It's getting interestinger and interestinger ..... still.

Submitted by Roanman on Thu, 10/27/2011 - 07:25

 

From both Business Insider and Zero Hedge which is fascinating in and of itself.

The following video shows Oakland police deliberately firing teargas cannisters and/or flash grenades into a crowd of people seeking to help a seriously injured protester.

 

 

The following quote comes from a timeline published by the Oakland Tribune via Mercury Press.

 

6:25 a.m. 'Stupid people who were provoking the cops'

Michael Porter, 24, works full time selling DirectTV, has camped at the Occupy Oakland site for the last 8 days.
He was disheartened to see everyone disperse last night-- down to 30 people after 3 a.m.

"We lost a lot of them because of the tear gas. And it was because of stupid people who were provoking the cops. It's random people who see a big group and are like, 'let's start a riot.'
All it takes is one thing and it's like let's gas everyone.
And I kind of understand where the cops are coming from as far as responding to signs of aggression. That's why we've got to keep those people out."

He's hanging around hoping to educate newcomers this morning about not provoking the police. Then he's going to sleep in his own bed for the first time in a week and then, he says, come back down.

Why? "I've always been told to be the change you want to see; I want to see more people come out"

Up to a dozen protesters, all men right now.

A plate window across the street shattered around what looks like a rubber bullet hole. Protesters telling police one of them owes someone a new window.

Finally from Colorlines.com, click on the photo for a short and well done piece from Robert Levato concerning recent issues with Oakland's police department and the resultant election of Oakland's first Asian mayor and her subsequently appointed Black police chief.

It seems post racial America has truly arrived.

 

 

Apologies if the formating is strange on your screen.

Try as I might, I couldn't lose the box around the above quote.

 

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To quote Milton Friedman over and and over and ...

Submitted by Roanman on Thu, 10/27/2011 - 05:16

Governments never learn.  Only people learn.
 
We have a system that increasingly taxes work and subsidizes nonwork.
 
I'm in favor of legalizing drugs. 
 
According to my values system, if people want to kill themselves, they have every right to do so.  Most of the harm that comes from drugs is because they are illegal.
 
Every friend of freedom must be as revolted as I am by the prospect of turning the United States into an armed camp, by the vision of jails filled with casual drug users and of an army of enforcers empowered to invade the liberty of citizens on slight evidence.
 
The Great Depression, like most other periods of severe unemployment, was produced by government mismanagement rather than by any inherent instability of the private economy.
 
The greatest advances of civilization, whether in architecture or painting, in science and literature, in industry or agriculture, have never come from centralized government.
 
So the question is, do corporate executives, provided they stay within the law, have responsibilities in their business activities other than to make as much money for their stockholders as possible?  And my answer to that is, no they do not.
 
Nothing is so permanent as a temporary government program.
 
What kind of society isn't structured on greed?  The problem of social organization is how to set up an arrangement under which greed will do the least harm; capitalism is that kind of a system.
 
History suggests that capitalism is a necessary condition for political freedom.
 
The most important single central fact about a free market is that no exchange takes place unless both parties benefit.
 
The black market a way of getting around government controls.  It was a way of enabling the free market to work.  It was a way of opening up, enabling people.
 
Most economic fallacies derive - from the tendency to assume that there is a fixed pie, that one party can gain only at the expense of another.
 
Nobody spends somebody else's money as carefully as he spends his own. Nobody uses somebody else's resources as carefully as he uses his own. So if you want efficiency and effectiveness, if you want knowledge to be properly utilized, you have to do it through the means of private property.
 
 

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What I been sayin' ... again

Submitted by Roanman on Tue, 10/25/2011 - 06:55

 

To quote Mike Krieger, www.ZeroHedge.com 10/20/2011

 

“The reason the liberal mainstream corporate media demonized the Tea Party is because it threatens the status quo. 

The reason the conservative corporate mainstream media demonizes Occupy Wall Street is because it threatens the status quo.

These are textbook divide and conquer strategies being used on the American people.

Do not fall for it. ( My emphasis.)

Yesterday I read a really interesting Gallup poll that stated: ‘Not surprisingly, Americans who consider themselves supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement (26% of all Americans) are more likely to blame Wall Street than the federal government for the nation's economic problems.

Supporters of the Tea Party movement (22% of Americans) are overwhelmingly likely to blame the government.’

What is most compelling to me is that 26%+22% = 48% so basically almost a majority. 

All we need to do is teach people that Washington D.C. and Wall Street are now the same corrupt entity. 

They are one gigantic rogue trader sucking the lifeblood out of America. 

