An Iraq War Argument that Bothers Me to this Day

Bush collage from photos of soldiers who died in Iraq. Origin unknown.

About this time 10 years ago, right in the middle of an argument, in the middle of our kitchen, a family member told me I would be "toast" in some other countries for opposing the Iraq war.

I always wondered exactly what she meant by that... that we should be more like those countries and kill the people who disagree, or that I was lucky to be in a country where I could speak out? I think the latter, but it's still an odd thing to say when debating whether we should have fought the war. Just out of the blue, like, well, don't you want to fight to protect your right to say you don't want to fight? As if Saddam Hussein was a threat to my right to speak. 

Bush and Cheney lied the right people into it, and the group-think led the rest. It was all threat inflation, all the time, even with supposedly smart people. And it will bother me forever that even close family members who are otherwise perfectly sensible people will succumb to the blood lust that a few neo-cons can fire up, given the right circumstances.

Keep Talking, Wingnuts

I finally did what I've been thinking about for a few weeks and started a blog called Keep Talking Wingnuts where I will post the stuff that is so wingnuterific that I won't have to say much at all. I'll just quote them, and try to keep them talking, while I stand next to them with my virtual "I'm With Stupid" shirt.

So, any of you who might be offended by my usual Gonzo attitude toward these fat cats in their corporate sinecures can follow that feed for pure, unadulterated wingnutitude which you can then use in anyway you think best.

For example, for the inaugural post, there's shorter Celeste Greig: "Todd Akin was insensitive. Now watch me hit this drive!" Maybe some of you would like to talk nicely to her to convince her that yes, women's bodies can get pregnant when they're traumatized, and at least one study shows that because rapists generally don't wear condoms, pregnancy is actually common as the result or rape, to the tune of 88 American women a day.

Frankly, I'd rather ridicule, belittle, and otherwise put her through a little dose of some mental violence exercise, since what she wants to do is force rape victims to give birth to their rapists' babies. Think of it as me physically stopping her from doing that to any women at all if you want. As the descendant of people who fought in the coal wars, I'd call that doing a good thing.

Backstage with Dad at the Hollywood Bowl

You can take a little history of backstage at the Hollywood Bowl tour on my Dad's page. He was the head sound man at the Hollywood Bowl from 1970 to 1993. I spent those summers hanging around the Bowl as much as he would let me. They were great years, and I got to learn things like Jazz, Classical, and live audio mixing from a perspective that few ever see. Dad was a proud member of IATSE Local 33, and died thirteen years ago today, 2000/3/3, at about 3:30 pm.

To continue the odd coincidences, one of our favorite musicians, Robyn Hitchcock, was born 60 years ago today. He has a new album that comes out Tuesday, Love from London---something to look forward to on a melancholy day, when we'll listen to some of Dad's favorites like Miles Davis, Art Pepper, and various other Jazz legends.

Lindsey Graham is Lying Again

Think Progress catches Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SuCk) lying.

"Well, all i can say is the commander-in-chief thought — came up with the idea of sequestration, destroying the military and putting a lot of good programs at risk."

Obama did not come up with the idea of sequestration. And the sequester will not destroy the military.

It's like they have to start off with the scariest bunch of BS they can think of to get all the wingnut ears to perk up. Er? Destroy the military? Take my guns? Wind up like Greece? Smoking gun might be a mushroom cloud?

Keep talking, wingnuts.

Man Who Shot World in Face is Sad Someone Took His Gun

"I think the President came to power with a worldview that's fundamentally different than mine. The sense that he wanted to reduce U.S. influence in the world. He wanted to take us down a peg."-- Former Vice President Dick Cheney

Well, Du-Uh-uH-uh-UH...

Jesus on a pogo stick, Dicky, if you haven't figured out that that is precisely the point yet, then I wonder how you ever got as far as you did in life? Oh, wait, I almost forgot about Wingnut Welfare, which is why Dick Cheney still appears in public to actually say things, and why a man with a list of deferments longer than his heart lasted was put in charge of the Pentagon, and then in charge of GW Bush.

