My Favorite Song of 2008

My favorite song this year wasn't released until September and never made it higher than 56 on Billboard's Top 100. For me, the steady then climbing guitars and vocals gave the song great energy and the melody hook is strong enough to match the eye-catching title. My favorite song of 2008 is "Sex On Fire" by Kings of Leon.



The Song I Heard Too Many Times

I don't think I can guess how many times this year I've heard "Bleeding Love" by Leona Lewis. My guess for Memorial Day alone is 6 times, but I lost count. Apparently it's not just here in the U.S. that the song has achieved overload. It was also number one in the airplay charts of the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Germany, France, Australia, New Zealand, Luxembourg, Latvia, Slovakia, Latin America, Estonia and Japan. For the 1 millionth time this year, you can listen here but I bet you a nickle you won't make it all the way through.



The Song I Can't Get Out of My Head

I'm as much a Kanye West fan as the next person. But one of his latest songs is burned into my brain. Kanye's synthesized voice is repeating over and over "So keep ya love locked down, ya love locked down. Keepin ya love locked down..."



While I'm here keeping my love locked down, what are some of your favorite songs from the year?

Wednesday: Artists of 2008.

Open Up Your Eyes

I'm not going to try to talk you out of eating turkey on Thanksgiving. I'm moving slowly toward less and less meat (for various reasons) but, heck, even I'll have turkey on Thursday. But I do think we need to make our choices with full knowledge.

This video is not acts of unusual or staged behavior. This is just the routine life of new mass grown turkeys.



Mass slaughter is no picnic either. The majority of turkeys are killed in large, semi-automated slaughterhouses. Turkeys are removed from their crates and hung upside down by their legs from shackles on a moving line. The shackles carry them to an electrically charged stunning water bath through which the bird’s head is dragged in order to render the bird unconscious, their necks are cut and the birds are then placed into a scalding tank, which is designed to loosen their feathers before plucking (hopefully they're dead by then).

In comparison, it's "compassionate" to stuff a live turkey upside down into a steel cone, slit its throat and then hold it down against its last desperate attempt to live.



So go ahead, enjoy our turkey, but we'll do it with our eyes open.

The Wisdom of Condoleezza Rice

From the New York Times.

Welcome to My World, Barack
November 16, 2008

Interviews by HELENE COOPER and SCOTT L. MALCOMSON

On Jan. 20, Barack Obama will inherit a world very different from the one his predecessor found in January 2001. Over the past eight years, the Bush administration has faced great challenges and nurtured grand ambitions; it has tried hard to remake the world. Condoleezza Rice has been a central player in that effort since becoming the candidate Bush’s chief foreign-policy adviser in 2000, so we arranged to interview her at the State Department late last month. The interview turned into a wide-ranging discussion of where this government has taken the United States and what sort of world it will leave for the next president. The editors have culled the highlights of her remarks in the text that follows. We also spoke with other administration foreign-policy makers — Christopher Hill and Daniel Fried of the State Department and Gen. James L. Jones, former supreme allied commander, Europe — whose remarks supplement and illuminate those of Rice.

....

THE MIDDLE EAST AND BEYOND
HOW WE CHANGED THE CONVERSATION.
There have been some real gains, but there also has been a complete change in the conversation, particularly in the Middle East, where some form of popular legitimacy is being sought in almost every country. The American voice has got to stay strong in that conversation.

HOW TO MOVE THE CONVERSATION FORWARD.
I really think we have the best atmosphere between Palestinians and Israelis since the mid-’90s, so I’m very gratified that that has come into place. The Palestinian leadership is avowedly in favor of negotiations, renounces violence, recognizes the right of Israel to exist. There is a robust negotiating process, and they have made a lot of progress on how to get to a two-state solution. There is now broad Israeli acceptance of the need for a Palestinian state. After all, Kadima came out of Likud (6) with that in mind. And we have a process on the ground that is beginning to make some progress in terms of making life better for people who live on the West Bank. Palestinian security forces are becoming competent enough that they’re now about to move into Nablus, one of the toughest areas, with Israeli consent.

