What is past is prologue
NBC News-YouTube Democratic Debate video
"Its Official: Mainstream Media Declares Bernie Sanders Winner of Debate."
"Elizabeth Warren Sinks Clinton's Hopes for Endorsement: In a speech before the Senate Thursday, on the sixth anniversary of the Supreme Court's Citizens United decision, Elizabeth Warren made clear -- for those with ears to hear -- that she will not endorse Hillary Clinton." She said: "A new presidential election is upon us. The first votes will be cast in Iowa in just eleven days. Anyone who shrugs and claims that change is just too hard has crawled into bed with the billionaires who want to run this country like some private club."
Hilary expressed outrage over the poisoning of Flint's water, which is good, but it's not clear she is correct that it has been swept under the carpet merely because the victims are largely poor and black. David Dayen on Twitter: "#PorterRanch is a collection of gated communities sickened by a gas leak for close to 3 months. Nobody "came running" to fix it #DemDebate" He's not wrong, and he talked about that, and about the comparison between Sanders and Clinton on financial regulation, on last week's Virtually Speaking Sundays.
Sanders releases universal healthcare plan before Democratic debate
* "Sanders vows to fulfill MLK's legacy in Alabama: 'We still have a long way to go'."
This is interesting - right-wingers funding a lefty-sounding ad against Clinton: "Wall Street-Funded Super PAC Airs New Iowa Ad Slamming Hillary Clinton's Ties to Wall Street." Oh, but is this Karl Rove's hand?
"Bernie Sanders Has One Pro-Wall Street Vote" - or does he? "This was an era in which voting against funding the federal government was considered a major governance faux pas. The bill sailed through both chambers of Congress, with few lawmakers even aware of the major new deregulatory changes."
* Robert Scheer: "Hillary Blames Bernie for an Old Clintonite Hustle, and That's a Rotten Shame."
I do have problems with the amount of control the states have over Medicare/Medicaid. I also think Medicare is pretty weak tea compared to the NHS, and I'd like to see the medical industry brought to heel rather than simply promising to cover their outrageous costs. So I understand what Karoli is saying in, "Sanders Defends His Single Payer Health Care Proposal But Questions Linger." No, wait, I don't, because this piece still accepts the frame Clinton has put it in, including the idea that letting the states have any control is not the present situation under Obamacare. Clinton is not proposing to solve any of these problems, she's just pretending that she wants to. And I don't understand this idea that somehow Hillary Clinton's "pragmatic" approach is more possible. We need to elect a Congress that will pass an improved plan before we can do anything. I can't imagine the current Congress doing it and I don't see Clinton as the one who has the vision or the coat-tails to do it. In fact, the "centrist" Dems have been consistently sabotaging any attempt to get real liberal progressives into Congress. So, no, nothing floats until someone fixes the Democratic Party. And that means getting rid of the DLC, not re-electing it. Ezra is more honest over at Vox with "Hillary Clinton doesn't trust you [...] "Here, again, Clinton knows better. Medicaid, the Children's Health Insurance Program - which she helped create - and Obamacare are already administered by the states and already rely on state funding. Sanders's plan would reduce the share of contributions states are responsible for and provide a federal fallback that doesn't currently exist if states refuse to participate in those programs. [...] All this, though, is Clinton's attempt to obscure the big picture: Sanders supports a single-payer health care system, and she doesn't. The technical arguments she's making about past legislation he's proposed could all be addressed if the bills moved forward. That's not the real disagreement between Clinton and Sanders. The real disagreement is he thinks we should move forward on single-payer, and she doesn't."
* "Hillary Clinton's absurd Bernie smear: Why attacking him from the right on healthcare makes literally no sense at all."
* Dean Baker, "Paul Krugman, Bernie Sanders and Medicare for All"
This number proves Bernie Sanders can win Iowa [...] The 43 percent of likely Iowa Democratic caucus-goers who self-identify as socialist is actually more than the number who identify themselves as capitalist - 38 percent."
* Nate Silver still doesn't think it's gonna happen, though.
"Human Rights Campaign Endorsement of Clinton Sparks Huge Controversy." Could it be because the current head of HRC once used to work for Bill Clinton's White House? It certainly can't be based on Clinton's superior record on the issue. And it wasn't based on a vote in the organization, because there wasn't one. Bernie Sanders answered Rachel Maddow's question about it by referring to the leadership of these organizations as "establishment" - which, of course, is true, because you can't hang around Washington lobbying Democratic bigwigs without becoming part of the political establishment. But that doesn't mean the membership of your organization is "the establishment". The establishment is a small collection of individuals, not the mass of underprivileged groups they purport to represent.