Just for the record, here are some of my favorite Dick Cheney quotes:

• I think Barack Obama is a one-term President. 
• I had other priorities in the sixties than military service.
• My belief is we will, in fact, be greeted as liberators.
• We know he's been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons, and we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.
• I think they're in the last throes, if you will, of the insurgency.
• Go fuck yourself.

Yeah, Dick, I'll give you this: you helped convince a majority of Americans that the whole idea of increasing America's influence on the world by lying us into a multi-trillion dollar war that killed and maimed millions of innocent people is precisely the kind of thing we need to take down a peg. And I hope sucking on that at least gives you a little agita until the day you die. 

In the mean time, please, keep talking while the rest of us try to find peaceful, lasting, and moral ways to increase our influence in the world. You know, things that people will thank us for, instead of shooting back.

Step Right Up and Get Your Shiny New Infrastructure

Steel Mill in Bethlehem, PA, photo by S Supak

What part of buy low don't you "conservatives" get? Invest now, while it's cheap! Borrow at real negative interest, and you pay less than tax and spend later. Hire unemployed workers now and you don't crowd out private construction later. Stimulate growth now, increased revenues lower deficits later. Duh.

It comes as we may be approaching the end of a five year period in which investing in the nation’s physical infrastructure has been something close to a free lunch. With interest rates near all-time lows and millions of construction workers unemployed, the last few years have been a time that it would have been a historical bargain for the United States to do upgrades to roads, bridges, and airports that will eventually need to take place anyway. It has been a political breakdown—in particular conservatives’ view of almost any non-defense federal spending as wasteful—standing in the way.

The American Society of Civil Engineers says we need to spend $2.2 trillion over 5 years to fix what's falling apart. Whole city blocks have exploded from leaking gas mains. Bridges have collapsed and killed people. One third of all traffic fatalities involve poor road conditions. If terrorists were killing as many people as our decrepit infrastructure is, how Keynesian would you "conservatives" get on defense spending?

And just look what we can fix with the money (from the ASCE):

Americans spend 4.2 billion hours a year stuck in traffic at a cost of $78.2 billion a year--$710 per motorist. Roadway conditions are a significant factor in about one-third of traffic fatalities. Poor road conditions cost U.S. motorists $67 billion a year in repairs and operating costs--$333 per motorist; 33% of America's major roads are in poor or mediocre condition and 36% of the nation's major urban highways are congested. The current spending level of $70.3 billion for highway capital improvements is well below the estimated $186 billion needed annually to substantially improve the nation's highways.

Neil Irwin goes on in his post to Ezra Klein's blog to mention the politics of it. Seems Republicans are concerned we'll just use their money to build bridges to nowhere. Interestingly, the President's JOBS bill, up on Capital Hill, has funding to start an infrastructure bank, a bi-partisan idea that eliminates a lot of the politics from infrastructure investment, to avoid just such a thing. But maybe the "conservatives" have forgotten that they once liked that idea?

Very Little Left in Their Body or Soul Worth Protecting

Jim Carey leapt into the gun controversy with a couple of tweets that are worth repeating here.

Any1 who would run out to buy an assault rifle after the Newtown massacre has very little left in their body or soul worth protecting. ;^\
— Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) February 2, 2013

Yes, i agree with the ppl who argue that cars can be as deadly as guns but a car is a lot harder to get through the door of a classroom. ;^]
— Jim Carrey (@JimCarrey) February 5, 2013

I love it when famous people have the balls to speak up.

I briefly met Jim Carey once, when he had taken a bunch of kids from the Make a Wish Foundation to see Lion King, and he brought them backstage after the show for a tour. All I could think to say as I shook his hand was, "What a great thing to do."

