A Progressive on the Prairie

Returned a bit ago from the Red Willow Band performance at the Washington Pavillion. My main reaction: those of us from the era when they dominated the South Dakota music scene were very damn lucky.

Most of the times I saw Red Willow in college was at a bar. By the time the band started playing, many (okay, most) of us were not in the sharpest states of mind. Moreover, although you listened to the band, a good portion of time was spent talking and drinking. Hearing them tonight proved beyond doubt what we were thinking back then -- there may never be a better homegrown band. Hearing them in a setting with near perfect acoustics and in a much, much, much less impaired mental state did nothing but solidify their reputation and legend. And it seemed as if the audience was just as comfortable with the band as if we had just seen them within the last couple weeks.

Red Willow took bluegrass, country, country swing, R&B and flat out rock 'n' roll and melded into a unique, undefinable style. Just as the band was homegrown, so was much of the music. Their talent makes Red Willow perhaps the epitomy of South Dakota roots music. (If you've never had the pleasure yourself, you can buy a CD containing both of their albums from the 70s here. Hopefully, the CD compilation of live performances sold at this week's shows will also be available online.)

Thirty years ago when Red Willow was playing bars, barns and outdoors, none of us could have imagined seeing them in a venue like the Great Hall. What a way to revisit a fondly recalled past. All I got to say to Chris, Marley, Kenny, Hank and Barry is thanks not only for some great years but for sharing that group talent with us once again and reminding us just how good we had it.
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From Friday's Strib:

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) -- A weight may soon be lifted off a Maryland woman charged with carrying a concealed weapon in an airport.

It wasn't a gun or a knife. It was a weighted bookmark.

Kathryn Harrington was flying home from vacation last month when screeners at the Tampa, Florida, airport found her bookmark. It's an eight-and-a-half-inch leather strip with small lead weights at each end.

Airport police said it resembled a weighted weapon that could be used to knock people unconscious. So the 52-year-old special education teacher was handcuffed, put into a police car, and charged with carrying a concealed weapon.

She faced a possible criminal trial and a ten-thousand-dollar fine. But the state declined to prosecute, and the Transportation Security Administration says it probably won't impose a fine.

The AP version in today's Miami Herald adds:

"It was a bookmark," Harrington, a special education teacher, told The St. Petersburg Times. "It's not a weapon. I could not understand why I was being handcuffed and put into a police car. I cried for hours."

Tip to Homeland Security and the TSA: these weapons are readily available on the Internet. In fact, style-conscious terrorists can even get one personalized.
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Among the items crossing my desk/monitor in the last 24 hours:

• Newsweek tells us It's Worse Than You Think.
  
  
• The New York Times confirms, reporting that a late July National Intelligence Estimate "spells out a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq."
  
  
• Meanwhile, The Guardian has a Sidney Blumenthal column to the effect that many senior US military officers believe Iraq has turned into a disaster on an unprecedented scale. (Via Cursor).

Hmmm, why does that word accountability keep coming to mind? (And could it be that Kerry is finally catching on?)

UPDATE: Inter Press Service News Agency summarizes the recent news from Iraq in From Bad to Worse in Iraq. (Also via Cursor).
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• Juan Cole on September 11 and Its Aftermath.
  
  
• Kos on the campaign if Bush ran against Jesus.
  
  
• Not quite sure the source of the data (appears to be IP addresses) but here's a neat graphic on where spam comes from. (Via memepool).
  
  
• Project Censored has announced its list of the Top 25 Censored Stories of 2004-05.

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For the last few weeks I have been amazed that much of the American electorate seems to refuse to hold Bush accountable for how his administration took us into war in Iraq under demonstrably false pretenses. I am also stupified by the fact Kerry and the Democrats seem to be afraid to hammer that fact home.

It looks like I'm not the only one wondering about this. It appears there's a new organization and ad campaign starting, appropriately called HoldThemAccountable2004. (Via Atrios).
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Two stories appearing next to each other in this morning's Argus made me wonder: Is it any wonder Iran, North Korea, etc., think they need to develop nuclear weapons or that we have no credibility when it comes to these issues?

At the top of page 3 was an Associated Press article that "the United States lobbied the U.N. atomic watchdog agency Monday to send Iran before the U.N. Security Council for refusing to freeze work that can produce nuclear weapons." Of course, a significant part of the reason for getting this before the Security Council is to try to obtain international sanctions against Iran.

Immediately below and to the right was a Chicago Tribune article reporting:

Congress this session will take up the question of whether the U.S. should continue its post-Cold War policy of lowering its military nuclear profile or instead embrace a new Bush administration program to research and develop a family of tactical nuclear weapons intended for use against terrorist enclaves and hostile nations.

I certainly don't condone Iran (or any other state) attempting to develop nuclear weapons. Yet it seems the height of hypocrisy for Bush and crew to preach about the threat of weapons of mass destruction when, faced with an opportunity to reduce the number of nukes, they advocate a policy to develop "better" ones.
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John Thune does not believe in evolution so probably doesn't pollute the minds of his young teen daughters with such a concept. He prefers they learn Christian values: "I'm training my daughters on how to use a semiautomatic handgun."
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On September 11, Jonathan Schell lived six blocks from the World Trade Center. He then began a series of columns in The Nation called "Letter From Ground Zero." Some have been collected in A Hole in the World, which I've been reading off and on over the last week or so.

Last night, I read his April 7, 2003, column. Published two days before US forces "took" Baghdad, its conclusion is a sad but accurate commentary on what the Great Misleader and his crew have done and been allowed to do to this country.

The tragedy of America in the post-Cold War era is that we have proved unequal to the responsibility that our own power placed upon us. Some of us became intoxicated with it, imagining that we could rule the world. Others of us -- the Democratic Party, Congress, the judiciary, the news media -- abdicated our obligation to challenge, to check and to oppose, letting the power-hungry have their way. The government of the United States went into opposition against its own founding principles, leaving it to the rest of the world to take up our cause. .... Because the Constitution, though battered, is still intact, we may still have time and opportunity to recoup. But for now, we will have to pay the price of our weakness. The costs will be heavy, first of all for the people of Iraq but also for others, including ourselves. .... The fight for "freedom" abroad is crippling freedom at home. The war to stop proliferation of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq has provoked that very proliferation in North Korea and Iran. More ground has already been lost in the field of proliferation than can be gained even by the most delirious victory in Baghdad. Former friends of America have been turned into rivals or foes. The United States may be about to win Iraq. It has already lost the world.

The "time and opportunity" to recover is fast disappearing. Failure to re-defeat Bush may well mark the expiration date.
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