In a week when Ms. Palin made a word-salad speech endorsing Donald Trump that left many agape with its sheer incoherence, the dumbest entry still has to be this: "INDISPUTABLE: Bernie Is the Establishment, Hillary and Planned Parenthood are the Anti-Establishment", by Peter Daou. Now, I like Peter, even though I know he is a long-time Hillary partisan who has worked with her and thinks very highly of her, but this really takes the biscuit. "Bernie Sanders is a white male who has been in Congress for over a quarter century - his views notwithstanding, he is the definition of the establishment. Hillary Clinton is a woman attempting to break the ultimate gender barrier, the first female to become President of the United States - she is the definition of the anti-establishment." And, sorry, but when the head of an organization who spends a lot of time lobbying in Washington suddenly uses the prestige of their formerly non-partisan organization to endorse a political candidate they happen to have personal ties to, that's the establishment's network in action. When someone who used to work in the Clinton White House suddenly announces, without any consultation with the membership, that the gay rights organization they now head is endorsing Clinton, even though Sanders is demonstrably better on gay issues, that's the establishment network in action. Pretending that Bernie Sanders is more establishment than a multimillionaire former Senator and former Secretary of State who hob-nobs with the very people who have sucked the life out of our economy and still run it is like claiming that the miners who lost their livelihoods under Margaret Thatcher were more "establishment" than Thatcher was. It's just crazy. But I guess that's the kind of thing Blue Nation Review is suddenly posting now that it was bought out last month by a Hillary partisan. The radical change in its headlines from last month to this is downright scary.
* Also on David Brock's plate: "Correct the record doesn't want to be quoted when offering Anti-Sanders oppo research" - We all know David Brock is a Clinton partisan, but he doesn't want the public to know he does anti-Sanders oppo research and tries to slip it to the press without being named as a source.
Lee Fang asked Clinton if she'd release the transcripts of her Goldman Sachs speeches. She laughed.
The big guns are coming out:
* Ta-Nahesi Coates, "Why Precisely Is Bernie Sanders Against Reparations?" A better question might be, "Why doesn't anyone ask Hillary Clinton if she supports reparations?" Well, because they know the answer would be a nuanced version of, "No." Benjamin Dixon smells a rat, and Killer Mike is is on the same page. Chris Hayes talked to Coates, and I'm curious about why the Sanders campaign didn't respond to his queries. But it's clear that there's a difference between advocating policies that the current Congress won't pass (but another might) that have massive support from the public, on the one hand, and advocating policies that have limited support from the public that even a comparatively liberal Congress still wouldn't pass, on the other. Reparations isn't even a priority for the black community and is pretty unpopular with the public. This is not an issue you build mass solidarity on, especially at a time when half the white population feels that they, too, have had their resources ripped out from under them and they are practically slaves themselves. The latter concerns everyone, but reparations targets only a specific slice of the population. Bernie Sanders isn't actually campaigning for pie-in-the-sky, he's campaigning to do things we've already done before and can do again that the public has always supported, or things that have already succeeded in other countries that the American public massively supports. He's putting these issues on the table and reminding us that there is no earthly reason why we couldn't or shouldn't do them, and that we need to do them if we are going to go back to having the kind of country we all want. The kind of country in which, by the way, the black community's wealth grew enormously after the inception of the New Deal, and the rate of murder of blacks by the police dropped radically. That country was on a path to real equality for black people, but it was also on a path to making life reasonable for pretty much everyone.
* Paul Street, in "Race Without Class: the 'Bougie' Sensibility of Ta-Nehisi Coates," reminds us that Coates is essentially a neoliberal, however good a writer he may be, and he doesn't get the relationship of class to race nor the problems that hurt us all. "The 'satisfaction of thinking you are somebody because you are white' has always been a terrible lie. It has helped cloak white workers' subordinate and expendable status, which never disappeared despite the very real if limited advantages white skin privilege has conferred them relative to non-whites. It has injured those workers' material status by undermining their capacity to enhance their economic and political power by joining in solidarity with nonwhite workers. It has too often joined them in allegiance to rich fellow whites who couldn't care less about working class people of any color. It has focused white workers' ire on the wrong enemies - those with the least power (non-white workers and the poor) instead of the moneyed elite, which wields its wealth and power to cripple and destroy lives and the common good. And it has (along with numerous other the related reactionary messages in the reigning American ideology) encouraged white workers to blame themselves as well as even less privileged people of color for their own difficult circumstances under the remorseless reign of capital. 'Privileged' people are supposed to be doing well, after all. If they're not, it must be their own fault. Hence the rising death rates of working class white males, driven largely by alcoholism, drug abuse, and gun suicide. Hence also the popularity of 'The [white racist-sexist-nationalist] Donald' with millions of angry and marginalized white male 'Trumpenproletarians.'"