The Fun's in the Fight

Molly Ivins (photo from Mother Jones Magazine)

Molly Ivins died 6 years ago today. This is an anniversary that many people, like Pat Buchanan, probably celebrate with glee, a celebration that would, or course, sound better in the original German (PDF).

Anyone who's happy that Molly Ivins is dead can suck it. The reason they are happy? They could never argue with her when she was alive. They didn't stand a chance. And, to add insult to injury, she really enjoyed giving them shit. That is the trick to a happy life. Stand up to the assholes, and have fun doing it. Here's how she put it in 1993:

So keep fightin' for freedom and justice, beloveds, but don't you forget to have fun doin' it. Lord, let your laughter ring forth. Be outrageous, ridicule the fraidy-cats, rejoice in all the oddities that freedom can produce. And when you get through kickin' ass and celebratin' the sheer joy of a good fight, be sure to tell those who come after how much fun it was.

Ironically, with John McCain trying to give Chuck Hagel the business over the Iraq surge today, Molly's last column was an exhortation to stand up against the war mongers who wanted to waste more American and Iraqi lives on a war that we should have never allowed ourselves to be lied into in the first place.

We are the people who run this country. We are the deciders. And every single day, every single one of us needs to step outside and take some action to help stop this war. Raise hell. Think of something to make the ridiculous look ridiculous. Make our troops know we're for them and trying to get them out of there.

Raise hell, indeed. Damn fine advice. If you're not out there making the ridiculous look ridiculous, then you're just wasting your limited time here. So, in memory of Molly, get out there and keep the wingnuts talking!

Annihilation Offense

Still got your guns? Still illegal?

"Yesterday we had to get rid of our guns. Today we gotta grant amnesty... They're running the no-huddle offense on us. We don't even have time to catch our breath. They're running play after play after play."--Rush Limbaugh

So, then, we can all agree that Rush is a liar? So is Speaker Boehner when he says Obama wants to annihilate the GOP. Because if running a 32 Dive on 3rd and 10, in the third quarter of a tie game means we've got you on your heels and moving backwards, then either you don't know football, or you're just lying. And anyone who listened to Wayne LaPierre before congress knows damn well the right wing will never be out of breath.

I'll be surprised if the Republican house passes any kind of sensible regulations on deadly high speed metal. We're talking tea-baggers, here--they want a Randian Autotopia of Mad Max cars with a mounted 50 cal machine guns, Praise the Lord.

It's just not the same without Sarah "Blood Libel" Palin being paid to whine about all this. Rush is getting lonely, Fox's ratings have fallen through the floor, and even sociopaths are getting sick of Glenn Beck. Isn't it time for Ted "Pants Crapper" Nugent to say something excrutiatingly stupid? Oh, right, he's supposed to be dead, or in prison by now.

Surprise, Surprise, Surprise!

This is the kind of thing that would have gotten Gomer kicked out of the USMC.

Jim Nabors, the Hawaii resident well known for his starring role in the 1960s television sitcom "Gomer Pyle, USMC," married his longtime male partner early this month, he told Hawaii News Now Tuesday. 

[...] 

"I'm 82 and he's in his 60s and so we've been together for 38 years and I'm not ashamed of people knowing, it's just that it was such a personal thing, I didn't tell anybody," Nabors said. "I'm very happy that I've had a partner of 38 years and I feel very blessed.  And, what can I tell you, I'm just very happy."

I can't wait to hear the wingnutteratti tell us how wrong his happiness is.

Signed, Noisemaker

I had no idea Pauline Phillips was still alive a few days ago when I started learning John Prine's Dear Abby. Ms. Phillips died yesterday, at the age of 94. My Dad used to say that things only seemed like one in a million to us because we don't live a billion years. But still, that's just weird.

Gonzo Bill McKibben

Bill McKibben:

Obama versus physics: Why climate change won't wait for the president

"In fact, he didn't even appear to notice those phenomena, campaigning for a second term as if from an air-conditioned bubble, even as people in the crowds greeting him were fainting en masse from the heat. Throughout campaign 2012, he kept declaring his love for an "all-of-the-above" energy policy, where apparently oil and natural gas were exactly as virtuous as sun and wind."

