Spreading confusion over the internet since 1994
A woman parking her bicycle in front of the Peninsula Hotel, Chicago. I assume she was a guest.
If you look in Lightbox:
www.flickr.com/photos/swanksalot/5672020601/in/photostrea…
you can see that her glasses even match her shoes and bike tires.
If I was slightly more brave, I would have interviewed her. I’m sure she had a good story to tell.
There aren’t many Republicans who actually served in VIetnam, despite being gung-ho for that war, and any other. George Bush the Stupider served, half-heartedly at best, in the Texas National Guard, but Dick Cheney and other Chickenhawks just evaded military service.
Like Donald Trump:
The suggestion that Trump, the son of a wealthy and well-connected developer, might have cut corners to avoid military service could conceivably hurt his standing with the Republican Party’s base — where reverence for the military tends to be particularly pronounced. In that sense, it’s notable that the issue is being flagged by someone at the National Review — another sign, perhaps, that elite, opinion-shaping conservatives are eager to marginalize Trump.
Whether Trump’s lack of service actually turns into a big story remains to be seen. But that it’s come up at all provides an excuse to point out that the 2012 campaign cycle might be the last one in which candidates have to worry at all about being tagged as “draft-dodgers.”
Besides Trump (if you want to count him as a serious candidate, which we are not inclined to), the prospective GOP field contains three men who would have been old enough to serve during Vietnam: Mitt Romney (who was born in 1947), Newt Gingrich (1943), and Mitch Daniels (1949). None of them actually served — and each has faced his share of questions on the subject over the years.
Romney, for instance, received a two-year draft deferment because of his stint as a Mormon missionary in France; when he returned to the United States, he then received a high lottery number and was never called to serve. When he was a first-time political candidate in Massachusetts back in 1994, Romney explained that “I was not planning on signing up for the military. It was not my desire to go off and serve in Vietnam.” This story seemed perfectly suited for the electorate of the only state that voted for George McGovern in 1972. But when he set out to run for the GOP presidential nomination more than a decade later, Romney changed his tune, claiming that not serving was “one of the two great regrets of my life…I’d love to have.”
Gingrich, meanwhile, received student and family deferments (he married his first wife in 1962, at the age of 19), and Daniels got a student deferment and then — like Romney — caught a break with his lottery number and was never compelled to serve. Mike Huckabee, who was born in 1955, was technically old enough to serve toward the very end of the war, but no one from his birth year was drafted and forced to serve.
(click here to continue reading The last hurrah for the “draft dodger!” charge – War Room – Salon.com.)
There’s a database of a few listed here (they haven’t updated to include Trump)
When an American male (or an especially belligerent female) makes the challenging transition from late adolescence into early adulthood, he is faced with many decisions. One certain, specific combination of choices will result in his becoming a chickenhawk: choosing to “support” war, while also choosing not to serve in the military. His motto becomes: “Let’s you and him go fight; I’ll hold your coat.”
Depending on external circumstances, such an individual may become one of three varieties of chickenhawk: • If there is no draft, and the nation is at peace, the individual becomes a Common Chickenhawk; • If there is a draft, and the nation is at peace, the individual becomes a Chickenhawk First Class; • If the there is a draft, and the nation is at war, the individual becomes a Chickenhawk First Class with Distinguished Fleeing Cross.
We currently have 154 Chickenhawks listed in our database.
(click here to continue reading The New Hampshire Gazette » Chickenhawk Hall of Shame.)
For the record, I would have been a draft dodger too, but also an opponent of the war in general, in contrast to Chickenhawks like Donald Trump.
Not that this is breaking news or anything, but Governor Good Hair Perry is a hypocrite and a liar. And a raging Tea Bagger, in deed if not words. I thought Rick Perry was advocating Texas secede? I guess he doesn’t have the courage of his convictions, all talk, no cattle, as the phrase goes.