David Dayen: "What the Liberal Attacks on Bernie Sanders Are Really About: Self-styled liberal wonks and opinion writers decided to turn their guns on Bernie Sanders this week, deriding him as myopic, unrealistic and even wrong on the merits of his arguments on behalf of single-payer healthcare and systemic financial reform. But at least on financial reform, they weren't actually attacking Bernie. They were attacking Elizabeth Warren. It's Warren, not Sanders, who represents the leftward pole in the intra-Democratic debate over how deeply to reform the financial sector. Warren, not Sanders, manifests part of her vision in the bill she wrote - the 21st Century Glass-Steagall Act, named for the two Depression-era lawmakers who initially separated commercial and investment banking. When Hillary Clinton and her supporters in the media dismiss Glass-Steagall as unnecessary and dangerous, they dismiss a consensus in most developed nations about the need to break interconnections in finance. The radicals in this debate, in other words, are those protecting the deregulatory status quo."
Cory Robin is getting irritated: "Bile, Bullshit, and Bernie: Sixteen notes on the presidential campaign: This is becoming a straight-up rerun of the 1948 campaign against Henry Wallace. Except that Clinton is running well to the right of Truman and even, in some respects, Dewey. It seems as if Clinton is campaigning for the vote of my Grandpa Nat. There's only one problem with this strategy: he's been dead for nearly a quarter-century. As was true of McCarthyism, it's not really Sanders's communism or his socialism that has got today's McCarthyites in the Democratic Party worried; it's actually his liberalism."
Pierce: "We Haven't Scratched the Surface of What Bernie Is Capable Of. [...] Meanwhile, Sanders punches up at the elites that, frankly, have more power in our politics than he does, or than you do, or than any politician does. He tells his audiences that he can't do it alone, that the money power has grown too great for any one person to combat. He needs them more than they need him. He is not Napoleon, he is a democratic politician. And that makes all the difference and that's why the "populist anger" narrative is a shuck."
* "Friends say Bernie isn't electable? Robert Reich offers guide of 6 perfect comebacks for Sanders' skeptics."
* Bernie Sanders Campaign Political Ad - America
Meanwhile, a curious thing: "Hillary is no lock in Nevada either: Bernie threatens to steal another key primary." Interestingly, the union that represents the most black and Latino voters has decided not to endorse a candidate.
"The Head of the Democratic Party Is Either a Failure or a Liar: Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz said today that the Democrats' 2016 presidential debates were scheduled to reach the largest audience possible." She has to be an idiot. If she didn't know beforehand that Saturday nights opposite major sporting events during the busiest parts of the Christmas season were stupid times to schedule the debates, she certainly must have noticed everyone pointing it out as soon as we saw the schedule, so even if she was stupid enough to think those were good nights to schedule, why would she say such a thing in public after she managed to garner the lowest viewership conceivable?
"Meet Debbie Wasserman Schultz's First-Ever Primary Challenger: Tim Canova" - The DNC chair's new opponent is interviewed by Glenn Greenwald: "I am a lawyer by training. I studied at Georgetown University, and then was a Swedish Institute visiting scholar at the University of Stockholm. I practiced law in Manhattan for a large firm for a few years, and then went into teaching, and really my entire legal career was animated by the study of, you can say, making our institutions more democratically accountable. The thesis I wrote as a Swedish Institute visiting scholar was a comparison of Swedish and American labor law and corporate law, and comparing how in Sweden and in other European countries, labor had a seat at the table. Fifty percent of the board members were labor. And in the United States, labor doesn't have a seat at the table. They get run over. So that is the orientation - more democracy - that has animated me throughout my career. I served on Capitol Hill as a legislative aide to the late U.S. Sen. Paul Tsongas in the early 1980s. A lot of this is on my campaign website, on the About Tim page - that I was an opponent of financial deregulation very early. I was writing in the early 1980s that the Garn-St. Germain Act, deregulation of depository interest rates and lending standards, would be a disaster, that it was a repeat of what had happened in the 1920s. It opened the door to predatory lending and sub-prime mortgages. I was calling that decades before that actually came to a crisis stage, you could say. In the 1990s, both as a lawyer and as a law professor, I was warning against getting rid of Glass-Steagall - Brooklyn Law Review article in the mid 1990s, 1995. I warned against financial derivatives. So I've been a constant critic of Wall Street deregulation. I'm for Main Street; I always have been. I believe in the New Deal. I believe in bottom-up economics."