Reminds me of one of The Great Hunter S. Thompson quotes:

"I returned to the Holiday Inn — where they have a swimming pool and air-conditioned rooms — to consider the paradox of a nation that has given so much to those who preach the glories of rugged individualism from the security of countless corporate sinecures, and so little to that diminishing band of yesterday's refugees who still practice it, day by day, in a tough, rootless and sometimes witless style that most of us have long since been weaned away from."
Gonzo Papers, Vol. 1: The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time (1979)

I blame the air conditioners! Up here at this latitude, we still just use the basement (geothermal heat pump).

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Ezra Klein Should Know Our Roads Are Killing People

Ezra Klein has a commendable piece on facts about guns and mass murders, but I'm shocked that he doesn't realize that we also have an epidemic of death in this country from poor road conditions. Here's Ezra:

If roads were collapsing all across the United States, killing dozens of drivers, we would surely see that as a moment to talk about what we could do to keep roads from collapsing. If terrorists were detonating bombs in port after port, you can be sure Congress would be working to upgrade the nation’s security measures. If a plague was ripping through communities, public-health officials would be working feverishly to contain it.  

Only with gun violence do we respond to repeated tragedies by saying that mourning is acceptable but discussing how to prevent more tragedies is not. “Too soon,” howl supporters of loose gun laws. But as others have observed, talking about how to stop mass shootings in the aftermath of a string of mass shootings isn’t “too soon.” It’s much too late.

Actually, the American Society of Civil Engineers says roadway conditions are a significant factor in 1/3 of all traffic fatalities.

Americans spend 4.2 billion hours a year stuck in traffic at a cost of $78.2 billion a year--$710 per motorist. Roadway conditions are a significant factor in about one-third of traffic fatalities. Poor road conditions cost U.S. motorists $67 billion a year in repairs and operating costs--$333 per motorist; 33% of America's major roads are in poor or mediocre condition and 36% of the nation's major urban highways are congested. The current spending level of $70.3 billion for highway capital improvements is well below the estimated $186 billion needed annually to substantially improve the nation's highways.

US traffic fatalities average over 30,000 per year, so we have over 10,000 deaths due to road conditions, and many billions of dollars wasted, every year. Seems like we learned to ignore our deadly infrastructure and our epidemic of gun violence. Maybe Americans are ignoring all kinds of things that are literally killing people? Pollution, Climate Change, Budget Cuts, Inadequate Health Care, Wars...

If terrorists were killing 10,000 Americans every year, I wonder how much we'd spend on war and security? The ASCE says we need to spend $2.2 trillion over the next five years to fix our crumbling infrastructure and make ourselves safer, more productive, and more competitive. So, a little over $400 billion a year (which we can borrow at negative interest and buy cheap materials with) seems like a real bargain.

Nectar Hills Designs on Etsy

Our friends at Nectar Hills Farm have started an Etsy store: Nectar Hills Farm Designs. The store features handmade sheep skin pillows, handbags, and hats, plus this amazing Scottish highlander cow skull.

This is a great way to shop for gifts that will help support our local organic farmers!

Dave Brubeck Changed the World of Jazz

My Dad taught me that Dave Brubeck changed the way the world thought about Jazz. Mr. Brubeck, who died today, one day short of his 92nd birthday, recorded an album, Jazz at Oberlin, that literally changed the way the world thought about, and listened to, Jazz.

From Wikipedia:

The concert is credited with making jazz a legitimate field of musical study at Oberlin, but it and the album did much more that. The album is further credited with initiating making jazz a subject of serious intellectual attention in a listening-centric environment; Wendell Logan, the chair of Oberlin's Jazz Studies Department, described it as "the watershed event that signaled the change of performance space for jazz from the nightclub to the concert hall". 