Asked by a Dallas television reporter whether he agreed with Texas leaders that the federal government should take some governing cues from the Lone Star State, President Barack Obama said he saw “a little inconsistency” in that position.
“Keep in mind, Gov. (Rick) Perry helped balance his budget with about $6 billion worth of federal help, which he happily took, and then started blaming the members of Congress who had offered that help,” Obama said during an April 18 interview with WFAA reporter Brad Watson at the White House.
…
The roughly $800 billion federal stimulus package, named the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act by Congress, became law in February 2009 after receiving only three Republican votes, all in the Senate. State governments were the primary recipients of the money, although funds have also gone directly to entities such as schools, hospitals and utilities.
The law specified that governors had 45 days after its passage to certify that their state would “request and use” the offered funds. On Feb. 18, 2009, Perry sent Obama the requisite letter of certification, assuring the president that the state would accept the funds and use them “in the best interest of Texas taxpayers.”
According to a February 2009 PBS News Hour online post, some stimulus money was meant “to help states avoid slashing funding for education and other programs that lawmakers could trim to offset shortfalls.”
Abrams, asked for backup for the president’s statement, pointed us to the National Conference of State Legislatures, which in turn sent us its July 2009 report on state budgets. According to the report, state budget-writing Texas lawmakers in 2009 were short $6.6 billion in revenue for 2010-11 and relied heavily on stimulus funds for a solution.
(click here to continue reading Barack Obama: “Gov. (Rick) Perry helped balance his budget with about $6 billion worth of federal help, which he happily took, and then started blaming the members of Congress who had offered that help.” – Latest Barack Obama News – Barack Obama: 2008 US Presidential Candidate – Newsbeet.)
And now that the Texas drought is helping Texas go up in wildfire flames, Governor Perry wants more of that sweet, sweet federal cash. And a kiss too.
Given the fact that Texas will certainly break the record for the most acres of land that has ever burned, in state history, it is obscene that Texas Republicans — who control every level of state government, as they have for every year since 2003 — are planning to do this, according to KVUE news here in Austin, TX:
State funding for volunteer fire departments is taking a big hit. It is going from $30 million to $7 million. Those departments are already facing financial strains. The State Firemen’s and Fire Marshals’ Association of Texas represents 21,000 state firefighters. The Association says more than 80 percent of volunteer firefighters are reporting taking a personal hit in the budget crisis. They have started using their own money to help pay for equipment and supplies.
“We’ve seen budget cuts, but this is the worst time that we’ve ever seen,” said Executive Director Chris Barron. “As far as the budget crisis and the fuel cost stuff for example continues to go up and it doesn’t help us out any whatsoever, so with the rising fuel and the budget cuts from the state it’s taken a great effect. I think the citizens and the public is going to see that.”
Most of the State of Texas is protected by volunteer departments. There are 879 volunteer departments compared to 114 paid departments and 187 departments that are a combination of both paid and volunteer firefighters.
To summarize:
- 1.8 million acres of Texas land has burned, guaranteeing Texas will have the worst year for wildfires in recorded history
- So far this year local fire departments have saved over 10,000 structures from being burned
- There are 879 volunteer fire departments in Texas, compared to 114 paid departments and 187 that are a combination of both
- Texas Republicans have voted to cut funding for volunteer firefighters by over 75%.
By the way — Governor Perry’s solution for all of this was simple: pray.
(click here to continue reading Burnt Orange Report: While Texas Burns, Texas Republicans Could Cut Funds for Volunteer Firefighters by 75%.)
The Governor is gonna make it rain…
This straight from the “How is it we are not making this up?” files: Gov. Rick Perry has declared this weekend Days of Prayer for Rain in Texas. Well, that’s cheaper than coming up with real water policy. Obviously you are currently checking the date but, no, this is not a delayed April Fools story. It’s on his website.