WHY SPEED IS ESSENTIAL TO DEALING WITH HAMAS.
The Hamas takeover of Gaza is a problem, but thanks to good Egyptian work, at least there is calm for now. One reason to try and get an agreement done pretty quickly is that I think Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas needs to be able to take an agreement to the Palestinian people through either referendum or elections in order to sideline Hamas politically or to have Hamas buy in, which I think is unlikely, or to sideline Hamas by demonstrating that they don’t have a solution for the Palestinian problem. So that’s another reason to do it quickly. But I think the structure is there, I think the Annapolis structure is a very powerful structure . . . On the Palestinian-Israeli issue, we will leave this in a much, much better place, agreement or no.

HOW TO CHANGE A REGIME — SLOWLY.
We have said to Iran that this is about changing your regime’s behavior, not changing your regime. That has been the message all along. Would we hope that the Iranian people . . . do they deserve to have a different regime than they’ve got? Absolutely. But the way that we have tried to help with democracy in Iran is to help indigenous forces there — to bring everyone from people who do disaster relief to artists to sending our wrestlers there. You know, it’s why the question of an interests section continues to be important to us.(7)

FINDING PRO-AMERICANISM IN IRAN.
There’s a very pro-American feeling among most Iranians not because of our policies but because of who we are and because we have stood for democracy. Iranians are sophisticated people — that’s a sophisticated and great culture — and we need to be able to reach out to them. But in terms of dealing with the regime, I think we’ve made it very, very clear that we’re prepared to deal with the regime; we just don’t want them to use negotiations as a cover while they improve their nuclear-weapons capability.

...

If you have time, I recommend the (lengthy) interview.

Two Shots of Happy, One Shot of Sad

A 15 year old kid walks into a bar with his dad... Sounds like the start to a good joke (or a sad joke). But in Wisconsin, it's legal. Anyone under 21 can possess or consume alcohol, as long as the minor is accompanied by a parent, guardian or spouse who is 21 or older (see Wisconsin Statutes Section 125.07). Anyone under 21 can even go to a bar and be served alcohol as long as they are with a parent or guardian.

Advocates of the law say it allows parents to educate their kids and supervise underage drinking. That's a fair argument at ages 18-21. Personally, I have never understood why we say young people age 18 are old enough to fight and die in war, but not mature enough to drink alcohol. This Wisconsin law, however, establishes no floor. You can serve alchol to a 10 year old, though the discriminating bartender will surely say "that's a no-go."

According to the news article, in addition to the legally drunk minors, drunk drivers in Wisconsin are not charged with a felony until they have been arrested a fifth time and Wisconsin law prohibits sobriety checks by the police.

Sadly, an organization formed to change Wisconsin's liquor laws informs us the state's loose approach to drinking has consequences:

1. Wisconsin has led the nation in binge drinking (5 drinks in a sitting for men, 4 in a sitting for women) every year since the CDC began its surveys more than a decade ago.

2. People in Wisconsin are more likely than anywhere else to drive drunk.

3. Wisconsin has among the highest incidence of drunken driving deaths in the United States.

Hard for me to say how scientific the connection is between lower drinking ages and drunk driving, binge drinking, etc. Makes a certain logical sense, but maybe it's the cold or the cheese or those underachieving Packers!

Regardless, I found this Wisconsin approach to "underage" drinking very interesting and with some merit. For now, I'll just dabble at supporting lowering the drinking age to 18 (maybe only when in the company of a parent?) and be glad I have several years before I address this with my boys.

Love...Dying Every Hour...Love

Reverend Lovejoy: "I know one of you is responsible for this. So repeat after me. If I withhold the truth, may I go straight to Hell where I will eat naught but burning hot coals and drink naught but burning hot cola [all the kids recite in unison] where fiery demons will punch me in the back, where my soul will be chopped into confetti and be strewn upon a parade of murderers and single mothers..."

Something truly shocking happened in Arkansas last week. 57% of the voters passed a law that will forbid unmarried couples from adopting or providing foster care for anyone under 18.

So starting January 1, if grandma or aunt has a live-in boyfriend, they cannot provide foster care or adopt their own grandchild or nephew. But grandma and auntie are "collateral damage" because the openly-stated targets of this law were gay and lesbian couples.