"WFSE/AFSCME Endorses Sanders for Democratic Nomination for President: The Executive Board of the Washington Federation of State Employees/AFSCME Council 28 on Sunday (Jan. 10) adopted a motion to endorse Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) for the nomination of the Democratic Party for U.S. president. The national union, AFSCME, endorsed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in October but grassroots support for Sanders has always been high amongst Federation members and Sunday's action reflects the homegrown perspectives."
* "Bernie Sanders Has The Most Effective Political Ads On TV"
"170 Economists Endorse Bernie Sanders' Plan To Reform Wall St. And Rein In Greed."
I guess it shouldn't surprise me to learn that Jesse Ventura and Henry Rollins feel the Bern.
"Liberals No Longer Amused By Bernie Sanders' Presidential Campaign. He doesn't actually mean "liberals", he means the Democratic establishment, but anyway: "Those in power expect liberals to police others on the left who would threaten their supremacy. So, when a political elite such as Clinton is faced with a formidable opponent, liberal pundits wittingly or unwittingly devise arguments for why Americans should vote against their interests and support someone who would likely manage government in a manner suitable for the corporate state." The arguments against Sanders amount to smears, a campaign of despair, and red-baiting. Speaking of which, I liked the headline Weldon Berger put on this one when he linked it on Facebook: "Stalwart Democrat frets that Sanders will lose the election when Republicans tar him as a commie, bravely goes there first."
* Speaking of red-baiting, David Brock is there, too: "Sanders smeared as communist sympathiser as Clinton allies sling mud."
Bill Black, "Wall Street Declares War on Bernie Sanders [...] Why do the Wall Street billionaires hate Bernie? Paul Krugman, unintentionally, provided the key in his most recent attack on Bernie. Krugman claimed that the key to what he claimed was President Obama's success was not 'breaking' 'Wall Street's power' over our economy and democracy. To Krugman and Hillary's horror, however, Democratic voters, like the median U.S. voter, understand that breaking the paramount power of the Wall Street billionaires over our economy and its political power that has caused us to descend into crony capitalism is essential to take back our Nation."
Paul Rosenberg has a great piece in Salon on "The truth about Flint: Kids drank poisoned water because of the GOP's radical, anti-democratic 'reforms': This nightmare happened because of deeply undemocratic steps taken after the GOP gerrymandered a blue state "
* "State of Michigan, Gov. Snyder sued in class action lawsuit over Flint water crisis." He belongs in jail, and so does his emergency manager.
* "Desperate MI Governor Tries Claiming Flint Poisoning Was ‘Natural Disaster', Obama Slaps Him Down"
* But could it be even worse than it already seems? What if this wasn't done just to save the city money?
State politicians everywhere are more dangerous than people realize until it's too late: "Senate pushes to eliminate health retirement benefits for North Carolina's teachers and state employees."
Glennzilla: "The Seven Stages of Establishment Backlash: Corbyn/Sanders Edition"
Republican surprise of the week: "Mitt Romney: 'I think we're nuts not to raise the minimum wage.'"
"Bloomberg, Sensing an Opening, Revisits a Potential White House Run" - if Sanders wins the nomination.
* Howie Klein thinks an indy run by Bloomberg would make the Clinton people happy and give them somewhere to go if Sanders is the nominee.
"Justice Ginsburg Hands Surprise Victory To Consumers Over Big Business" - This was actually a question of whether a class action could go forward, but the truly fascinating thing is that, though Roberts, Scalia, and Alito dissented, Thomas did not.
"Obama bans solitary confinement for juveniles in federal prisons: President Obama on Monday announced a ban on solitary confinement for juvenile offenders in the federal prison system, saying the practice is overused and has the potential for devastating psychological consequences."
Obama gave his last State of the Union Address, and spent a little time making up stories about how wonderful TPP is, but we all know they're not true: "The Deeper, Uglier Side of TPP"
"Obama Administration Enables Billionaire Takeover of US Public Schools: With the Walton billionaires doubling down in their efforts to accelerate the charter school industry and with the Netflix CEO, Reed Hastings, throwing in $100 million to privatize traditional public schools, one might think that the U.S. Department of Education would be a major line of defense for America's public schools educating the most underserved students or even a bold investor in sustainable community schools that are truly public. One would be wrong."
