A Song for Iowa's Waves of the Blue Tide — Free for Those Who Donate

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday October 23, 2008 · 5:42 PM PDT

2008/10/23 · 17:42

With all the well-deserved attention on high-profile down-ticket progressive comers like Rick Noriega (TX-SEN), Andrew Rice (OK-SEN), Darcy Burner (WA-08), Jim Himes (CT-04) and Victoria Wulsin (OH-02), two previously deemed Quixotic, now potential sleeper campaigns here in Iowa haven't gotten a lot of limelight. Rob Hubler and Becky Greenwald have a chance to deliver stunning blows in IA-04 and IA-05 to Bushian hacks Steve King and Tom Latham (respectively), and I wanted to throw a small impetus out to the Kos to help them out.

My occasional editor and raker of muck at DownWithTyranny Howie Klein was good enough to whore my song (below the fold) here last week, and Kossack desmoinesdem, the first and last word on Iowa electoral politics at BleedingHeartland, helped float an impromptu little promotion this week that I thought I'd try here too, just my two cents for the cause — er, as it were.

redsmear1

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday September 01, 2008 · 2:33 PM PDT

2008/09/01 · 14:33

I am thinking this morning of the men in the mills and the factories; of the men in the mines and on the railroads. I am thinking of the women who for a paltry wage are compelled to work out their barren lives; of the little children who in this system are robbed of their childhood and in their tender years are seized in the remorseless grasp of Mammon and forced into the industrial dungeons, there to feed the monster machines while they themselves are being starved and stunted, body and soul. I see them dwarfed and diseased and their little lives broken and blasted because in this high noon of Christian civilization money is still so much more important than the flesh and blood of childhood. In very truth gold is god today and rules with pitiless sway in the affairs of men.

redsmear1

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday July 23, 2008 · 9:25 PM PDT

2008/07/23 · 21:25

IOWA CITY, IA - In spite of general revulsion at the McCain campaign's latest broadside against Barack Obama, in which it called Obama disingenuous and a flip-flopper for his short empathetic missive in the guest book of an Isreali holocaust museum, insiders say this actually represents a new tactical imperative by the Republican National Committee.

"We have a story to tell about some of the unconscionable stances Democrat candidates take that might seem kind of good but really aren't," an RNC staffer said on condition of anonymity. "They're undermining our way of life, millimeter by millimeter, and the voters need to know this."

A new ad breaking in support of businessman Chip Swanne, vying for a congressional seat in southeast Wisconsin, shows the Democratic incumbent Rob Tavernas in obviously hand-held cam footage from the recent funeral of his beloved aunt, Dedra Tavernas. Pulling in on a mourning Tavernas's face to show him weeping openly, the ad then puts up a simple block of copy: "Rob Tavernas. Wrong About the Surge. Plus, he's a Pussy."

redsmear1

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday July 21, 2008 · 5:53 PM PDT

2008/07/21 · 17:53

They had another black Republican pundit guy on MSNBC this afternoon. That's two completely new black Republicans I've seen on TV news in the last week. It seems the industrial/news complex has single-mindedly dedicated itself to this on-air diversity because, apparently, Joe Watkins, J.C. Watts, Larry Elder, Ron Christie, Amy Holmes, Armstrong Williams, Mike Steele, Michelle Bernard, et al. ad nauseum, just aren't enough, combined, to offset, say, the awesome Gene Robinson. CNN even brings Ken Blackwell on-air sometimes and he's a fucking felon.

By my admittedly rough breakdown of nationwide numbers, we now have one African-American Republican on the air for every three actual African-American Republican citizens in the country, presumably via some mainstream media iteration of the affirmative action they so loathe.

redsmear1

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday July 13, 2008 · 12:51 PM PDT

2008/07/13 · 12:51

I will do whatever I can, with the humble means at my disposal, to get Barack Obama elected president of the United States. I want to state that upfront so that, should a pissing contest break out, we can refer back to it. The problem with establishing it, of course, is it betrays my hand, right? In conventional political metrics, it means whatever I have to say hence forth, and however it might faithfully represent the equally humble opinions of civil libertarian progressives/FDR Democrats like myself, it can be dismissed, because as a conscientious person, one who measures the greater good and the general welfare into his decisions, I must do the right thing. Obama and I agree on a lot of other stuff, my choices have been winnowed down, he's got me.

It's the aforesaid dismissal thing, however, that seems to sum up some of the sniping discourse here of recent, particularly as pertains to Obama's vote on the FISA bill. Or here's a pithier summary: it doesn't matter, shut the fuck up and get in line.

redsmear1

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Thursday July 10, 2008 · 11:36 AM PDT

2008/07/10 · 11:36

We have exited the honeymoon, even before any actual coitus has taken place. Well, other than that sneaking adventure into our rectum the Congress offered us yesterday — which, I guess, wasn't actually that sneaky, preceded by any number of obvious signals by hamfisted, Hoyer-regimented collaborationist jagoffs in recent months of their intentions to punch a whole in the Constitution and pump us right through it like randy Hasidim. Okay, look, fuck the analogies, the Senate in approving the FISA "compromise" ushered us into a realm of non-law yesterday, creating a selective bubble where the Constitution of the United States does not apply.

Normal people, of course, workaday citizens, you and I, cannot enter therein; nope, it is a velvet roped club, reserved for wealthy criminals, who have bought their way out of criminality. And those vested with looking out for the rest of us are working the fucking door, including our ostensible last best candidate for the presidency.

redsmear1

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Tuesday July 01, 2008 · 3:51 PM PDT

2008/07/01 · 15:51

I played around with a couple maps in Photoshop a few months back, documenting the leftward transformation of Latin America as the most positive legacy, if wholly unintended, of the Bush administration on geopolitics. Pico asked for a bit of exposition on the dynamics on the ground, country by country, which I didn't have time to do back then.