If we can unite these forces, which I can say with certainty agree on the important issues, we can put an end to the status quo and free ourselves of this bondage.”

 

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Brownie and Blackie

Submitted by Roanman on Sun, 10/23/2011 - 08:57

 

I knew in advance I'd be posting this.

I also thought I knew between two people who it was that would call and explain it to me in no uncertain terms how it is that Pearly Gates could not possibly be the most famed guitar in the history of Rock and Roll when it was indeed Brownie that sold at auction in 1999 for what was then a record price of $450,000 and Blackie that subsequently shattered and still holds the record for the highest selling guitar of all time, having also sold at auction, this time in 2004 for $959,000.

I was so sure ..... I had it typed in advance.

I simply left a space open just up ahead a bit in order to insert the name.

As it happened I only had it about half right as it turned out that it came via email from our good friend Richie (don't call me Dickie) V. a better than average non pro picker and a for sure Strat guy rather than a D. brother.

So, ok Rich, I was layin' for ya.

This is Brownie. 

 

 

Fender Stratocasters sound nothing like Gibson Les Pauls, as they use mostly different woods, different body types (sollid vs chambered), pickup construction/configuration, set up, the list goes on and on.

To most people they're all guitars, but to a picker (which as previously disclosed I am not) the one is nothing like the other.

And that's before you get into the charactor of individual guitars as different pieces of wood from the same tree will display differing personalities.

As mentioned in the Gibson post, for me it's Tush that best defines that crunchy Gibson humbuckin' thing.

And it's Eric Clapton and Brownie's Layla that comes to mind when I think about that sweet, reedy Fender single coil sound.

And while I couldn't find any early 1970's Derek and the Dominoes performances of Layla, I did find this little treasure.

Live in the studio, this is Eric Clapton and Brownie along with three of the finest sidemen/hired guns in all of popular music, Bobby Whitlock on piano and vocals, Carl Radle on bass, and Jim Gordon on drums, together with Johnny Cash and the magnificently coiffed Carl Perkins.

Derek and the Dominoes.

It's Too Late and Matchbox.

 

 

This is Blackie.

 

 

To quote Eric Clapton from the book The Stratocaster Chronicles,

"My first Strat was Brownie, and I played it for years and years, a wonderful guitar. Then I was in Nashville at a store called Sho-Bud, as I recall, and they had a whole rack of old '50s Strats in the back, going second-hand. They were so out of fashion you could pick up a perfectly genuine Strat for two hundred or three hundred dollars — even less! So I bought all of them. I gave one to Steve Winwood, one to George Harrison, and one to Pete Townshend, and kept a few for myself. I liked the idea of a black body, but the black one I had was in bad condition, so I took apart the ones I kept and assembled different pieces to make Blackie, which is a hybrid, a mongrel."

Among Clapton and Blackie's hit records were were Lay Down Sally, Cocaine and I Shot the Sheriff.

Here's Eric Clapton and Blackie along with Tim Renwick on guitar, Duck Dunn on bass, Chris Stainton on keyboards, Jamie Oldaker on Drums, Shaun Murphy and Marcy Levy singing backup.

Layla.

 

 

Just to make things clear, Clapton recorded Layla with Brownie, but is playing it here with Blackie.

Unfaithful bastard.

You might have missed Duane Allman, I know I did.

Still, pretty good stuff.

 

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Your Government at Work

Submitted by Roanman on Fri, 10/21/2011 - 15:45

 

Anyone paying attention has probably figured out that we really like music around here.

And in the interest of full disclosure we're hacks on a guitar, but if given the choice of one and only one tone to bash away at, we're picking up that Gibson Les Paul Standard with a pair of Pearly Gates pups.

Think Tush.

You may have heard that the federal government has now twice raided the Gibson Guitar Company, confiscated their property and has subsequently refused to charge them with any crime.

On that third item, the United States government has actually fought Gibson in court in order to avoid charging them with a crime or even disclose what federal crime they are under suspicion of having committed.

Here is Henry Juzskiewicz, Chairman and Ceo of the Gibson Guitar Corp making his case.

 

         

 

The photo of the 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard reissue above will link you up to Gibson's site where you can check out some beautiful American made guitars and hear some more regarding Gibson's side of this story.

The photo in the upper right hand corner of this post is that of the one and only Gibson 1959 Les Paul Standard # 9 1171, Pearly Gates herself, Billy Gibbons' favorite axe and the guitar with which he recorded Tush.

Click on that photo for a nice Billy Gibbons interview in which he discusses how he came to own what is likely the most famous guitar in the history of Rock and Roll.

 

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