MooPig's Tuesday "Up - Down" News Summary

Rhetoric Based Second Source NEWS

Depression Up on Gulf of Mexico Coast

DOA Jones Down

Campaign Spending Up

Stoning Criminal Women Down

Hanging Criminal Women Up

Slander at "Google Instant" mostly Down, Some Up

Kim Jong Il Up

Second Son of Mistress Up

Drone attacks on Afghan-Pakistan Border Up

Civilian Casualty Rate at Afghan-Pakistan border Down

Founding Fathers stories Re-tellings Up

Russ Feingold Down

Oktoberfest in Lacrosse Up

Schwarzenegger's Popularity at Home Down

Temperatures ... Down.

MooPig Report from the Middle: Chicago Talks Back

To Dream the Impoo-sssibull Dreammmmmm.... bwamp!!!

"Eh?"
"Eh, did choo do dat t'ing, dere?"
"What!"
"Dat t'ing... do's books?"
"No. I taut you mint pahkin cahrs."
"Yeah, dat's it... pahkin' cahs! Well, didja?"

Whad we goin' do 'bout dis charact'r dat got cawt?"

"Don' know."
"Da boss is callin' him Quarters, for whadt he done, heh?"

"Qwa'ters, heh, heh... das a goo'dwan, heh, heh."
"He gonna do time.."

"Say, did it ever occuhr to youse why we t'ahlk dis' way?"

"The Daley political machine in Chicago has thrown its support behind presidential candidate Barack Obama, forging an alliance that could make him the next president.

"Although the machine supported Obama’s rivals early in his political career, viewing him as an outsider, Obama’s success on the national stage has changed all that.

“It’s a simple political calculus,” Jay Stewart, executive director of the Chicago-based watchdog group Better Government Association, said.

“Here is a popular guy with a reasonable shot at winning, from the same party. It’s good for Illinois if he wins. So the machine [and] the mayor [are] backing Obama.” (12 October 2007; PHOTO and excerpt from HERE )

EXCLUSIVE: Interview with David Freddoso, Author of 'The Case Against Barack Obama'

08/04/2008 (Excerpt Retrieved HERE for reclamation project by MooPig Middle)

Excerpt.....
MO: Your book focuses a lot on the “Chicago Machine.” Not everyone knows about Chicago’s political corruption. In short, how does it work? And how has Sen. Obama been a part of it?

DF: Just to give a few examples from my book, chapter one discusses at length Sen. Obama’s support for and alliances with Chicago machine politicians, that’s chapters one and two.

The “political machine” is all about using the apparatus of the government treasury, using the taxpayer’s money to keep yourself in power permanently. You put your political cronies on the payroll to help yourself get elected and re-elected and then when you’re in power you get to do things like steer pension funds and investment to benefit your pals. All of this stuff was going on.

Liberals and conservatives had come together and had the Cook County, Illinois machine on the ropes but Sen. Obama did not help them. In fact, he ended up endorsing the machine candidate that year in the competitive general election and called him a good progressive Democrat. In this case he didn’t support the reformer, because to support the reformer in that election, he would have upset all the allies of the machine politician. That would have been against the interests of now-convicted developer Tony Rezko, who was tied closely to the Stroger family. He would have upset Mayor Daley, he would have to upset Emil Jones. So he played along like a good machine politician.

Obama’s very much about the old politics, and he’s very much not a reformer. It shouldn’t be a surprise except the only surprise is that he has managed to project this reformer image. Obama was denounced by a lot of liberals including some big people who were still big fans of his at the time.

Obama’s very much about the old politics, and he’s very much not a reformer. It shouldn’t be a surprise except the only surprise is that he has managed to project this reformer image.

MO: Why do you think the mainstream media hasn’t reported on these stories of Obama’s career in Chicago? Your book references many stories from the Chicago Sun-Times. Why does the national media ignore it?

DF: Well, unfortunately, I think the national media -- which resides largely in New York and Washington and perhaps out West in Los Angeles -- doesn’t look at or read the Chicago papers nearly as much as they should.

Part of the problem is that Chicago’s politics are so dirty that it’s almost hard to believe it’s true. Who would think that a guy who was convicted of stealing $4 million in quarters from Chicago area toll booths would then be given a city job with responsibilities where he could shake down city contractors for hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes and campaign contributions?

MO: That’s true!?!

DF: Yes, that’s absolutely true. The man earned the nickname “Quarters” because of his earlier conviction. He came out of prison and went right on to the city payroll shortly thereafter. He was part of one of Daley’s political organizations -- the Coalition for better Government -- so he got the job.

This is the way Chicago politics works and Sen. Obama can’t do or say anything to change it because Sen. Obama’s allies, the people who got him where he is today and the people who are going to help him become president of the United States -- they all started the problems.

