bases I've visited." - William Kristol

This just makes me angry - complaining that we shouldn't be spending money on education but rather should be spending it on the military? Are you fucking kidding me?

Also the article seems to suggest that small government is an ideal we should give up just because it's not politically expedient for people running for office. In other words, we shouldn't work towards it because it's hard. I can't believe what I'm reading.

I may sound a little hypocritical in this post, but let me explain. I disagree that we need to pour money into the military and not into schools and infrastructure. Overall, I wish the size of government would decrease but at any size I think government money should be spent on the right things - this is why I voted for Obama even though in principle I am an economic conservative. In further response to Kristol's complaint about the state of military bases, I say eliminate some of the one's we unneccesarily keep over seas and use the money saved to improve the conditions in the ones we need; because do we honestly need to have troops in Germany still? No. Probably the only statement in Kristol's article that I agree with is the parenthetical suggestion that government probably wouldn't shrink with either party anyways, another reason I feel justified in voting Obama. If Ron Paul had had a chance, I would have voted for him in a second but such is not the case.

Here's the whole article.

Great Article from Friedman

My favorite line: "This money can't just go to patch up our jalopies."

The whole article here


Cheers!

Interesting Post From The Freakonomics Blog

You can find it here

I hope I hear more about this; whether it works or doesn't work and why.


Cheers!

Homosexuality/gay marriage/prop. 8 and the Black Community

A very insightful and interesting article from the New York Times here. I especially like the constructive advice at the end of the article.


Cheers!

Farm Subsidies

From the Washington Post:

Obama Goes After Farm Subsidies

In a speech just concluded announcing two more economy appointees -- CBO chief Peter Orszag to the Office of Management and Budget and Robert Nabors (House Approp. Comm.) to be his deputy -- President-elect Obama gave an example of one piece of wasteful government spending: farm subsidies.

Obama cited a GAO report out yesterday that said from 2003 to 2006, "millionaire farmers" got $49 million in farm subsidies despite earning more than the $2.5 million cutoff in annual income.

"If it's true," Obama said, "it's a prime example of waste."

With the announcement, Obama joins a long and largely defeated line of presidents and officials who've tried to kill farm subsidies, a perk as deeply ingrained in a nation built on the Jeffersonian Agricultural Ideal as any other.

Subsidies have been constructed and preserved by powerful Midwest lawmakers and are very difficult to pry loose.

To the president-elect, we say: Good luck with that. Let us know how it works out for you.

Orszag, Obama said, "doesn't need a map to tell him where the bodies are buried in the federal budget."

One place to start digging is the Nation's Breadbasket. The president-elect may be wise to be on the lookout for a Combine Army motoring to Washington to preserve the subsidies.

The Post's Dan Morgan, Gilbert Gaul and Sarah Cohen did a terrific series on farm subsidies in 2006. Here's where you can read it.

Good and Godspeed I say!

Cheers

Some Videos For Fun

Poetry!

Taylor Mali:


Billy Collins:

Great Web Find

While I don't really have time to read through many different news sources every day, I do like to vary where I get my news (although I sometimes fall into the habit of just clicking on the NYT website and possibly scanning through Andrew Sullivan's blog, The Daily Dish). I'm always interested to add new bookmarks to my Firefox with various perspectives and slants. I found something called source watch that, among other things (it being a wikilike encyclopedia site), lists news sources according to their political slants - conservative, or liberal. It also provides what looks like an interesting article on the nature of propaganda which you can find the link to if you scroll down on either of the aforementioned linked pages.

Cheers!

The Reason I Felt Obama was a Good Choice

"Advisers to Mr. Obama say they want to use the economic crisis as an opportunity to act on many of the issues he emphasized in his campaign, including cutting taxes for lower- and middle-class workers, addressing neglected public infrastructure projects like roads and schools, and creating “green jobs” through business incentives for energy alternatives and environmentally friendly technologies." -NYT (Italics my own)

Yes. I'm not a huge proponent of lots of government spending but Obama seems to want to spend it on the right things - at least in the short term (In the long term I have about an equal chance of voting republican in the next few elections as I do Democrat - we'll see where we are in four to eight years. By no means am I staunch partisan.). Infrastructure is the best use of tax dollars and energy alternatives are the best investment our country can make for our future. I didn't get the impression that McCain would have as strong programs for such things. This same article mentions that he might let the bush tax cuts expire on their own instead of cutting them short, which should make the more conservative among us at least a little bit happier.