If you think that the welfare of the child is the purpose behind the law - these groups had their day in court to prove any link between child welfare and gay parents and they failed.

An Arkansas trial court decided, and the Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed, that there is no rational relationship between gay or lesbian parents and the health, safety, and welfare of the foster children. According to the Arkansas courts, the facts demonstrated that there was no correlation between the health, welfare, and safety of foster children and a foster parent who was gay or lesbian or who resided in a household with a gay or lesbian, and the Arkansas Department of Human Services admitted that no known complaints were ever made in those situations.

They can't prove it's harmful to kids, it just contradicts their moral code. Truly mind boggling. It's yet another disappointment to learn that Focus on the Family are the malevolent moral police behind this bigoted law that actually reduces the available foster homes and adoptive parents in Arkansas. Given the simultaneous push from these organizations of adoption instead of abortion, this strikes me as perverse.

I hold out hope that this new law will be found unconstitutional. If you don't have to prove a connection to the welfare of the child, then it's simply the majority opinion that determines who are fit parents. Right now, your opinion may happen to be the majority, but that could change.

"That the desires of the majority of the people are often for injustice and inhumanity against the minority, is demonstrated by every page of the history of the whole world" - John Adams

Remembrance Day

What have we learned?

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

- Lieutenant Colonel John McCrae, May 13, 1915

"So on we go with our journey of equality. On we go in the pursuit of justice."

- Bono, February 22, 2006.

My week has been a blurry buzz of joy and grief. I've celebrated history with the world, I've celebrated a little boy's birthday, I've said good bye, I've experienced the frustrations and work of life, I've gotten a few precious hours alone with my best friend.

As Bono says with typical directness, the journey of equality goes on. But can we take a moment to rest? Can we sit here for just a short time and feel the hope of a new day? Just the possibility...? Barack Obama is not the savior. Try to just enjoy the beat, because if this election has taught us anything, it's this: Will.i.am makes a kick-ass political video!

Yes, We Can.

It's been a long Monday. Obama wasn't the only one who lost a grandma today. Rest in Peace, Toot and Nellie.

As all across this country we head to the polls, pack into a box the sacred memories of a life, pick up kids from school, hug the ones we still can, watch the vote tally, regardless of the outcome of the vote, I feel these words:

We are not as divided as our politics suggests.
We are one people;
We are one nation;
And together, we will begin the next great chapter in America's story with three words that will ring from coast to coast;
From sea to shining sea -
Yes. We. Can.

This song is for all of us. I never get tired of it. As I am reminded today, again, of the frail shells that protect our priceless spirit; that even when it was long, life is short; I want to believe that we can...

See the Bird With a Leaf in Her Mouth

I saw Barack Obama downtown Columbia on Friday morning. I know, he was here Thursday night, I saw him then too. But on Friday morning I went to Lee Elementary School's "America My Home" themed parade. The kids were encouraged to dress up in a way that displayed America their home, the suggestion was very open ended. More than one little African-American boy dressed up as Barack Obama and several kids wore Obama-themed outfits. The pride in their faces was evident.



I was wearing an Obama sticker with Obama's face on it, and I attracted a crowd of kids all trying to high five and show their enthusiasm. One little guy stood back and looked at my sticker, then looked at my face; then looked at my sticker, then looked at my face. We don't want these kids to see color, to feel different. But I'm sure at times they do, especially when it comes to power. And their pride was obvious in seeing a person of color in a position of real power.



I've read and heard that Obama rallies are diverse. Well, I live in a brightly diverse community and I've attended large political, cultural and sporting events here so I had no expectations Thursday night to even notice the diversity of the crowd. But as I looked at the 40,000 people around me, I was actually surprised at the range of age, culture, race, color, and income level around me. Not black and white, but every race and culture I could have imagined. Not in a carefully arranged mosaic, but in large groups and mixing together in a common purpose - to try to see from way back where we were!



It was an incredible experience, buoying my spirits and giving me encouragement for at least the moment that there are more of us that believe this diversity is America than there are those that fear our differences and see only an ever decreasing piece of "their" pie. And I got my wish. I got to yell "Yes We Can!"