"With Inequality Rising, Billionaire Steve Schwarzman Expresses Surprise That American Voters Are Unhappy." Mind you, this is the guy who can't tell the difference between taxing billionaires and invading Poland.
"What $15 an Hour Looks Like: In July, Emeryville, California, passed the highest city-wide minimum wage in the country. Here's how workers' lives changed - and didn't." You know it should be $21, don't you?
"Reefer madness debunked as major UK study finds marijuana does not reduce IQ in teens."
"U.S. Radically Changes Its Story of the Boats in Iranian Waters: to an Even More Suspicious Version [...] So, to recap the U.S. media narrative: when the U.S. Navy enters Iran's territorial waters without permission or notice, and Iran detains them and then releases them within 24 hours, Iran is the aggressor; and the same is true when Iran aggressively allows one of its civilian jets to be shot down by the U.S. Navy. And no matter how many times the U.S. government issues patently false statements about its military actions, those statements are entitled to unquestioning, uncritical treatment as Truth the next time a similar incident occurs."
Alberta fracking operation closed indefinitely after triggering 4.8 earthquake.
Britain's only publicly owned railway delivered record performance for passengers before Tory sell-off: "East Coast Mainline had been placed in state ownership after previous privatisation deals collapsed but was flogged off again despite its outstanding performance "
"You're not hallucinating, MPs really did pass crazy bad drug law."
Monsanto Buys Up Heirloom Seed Suppliers
"Opus Dei: Neofascism Within the Catholic Church"
* "Is the Left Prepared for the Right's Terrorism?"
Billy Bragg made this observation in his FaceBook post on the death of Alan Rickman: "It's not only the timing of his death and the fact that he too was 69 that links him to David Bowie. Both were working class kids from council estates who went to art school where they gained enough confidence in their own creativity that they were able to go on to find fame and fortune. Is it still possible for working class kids to realise their potential in such a way? The art schools are almost gone, those that survive now charge a fortune. The social mobility that Rickman and Bowie experienced is increasingly stifled."
"ATVOD Has Closed. Now What?" Its attacks on the British porn industry, and on the internet, won't stop. "Now that Ofcom has taken the reins, we can expect to see the regulator lobbying for more censorship powers against ‘unacceptable' overseas content - which doubtless will go far broader than pornography. Currently, a private members bill to enable censorship is in progress through Parliament. Like previous non-government attempts, this will probably fail, but we should watch out for the contents of the Queen's Speech this Spring. Any mention of ‘online safety' or ‘protecting children online' will herald the impending end of free Internet access for British citizens."
RIP
Tor Books Senior Editor, David G. Hartwell, 1941-2016. And, among other things, the wearer of outrageous clashing colors and hilarious ties who would always go along with a sartorial joke, and had a hand in nurturing some of the most important authors and editors and other publishing geniuses in science fiction. Memory is flooded with images of joking around with him, his smile, and serious conversations as well. At my first worldcon, he turned me on to Frangelico, so naturally I poured some in his honor when I first heard the news that he was alive but not expected to survive. He was special to many of us, and I could go on at length about what he meant to me, but Patrick also had a close professional association and wrote this. There are more like that all over the net, our family is in mourning. And Kathryn Cramer, his wife, wrote this. And George R.R. Martin says good-bye.
* Eagles guitarist Glenn Frey, 67, dies. I had enormous respect for their compositional and harmonic skills, always spot-on emotionally, and smarter than they might have seemed to some.
* "Dallas Taylor dies at 66; drummer for Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young." Also of Clear Light and sessions work. Seems young until you think about how badly he treated himself. I mean, Keith Moon told him he did "too much drugs". Keith Moon!
* Dale Griffin, drummer for Mott the Hoople, 67 - Their most noted tune was one David Bowie gave them, "All The Young Dudes".
* Giorgio Gomelsky, jazz club founder who gave The Rolling Stones and The Yardbirds their start, at 81 (although the Telegraph decided to headline him at 82, which wouldn't have happened until February).
* Robert Stigwood, music producer of almost everyone, 81: "In short, he was the man who put Cream together, launching Eric Clapton's career on the big stage; he discovered the Bee Gees and shepherded them through the highest points of their career; and he produced numerous iconic stage and film musicals, including Hair, Jesus Christ Superstar, Grease and Saturday Night Fever."