In an accompanying statement, Perry said, “It is fitting that Texans should join together in prayer to humbly seek an end to this ongoing drought and these devastating wildfires.” What makes this particularly galling is when he goes on to ask Texans to pray for “the safety of the brave firefighters and emergency management officials who have worked tirelessly to protect lives and property around the state.” This would mean something if Perry’s people had not stood in the way of a measure that would have improved the safety of exactly those firefighters. It is not just that the current wildfires, which have destroyed over 1.5 million acres and killed two firefighters, are so huge: It is that Texas is increasingly building housing outside of cities. Unincorporated areas are very attractive to developers because there is usually lots of space and fewer regulations. However, there are also fewer hospitals, fewer police, and fewer firefighters. That means less equipment, fewer fire stations, and worse response times.
Texas had a chance to fix that two years ago, and Perry was at least passively part of the effort to squash that fix. Back in 2009, now former Travis County Democratic state rep Valinda Bolton authored House Bill 3477, a measure that would have allowed those hugely overstretched rural emergency service districts to hold short-term tax elections for desperately needed infrastructure. The sole purpose was to cut response times and give them a better chance to fight exactly this kind of fire. It is interesting to note that, when the accompanying House Joint Resolution 112 came up in committee, every witness spoke for the bill – except for Michele Greg of the Texas Apartment Association. Somehow, the bill still failed, and word at the time was that the governor’s office was pleased that even a vitally needed and broadly supported ‘tax’ bill sputtered out. If it had passed, then it would have given ESDs the ability to ask voters to give them more resources to fight wildfires in unincorporated areas. It would also have meant more infrastructure in place like Oak Hill, which was severely damaged by fire this weekend, when they are incorporated.
When asked about the bill’s demise last year, Perry said he did not know about the specifics. However, during the 2009 session it was pretty clear to everyone that HB 3477 was squashed as part of the general anti-tax, anti-public investment rubric coming out of his office. So now Perry’s solution to out-of-control wildfires caused by a massive and ongoing drought (ssssh don’t mention climate change) is prayer. Maybe we should be praying for longer hoses.
(click here to continue reading Perry Gonna Make it Rain – News Blog – The Austin Chronicle.)
With wildfire season gearing up out West, more tankers are expected to be available. A total of 18 air tankers are scheduled to be cycled in for use by mid-June, and four more military C-130s could also be called upon in an emergency.
Severe drought set the stage for these massive wildfires, but the intense winds and abundant shrubs that grew as a result of last year’s more plentiful rains stirred the pot for Texas and its surrounding areas (ClimateWire, April 21).
Texas State climatologist John Nielson-Gammon said that while the Texas fires themselves cannot be attributed to climate change, global warming likely sparked some of the conditions leading to the blazes.
“Global warming probably produced a slight enhancement of the rainfall, leading to a little extra plant growth,” he said. “Also, the warm temperatures during the past couple of months are probably a degree or two warmer than they would have been without the rise in global temperatures, thereby increasing the dryness,” he added.
(click here to continue reading Fighters From 43 States Battle Far-Flung Texas Wildfires – NYTimes.com.)
But, don’t forget, Obama is the culprit, not Rick Perry and his teabagger tendencies.
Wildfires have already ravaged nearly two million acres in Texas, and Perry is requesting federal help to pay for the emergency response, officials said. Spokeswoman Katherine Cesinger said without the federal assistance, “we’re going to have to get pretty creative.” She said it has been about 10 days since the state requested federal disaster assistance and the governor, who has repeatedly bashed Washington, believes disaster response is one of the government’s “core functions.”
She said the state has estimated the cost of the response at $70 million. The state can pay 25 percent of that, or about $17.5 million, Cesinger added. Perry wants Uncle Sam to pick up the rest of it.
“We can’t afford ($70 milllion),” Cesinger said. “That’s why we asked them for help.”
(click here to continue reading Texas governor: Disaster could blow hole in budget – BusinessWeek.)
