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!