Never go to D.C. before you’re elected.

As someone who sits a good 6 to 8 hours outside of the beltway, I listen to some of the gut-check predictions taking place down there, and I can’t help but wonder how much their all drinking down there.

Today’s politico is reporting that the Democratic Majority in the House, and possibly the Senate, is toast. Where? By what force? I get the idea that insiders have allowed their own instincts to congeal into facts, but just because the politically savvy believe the Tea Party Movement is Republican support, doesn’t mean they actually are. Like all internal movements, they are fully prepared to depose their own “leaders” for corruption. Big Government Spending is part of the narrative for Democrats, the Tea Party feels it has become so too for the Republicans – this is what they are looking to change.

Say what you will about optics but here’s how the Mid-Terms should be scored.

Republicans are on the comeback trail, or at least on course correction, if the following happens:

1. Michele Bachman keeps her seat.
2. Rubio wins Florida’s Senate seat.
3. Angle takes Nevada.
4. Boxer loses California (this is not a high hurdle)
5. Ensign/Vitter manages to hold on.

Everything else can boil down to normality outside of the Presidential Fervor. The Democrats were lucky to grab some of the seats they did in 2008. We can’t assume, for an example, that many of these states and seats will go blue forever.

Can Republicans unseat Democratic Leadership? Its looking like a tough sell in the Senate and only in the House if they pick up 39 seats. (I don’t think anyone assumes they can unseat Pelosi).

If you want my political 45 cents, Obama is letting the Congress hang out to dry. Show them as a do-nothing group and retake 2012. He keeps citing Reagan, but this is a move straight out of the Tip O’Neill playbook. Allow the economy to be the Republican’s again and savage them for a second time. It’s a big gamble, we’ll see how it turns out.

Pop

I’ve been told that my musical taste is eclectic bordering on indiscriminate. In seemingly unrelated news, I’ve also been told I’m very hard to watch movies, television shows, or listen to the radio with. The inference in tone and fits proximity to my own statements suggest its because I’m highly critical of most everything to do with art. I refute nothing.

Having said that it might be slightly vexing to know that I not only listen to pop music, but enjoy it to a large degree and will often prefer it to music I generally own. This audience isn’t something I’ve procured through romantic entanglement or occupational hazard.

I’d once known a man who claimed that Xanax was like a “reset button” for life. Similarly, I find pop music a sort of respite for a critical mind, which is no disparaging commentary but rather a compliment to its clear philosophical vision; The veritable post-wine cracker at the tasting. Where many make the mistake of seeing compliment become insult is in believing that there is no virtue in striving for simple goals (which much of pop most certainly does) and that without risk, music can’t simply be worth the listen.

While a good deal of the flack is given for the genres fan base, this is more of a lesson in psychology and sociology which no one has neither the time to listen, nor the patience to put up with my lecturing. While its certainly a large and valid topic, for the purposes of explaining myself, lets suffice with the idea that any disgruntled attitude toward anyone who listens to the music has no bearing on, nor should be calculated into the worth of the genre.

But just as in life where we cannot all be chemical engineers, neither, too, can all music push the very bounds of what is collective commonplace in the world of Western Popular Music. The tiny gears of the world are as vital to the machine as the engine or the fuel, and any value found in one or the other is nothing more than rationalization created to suit ones own vision of the economy of things.

At this point it might be hard to discern how this is a favorable comment (or how it was intended to be) at all. It has to do with, I suppose, my own vision of how things ought to be. Do we view music as a finished masterpiece to be reviewed plainly without the assumption changes were possible? A sort of divined and unwavering truth that was born in tact? Or do we conclude what I believe most would have found themselves bereft of the linguitical baggage that would come with this topic and conversation, that music is an ever-flowing muse, created to inspire rather than to be evaluated? The suppression fire that allows advancement; the felled tree that fertilizes the fallow earth?

President Kennedy once said, “Nothing compares to the simple pleasure of a bike ride.” I find pop music to occupy that same position. Just a simple machine, whose operations learned in youth allow the complications of the adult world to be dismissed to the subconscious where all brilliance springs from, while the conscious mind unravels and heals from all the vexing bulwarks of a life with responsibilities.
In short: without simplicity now and again, there is no hope for the complexity that would satisfy our more critical thirst.