A federal major disaster declaration could reimburse Texas and local governments 75 percent of the cost of their response. Local departments and the Texas Forest Service have spent more than $60 million since Sept. 1 responding to wildfires, state forest service spokeswoman Linda Moon said.
“Governor Perry’s request is currently under review, and will continue our close coordination with the state as they work to protect their residents and communities,” FEMA spokeswoman Rachel Racusen said.
She said Texas has already received 22 grants to help pay fire management expenses this fire season, including 16 in April alone.
In the past, Perry has charged that the Obama administration is punishing Texas. The Republican governor has been an outspoken opponent of the federal health reform law, and the state is suing the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency over a proposal to end Texas’ independent air quality permitting program for factories and refineries.
(click here to continue reading UPDATE 1-Governor says Obama leaving Texas in the dust | Reuters.)
Fun recollection from an assistant engineer, Glenn Berger, who worked on the infamously scrapped Blood on the Tracks sessions…
In 1974, Bob Dylan was looking for renewal. His marriage to his wife, Sara, was headed for divorce. Over the previous few years, he’d left Columbia Records and the music he was making was indistinct and not well received.
That year I was working at A and R Recording Studios in New York City. Phil Ramone, the owner and “R” in A and R, was to eventually go on to become a legendary producer after working with Billy Joel on “The Stranger.” At that point, he was merely one of the world’s greatest recording engineers. I was his personal assistant engineer.
In September, Phil came to me with exciting news. Dylan was coming in to record his new album with us. The record marked Dylan’s return to Columbia. He would celebrate his renewal in other ways as well. We’d begin recording on September 16th, the Jewish New Year, Rosh Hashanah. The recording was to take place in the studio where he had recorded his first.
A and R’s studio A-1 was on the 7th floor of 799 7th Avenue on 52nd Street in New York City. It had once been Columbia’s studio, where Dylan had done his early work, but they had sold it to Ramone and company in 1968. This was Columbia’s earliest recording room, operational since the 1930’s. The walls rang with the echoes of sessions with artists from Sinatra to Streisand. Not least of the astounding hits recorded there was “Like a Rolling Stone,” Dylan’s signature.
(click here to continue reading Shrinky | Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks: The Untold Story.)
Because of these changes, the USPS does not accept bulk mail that has address labels that contain POSTNET bar codes that are generated by Word. These bulk mailings no longer qualify for a bulk mailing discount.
Even though I don’t bulk mail, found the bar code useful
Wow, seems as if Senator Harry Reid might be doing something smart, for once.
Sam Stein has it from the horse’s mouth:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) announced on Wednesday that he would host a vote on Rep. Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) budget as a means of forcing moderate GOP senators to weigh in on the legislation’s controversial proposals. He did not provide a specific date for when that vote will take place. “There will be an opportunity in the Senate to vote on the Ryan budget to see if Republican senators like the Ryan budget as much as the House did,” Reid said on a conference call with reporters. “Without going into the Ryan budget we will see how much the Republicans like it here in the Senate.”
…This is really great news. First off, it’s simply great politics—it utterly puts the screws to the GOP. …
By forcing a roll call, this will put the GOP on record for years to come about their views on Medicare. And many Republican senators are caught between a rock and a hard place: Vote for it, and you invite a permanent barrage of ready-made attack ads; vote against it, and you risk getting teabagged to death. Olympia Snowe, for instance, already faces that conundrum, but this vote has the power to affect many more senators well past 2012.
And if Reid really wants emphasize the “hard” in hardball, he’ll schedule the vote after Nevada Rep. Dean Heller get elevated to the Senate by Gov. Brian Sandoval in a week or so. That would force Heller to be the one guy to vote for Ryan’s Republican budget twice—or wind up voting for it before he voted against it. Somehow I feel that neither of these is a winning move… which means that for us, putting this to a vote most certainly is.
(click here to continue reading Daily Kos: Harry Reid says he will schedule vote on Ryan’s Republican budget plan.)
