Hear and See The Eels on Jay LenoGo and listen to (and see) Mark Oliver Everett (aka E). He was on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno recently and he was great. The video is at the bottom (right side) of the page.
You can see him (and his band, The Eels) tonight on the Carson Daly Show.
The new album gets an A+ from me. Perhaps I'll soon have a chance to review it at BlogCritics.org.
I just adore Mark's work..and him. And Bobby Jr (his dawg).
Mountain Bloggercon This Autumn?Rumor has it:
There's talk of an autumn Mountain Bloggercon in Asheville, N.C.
*thanks to a little bird
Harry Reid - Stand Up and Fight For America!Thanks to Mark at The Common Ills, I found this blogpost at A Winding Road about the "nuclear option" and the out-and-out refusal on the part of the GOP to work with the Democrats. The Democratic leadership cannot keep offering olive branches to Bill Frist, who is gunning for our rights. I recently heard an ex-Congressman speak, off the record, about how the current Congress is alien to him - he recalls a Congress where Reps from both sides of the aisle worked, as statesmen, in the spirit of compromise for the good of America. The current GOP leadership are a bunch of radical thugs who care nothing for the rights of the minority - and President Bush does nothing to temper them, so I have to assume he is fully supportive of their actions.
Harry Reid needs to get tough - and now!Excerpt:
Reid is like the outcast on the school playground who keeps trying everything in his meager means to be accepted by a group of bigger kids as an equal.
The Republicans have made clear that it's their way or no way. Reid and the Democrats need to be making it clear that they've already been more than reasonable and are not going to give up the right of the minority party to filibuster without a real fight.
The Example of John Brown Raises Moral/Ethical QuestionsIn the current issue of The Nation, I read The Avenging Angel, Martin Duberman's book review of David Reynolds's new biography, John Brown, Abolitionist, and I began to think.
"There is something more terrible than Cain slaying Abel: It is Washington slaying Sparticus!"
- Victor Hugo, 1859
John Brown, the abolitionist, was a complicated man of deep moral values who was put to death in America for putting his faith and values into action in his own spiritual war against the moral hypocrisy of state-sponsored slavery. At that time, Christians used faith-precepts to defend state-sponsored slavery.
In contrast, today, our government expects us to call state-sponsored killing "for liberation" in Iraq (in what the Catholic church considers an unjust war) "heroic".
Think about that, in terms of moral and ethical consistency...and in terms of your personal faith.
In Duberman's words:
"Who, if anyone, has the "right" to kill? And from what source does the right derive? When does (or should) taking another life bring honor, and when disgrace? Is there such a thing as a "just" war that merits medals and heroes..? ..The ethical conundrums multiply even as their resolution resists consensus...
....No madman or fraud could conceivably have matched his astonishing eloquence and spiritual grandeur. This was a special man indeed, made so by the utter sincerity of his egalitarian convictions and his willingness to sacrifice all in their name. Reynolds has managed--long after someone else should have--to restore to us a flawed but deeply impressive humanitarian figure who makes the moral midgets currently dominating our national discourse appear, by contrast, the ignoble specks they actually are.."
Antinomianism is the belief that Christians are liberated from the observance of moral laws when God's grace is active. The belief was first attributed to St. Paul, who declared that his opponents "slanderously" had charged him with saying, "And why not do evil that good may come?" (Rom. 3:8). Antinomianism caused John Brown to kill in Kansas for egalitarian reasons. It causes men to bomb abortion clinics for what they believe is defending uninterrupted in-utero growth.
I ask myself:
Why, in spirit, do I understand why John Brown did what he did?
Why, in spirit, do I not agree with the men who bomb abortion clinics and take innocent life for what they see as defense of innocent life?
It has much to do with the value I place upon freedom. Freedom, for the slave, is a lot easier to embrace than the problem of freedom vs. faith which arises when the free control over a person's own body is threatened by the State. Is abortion not also an issue regarding some element of slavery? What would John Brown do?
The hand in this photo is telling you there is something going on inside this open womb. Personally, it causes me to understand what is real and often unseen to the eye. What is unseen to the eye is easier to neglect. I support sex education in schools along with abstinence programs, pregnancy prevention, counseling, and all adoption support because I believe there's more to that hand than meets the eye. A woman's right to choose should always be a legal option, along with the others.
This is one of the toughest issues we'll have to face in America. We have to learn to talk about it without the strong emotion that comes all too naturally to us.
New Address for Suburban GuerillaFYI: Suburban Guerilla's address has changed. The address may have changed, but blogsister Susie still provides the same great commentary.
Thanks to Elayne for the info.