This position and its logic are obviously not airtight. Room for interpretation is till to soil. But the alternatives should always be presented if only to strengthen the opposition through the questioning that comes with debate. While many who relish the higher register complexities of progressive pieces might begrudgingly give pop its place, those willing to move in new directions will always be ready to start back at the bottom. Even if it means relearning those lessons of youth, as basic as they are, as frustrating as it might be to have to learn them again.

To take a line from Caddyshack: “The world always needs ditch-diggers too.”

Immigrant Waves

Is history repeating itself on the other side of the country?

In 1845, about 15 years prior to the Civil War, a potato famine hit Ireland so badly that anyone who had the ability left for greener shores. In many, many cases that meant New York and Boston.

The civil war had yet to be fought, so there were no immigration laws, the radical republicans had not yet taken the Congress, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments weren’t proposed yet. For all intents and purposes they’d become Americans by showing up here, but the WASP Ascendancy barely recognized them. They were not considered white; their Infant Mortality Rate was astronomical leading one Census worker to comment, “The Irish were literally born to die.” Signs reading “No Irish Need Apply” were regularly hung, and they lived, in most cases, in tenement housing; cramped, poorly built, structurally dangerous, and lacked maintenance.

But that was 165 years ago. Today we don’t question any man of Irish decendency as to whether or not he’s white. This may or may not have to do with an influx of other, darker races, but probably has more to do with how wide spread they’ve become. Today, give or take a few thousand, roughly 36 million Americans can trace their heritage back to Ireland.

And while they clung to their own cultural identity, they embraced with open arms (politically if not literally) the other immigrants waves of Italians and Eastern Europeans to form a permanent political majority for their political party. I am purposely not saying “Democrats” there because history shows their choice was less platform and more reaction. The Protestant Establishment in the former colonies was fierce, ruthless, and apathetic to the plight of the new immigrant classes. They forged themselves with a then dormant party and used it like a shield to take up the problems and struggles of the class. They did so then because the Republican Party then gave them no options to join their ranks.

In a seemingly “bizarre-o” world turn of events, Phoenix is the new Boston.

Ignore the conditions listed before. I don’t know that its wise to try and compare how the Irish lived then (two centuries ago) and how Latino’s live today. The Country is different, the regulations on housing, medical care, the social programs are, well first of all they exist. There was no such philosophy let alone law in the 1840’s that dictated how anything really had to be done. But politics isn’t figures on a spreadsheet, its perception.

The growing perception is, through talk of walls, mandated English, “anchor babies”, and SB1070 – as well as Amending the 14th Amendment – that the Republican Party are the WASPs to the Latino’s Irish.

If you’re following this furor, then I’m sure you’ve heard about the numbers. Fastest growing demographic, a birthrate that’s set to dislodge white people as being larger than all other minorities combined. (Note: Whites will still be a majority, they just won’t beat, as a group, all other races combined). But those are logic-tactics. You can almost hear, in a very avuncular tone, the father figure saying, “you’d better be careful now.”

The problem is not votes; the problem is dignity. And it isn’t American, its global and historical. Nations and peoples can be defeated, but if they are humiliated, they will tell their children of the vicious opression that faced them as they came to America, passed down like camp-fire horror stories that become a cemented reality unified with cultural identity.

Ask any eastern Frenchmen about the Nazi’s. As any Jewish Immigrant for that matter. Ask Southerners how they feel about General Sherman, or Iranians how they felt about the Shah. Civility and Diplomacy cannot be measured in the safety it provides the future.

Last night I watched Charlie Wilson’s War. If you haven’t seen it, you should do yourself the favor. But in it, the Afghani’s make a point to tell the Western World that they do not want food, or medicine. They want weapons. They want to defeat the Imperial Soviets and they want their land back. Its hard to imagine a better illustration of what dignity is than to mention a people who have almost nothing, living in rocks, and tribal villages and showing how all they want is to be left to their own devices. It’s saddening on a level one can’t imagine to have so little and be deprived of it still.

The Latino Community, prior to the dust up over SB1070, had two major concerns when it came to politics; Jobs and Education. Say what you will but those could go to either party, and it suggests that they came here not for themselves but for their children. Marco Rubio was on television two days ago echoing that sentiment when he responded to the recent moronic comments by Sen. Harry Reid.

The Latino community wants to be here, and they want to be American. The Irish still have their parades, the Italians, Polish, and the Portuguese their festivals. They still hand their language down to children. Mexican’s, Guatemalans, Cubans, et. al are doing nothing no less different than what the immigrant classes of the past have done, and unfortunately for them, that means engaging in the same struggles and legislative battles of every class before them.