In addition, it was one of the early works in the cool jazz stream of jazz; The Guardian's John Fordham wrote that "indicated new directions for jazz that didn't slavishly mirror bebop, and even hinted at free-jazz piano techniques still years away from realisation"; he further observed that it "marked Brubeck's eager adoption by America's (predominantly white) youth - a welcome that soon extended around the world ... for a rhythmically intricate instrumental jazz". 

Just listening to the album now takes me back to my youth, when I would listen to Dad play it--loud, so loud that you could hear it up the hill behind the house, all the way up to the shed (which he later tore down and put a hot tub on the slab), all the way up to the Kumquat tree, where I would sit on a limb and listen while looking at the view of the San Fernando Valley.

Of course, I was just one of many kids who's Dad taught him about Brubeck. Brubeck inspired many generations of musicians. While I tend more toward John Prine than Jazz, the influence is there, and it makes up a part of who I am musically--from what I play to what I listen to to this day.

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I Know Comedy is Tragic, but...

Someone needs to tell Willard and his merry band of cheering wingnuts and assorted snake oil salesmen that this isn't funny.




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Already in Chains

Did Joe use hyperbole? Oh, heavens my, fetch my fainting couch. 

The wingnuts, who call Obama a Kenyan/anti-colonial/food-stamp/non-work-requriing/anti-christ/witch-doctor/un-American/socialist/commie/hippie/dope-smoking/terrorist, are upset that Uncle Joe used hyperbole to describe the result of trickle-down economics, which steals the fruits of our labor? 

Exhibit A: 

David Gergen Still Gets Paid to Speculate Wildly

Analysis: Romney's secrecy becomes focus of Obama's attack strategy

In ads, interviews and social-media blasts, the Democratic president's team is casting Romney as a mysterious figure who is guarding important secrets about his wealth and work history.
Feeding the Democrats' storyline: Romney's refusal to release more than a year or two of his tax returns, questions about whether he is being honest about when he left his job at Bain Capital, and the reams of records that have been kept secret from his years as Massachusetts governor and chief of the Salt Lake City Olympics.

Here is an example of an unforced meme, and an unforced error by Willard. Or, perhaps it's not fair to call it an error, since there's really not much he can do, apparently. He really, really wants to be president, but that seems to conflict with the fact that he, in the past, really, really wanted to be rich. Now it seems his hard work at becoming rich is hurting his chances to be President. Hoocouldaknowed?

The fun part in this story is David Gergen, who is yet another pundit who has been so horrifically wrong in the past that it is a wonder that he still gets paid to spew what he thinks through his pie hole.

David Gergen, an adviser to two former Democratic and two Republican presidents, is among those who believe that questions about Romney's faith are an unspoken part of the Democrats' strategy of focusing on the secrecy issue. 

"I think they're connected," he said. "Clearly they're trying to weave together: 'Do we really know what he did at Bain ..., do we really understand his faith and, you know, what he would do and who is he?' " 

Democrats "know it's in the culture," Gergen said of questions about Romney's religion. "They don't have to say it. I think they're very intentionally weaving these together."
Gergen added that the Obama campaign's strategy could backfire if it mentioned Romney's religion directly.

Of course, Gergen doesn't have one shred of evidence proving that the Obama team is "very intentionally weaving these together." He just thinks it. And, of course, the reporter doesn't ask if he has any evidence, or even a plausible theory, supporting such a contention. Because that would be, ummm, reporting, instead of dictation, which is all reporters are allowed to do anymore.

None-the-less, if we just drop the whole thing about Willard's sky wizard worship being more secretive than, say, the Vatican is when moving pedophiles around, we find that the rest of the article focuses on more substantial issues, like, well, Willard's taxes and offshore accounts.

