On the Republican side, the only colorful component of the Republican party, the Ron Paul delegates, became raucous and forced the party leaders to abruptly shut down their state convention. Paul supporters outnumbered McCain supporters and demanded a rule change in order to grab more delegate spots. The rule change was totally not anticipated. In response, the rest of the party walked out. Paul got louder applause than Romney did when he came to urge support for McCain. The convention will have to be reconvened at a later time.
“Coachella, I am here.” Prince hit the stage at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival with that announcement, heralding his arrival as the much-anticipated headliner of the summer festival. Shortly after 11 p.m. Saturday, Prince strutted onto the stage wearing white pants and a white shirt with glittery fringe. His performance, the centerpiece of the three-day festival, was announced only two weeks ago, immediately making an already very hip festival of 125-plus bands significantly more in-demand.
And Prince knew it. “You are the coolest place on earth right now!” Prince declared to a sea of tens of thousands. Prince, who had been sought out to perform at Coachella since the festival was founded nine years ago, told the crowd that when he agreed to perform, he informed the organizers that he would not only play, but party too.
True to his word, Prince then launched his band - complete with a horn section and background singers - into “Jungle Love.” Morris Day came out to sing his song, while Prince strolled around the stage with his guitar. For the beginning of the show, Prince preferred to let his guitar do the talking. He also welcomed the singer and drummer Sheila E, who took the lead for a song and then joined Prince in an extended jam.
Finally, Prince satisfied the crowd with a celebratory performance of “1999.” His classic “Little Red Corvette” soon followed. One of the big surprises of Prince’s concert was his cover of Radiohead’s “Creep,” which was sure to be one of Coachella’s most talked-about performances. With some lyrics adjusted, a ripping guitar solo and extended falsetto crooning for a finale, Prince’s “Creep” had the crowd slack-jawed.
To close the set, he gave another unique take on a song not his own: the Beatles’ “Come Together.” He urged the audience - whom he called his “choir” - to sing “Come together, yeah” over and over. And just as trepidation was beginning to take hold in the crowd that Prince might actually leave without playing “Purple Rain,” he returned to confirm that even in the desert, it could rain purple. Even after the encore, though, he came back for more. “They’re telling me that we got to go, but I can’t leave!” Prince shouted. He then flew through a torrid version of “Let’s Go Crazy.”
Prince had widely been considered the one act most all concertgoers - a diverse 60,000 of indie rockers, electronica dancers and pop fans - were certain to see. And by the end of “Let’s Go Crazy,” Prince had seemed to put his stamp on Coachella lore. “From now on, this is Prince’s house,” he shouted before triumphantly strutting off stage and tossing his guitar 30 feet behind him.
Got an invite to be MySpace "friends" with Ari Melber, a Seattle homeboy who writes for The Nation and lives in New York City. Met him when he was with the Kerry campaign & keep running into him (YearlyKos in Vegas & Chicago) & his writing. & he was linked to Hip Hop for Obama, who had these great shoes..Obama was on FOX and Howard Dean was on Face the Nation but I spent my day alphabetizing my R&B singles from the '80s & seeing the Robert Crumb exhibit at the Frye again (its last day) Slugbug
In 2002, Rove spread rumors that McCain was gay, since Rove was working for Bush. Rove, the guy many claim to have seen regularly in the leather bars of Austin?
It won't be long before the gay rumors circling Hillary and Obama will surface, especially for the one who takes the nomination. The Hillary ones come from lots of sources, some old news. The Obama ones can, at least in part, be traced potentially to Swift Boaters. In a video shown on Puerto Rican television (they have a primary, and homophobia may be a good wedge issue there), the already discredited Obama gay sex guy says he took a lie detector test "arranged by Corsi." Bells went off in my head. Jerome Corsi is the guy who wrote "Unfit", about John Kerry, and who spearheaded the Swift Boat Vets.
Hillary has the most Google votes for gay allegations - 2,000,000 to Obama's 1,010,000. Hillary has no GLBT section at her website, but sent Chelsea to a gay bar in Philly with Governor Rendell. Don't ask don't tell.
Results 1 - 10 of about 2,000,000 for is hillary a lesbian. (0.26 seconds) Hillary's Lesbian Affair with Muslim Aide?
Is Hillary Clinton a Lesbian? A new book claims Hillary Clinton is a lesbian. Is she?
People ask: Is Hillary a lesbian? Yes. More precisely she is a bisexual,
although some folks would describe her as more of an anger-filled, ...
"Not Just Republicans Spreading Rumors About Hillary’s Lesbian ...
Rahm Emanuel: Ha Ha, Hillary's a Lesbian
Results 1 - 10 of about 1,010,000 for is obama gay. (0.04 seconds)
RNC: "Obama Busted in Gay Tryst!" -
Campaigns: Obama's Gay Lover Can't Pass Polygraph
Obama: America's first Gay President?::By Kevin
If William Jefferson Clinton was America's first "black" president, could it be that Barack Obama is positioning himself to be the nation's first "gay" ...
NPR: IS OBAMA'S PASTOR ANTI-GAY?
One day, a girl awakened fatherless, her home destroyed -- even its barn that bore a target her dad had painted to teach her to shoot. Disguised as a boy, she trekked the Himalayas & Antarctica & the shores of Lake Erie & the deserts of Nevada & California & Washington DC & the cobbled ways of Ulster & Manhattan's canyoned streets. Even did she brave a strafing of a Bosnian airport.
Then in a real folk's tavern, she downed a whiskey & a beer -- and wept: "Where's father? Where's home?" She fainted on the sawdust-covered floor & awoke above the clouds before a great white gate. Inside stood a gaunt & bearded, loincloth-wearing man. She put her nose between two bars.