Attoning for Sin

I guess I'm an attention whore. I was thinking the other day as I walked around that I hadn't been writing much because I had no focus anymore. I mean I guess I did, I love writing about politics, but the truth is I don't because I really like comments, and no one comments on the snooze-fest that is my electoral prognostication.

But in this confession I think I'm going back. Because I'd rather write than not, and I'd rather have no one following, and have all my comments be ads for male enhancement than hope I have an audience. Its a shameful thing to realize you're a shill, but at least the healing can being.

Who?

I feel awkward talking about my intent to pursue a political career someday. It sounds childish to me; equivalent to wanting to be a famous dancer or movie star. Not that I think either are necessarily comparable in obligation, but they seem to share an arrogance. I cringe a little when I hear myself say it because I know subconsciously I'm thinking "who do you think you are?"

Thankfully, at the end of the day I don't need to think I'm good enough. I think for me its good enough to say at the day's end that I went at it with the best intentions. To that end, I read this quote the other day and it struck me fairly hard...

He was no saint. Win or lose, there would be no canonization of Thomas P. O'Neill Jr. In a lifetime in politics he'd gouged eyes, thrown elbows, bent the law and befriended rogues and thieves. He could be mean and small-minded. But at his core there lay a magnificence of spirit, deep compassion and a rock-hard set of beliefs. He had a sense of duty that he refused to abandon for those whom Heaven's grace forgot - and he would sooner die on the floor of the House, or watch his party be vanquished and dispersed, than desert them. "You know you're right?" Millie would ask him, as he adjusted his tie at the door in the morning. "Yes," he would say, and he knew it -knew it- knew it like he knew the streets of Cambridge, the liturgy of Sunday Mass or how to stack a conference committee. "then do your best," she would say, and off he would go.

- Tip O'Neill and the Democratic Century...

We've all read that quote or passage or something where a confluence of ideas we've had become clear, like the forged grains of our own constitution. For me, this passage might have summed up my political intentions and in those political intentions, a lifetime's worth of feelings, philosophies, and visions. We're never the product our grand ideals would call for us to be, but its good to know that great men before have achieved that greatness while falling short as well.

I don't need to make it a sap's story here, but I've been on the losing side of plenty of battles in my lifetime. Too poor, too ugly, too late, too unaware, or too bad - you sit there awake at night sometimes and wonder what you did to make something that shitty happen to you. I'm lucky enough to be able to bounce back, but I still burn up when I see it happen to someone else. That socially awkward kid who just wants someone to talk to them, or that poor son of a bitch who just can't seem to get some momentum going.

I didn't really get into politics until I was 17. Before that it was just my mother and my uncle reciting diametrically opposed platform planks while we went to get pizza, or for Christmas shopping. But politics to me is a cause you know before you understand it can be addressed in politics. So maybe I have my flawed days where I can be small-minded. God knows I can be vain and lazy. But for every moment I cringe at some social function when I tell people what I'd like to do, there are countless other times where I come around to find someone down and out, needing a job or struggling to get help moving out of their place and I remember that its a pretty shitty place out there sometimes. I can't say if I'll be a pol some day, and if I am what sort I'll be but I do know I've seen the face of Alzheimer's, and of single-motherhood and I know that I can at least do my best for those Heaven's grace forgot.

That justice is done, that mercy prevails. - Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neill Jr.

And again I tried to explain distance

Writers attempt to express emotions in innovative ways we've all felt before. If I die tomorrow, it could be said that I spent my life trying to express distance but never really could. Like all writers, trying to has been the most fun I've had with a pen.

What I think most of us strive to do is draw from memories that we've come to obsess over. I've been there when I was furious and starving and devastated and used up. Those times you don't have a choice but to focus on your emotions like a hawk on a field mouse. There’s nothing pleasant about it. As those instance fade, there’s a warmness to them that you never see up close. They're badges and hallmarks of the road you've been on. The distance from those memories softens the blow, enhances the worth, and strengthens bond. But this is a distance of time. We can't help but end up there.

I mean to speak about the distance of emotion, that proverb that says it makes the heart grow fonder. Bobby Kennedy was fond of quoting Aeschylus: "In our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God." And that’s where I mean to be. Not describe the action, which the ancient Greek did well, but what stirs in the soul and mind when that happens. When the bodys pain becomes the souls wisdom, there isn't another time I can think of when that happens; a perfect marriage of the animal and the spirit.