Cheers!

Ronda and Toni

A spar from the rank testing on Saturday:

Went to a ska show last night

Toasters headlined:



Cheers!

Just voted

Why were the lines so short? I don't know but I guess I'm going to classes today. Speaking of which...

cheers!

John McCain...

...has a much higher voice when heard in person at the Bank United Center at the University of Miami. This little tidbit of information sponsored by my moronic thought that I might actually get something out of witnessing part of his rally on campus today. I went at around 11:45 pm and he came on for an appearance at about half past midnight, after my friends and I put up with unneccesarily loud Salsa music for 45 minutes (fortunately John McCain's sister decided to amuse us all by getting on stage and shaking her senior citizen hips - no injury either). He spewed bullshit to the hordes of supporters there - who were largely Cuban as evidenced by the Cuban cacophony that resulted when he started asking which Hispanics were in the house; "How many people in here are Venezuelan American?... Puerto Rican?... Cuban?" Another highlight came when he started talking about our good friend, Joe the Plumber. In order to appeal to his Spanish speaking brethren, Senator McCain kindly translated the name, in one of the most pathetically american spanish accents I've ever witnessed (can you really not at least attempt to roll an R?), to "Pepe el Plomero."

Cheers!

Epic Classic Drumspot: Weckl, Gadd, Colaiuta

A Discussion Worthy Comment, please excuse the rant.

Bradley:

"Nice post.
I'd like to question the conventional wisdom about higher education subsidies. What I mean is, does America really need cheaper higher education? Everybody and their mother already goes to college, and many college students are apathetic trust-fund twats that get legitimately little out of their education. All this says is that the private school system is healthy and proper as a money-making venture. If anything, private schools should be more authoritarian and selective in order to ensure that only people who are ready get into college. High-school minded slacker non-contributors should get acquainted with life beforehand.
The only conclusion is obvious: we need aid for those that need aid. The government provides some but could provide more. As you pointed out, gov intervention in private higher education would handicap the positive economic impact.
One last point: The fact that the income gap in the US has grown over the last 3 decades and that its higher than almost any other large industrialized country indicates that our higher-education saturation strategy is not effective."

You raise some interesting points. I would tend to agree with you in that I understand your point to be that higher education should not be cheaper on a wholesale level but for the people who are ready to take on the challenge and responsibility of their education. What I think you perhaps need to think of or at least express if you have thought of it is that, while higher education is a privilege and a responsibility, education, period, is a basic right in a developed country such as ours (and something to strive for elsewhere). Thus, yes, people who don't get anything out of their education probably are at too high a level of education and money should not be wasted subsidizing their attending college. However, this says something about our elementary and secondary level educational system and how little it prepares so many people for the higher education they want (perhaps for the wrong reasons - they see a degree as only a means to an increased paycheck, and see it as a chore, something they just have to do without thinking of why they have to do it.) to pursue. This problem exists, not only in the culture of "trust fund twats," as you put it, but in and due to insufficient inner city and even other public schools and due to parents who are too unconcerned or uninvolved with their childrens's education. In fact, I think that the parenting probably plays the largest role in the matter, in that parents should raise their kids to have a good attitude towards learning. Parents need to have high standards for their children and, an often neglected point, for themselves. A child with intellectual parents are more likely to be intellectual themselves just by virtue of the nature and the amount of discussions and language they hear in the home. Parents who simply demand their kids get high grades don't even do enough; they need to instill values in their children that will mark them as people who will appreciate the opportunities afforded them, enjoy reflection and creativity, and honor, in themselves and in others, the pursuit of knowledge and skills. One of the the teachers I most respected and enjoyed in high school, Mr. Thurber, hated "grade grubbing." He understood that, too much, grades have become a measure unto themselves instead of what they should be - a means to evaluation. In effect, people who care more about a grade than what the grade evaluates defeat the true purpose of their education.
One thing that strikes me about government intervention in higher education is that they could be infringing upon the competitiveness of colleges and crippling these institutions' ability to find and recruit the best possible student bodies they can based on intellectualism, skills, individuality and differing perspectives. I say to the government: leave higher education alone, get your hands dirty working to improve elementary and secondary education. And an aside, if you look at the video I posted in my first post (not the drum one) it mentions that Nintendo spends much more on marketing and research than we spend on education. That simple fact tells me that our government's spending priorities are seriously askew. I won't get into how much the government should and should not spend in total but it needs to change the direction they're sending their cash. Ultimately, my response to your intial question, Bradley, is not that we need to prevent the expansion of the population that pursues a higher education but that we need to prepare more of the people who pursue one.