"Father?" she begged.
"Pinocchio?" the gaunt & bearded, loincloth-wearing man inquired with a whisper.
Q My last question would be about the Iraqi women. How do you see their role in the society now?
MRS. BUSH: Well, the good news that came out of Iraq that the Governing Council has been able to write this agreement so they can begin to write the constitution is very good news. And even though I don't know what all is in that agreement, I do understand that women's rights are protected in that agreement, and I like that very much.
I want the women of Iraq to know how much American women stand with them. We want them to be successful. We want the people of Iraq to have peace and to be able to build their country in a good and secure way, so that the children of Iraq have a future that's free from violence and that's happy and with wellbeing for all the children and the people of Iraq.
Rand Abdel-Qader, 17, told her closest friend that she was in love from the moment she set eyes on the young British soldier working alongside her in Basra, and she dreamed of a future with him.
t was an innocent infatuation but five months after Rand, a student of English at Basra University, met Paul, a 22-year-old soldier posted to southern Iraq, she was dead. She was stamped on, suffocated and stabbed by her father. Several brutal knife wounds punctured her slender, bruised body - from her face to her feet. He had done it, he proclaimed to the neighbours who soon gathered round, to 'cleanse his honour'.
And as Rand was put into the ground, without ceremony, her uncles spat on her covered corpse because she had brought shame on the family.
The father will not be prosecuted for this "honor killing." These murders are not rare events. In Bsara alone there were 133 of them last year.
And the ones who stay home are perhaps better off than the 1.4 million refugees (number from Richard Engel's NBC video below) from Iraq in Syria alone (Jordan and Iran are also havens for refugees). Many young girls - ones as young as 11, 12 and 13 -- have to turn to prostitution to support themselves.
That Iraqi girls and women are selling sex may not seem shocking, but prostitution is especially taboo for Arab women. "In this culture, to allow your daughter to become a prostitute means you've hit dirt bottom," says Joshua Landis, an American professor from the University of Oklahoma, presently living in Syria. "None of your sisters can get married if it's known that one of them is a prostitute. If there's any public knowledge of this, it's a shame on the whole family." The shame can even lead to "honor killings," in which women are slain by their husbands or relatives for tainting the family name.
The media seldom mentions the millions of Iraqi refugees, many of whom are women and children. The approach of the Bush administration has been to highlight charity groups such as Operation Iraqi Children which has given, among other things, 8000 copies of Arabic translations of Seabiscuit an American Legend to Iraqi Children. There is a big disconnect between the problems and the solutions offered. The situation reminds me of a quote by Thomas Paine: He who is the author of war lets loose the whole contagion of Hell and opens a vein that bleeds a nation to death. In this case, it's the US and Iraq, but Iraq has clearly suffered more.
This week's feature at The Stranger/Seattle is Making Out With Portishead in which people reminisce about Portishead music and what they remember.
From the article:
There's a girl in my past. She was strange. She was short. She would not let me touch her unless we were alone. No public affection from her. And if I wanted to go beyond touching her when we were alone, I needed to play the right music. The right music was Portishead. I remember her belly button: a ring attached to it. I remember her wrist: a bracelet around it. And we would kiss and kiss. And the voice of Beth Gibbons would sing and sing.
I've definitely done S&M with Portishead playing. It's kind of a standard dungeon track. Either Portishead or Dead Can Dance. Usually, when you meet with a dominatrix, she'll ask you to get undressed and leave you in the room with music playing. This is often true even if the dominatrix is your girlfriend, or wife.
Morning sickness and Portishead were one. Trying to quickly twist the radio knob away from the sound was like trying to scratch an itch while hang gliding.
I do recall 10 years ago when I was the doorman for the winter in the brand-new Baltic Room, and Portishead played at the Paramount just down the street. Cover was $7, I think, and these British folks kept showing up without money or ID, and one after another, as if the hipness cred of it were enough, would flatly say in a woofy London accent, "We're wif PortisHEAD." Portishead were the shizznatch at the time and the bar hoped they would show up there, so I let them in. For years afterward, my best friend and I (we grew up together in London), when we would witness ourselves make some slightly overbearing demand without really justifying it, would say in that accent as if at last resort, "We're wif PortisHEAD," and crack up.
____________________
For me, I first heard them on "John in the Morning" show at KEXP and I was working in these gloomy nursing homes. At first, I thought he said they were called "Tortoisehead." It was perfect! I saw them live at the Paramount and along with Tricky, Massive Attack, Radiohead and Underworld, they helped get me through a couple of wars so far.
John Lennon's sons and widow, Yoko Ono, are suing the filmmakers of "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" for using the song "Imagine" in the documentary without permission.
The movie features the right-wing apologist Ben Stein starring in a film intended to show discrimination against scientists and teachers who believe in and promote intelligent design rather than evolution.
How can someone who claims to be educated not believe in evolution? How does a believer in intelligent design explain the mutation of a virus? Or genetic changes in fruit flies over generations that show preferences for different chromosome patterns depending on the time of year? In other words, the natural selection of fruit flies occurs in a short time frame and supports Darwin's theory.
The film makers are wrong on evolution and they are wrong to misuse John Lennon's song. This is kind of abuse of artist's work is typical of corporations and the right wing. Remember when Janis Joplin's song was used to sell Mercedes Benz? And John McCain misusing one of John Mellencamp's songs in his campaign or Huckabee doing the same with one of Boston's songs. Devo had the right term for what these people are doing and it's called Devolution.
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