And, that's it. No mention of the erased hard drives from Willard's Governorship in the rest of the story. No mention of the secrets from the Olympics mentioned at the top of the story. No mention of anything else at all. And yet, there is so much they could have covered. Here's just one example:

Bush Library Refuses To Release Rob Portman’s Records

The George W. Bush Presidential Library has denied a request by a Democratic super PAC to turn over documents relating to Rob Portman’s stint in the Bush administration.[/quote]

So many things to choose from when it comes to the leader of the GOP's secrets. In fact, at the end of the Reuter's article, the story just turns to some concern trolling on Gergen's part:

"Politically all of these attacks may in the end work, but it's also clear that they are going to come at the expense of governing in a second term" by making it even tougher for Obama to work with Republicans, Gergen said.

No worries that Willard's attacks on Obama might possibly poison the well with Democrats in congress if Willard wins, eh Mr. Gergen?

Senator Jon Kyl is a liar, again

#notintendedtobeafactualstatement

"I note that in his response to today's Supreme Court ruling, President Obama called on Congress to pass comprehensive immigration reform. I also note that the bipartisan comprehensive immigration reform bill I helped draft in 2007 was killed -- in part -- by then-Senator Obama."--Senator Jon Kyl

I guess it's a good thing Senator Kyl is retiring, because he seems to be losing it.

Senator Obama voted for the bill.

As you can see at that same link, Senator Kyl voted to filibuster the bill.

So, not only did Obama vote for the bill Kyl says Obama voted against, but Kyl voted against the bill he says he was for.

Ergo, Senator Jon Kyl is a liar. Again.

h/t Steve Benen

IATSE Local 33 Stagehand Died at Gibson Amphitheater

Jose Lucero was only 22 years old. I didn't know him, as I left IATSE Local 33 before he got in. But when I heard he had fallen to his death from the "ozone" in the grid at the Gibson Amphitheater, formerly the Universal Amphitheater, I immediately remembered my great fear the one time I had to go out on one of those steel beams. I never said anything to anyone I worked with, because I really needed the work at the time, but it scared the hell out of me. Back then, we never wore safety harnesses hooked to fall-arresters, like you're supposed to now (and the investigation is underway to determine if Jose was wearing his), and it was scary as shit to go out on those beams. After that one time, I avoided rigging because I could handle working in grids from catwalks with rails, or working in grids with "ribbon" floors (meaning small gaps between steel beams that you could maybe get your foot stuck in but not fall through), but I just couldn't overcome my fear of heights when I was on one of those beams with nothing but air and floor on either side of me.

But there are guys I've worked with who, like Mohawk Indians on the high steel of sky-scrapers, would just saunter right out on those beams, like they were walking down the sidewalk. Of all the different specialist stagehands I worked with, I always had a huge respect for the riggers. They take big chances to make slightly more money than the guys on the floor, and they do it with gusto.

To put this incident in context, I was shocked to learn yesterday that more people died on the job in the US in 2009 than the total amount of Americans who died in the entire Iraq war:

...4,551 people killed on the job in America in 2009, carnage that eclipsed the total number of U.S. fatalities in the nine-year Iraq war. Combine the victims of traumatic injuries with the estimated 50,000 people who die annually of work-related diseases and it’s as if a fully loaded Boeing 737-700 crashed every day. Yet the typical fine for a worker death is about $7,900.

If you'd really like to get an idea of what a huge problem workplace safety is in this country, check out the AFL-CIO's Death on the Job Report.

In 2010, according to data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 4,690 workers were killed on the job—an average of 13 workers every day—and an estimated 50,000 died from occupational diseases. Workers suffer an additional 7.6 million to 11.4 million job injuries and illnesses each year. The cost of job injuries and illnesses is enormous—estimated at $250 billion to $300 billion a year.

We have a much higher worker fatality rate than other industrialized nations, and Republicans would like to cut OSHA and other workplace safety programs. Insanity. It reminds me of a poster we had back at Arkansas Explosives Inc, where I occasionally worked when I was in college: "OSHA is not a small town in Kansas." I guess if the GOP gets their way, it would be.