My friend Michael Tallon, an expat living in Guatemala, also saw the item and we hashed around some ideas as to how to present the story to a different audience, that of La Cuadra, a small magazine he contributes to in Antigua. The following story is sort of a "beginner's guide," as presented to that magazine, and so is not hardcore in-depth-metric socio-political analysis. Nor, again, does it really parse well-meant progressives' issues with Chavez, which requires far deeper and incisive analysis and about which I continue to argue, love him or hate him, he is not, nor does he need to be, our enemy, much less a hemispheric bogeyman. Either way, I'm hoping it addresses, at least in broadstroke, of some of the well-grounded queries, like Pico's, as to who and what have fanned the Bluing of Latin America.

redsmear1

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Sunday June 29, 2008 · 1:20 PM PDT

2008/06/29 · 13:20

I don't know if you've watched a lot of Sunday morning news shows recently, but I just did this morning and, my fucking God, everything is rosier than I could possibly imagine. Unfettered, beneficent oil companies, according the advertising of like all of them, are harnessing the intellectual and technological capital of the nation and the earth and fostering such innovation that they are creating a new energy paradigm even now ushering us unto the midst of Utopia.

They employ brilliant scientists who care about a effecting sustainable future — even if, at a substratum beneath the gloss of advertising, they have spent millions of dollars to bribe congressmen to deny that "sustainability" is necessary to, y'know, sustain things living and stuff. Oil companies are not only not part of the problem, they fully engender the solution! That's what their ads say!

And here I was actually paying attention to news about food riots, pan-European gas-price protests, millionaire former energy executives actually running governments, badly, and the Earth violently rejecting the species.

Fuck that noise. Turns out everything's swell, as is, and verging on a new Golden Age of humankind. Thank you, advertising, for brightening up my Sunday!

New! Improved! Iowa City Relief Bash Set for Tomorrow, 6/19

redsmear1

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Wednesday June 18, 2008 · 7:16 PM PDT

2008/06/18 · 19:16

I realize this is of limited interest to most people on here, but for some of the Kossacks who've followed this process and helped, I promised to post updates.

The Iowa City music community has responded in awesome force to our Flood Relief Benefit Show. We've got two of the best known names in our local business, Public Property and Dave Zollo, headlining tomorrow night's show (6/19) at The Mill, one of the last best live music venues in town, with some killer opening acts to make this an all-night, knock-down/drag-out celebration of the selfless, giant-hearted people of this city.

All proceeds are going by way of the United Way of Johnson County's 2008 Flood Relief Fund to local individuals and families directly impacted by the flooding.

The roughed out (and by no means tightly-kept) schedule for the lineup donating their time and talents (thanks, The Mill!):

redsmear1

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Monday June 16, 2008 · 11:32 AM PDT

2008/06/16 · 11:32

So, latest numbers say some 36,000 Iowans have been displaced by recent weeks' flooding, and that's likely to rise as the cresting continues southward. I know some of them, so do you most likely. We're hoping to do at least a little bit to help them here in the Iowa City area, having secured The United Way of Johnson County's sanction on our big-ass all-star benefit show, which will be at The Mill on Burlington (between Dubuque and Clinton) this Thursday, June 19.

The Mill has been completely supportive, and, per its website, the show will be "free to a community that's worked so hard and faced unimaginable calamity in recent weeks, even as we'll encourage $5 donations, or whatever you can give, to the United Way in its vital efforts to help out individuals and families hardest-hit by the flooding in the Iowa City and Coralville area. Come blow off some much-blow-off-able steam at this all-night, all-star musical bash, and enjoy some much-deserved rewards for all your aching muscles and big ol' hearts."

redsmear1

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Saturday June 14, 2008 · 1:50 PM PDT

2008/06/14 · 13:50

More rain coming. Thunder outside. They've suspended sandbagging work down at the U.

Thinking maybe I could try to do something in another way. I had a show scheduled for The Mill in Iowa City next Thursday, June 19, and I've decided to try to expand it into a bigger benefit show for flood relief funds and could use tips, contacts, resources. For all our locals on the Kos, I know this seems frivolous in the face of all this shit, and kind of ad hoc — I've never tried to do something like this — but there doesn't seem a point to our playing a show right now without trying to use the venue and the our meager talents to try to get some dough to people who need it.

redsmear1

Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.)

Friday June 13, 2008 · 2:03 PM PDT

2008/06/13 · 14:03

If you saw the fire-brigade lines, and if you held to some religion, you might see that proverbial, elusive face of God, every color, every shape, every size, children no more than three feet off the ground hoisting bags so big they shouldn't even try, little girls tying, a one-armed guy swinging them up to my arms because the it saves the effort of the full lift, so important after five days' strain on your stiffening lower back. Getting the rhythm, making a system, out of nothing.

Keep busy, keep working, it helps you to not just fucking cry.

If not proximate to us, it's worth reposting these resources from Govinda's diary:

Newer
Older

RSS

A Song for Iowa's Waves of the Blue Tide — Free for Those Who Donate

Debs, the Bending Cross, and Some Free Songs If You Want Them

Post-Holocaust 'Gaffe': GOP Outraged Over Confabulated Crap

Man Bites Dog! GOP Now Loves Affirmative Action

A 'Center' Where There Is No There

Obama In Vichyland, or Quibbling as Rome Burns

The Pink Tide = Blue Latin America, Revisited

Oil Companies Are Awesome!

New! Improved! Iowa City Relief Bash Set for Tomorrow, 6/19

Iowa City Rock Flood Relief Benefit: We're GO for June 19

Iowa City Benefit for Flood Relief: Seeking Counsel

Notes from the Sandbags, Iowa City, IA, Part 2