uTopianTurtleTop

I've always thought that the best part of being stuck listening to cheesy pop you wouldn't regularly listen to is you occasionally get the opportunity to challenge your knowledge of session players' sound. I have a running bet with a friend that Pino Palladino plays the cool bass stuff on that Paul Young tune (which only runs because we don't really care to actually find out). He says that while it sounds like Pino, it actually is John Giblin(?), the guy who was in Simple Minds. Is this kind of geekiness worse or better than being a Nader-head?
I think the absolute silence you hear following Feingold's censure proposal is only giving the Nader-heads more ammo.
 

I had a look on amazon... Everytime You Go Away first saw the light of day on the Hall & Oates 1980 album Voices.
So, it looks like you are right about the source.

Apart from that, thanks for the being uTopianTurtle Yop!
Best wishes,
Mister B
 

Larry Love,

I hope I speak for uTTT's readers as well as myself when I say that We Love This Kind of Geekiness. Thanks!

We'll see with the censure vote. Kerry has signed on; Dean is supporting it; Harkin, others too. In any case, Nader-heads can always invent their own ammo, such as the argument, sincerely presented on the aforementioned thread, that Gore would have invaded Iraq just like Bush did.


mister bijou,

Thanks for looking that up! A respected correspondent privately emailed me the same information, along with an mp3 of Hall & Oates's version of the song, which is gorgeous. That correspondent also ID'ed the singer of the contemporary R&B song I mentioned as Ne-Yo and told me the song & the album it's from are #1 in the country! It's a terrific song.

Apart from that, thanks for your note -- so nice of you to let me know that the pleasure isn't ALL mine!
 

John could you point me to your source on Kerry signing on to Feingold's censure proposal? Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair recently posted a piece on CounterPunch quoting from a Washington Post article that seems to contradict your claim:

"Dana Milbanke in the Washington Post had an entertaining piece last Wednesday describing the panic of Feingold's Democratic colleagues when asked for their views on his motion.

Barrack Obama of Illinois: "I haven't read it."

Ben Nelson of Nebraska: "I just don't have enough information."

John Kerry of Massachusetts: "I really can't [comment] right now."

Hillary Clinton of New York rushed past reporters shaking her head, then trying to hide behind the 4'11" Barbara Mikulski.

Charles Schumer of New York, who would normally run over his grandmother to get to a microphone: "I'm not going to comment."

Mary Landrieu of Louisiana: "Senator Feingold has a point he wants to make. We have a point that we want to make, talking about the budget."

Chris Dodd of Connecticut: "Most of us feel at best it's premature. I don't think anyone can say with any certainty at this juncture that what happened [i.e., the NSA's eavesdropping] is illegal."

Now granted, that was from last Wednesday, but even so, if Kerry has decided to support it since then, it seems to demonstrate the complete demagoguery of the Democratic Party.

Regarding your claim that Gore wouldn't have invaded Iraq: You never responded to my point on "Stop Me" that Gore and many leading Democrats made a number of hawkish statements about getting tough with Saddam Hussein pre and post Clinton. You can view that again here.

Further eroding your subjunctive claim that Gore wouldn't have invaded Iraq is the new report from a two academics from Harvard and U Chicago, which shows how the Israel lobby (which has donated more money to the Democrats in the past decade than to the Republicans) were a major player in crafting post 9/11 policy. From Justin Raimondo's latest column:

"The authors detail the penetration of the Clinton administration by the Lobby, which meant that the American delegation to the Oslo "peace process" negotiations basically took its orders from Tel Aviv. Yes, the delegation supported Oslo, but only within the limits determined by the Israelis. Palestinian negotiators had every reason to believe that, as they put it, they were "negotiating with two Israeli teams: one displaying an Israeli flag, and one an American flag."

...The Lobby's efforts to get us into war with Iraq are detailed, and the role played by the neocons within and outside the administration is examined with unusual candor. The central role played by neoconservatives is described, and the timeline of their triumph is explained. While they had some limited success in furthering their agenda of regime change in Iraq during the Clinton years, the authors describe 9/11 as the turning point."