In distance the hurt is not erased, but the wisdom of the entire providence shows us why there was pain to begin with. It is an overly articulate emotion that I've never been able to express. it might be the some emotions are inexplicable with the tools of English. It might be that in that pain, we still find a lack of wisdom and I'm more inclined to believe the latter.

In the past there was color, and a goal. Things seemed virtuous because our emotions were clear and raw. We could drive toward the end without concern about the small things. There was no responsibility or duty there, it was a satisfaction for the id of two people and when emotions can be legally satisfied, there is an intoxicated effect unattainable in chemistry.

Somehow, in all the distance of emotion, there seems to be a magnified distance of everything. The world has seemed distant, and there were no dead ends. The world seemed like it went on forever.

I have, in my mind, an imagine of what seems like a merging of multiple places. the rotten-wood fences that divide dune from grass on those Cape Cod beaches that always seem abandoned come 3 pm on an August afternoon. And as you drive out along that dying peninsula, the world seems to climb, and the entangling growth of some berry bush covers the land in the girl doodled swirls of overgrowth that tells you you're alone; no one comes here and no one cares enough to clean it out. And the wind is always singing and it makes it hard to breath and on the best days it still rains with ocean mist. In the distance, someone’s created a camp fire in their own world, and the flames lash out of a makeshift pit and the seagulls cling to stay in flight.

Every now and again I'm there, inadvertently, the world just throws one at me and I'm there. Its not scene perfect as I've seen it before, but I can't help but thinking about everyone I've lost. Those winds, on the beaches and the highways at 3 am, they close in around me and my emotions become remote, there in front of me to explore in fine detail like an ape searching for insects on the back of another. Meticulous and with an intensity of hunger, and survival, and love.

And then its all gone again. We've moved on, or it was a passing scene on the horizon or someone calls me back to reality and I'm in the here and the now. I can feel things again as they are, and the cold clammy distance is gone. I'll never catch what I see there again, just as I'll never explain distance as acutely as I see it, and feel it. Its as defined by what I feel as what I can't feel when I'm there. There are no smells in a fading memory, I can't tell when you touch my arm. There’s just the numb sensation that two objects have collided into one another. Unable to breath. Off in a place the worlds forgotten.

I wrote this off the cuff in a deabte we were having on MusicBanter. Theres a link at the bottom if you want more context but I thought I'd just put it here and see if there were any other Tools out there who enjoy them as much as I do...

Tool has, for me, always been something of an anomaly. Because while every other shit band out there was writing the same old things with the same distorted power chords, TOOL was out on Mars. The topics might have been bumper sticker politics, but the lyrics were such a massive diversion from the same stupid "i'm going to be politically active by yelling angrily as a name-less 'you'." lets take Stinkfist for example:

Every band was warning us about oversaturation, about letting the television tell us what to do, how we're all just becoming whatever, and then Tool, who takes that concept and marries it with an even more meathead topic, anal sex, makes a masterpiece by never really mentioning either. I'm not going to call MJK a poet because I don't think thats what he does on albums (he may be privately, who knows) but he's got a poets eye for the world. This device that he uses in Stinkfist, take a character doing activity X and basically talking about Y (and X i guess) at the same time is exactly what Adrienne Rich and Sylvia Plath were doing while writing poetry.

Beyond this, while other bands were out there following a formula well treaded by everyone else, TOOL was trailblazing through uncharted territory, making music that was more identifiable by its erratic "mistakes" than its solos or riffs. Who doesn't always remember Sober's feedback at the beginning, or Eulogys highhat work around the end of the song (minute 5 maybe?). TOOL was strange as an entity back in 1996. The bridged the gap between Distrubed and Soundgarden, between Korn and Primus, Between Ozzfest and Lollapalooza and the art gallery opening down the street. TOOL's most major and underrated accomplishment to me was that the showed everyone what was really possible if you just did what you loved. Loved enough to really learn it, and put effort into it.

They followed no trend, and while they weren't an end point (I wouldn't say TOOL is the final stop on anyones musical progression) they certainly were a boarding pass to destinations previously seen as well beyond the reach of many young nu-metal heads. To leave them out of the best of the 90's is inexcusable and ignorant. its not a question of whether or not you like them, its a question of whether or not we need them, and if any act was the rope thrown to a man drowning in a well of fecal matter, TOOL is that rope.

Read more: http://www.musicbanter.com/rock-metal/43681-official-tool-thread-31.html#post871090#ixzz0orW0rAzG