This vote is smart for the Dems – especially because in 2008/2010 election cycles, many Republicans ran a fear mongering campaign directed at seniors, with the message being that Medicaid/Medicare was in danger, and only by voting Republican would it be saved from the meddling Dems. Ooopsie…
Oh, sure, this will be effective…
Although there is no single, easy answer for addressing increased gas prices in the short term, there are things we can do to guarantee that Americans aren’t victims of escalating gas prices in the long term.
* One thing we can do is eliminate unnecessary tax breaks for the oil and gas industry and instead invest that money into clean energy, so that we can cut our dependence on foreign oil.
* America’s outmoded tax laws offer the oil and gas industry more than $4 billion in annual taxpayer subsidies, even though that industry is expected to report extra-large profits this quarter. Even as those companies are reaping near record profits, Americans are shelling out for near record gas prices. That doesn’t make sense and it has to end.
* CEO’s of leading oil companies have made it clear that such high oil prices alone offer enough of a profit motive to push them to invest in domestic oil exploration and production — even without special tax breaks.
* Speaker Boehner has said he’s open to eliminating wasteful subsidies for the oil and gas industry. For too long, our political system has avoided doing so. Now, hopefully, our leaders can come together in a bipartisan way to make it happen.
(click here to continue reading Dems seek to change conversation on gas prices – The Plum Line – The Washington Post.)
Any proposal that will help the US and involves Boehner will not happen. That dude, and the GOP in general, basically is hoping for end-of-times.
I have to laugh at the spectacle that is Donald Trump, and his hair, and his ego1. Otherwise, I’d be blubbering about the fact that this clown is getting way too much media attention. Much easier to laugh at Trump, especially when considering his transparency hypocrisy:
George Stepanopoulos reminds us that he recently asked Trump in an interview if he’d release his tax returns if Obama released the birth certificate Trump has been demanding. Trump responded:
“Maybe I’m going to do the tax returns when Obama does his birth certificate. I may tie my tax returns. I’d love to give my tax returns. I may tie my tax returns into Obama’s birth certificate.”
I’ve asked a Trump spokesperson whether he will now release his tax returns in light of this morning’s development.
The question of whether Trump will follow through no this suggestion goes directly to the heart of whether Trump’s presidential flirtation has been a big fraud all along. Those who say it’s a ruse argue that Trump will never run for president, because he’d have to reveal that his net worth is far less than he’s claimed. Trump, who bristles at this suggestion, sought to dispel such talk by suggesting to Stephanopoulos that he’d release his tax returns if Obama released his birth certificate — apparently thinking he was secure in the knowledge that Obama would never do this. Now Trump’s bluff has been called.
(click here to continue reading Now that Obama has released birth certificate, will media press Trump to release tax returns? – The Plum Line – The Washington Post.)
Footnotes:
Lovely. What’s next? Asking ExxonMobile to conduct its own environmental studies for the EPA? Asking G.E. to do its own tax audits for the IRS? We expected better than this from Obama’s administration.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration introduced a pilot project in the Federal Register this month which would allow biotech seed companies to perform their own environmental impact studies of novel seed varieties before deregulation. The USDA’s move seems to be a response to a decision last August by Federal Judge Jeffrey White which banned the planting of genetically modified sugar beets until an environmental study assessed the impact of commercial cultivation. White ruled that the USDA’s approval of the beets violated the National Environmental Policy Act.
Proponents of the USDA’s project believe the decision will make the biotech industry less vulnerable to legal challenges and speed the registration process of new GE crops. “A big deterrent to future lawsuits would be if the USDA were to win some of them,” said Karen Batra, director of communications at Biotechnology Industry Organization, to Capital Press. “The more information the department has, the better case they can make.”
Most recently The Center for Food Safety challenged the USDA’s unregulated approval of GE-alfalfa saying the decision puts organic and conventional farmers at risk. The case is pending.
Organic advocates believe the USDA’s pilot will slow what they believe to be an already ineffective process and encourage more legal challenges.
