May 2006

The Dixie Chicks new album, Taking The Long Way is due out tomorrow and along with it comes a nice article in Time about the controversy that put the Dixie Chicks in the national spolight as a strong anti-war voice (excepts from Huffington Post):

"I apologized for disrespecting the office of the President. But I don't feel that way anymore. I don't feel he is owed any respect whatsoever," Dixie Chicks' Natalie Maines tells TIME's music critic Josh Tyrangiel, of her remark to a London audience in 2003: "Just so you know, we're ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas." TIME's cover story, "Radical Chicks," hits newsstands Monday, May 22nd.

You can read the entire article at Time.com (subscription required) or the rest of the review at the HuffPo.

I would like to take a second to remind everyone to please support the new anti-war music and help send a message to the music executives that we want more of this. The best way is to call and request these songs on your local station and even better is by purchasing their albums. I have a list of current anti-war songs, which can easily be ordered through Amazon, on the right hand side of the page. Just click the link and it will take you to Amazon's page for that album. The more albums sold the more of this music we will see being released.

Every time Bush talks about our "robust and strong" economy, I just want to puke. He acts like if he says it enough then it must be true. Of course we all know Bush doesn't read the papers to see articles like this:

If you want to measure the strength of the city, you might consider a statistic released this week: The number of families seeking food from the St. Vincent DePaul Food Pantry has increased 78 percent over the last year.

"Families are feeling a pinch right now from a lot of different directions. Minimum wage has not increased in years, and I think this is just one sign of how the economy is going for Cincinnati residents," said Julie Rack, of St. Vincent DePaul.

The increased demand is putting a strain on the pantry's supply.

"With summer coming up and children being out of school .... people are going to need more food," Rack said.

Another reason to work even harder? The largest group that the food bank serves is those children who won't be getting food from schools' breakfast and lunch programs.

"People with children will do anything they can to feed their children, pride aside," Rack said.

This is a story I didn't have to go hunting for - it found me. This is a local news story for the Cincinnati Area. What is even more amazing is the fact that this article came out on the same day Bush was speaking less than 10 miles from the St. Vincent DePaul Food Pantry and had this to say:

Russ Feingold has issued the following statement regarding his walk out of today's hearings on the Constitutional Amendment on Marriage:

“Today’s markup of the constitutional amendment concerning marriage, in a small room off the Senate floor with only a handful of people other than Senators and their staffs present, was an affront to the Constitution. I objected to its consideration in such an inappropriate setting and refused to help make a quorum. I am deeply disappointed that the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee went forward with the markup over my objection. Unfortunately, the Majority Leader has set a politically motivated schedule for floor consideration of this measure that the Chairman felt compelled to follow, even though he says he opposes the amendment.

Constitutional amendments deserve the most careful and deliberate consideration of any matter that comes before the Senate. In addition to hearings and a subcommittee markup, such a measure should be considered by the Judiciary Committee in the light of day, open to the press and the public, with cameras present so that the whole country can see what is done. Open and deliberate debate on such an important matter cannot take place in a setting such as the one chosen by the Chairman of the Committee today.

The Constitution of the United States is an historic guarantee of individual freedom. It has served as a beacon of hope, an example to people around the world who yearn to be free and to live their lives without government interference in their most basic human decisions. I took an oath when I joined this body to support and defend the Constitution. I will continue to fight this mean-spirited, divisive, poorly drafted, and misguided amendment when it comes to the Senate floor.”

We heard that Osama attacked us because "they hate us for our freedoms". Now a real President would have gone out and done what he could to protect those freedoms and flaunt them in the face of our attackers. Instead Bush exposed a pussified America and used it to shred our civil liberties. Now we hear the Americans think this is ok:

A furor over the trade-off between civil liberties and security in the fight against terrorism is raging in the U.S. Congress, think tanks and the media, but the heated debate leaves much of America cold.

In Washington, attention was focused on Senate confirmation hearings of Gen. Michael Hayden, the nominee for CIA chief who ran a domestic spying program, and on a report last week that the government gathered phone records of millions of Americans.

But the debate was unlikely to change many minds in a country where opinion polls show more than half of the people believe that sacrificing some rights is a necessary price to pay for safety after the September 11 attacks.

"People look at it through the lens of 9/11 and understand that we haven't been attacked since then and that there are reasons for that other than just good luck," said Mac Thrower, editorial page editor at The Paducah Sun in Kentucky.

"I think for that reason there's pretty strong support for what the president is doing in that area, not a great deal of concern about a threat to civil liberties," he said.

A CNN poll released on Thursday showed 54 percent of Americans support gathering phone records to find terrorists. A few days earlier, a Washington Post/ABC News poll showed 51 percent approve of the way Bush was protecting their privacy.