Cheers!

Some Politics

From a George Will article

"Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.) recently convened a discussion of how colleges and universities should be spending their endowments. Grassley, who says more than 135 institutions each have endowments of more than $500 million, says perhaps they should be required to spend 5 percent of those endowments each year. Welch has introduced legislation to require that percentage to be spent to reduce tuition and other student expenses.

This government reach for control of private resources comes even though last year colleges and universities spent, on average, 4.6 percent of their endowments. Furthermore, most endowments are too small to be a significant source of captured money.

...

So the frequently cited $700 billion sum is but a small fraction of the cost, over coming decades, of today's financial crisis. The desire of governments to extend their control over endowments and foundations is a manifestation of the metastasizing statism driven by the crisis. For now, its costs, monetary and moral, are, strictly speaking, incalculable."

While I'm not wholly against the bailout as Will seems to be - I think it's probably a necessary means on the whole - it seems to me that Will has a point. Should the government really be sticking their noses into private higher education? Lowering tuition and student costs is certainly an amiable cause but should that be a forcibly mandated burden on private educational institutions? If the government really wishes to help students in this way, shouldn't the money at least come from some other tax source instead of crippling the freedom of educational institutions to spend their endowments at a pace and aim of their own choice. Further, if the wealthy alumni of these institutions (and any other donors for that matter) are aware that their donations aren't being controlled by the college or university but by the government, they might just be less likely to give as much.


Cheers!

Just Got Stumbleupon...

And my first stumbled upon website is...

http://www.worldometers.info/

always startling to find stats like these...more startling to see them develop in real time.


cheers

Zogby poll

http://www.zogby.com/news/ReadNews1604.html

Pollster John Zogby: “Three big days for Obama. Anything can happen, but time is running short for McCain. These numbers, if they hold, are blowout numbers. They fit the 1980 model with Reagan's victory over Carter -- but they are happening 12 days before Reagan blasted ahead. If Obama wins like this we can be talking not only victory but realignment: he leads by 27 points among Independents, 27 points among those who have already voted, 16 among newly registered voters, 31 among Hispanics, 93%-2% among African Americans, 16 among women, 27 among those 18-29, 5 among 30-49 year olds, 8 among 50-64s, 4 among those over 65, 25 among Moderates, and 12 among Catholics (which is better than Bill Clinton's 10-point victory among Catholics in 1996). He leads with men by 2 points, and is down among whites by only 6 points, down 2 in armed forces households, 3 among investors, and is tied among NASCAR fans.”

Nascar fans? guess my vote really does make a difference... In all seriousness though, I'm glad my vote counts. Swing state bitches.

Cheers.

Dolla Dolla Bill Ya'll

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/dollar_bill_on_floor_sends_wall

very funny. I particularly like this part:

"I bet it smells like rose petals," mutual funds specialist Ken Stoute said. "My friend's friend Tim Formato? He's on the board at Westminster Securities and he says he touched it. He said it was warm and soft and wonderful. He said he knows where it is now, and I can put in an option on seeing it tomorrow for only $85."

Man Enough

Very funny comic my cousin Will sent me a little while ago: http://www.philintheblanks.com/comics/manenough.html

First Post!

I believe that a place to reflect and write on politics/news/philosophy, write and post the occasional story or poem, post articles/pictures/videos that I enjoy or find interesting will enrich me and hopefully open up dialogue with others. This blog will not largely be about anything to do with my personal life although it is not impossible that something will slip through the cracks and so be it if it does. I encourage anyone who reads this to respond to anything i write, no matter the type of response; I welcome criticism, argument, agreement, disagreement, rants, raves, etc...

I'll start things off with a couple youtube videos:

Drumspot: Steve Gadd grooving (like no one else can) with a percussionist



And some astonishing stats/facts with dramatic music behind it





cheers