What a real soldier had to say about the clown protest: "Refuge of Scoundrels [...] If the Founding Fathers had depended for their independence on the various irregular militias, they surely would have all been hanged - separately and together. Those men, those men who led the Continental Army and fought for our freedom, those men knew exactly what they were doing when they included the words 'well-regulated militia' in the Second Amendment. And they for damned sure weren't talking about giving Americans the right to shoot down their own government - because those Founders were the government."
"Hillary Clinton Isn't a Lesbian - but She Dresses Like One." Kudos, even though it's Slate, because this is the territory I never did figure out how to navigate back in the days when I worked in - well, anywhere.
Interview with Marcy Wheeler, The NSA's Worst Nightmare
"What the Vanilla ISIS Crisis in Oregon Says About the History of Wage Labor [...] The thing that is, again, never taught or said is that most English peasants wanted land and not a wage, which was too low to adequately sustain them. The wage system also deprived them of free time (the war on Christian holidays was not started by atheistic liberals but by the big bosses of farms and factories). Subsistence farming, foraging, and hunting provided rural peasants with more than they needed. Wage labor did not, and as a consequence, the state, which supported the interest of capitalists, had to impose laws that banned hunting (game laws) and made domestic production nearly impossible (enclosures). The English transition to capitalism did not need slave labor because wages for landless peasants were very low. But in the New World, the United States, the situation was different. There was lots of land to be had, and so wages were very high, and it was almost impossible to keep white workers in factories, fields, or other market-related enterprises. As soon as they made enough money, they left and bought land and become independent. And it is here that we find the roots of American individualism; it's not in entrepreneurship but in revolt: White American individuals were fleeing the market-centered system. They wanted out. And the best way out was land, which provided the things that the market provided but for much less work and demands on personal space and time."
"Most Of The Radical Ideas The Black Panthers Had Are Now Totally Mainstream."
"Most of you have no idea what Martin Luther King actually did."
The U.K. National Health Service Act of 1946: "The Patient Protection and Affordable Health Care act signed into law by President Obama in late March is a complicated bill that overhauls the nation's health care system over a period of five years. It sometimes is mentioned in the same breath with the United Kingdom's National Health Service Act of 1946 which set up that country's government-run health-care system. But that law was a paragon of succinctness, occupying only 92 pamphlet pages. Here (in three parts in Adobe Acrobat PDF format) is Britain's National Health Service Act of 1946"
"Woody Guthrie Despised His Landlord - Donald Trump's Racist Father."
"David Bowie, rock star groupies and the sexually adventurous '70s: 'Labeling us as victims in retrospect is not a very conscious thing to do'."
"The Doctor Is Not In: BBC Delays Season 10 Of Doctor Who Until 2017."
You know, I had completely forgotten who played Scum of the Earth in the WKRP Episode "Hoodlum Rock".
"Victorian London in Incredible Detail: Here's a real treat. The National Library of Scotland's Map Department, supported by David Rumsey, have taken some very high-resolution scans of the Ordnance Survey 1893-6 1:1056 (that's 60 inches to the mile!) set of 500+ maps of London and, crucially, reorientated and stitched them together, so that they can be presented seamlessly (using OpenLayers) on top of a 'standard' Google web map or OpenStreetMap, with the base map acting as a modern context."
"David Bowie Tribute: Starman Gets His Own Constellation."
* "Did You Know STAR TREK's Dr. Crusher Choreographed the Goblins in LABYRINTH?"
Ronan Murray, the organist at St. Joseph's in Glasthule, Dublin, performs "Life on Mars" on the church's organ.
* Clip of Chris Nickol's performance of "Life on Mars" on the 115-year-old organ in Glasgow's Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum,
Six Into One: Seldom seen doc on Patrick McGoohan's cult TV classic The Prisoner
Classical Music Mashup knitted together by Grant Woolard, with visual aids. Quite a lot of fun.
Darlene McBride - Take Back America Tour
* Lewis Black on NY versus TX
16:10 GMT comment
Just for one day
I know we're all supposed to be fixed on the right-wing clown protest of a wildlife preserve, but everyone's already seen the story about how one of them took the money and drank it all up,* and the only other story I saw that truly entertained me was the one about the old man who took one of them down with his leg after the guy annoyed him.
"The Top 5 Reasons MoveOn Members Voted to Endorse Bernie (with the Most Votes and Widest Margin in Our History)"
* The interesting thing about this article isn't that it's in the HuffPo, and isn't that it says, "The Impossible Could Be A Real Contender In 2016," but that it's written by Howard Fineman.