He can’t speak out against the problems because his friends are the problem.,, (read on by clikkin' HERE)

The Guitar may be Mightier than the Pen is !!

Guitarists reminisce on early days

[Retrieved today at: http://www.bransondailynews.com/story.php?storyID=7281 ]
By Dave Abner / Copyright © 2006 The Branson Daily News. All Rights Reserved.

BDN Staff Writer dabner@bransondailynews.com (Note: The following is the first in a three-part series of stories.)

There’s a cliché about the Branson music scene: You can’t throw a rock 30 yards in Branson without hitting 12 guitar players.

Maybe there’s some truth in the statement.

Music meccas like Branson, Nashville, Las Vegas, New York and Los Angeles always attract musicians.

Lots of them.

And there are always a lot of guitarists in the mix.

How many? Nobody knows.

Some figures – likely largely underestimated – state that 15 million guitarists dot the globe.

But with hard numbers tough to come by – and some sales figures showing several million new electric guitars sold each year in the U.S. alone, many of those low-end models sold to novice players – the number is quite likely much higher.

Maybe the important question is not “how many,” but rather “why so many?”

Some simple answers.

Guitars are relatively small. You can pack one in a small car for a trip to the park or to take on a picnic.

They can be relatively inexpensive, with a number of decent models hanging off music store shelves for a couple hundred dollars a pop.

But, beyond the expected answers, why do so many musicians choose guitar over harmonica, trombone, piano, drums, tuba?

The answers are as varied as the musicians who offer them.

FORMATIVE YEARS

Larry Holiday plays guitar and sings for “Take it to the Limit,” an Eagles tribute show at RFD TV The Theatre in town.

Holiday’s almost half-century guitar odyssey began in a dream.

He said, “I had a dream when I was five years old I wanted to be a guitar player.”

When he was eight, Holiday inherited his father’s Stella guitar.

“My brother had dropped it down a flight of steps and it was a bit bashed up,” Holiday said.

Jack Pribek has earned a living playing guitar all over America. He landed some years back in southwest Missouri and served as business manager, bandleader and guitarist for Bill Dees. Dees gained notoriety in part for penning a number of hits with rock legend Roy Orbison, including the Orbison-Dees classic, “Oh, Pretty Woman.”

"Someone’s got it in for me, they’re planting stories in the press," (Posted on 29 Apr 2008 at 11:31 am Under: Guitar, Media, Music) ...And, I know who it is too; musician/journalist Dave Abner. A couple of weeks ago I mentioned that I did an interview for a guitar story with the Branson Daily News. It’s going to be a three part deal and the first part hit the streets this morning. Part 1 can be found here.

Pribek got his first guitar at 14.

His parents weren’t thrilled by the idea.

Pribek said, “They wanted me to study a legit instrument... but said they would pay for the lessons if I saved up for a guitar.”

With a classically-trained pianist for a mother, Pribek’s parents insisted he learned to read music – a skill not held by all working musicians.

Holiday had a similar story.

“My dad made a deal with me. He said he would buy me an electric guitar and amp(lifier) if I would join band in school and play a horn.”

Holiday said he took up trombone. “The (teacher) goes, ‘You’re going to be a trombone player,’” Holiday said.

And Holiday was on the road to guitar ownership.

“(My dad) went to Montgomery Ward’s and bought me a Tesco Del Ray (guitar) and a matching amp.

“He got all of that for like eighty-nine bucks.”

Holiday’s first guitar lessons came in the form of what he heard coming out of a transistor radio during his formative years growing up in Indiana.

Raised near Chicago, Holiday said he went to sleep each night “with a transistor radio under my pillow.”

It’s where he learned about rock and pop, on radio station WLS out of Chicago, or what he heard on a late-night blues-soul broadcast on a station “out of Gary or Calumet City.

“I got pop music from WLS, and blues and soul from this other station.”

Pribek remembers an old Johnny Carson broadcast.

“I was about eight or nine and I remember seeing B.B. King on ‘The Tonight Show.’ He was making his guitar sing like a voice.

“Something about that grabbed me.”

Holiday remembers Elvis films that caught his eye years ago.

He said, “When I was a kid, I remember watching Elvis movies.

“He played guitar and it seemed like he was getting a lot of chicks.”

Pribek’s first gig – a real playing job, for money – is different than the $5-a-night tale told by many of today’s Branson musicians when recounting “first gig” stories.

In his early teens, Pribek and his young bandmates rented a community hall and hosted a Valentine’s Day dance.

They charged an admission and “made like four or five hundred dollars,” Pribek said.

Thus are guitar players – and concert promoters – born.

(Coming in Part Two: Becoming a professional guitar slinger.)