“There’s virtually no chance, in the current political climate, that the idea of expanding the role of biotech is going to speed up approval,” said Chuck Benbrook, chief scientist for The Organic Center. “The fact of the matter is there are many good reasons not to trust science from Monsanto. Almost inevitably the first assessments carried out under this pilot program will be challenged in court—probably successfully.”
Bill Freese, science policy analyst for the Center for Food Safety, said the USDA’s proposal would make an already poor process worse.
“This decision would give us additional incentive to challenge a seed up for deregulation, subject to other factors,” he said. “We might actually challenge the process itself. This decision seems to go against some pretty basic scientific integrity guidelines. Letting a company do its own assessment is a pretty obvious conflict of interest.”
(click here to continue reading USDA suggests Monsanto do its own environmental impact studies | Farming content from New Hope 360.)
The Halsted bridge is undergoing complete reconstruction, but the Division Street bridge is not, at least yet. Presumedly soon though as it is not in good shape1. Apparently last rehabilitated in 1983, built in 1903.
This is one of Chicago’s oldest surviving highway bascule bridges, an example of the first generation of bascule bridges built in Chicago and among the oldest surviving bascule bridges in North America. The success of these bridges had a profound influence on Chicago’s decision to populate essentially the entire navigable river/canal system in the city with trunnion bascule bridges during the 20th Century. Further, these bridges were noted by a number of cities across the country who adopted the specific form of the trunnion bascule bridge which became known as the “Chicago trunnion bascule” bridge type.
Each surviving bascule bridge of this first generation in Chicago is nationally significant and should be given the highest preservation priority. This specific bridge was the fourth bridge built in the city according to the first bascule bridge design, which was a complex part-through part-pony truss design as seen here. The superstructure for this bridge was built by Roemheld & Gallery and the Fitzsimmons and Connell Company (both of Chicago) constructed the substructure. Of the small number of surviving first generation bascule bridges in Chicago, this is one of the most heavily altered with a significant number of members, members toward the center of the bridge, having been replaced and/or rivets being replaced with bolts.
(click here to continue reading Division Street North Branch Bridge Historic North Branch Chicago River Division Street.)
Just a wee bit of decay and rust, no?
Footnotes:
It actually seems like nearly every day in April has either been rainy, or at least overcast, but I guess that’s a bit of an exaggeration. A bit. As Tom Skilling reported yesterday:
Rain-weary Chicagoans won’t find this hard to believe. April 2011 has produced 16 days of measurable rain—55 percent more than normal and the greatest number of measurably rainy April days here in the 50 years since 1961! A scan of Aprils back to 1871 indicates the opening 28 days of the month typically sees 11 measurable rains. “Measurable rain” is defined as any rainfall which reaches or exceeds 0.01-inch.
The month’s 4.56 inches of rain through Tuesday ranks as the 17th rainiest April in 140 years of records. While 124 have been drier, only 16 have been wetter.
Latest storm’s rain to “swipe” Chicago; heaviest totals expected east and south–but a flood watch posted for area rivers which are running near bankful
Heavy rains sweep northeastward into an area EAST of Chicago Wednesday. Lighter rains to the west will swipe the metro area from time to time with several tenths to as much as a half inch of rain at some locations. Flood watches have been hoisted for Chicago area river basins.
(click here to continue reading April’s produced the most measurable rain days in a half century; month ranks 17th wettest in 140 years! – Chicago Weather Center.)
And today? Rain has been steady since I woke up, and doesn’t look like today will be sunny either.
—
Late update: didn’t realize quite how bad the weather is in the rest of the country. Puts things in perspective a little. I’ll take a few weeks of rain over massive flooding, tornados, or whatever else.