Brian Naughton, Musician, Friend, and Stagehand, Lived for Today

When I first got in IATSE Local 33 I was lucky enough to get a call with Brian Naughton, lead guitar player for The Grass Roots in 1971 and 72. He was a well-known stagehand who I wound up working with many times in my career. He was always patient and kind when I was first starting out. He showed me all kinds of things I needed to know, and he did it kindly and well. He loved to talk about music. I remember the time I visited his home, I was lucky enough to hear him play one of his great guitars, and I did my best to keep up.

I also worked with brother and bass player James Naughton, in the ABC carpenter shop, where I started calling him "good for Naughton," even though he's actually a damn good bass player and carpenter. I just couldn't resist the nick name.

Brian, James and Brian's son Corey Naughton started a band called the Naughtones (their MySpace page has more music):

In 2006 the Naughtones won a L.A. music Award for Independent Classic Rock Album of the Year for their debut album entitled "From the Nut." They were also nominated for Best Male Singer/Songwriter for their song called "Around Me."

[...]

In 2008 the Naughtones realeased their Sophmore album. The album is a five song EP that is featuring the group in its new state as the best they have ever been. The album is a Self titled EP that has won the L.A. Music Award's 2008 Producers Choice Award for Rock EP of the Year and also was nominated for 2008 Rock album of the Year by the L.A. Music Awards.

[...]

Biographies Brian Naughton started playing guitar at age 12. His first group was a surf band called the Velaires in 1961. In 1965 he joined a national surf group called the Persuaders. In 1969 Brian formed his own group called Rock Candy. Rock Candy was signed to MGM by a man named Mike Curb. In 1970 he took the opportunity to join the International super group called the Grass Roots. Brian toured and did T.V. shows (American Bandstand, Sunny & Cher, and Kenny Rodgers) with the Grass Roots until 1972. After that he played for a short while with a group called Peanut Butter Conspiracy. PBC had a big hit called "It's a Happening Thing." Always in his pursuit of his own original Rock and Roll, Brian left PBC to form a group called Rockit in 1973. By 1976 RSO Records signed the band and renamed them Rockicks. The band was managed by Warren Entner who also managed Quiet Riot. Rockicks shared a rehearsal room with Quiet Riot and also did gigs with them. They played all over the country and locally at places like the Roxy, the Aquarius Theater and Santa Monica Civic Auditorium. Rockicks had radio commercials and a lot going for them until a show opening for Blondie at Whiskey was given Tom Petty. This was Tom Petty's big break show and the beginning of the end for the Rockicks. By this time his son Corey was about three Brian began his first day job at the age of thirty. Although Brian began earning his money behind the scenes as a stagehand he never stopped writing, singing and playing his guitar in little bands and local jam nights. Now Brian's life is all about the Naughtones and blessing the world with his amazing skills.

Brian's son Corey reports that Brian died of a heart attack, on the golf course, and that it was quick. I can report that the world needs more people like Brain Naughton, not less.

Start your engines, Brian. We'll miss you.

Ann Romney's Hard Work

In 2010, Willard paid 4 people just over $20,000 to help around the house. I wonder how much he paid when there were five boys running around? How many cooks? How many nannies? How many maids? How many drivers? Tutors? Gardeners? Ski coaches? Horse trainers? If Willard would just release all his taxes, we could all find out just exactly how much work raising five boys was for Ann Romney.

And I would really like to hear how the Willard team makes up for the fact that their candidate has let himself be defined as an out-of-touch rich guy war monger who lies a lot and wants to cut his own taxes even further?

And I would REALLY like to know how the Willard team makes up for the fact that he is the least liked Republican nominee WITHIN HIS OWN PARTY ever.

Romney's 42% support in the final 2012 nomination preference poll ranks among the lowest Gallup has measured for a nominee in its final poll since 1972, when the McGovern-Fraser reforms shifted power for choosing the nominee to voters in primaries and caucuses rather than party leaders at the national conventions.

Obama shares are still $6 at Intrade. It's a steal.