The undeniable link here at the very least is between Israel lobby money received by Democrats (with Hillary Clinton at the top of the list) and their support for the invasion as well as their continuing support...
 

Welcome Tim D!

For people unfamiliar with him, Tim supports the right of states to teach the anti-science discipline of Intelligent Design in science classrooms. This is the level to which the Bush-apologists of splinterist progressive left has descended in their quixotic quest to persuade everybody that a Republican administration brings no significant difference to our lives than a Democratic administration. Ignoring, of course, the historical record of Clinton appointing Breyer & Ginsburg to the Supreme Court versus Bush appointing Roberts & Alito. Yes, Tim, the D's failed to filibuster Alito & Roberts. But even if they had filibustered, Alito & Roberts would be on the Supreme Court. Which they would not have been if a Democrat were president.

Now, to Tim's points.

I don't remember where I read that Kerry was supporting Feingold; it appears to have been an inaccurate forecast. As far as I know, the Feingold censure is still developing; we'll see where it ends up.

My reasons for thinking Gore would not have invaded Iraq:

1) From a strategic point of view, it made no sense. The Clintonists were tight with the NSA people (like Richard Clarke) who could not believe what they were hearing when Rumsfeld and the rest started talking about invading Iraq as a response to the atrocity of 9/11.

2) Gore was not a signatory of PNAC, which most of Bush's top people were; PNAC's first salvo was Iraq, and 9/11 was the excuse. For all of his odious sabre rattling, Gore was not looking for a reason to invade Iraq.

3) The Clintonists were all about multi-lateralism. You may remember the UN's refusal to endorse America's invasion. Gore would not have bucked that.

4) The Clintonists tended to follow the Powell Doctrine of low-(American)-risk warfare. Gore would not have bucked that for Iraq.


Of course, this does not PROVE that Gore would not have invaded Iraq. But the transformation of your well-marshalled evidence of Gore's disgusting hawkishness into an assertion that "Gore would have invaded Iraq" still falls into the category of "invented ammo." Politicians say a lot of crap they don't believe. Including Nader. The historical (as opposed to rhetorical) evidence is overwhelming that Gore would not have invaded Iraq.

Gore has speechified against the invasion from day one! I wish he had been as fiery & clear as a candidate. He probably would have won, despite Nader's best efforts to obfuscate the substantial differences between the 2 parties.
 

John, john, john….

I debunked your comment over at Stop Me on the "Necessary but not sufficient" post. Please pay extra special attention to the PPI link...
 

Tim's debunkment is fantasy -- he doesn't even address my points about Gore! He does, however, admit that not only should Intelligent Design in the classroom be decided locally, but also:

1) he doesn't care about abortion rights (yeah, he says, maybe the D's appoint pro-choice judges, but because not all of their judicial appointments are pro-consumer it does not matter that they're pro-choice, and besides, he continues, he would vote for an anti-choice politician as long as they agreed with him on other issues);

2) the Republicans' "all belligerance all the time" foreign policy doesn't matter (give the neo-cons their due, he says, pissing people off isn't the main intention -- really, he says that, as if they shouldn't be held accountable for a 99% likely outcome);

3) having a pro-science government doesn't matter; this despite the fact that Big Oil gives a lot more money to R's than to D's, because they know the R's anti-science agenda is good for them, among other things;

4) who-knows-how-many dead in New Orleans due to a deliberately incompetent FEMA is meaningless;

5) the budget deficit is meaningless, even though it will indebt the poor of America for many decades;

6) Alito and Roberts on the Supreme Court don't matter.

He really says this -- he really says that these things are meaningless.

The particularly sickening part is, he says these things are meaningless in the name of progressivism.

Oh, and he makes bizarre ad hominem assertions that because I vote for Lesser Evils in hopes of defeating Greater Evils, that I support all the Evils of the Lessers. I guess he thinks that the Vote is the only political action one can make.

Pitiful.