Look what I got today from Harmony Valley, WI, via Freshpicks.com
Shot with my Hipstamatic for iPhone1
Allium tricoccum — also known as the ramp, spring onion, ramson, wild leek, wild garlic, and, in French, ail sauvage and ail des bois — is an early spring vegetable with a strong garlicky odor and a pronounced onion flavor. A perennial member of the onion family (Alliaceae), the plant has broad, smooth, light green leaves, often with deep purple or burgundy tints on the lower stems, and a scallion-like stalk and bulb. Both the white lower leaf stalks and the broad green leaves are edible. The flower stalk appears after the leaves have died back, unlike the similar Allium ursinum, in which leaves and flowers can be seen at the same time. Ramps grow in groups strongly rooted just beneath the surface of the soil. They are found from the U.S. state of South Carolina to Canada. They are popular in the cuisines of the rural upland South and in the Canadian province of Quebec when they emerge in the springtime. They have a growing popularity in upscale restaurants throughout North America.
A thick growth of ramps near Lake Michigan in Illinois in the 17th century gave the city of Chicago its name, after the area was described by 17th-century explorer Robert Cavelier, sieur de La Salle, and explained by his comrade, naturalist-diarist Henri Joutel.
The plant called Chicagou in the language of native tribes was once thought to be Allium cernuum, the nodding wild onion, but research in the early 1990s showed the correct plant was the ramp. The ramp has strong associations with the folklore of the central Appalachian Mountains. Fascination and humor have fixated on the plant’s extreme pungency. Jim and Bronson Comstock founded The West Virginia Hillbilly, a weekly humor and heritage newspaper, in 1957, and ramps were a frequent topic. For one legendary issue, Jim Comstock introduced ramp juice into the printer’s ink, invoking the ire of the U.S. Postmaster General. The mountain folk of Appalachia have long celebrated spring with the arrival of the ramp, believing it to have great power as a tonic to ward off many ailments of winter. A ramp bath was featured in the film Where the Lilies Bloom (1974) about life in North Carolina.
(click here to continue reading Allium tricoccum – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.)
Footnotes:
Merchandise Mart, modestly altered via PictureShow app. Originally taken with Hipstamatic 201, Kodot XGrizzled film, John S lens.
since there wasn’t much sun, I embellished.
I’m so glad I finally pushed through the bureaucracy and got my U.S. Passport. The State Department is about to make it a real challenge for new applicants:
The U.S. Department of State is proposing a new Biographical Questionnaire for some passport applicants: The proposed new Form DS-5513 (PDF) asks for all addresses since birth; lifetime employment history including employers’ and supervisors names, addresses, and telephone numbers; personal details of all siblings; mother’s address one year prior to your birth; any “religious ceremony” around the time of birth; and a variety of other information. According to the proposed form, “failure to provide the information requested may result in … the denial of your U.S. passport application.”
The State Department estimated that the average respondent would be able to compile all this information in just 45 minutes, which is obviously absurd given the amount of research that is likely to be required to even attempt to complete the form.
It seems likely that only some, not all, applicants will be required to fill out the new questionnaire, but no criteria have been made public for determining who will be subjected to these additional new written interrogatories. So if the passport examiner wants to deny your application, all they will have to do is give you the impossible new form to complete.
(click here to continue reading State Dept. wants to make it harder to get a passport.)
I’ve lived in a lot of places, especially in my twenties, so providing this information would be an exercise is guess-timation, and even the thought of providing phone numbers for various supervisors at places of employment is a joke. But then, who is checking to see if it is accurate? Does the federal government already have this information somewhere, so that if you misspell your bosses name at that pizza place you worked at one summer in high school, they’ll reject your passport application? Or is this all an exercise in expanding government overreach because The Castle was such a innovative model to emulate?
Hope your passport is current! Or else you’ll have to answer questions like:
What type of document, if any, did your mother use to enter into the United States before your birth?
or:
Please describe the circumstances of your birth including the names (as well as address and phone number, if available) of persons present or in attendance at your birth
or:
List your mother’s residence one year before your birth:
(Street Address) (City, State, Country)
7. List your mother’s residence one year after your birth:
Dates of employment:
Name of employer:
Address of employer:
Fun!