* Tommy Chong gets out there for Bernie - because he wants to legalize "a real living wage".
* Even Booman reckons that Bernie has a real chance if he can win the first two contests in Iowa and New Hampshire and if the polls continue to say that Bernie fares better than Clinton in the general election. Current polls show Sanders running a few points ahead in NH and in Iowa, but only Sanders beating the top three Republicans in the general in those states, while Clinton only beats Trump (and not by nearly as much). Print out copies of the January 10th polling entry to show your local friends and relatives who keep insisting that Clinton is "more electable", since that seems to be one of their big arguments. True, the Republicans haven't really started going after Bernie yet, but since all they seem to have is "Socialist! He wants to raise your taxes!" this is a lot less convincing with some fairly simple push-back by people who can point out that "democratic socialism" (or socialism in general) is nothing like Soviet communism, and that it's more American than apple pie, what with being pretty much spelled out in the Preamble to the Constitution and all. And that Bernie wants you to have more money in your pocket at the end of the month.
* CNN has "Biden praises Sanders on income inequality, calls Clinton 'relatively new' to the fight," and at The Hill, "Biden: Clinton 'relatively new' to income inequality issue."
* "Bernie Sanders Is a Loud, Stubborn Socialist. Republicans Like Him Anyway."
Chelsea Clinton goes out scamming on Medicare for All for her mom: "'Sen. Sanders wants to dismantle Obamacare, dismantle the CHIP program, dismantle Medicare, and dismantle private insurance,' she said during a campaign stop in New Hampshire. 'I worry if we give Republicans Democratic permission to do that, we'll go back to an era -- before we had the Affordable Care Act -- that would strip millions and millions and millions of people off their health insurance.'" Wait, I've heard this before, and it was a lie then, too.
* "'Fighting Dirty,' Clinton's 'Inflammatory Distortion' of Sanders' Single-Payer Plan"
* "Nurses Blast Clinton Attack on Healthcare for All."
"Howard Dean, Now Employed by Health Care Lobby Firm, Opposes Bernie Sanders on Single-Payer."
Ian Welsh's 2015 in review: "The real dangers in the world are increasing. For the first world, this doesn't mean 'Islamic Terrorism,' which has never been an existential threat; it means political and economic instability at home. The people one should fear most are almost always one's own leaders, both political and economic, rather than foreigners, and this remains true."
And it's nice to see Thomas Frank finally saying what I've been saying for years: "It's not just Fox News: How liberal apologists torpedoed change, helped make the Democrats safe for Wall Street: Center-left pundits have carried water for the president for six years. Their predictable excuses all ring hollow. As the Obama administration enters its seventh year, let us examine one of the era's greatest peculiarities: That one of the most cherished rallying points of the president's supporters is the idea of the president's powerlessness."
"The DNC Junta Is Continuing the Democratic Leadership Council Coup"
"There Is A Bipartisan Refusal to Accept Obama's Push For TPP."
David Dayen: "Hillary Clinton Whiffs on Reforming Wall Street's Ratings Agencies: Hillary Clinton's response to Bernie Sanders' plan to aggressively break up the big banks responsible for the financial crisis is to suggest that he is naive. 'My plan also goes beyond the biggest banks to include the whole financial sector,' Clinton wrote in a New York Times op-ed in December. 'My plan is more comprehensive,' she said at the first Democratic debate in October - and for that reason, 'frankly, it's tougher.' But Clinton's vision of financial reform neglects one part of the industry everyone agrees was an essential factor in the 2008 crisis: the credit ratings agencies, which assess the worthiness of Wall Street securities for investors. Sanders' plan, released last week, would no longer allow the companies that issue securities to pick which ratings agency they use - a simple but outrageous practice that creates an enormous conflict of interest and helps facilitate fraud. The heart of Clinton's pitch on Wall Street is that she recognizes all potential hazards. But there is not one word in her big reform plan about the ratings agencies."
"ObamaCare's Neoliberal Intellectual Foundations Continue to Crumble" - Basically, the theory that's supposed to make Obama care "work" doesn't work, unless of course the real theory is something else.
