I didn't know Richard Thompson considered himself Muslim. Goes to show you faith is not something you've got to wear on your sleeve.

The article that talks about Thompson receiving hate mail for making Islam his religion also quotes Thompson talking about an anti-war song he put on his last album which I'm going to have to hear:

The peace-loving co-founder of Fairport Convention addresses current religious tensions on his latest lauded album, Sweet Warrior, which contains a biting anti-war song called Dad’s Going To Kill Me.

It uses the soldier slang for Baghdad – Dad – to explore the war from the bleak point of view of a grunt on the ground in Iraq.

“It’s got a lot of attention,” said the Grammy-nominated artist chirpily. “People either seem to love it or hate it. The reaction has been interesting, the troops generally like it and think it accurately represents their experiences and point of view. But the families and friends of troops generally hate it because they think the soldiers are out there fighting for freedom and democracy and this war has nothing to do with either of those things.”

You can read the full article here. Our song, "Operation Cakewalk", which also aims to portray the war from the soldier's point of view, can be found here.

Our fan and friend, Bob Lieber, posted this home video from our performance at Tinicum Arts Festival last week. "The Vice-President's gone mad..." Enjoy.

Here's a story about The Artist Formerly Known as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince, and his release of his new CD in the Sunday London Times. How a 'free' album makes millions...

Visualize the 10th Dimension. It takes about 10 minutes to go through them, but I guarantee, it'll bend your head.

I just joined stumbleupon.com. They linked to our lyric for "What the Blind Man Saw" Saturday and landed us 175 hits that day. I stumbled upon these unusual and fascinating sidewalk murals on my second stumble. Looks like the site could be good fun, and it adds a tab in your browser, so when you feel like stumbling around, you just hit it.

I also wanted to mention this article on the growing "Dead Zone" in the Gulf of Mexico which I've been following the past few years.

I don't have much to say right now, but here's my webular newspaper of choice these days: Rawstory.com

Is the music business set on stabbing itself in the heart? You'd think at a certain point they'd see that by running around tracking down their biggest fans and preventing them from loving and using and sharing and playing music they were hastening theyir own demise. Weird to watch. Click the link to the news story on the title.

*Sorry for the slow posts the last week. We performed this weekend near Dark Hollow in Josh's home town along with Brother Ben. We recorded our set, too, and are beginning to gather new material for a future release.

It's a longish post, but it has some interesting things to say about where the left progressive blogosphere came from and where it's going, and the article asks for input on how the netroots might remain open and democratic despite the fact that structures are crystallizing.

From Open Left's Journal of Netroots Ideas, New Establishment Rising? The End Of the Flat Blogosphere by Chris Bowers

Here's something to read from Digby. If you're afraid to leave a job you don't like for fear of losing your health insurance and being unable to pay your bills, can you really say you're free? Digby suggests the conservative agenda, dating back to Barry Goldwater, is responsible for this present state of affairs. What can be done?

Update: This book review is right along these lines, as well.

I've been poking around on-line to find out if anybody else is talking about those audit letters being sent out to low-income families who file for EITC (earned income tax credit) or the Child Tax Credit.

Here's the most complete article I've found from the American Prospect.

I found this on the tax-coalition.org site:

IRS Refund Freezes [posted 2/6/06]

...It seems the IRS has developed a back-door mechanism to audit this many EITC taxpayers – thus thwarting the intent of Congress to prevent such targeting.

Seventy-five percent of the estimated 1.6 million Americans who had their refunds secretly [frozen] over the last five years (as reported in January by the National Taxpayer Advocate) were EITC taxpayers; the median income of all those targeted was $13,330 and their median refund was $3,519. The hundreds of thousands of secret refund of EITC freezes annually are in addition to nearly half a million audits of EITC taxpayers by the Wages &Investment examination unit, 300,000 “automated underreporting of income” audits, and 60,000 special EITC audit “tests”. Thus the number of annual EITC audits is likely over 1,000,000 per year.

The Center for Economic Progress is strongly opposing the refund freeze program, with the following talking points:

• The program is abusive towards taxpayers and should be immediately suspended.
• This constitutes something akin to racial profiling, what we’d call income profiling.
• The program as it is should be ended and any refund freeze function should be moved into Examinations. Criminal Investigation should not be freezing refunds.

>>>>>>>>>>

Apparently, the secret freezing has stopped, though I know one couple who had their refund check frozen with an IRS letter informing them they would be penalized if they cashed that check.

I also found this story on John Kerry's site:

In 2004, the IRS conducted 48 percent of its audits on EITC taxpayers, who make up only 17 percent of all tax payers. Kerry said, “We need to right the imbalance of these audits, focusing on the fraudsters who do the most damage and only pry the tax gap wider..."

The audits I referred to in my recent blog post were Massachusetts audits and I can't find any specific articles on this issue.

This Excel spreadsheet is also interesting because it shows state by state how many people claim the credit, how many had their checks frozen, and the government savings involved.

Last night my friend sent me this article from Florida. I can confirm this, from speaking to venue owners out in San Diego and locally here in Massachusetts. ASCAP, in particular, for at least the past five years, has enjoyed hassling small businesses who present music, many of which can barely make ends meet. I've had restaurant owners say they wouldn't hire me unless I played all original music. And as the article points out, no one really believes the actual songwriters who a duo in a cafe covers gets a penny of the money.

The second article, which I came across this morning, provided a kind of gleeful antidote to the other story. I don't really like that a guy like this profits off of recording live music illegally. But there is some deep sense that the music needs to break free of the bonds placed by BIZNESS. Read Confessions of a Bootlegger, from my old San Diego stomps, no less. Very amusing in places.

Apparently Bob Geiger does this round up of the political cartoons for the week every Saturday. Have a look at this week's edition.

My favorite Betty Boops. Didn't know when I'd see them again, but there they were on youtube when I poked. Enjoy!

Hey, this guy can play! ;-)

Hey, it's America's birthday. Good time to reflect on ideals and realities. Here's a couple pieces that indicate where we are. First one profiles our pres, and shows him calling people into the White House to ask them questions like, "Does the world hate America because of me?" Hmm...

The second is an eloquent comment of indignant rage at Scooter's "commuted" sentence, and a strong argument for impeachment.

The Lonely Prez

I got this note and link from Alexei Panshin yesterday morning.

"Ted Sorensen was JFK's word man, the real author of his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Profiles in Courage.

"This is a real speech -- meant to be read aloud. It has incredible cadences."

Alexei didn't know Kim and I had seen Sicko the previous evening (which is really good, maybe Moore's most damning film, since the corporations he profiles make their profits by screwing with people's very health and lives). This article turned out to be a good antidote to the depression we were left with after the film.

I read it aloud to Kim. At the end, she said, "I hope someone would actually give a speech like that. We need leadership."

Sorensen's Dream Acceptance Speech for the Democratic Presidential Nominee at the 2008 Convention

I was in the Peace Corps from '95 to '97, and my mother knows I still love to try and keep up with things Romanian. Here's a review of a film from that great country that sounds rather amusing. Too bad I wasn't in New York to go and see it. Maybe I'll catch up with it on DVD.

12:08 East of Bucharest