Curt Kirkwood of the Meat Puppets answers a lot of questions for Andrew Perry, including:
You were the fourth or fifth band on Greg Ginn from Black Flag’s label, SST — was it a chaotic operation?
We were there real early on. We were from Phoenix which is like a faraway suburb of L.A., in our minds at least. It’s 400 miles away, it’s where you’re always looking when you’re kid. Disneyland is there, Hollywood is there, the ocean. We would go over there and play, and what Black Flag saw in us was, we were way more pissed off and crazy, and played a lot faster than all the other punk-rock bands around. We weren’t even that good, we just played really fast, and were completely out of our minds.
But we weren’t typical, in that none of us were aggressive bruisers. We would play stuff from Broadway shows, and stuff that I really liked from my childhood, like The King And I, then we’d go as far out on the other limb as we could, and just really try to hurt people mentally. It’s all completely valid in the art realm, and we could see that — there’s just so much canvas here to cover, we can do anything. It’s still that way. I don’t like to repeat myself ever. So we did a screaming punk-rock record, then I just went, “I can’t do that again.” Then I heard Metallica, and I was like, “Fuck, let them do it!” But you know, they didn’t have to keep doing it.
Was country music a big influence?
We always knew about it, and had dabbled in it — we did “Tumblin’ Tumbleweeds” on our first record. Then I was just like, “Know what, we could use this stuff to really hurt punk rockers’ feelings.” Because I was starting to hate them. Like, “Oh yeah, freedom? As long as we don’t leave your box!” It has to be loud, fast, pissed off. It’s just like more classifications, that don’t really do you or your art any good. So, what we really need to do is not just be defiant, we have to actually hurt these people’s feelings. Let’s just do this as ass-backwards as we possibly can — like we thought Jimi Hendrix did it — get fucked up, and make a fucked-up fuckin’ record, exactly the way you want to.
How did the new direction go down with SST themselves?
They got it. They always got it, even Black Flag. Greg Ginn and Chuck [Dukowski] and The Minutemen and Hüsker Dü were all our best buddies — and are still some of my best friends. They had to be taken seriously as punk rockers. Then you got Rollins. Then it’s, Look out! Things get real serious. Everything was drawing a lot of mosh pit stuff, but they liked it, because we could open for them, and their crowd would just spit all over us, and hate us, and they’d be good and pissed off by the time Black Flag came on.
They figured it out, too, though — like, “This is funny, you guys came in like a punk rock thing, but you’re so not,” so it was part of actually the growing ethos that that label had. The Minutemen were doing it. We just tried to take the jock, macho element out of our thing, initially. What I saw with punk rock, especially in L.A., it was becoming like an athletic event for people to slamdance to. So it was like, let’s just play stuff that’ll put these people to sleep. That’s when people were going [aggrieved dullard’s voice], “Pink Floyd! Neil Young! Grateful Dead!” I was like, “Yeah, I like that stuff!”
You recorded Up On The Sun in three days flat. You wouldn’t have believed at the time that you’d be playing it in full at a festival in 2011, at the behest of one of the world’s coolest bands, ATP curators Animal Collective…
I would’ve said no! We hardly ever played it live that much. I see why we didn’t. There’s a lot of guitar parts on it, and it’s very artsy, it needs to be examined. Once again: more thought than I like to put into something when I’m onstage. I don’t know: God bless Animal Collective, I don’t know ’em, I don’t know what their motivation is here, probably self-indulgence — they just wanna sit there and drink beers and hear Up On The Sun played live.
(click here to continue reading eMusic Q&A: The Meat Puppets – eMusic Spotlight.)
The Meat Puppets were one of my favorite SST bands back in my UT – Austin days, especially their second album (wikipedia entry). I liked them for the fact that they weren’t afraid to abandon the jock-rock aggressive music template and play some unusual genres.