"DNC chairwoman flippantly defends her support for war on drugs: In a recent interview with Ana Marie Cox in the New York Times Magazine, Chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee and Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz admitted her 'criminal-justice record is perhaps not as progressive' as the records of some of her progressive colleagues. Wasserman Schultz was asked during the interview about her status as 'one of a dwindling number of progressive politicians who oppose legalization of even the medical use of marijuana.' Her response was frankly a word salad of tired drug war cliches - the same ones that have fueled mass incarceration for decades."
* "DNC chair: Young women have been complacent since Roe. Young women: WTF?" Stupid woman. Who do you think has been fighting for reproductive rights while the "centrists" have been shushing the older women who've just gotten tired of having to fight Democrats on the subject?
* "Debbie Wasserman Schultz Blames Voters for Failures of Democratic Party."
* Pierce: "Update: Debbie Wasserman Schultz Is Still Head of the DNC."
* Controversial DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz To Face Progressive Tim Canova In An August Primary.
"Lawyers Went to Rahm Emanuel, Then Quashed the Laquan McDonald Video: The mayor's men demanded that dash-cam video be kept confidential for at least several years as part of a $5 million settlement with the teenager's family."
Elizabeth Warren And Chuck Schumer Will Have To Co-Exist
* VA-09 Congressional Primary Pits A Bernie County Chairman Against The Hillary Backer Who Loves Japanese Internment Camps
Pierce: "Joe Lieberman's 'No Labels' Group Has Labeled Donald Trump a 'Problem Solver'."
David Dayen, "The Problem With Hillary Clinton Using a Progressive Hero to Attack Bernie Sanders" The problem is that it neuters Gensler, silences him, because as part of the Clinton campaign he can't object to things he used to object to that Clinton herself seems unconcerned with. "When asked for Gensler's views on Massad's tenure and whether a hypothetical Clinton administration would prioritize restoring stronger derivatives rules, the campaign declined to comment. Gensler's comments about Sanders repeatedly attacked him for failing to consider the shadow banking system: the collection of financial institutions whose activities sit outside the regulatory perimeter. But after two years of CFTC give-backs, much of the derivatives market sits in the shadows as well. On this point Gensler and Clinton have said little, and the silence speaks volumes."
"Massive Online Backlash After Planned Parenthood Endorses Hillary Clinton." This seems like a bad move, since they have never done this before. Hm, maybe this is why.
"This Supreme Court Case Could Make All Public Unions 'Right to Work': The legal foundations of thousands of public-sector bargaining agreements could soon disappear."
Ryan Cooper in The Week: "How Michigan literally poisoned an entire city to save a few bucks [...] Why on Earth did they do this? Austerity. Aside from the obvious humanitarian disaster, this is a stark demonstration of austerity's false economy. Trying to be cheap on Flint's water supply will end up costing the state of Michigan (and probably the country as a whole) a ton more money than it would have to fix it properly in the first place."
* "Michael Moore Demands MI Republican Gov. Be Arrested For Poisoning Flint's Water."
* Maddow: "Flint toxic water tragedy points directly to Michigan Gov. Snyder." And that's just one little thing Snyder has done.
"FBI Turns 18-Year-Old With An IQ Of 51 Into A Terrorist; Dumps Case Into Laps Of Local Prosecutors." Really, the FBI should be embarrassed to have anything to do with these cases, and so should prosecutors.
"California Crisis Pregnancy Centers Dealt a Double Blow in Court: Two federal judges in California delivered a one-two punch to anti-choice activists at crisis pregnancy centers (CPCs) last week by declining to block the state's new reproductive disclosure law. The law, set to go into effect January 1, requires a public notice about access to abortion and birth control at pregnancy-related clinics statewide. CPCs have sought to block the California Reproductive Freedom, Accountability, Comprehensive Care, and Transparency (FACT) Act, arguing in a flurry of lawsuits that it violates their constitutional rights to ?freedom of speech, assembly, and free exercise of religion."
Al Jazeera America shutting down.
Squeeze makes David Cameron listen to insults
"DuPont's deadly deceit: The decades-long cover-up behind the 'world's most slippery material' [...] None of this would have come to light had it not been for a West Virginia cattle rancher named Wilbur Tennant who, along with four other members of his family, sued DuPont in 1998 claiming he had lost hundreds of head of cattle because of pollution from a landfill next to his farm. DuPont had purchased the patch of land, which included a creek that ran directly into the Ohio River, from Tennant in the 1980s, telling him that it would be used as a non-hazardous landfill. But soon after the landfill got underway, the creek started to turn black and smelly. Sometimes there would be a layer of foam on the water. Within a few years, about 280 of Tennant's cattle, which drank water from the creek, had died. When the Tennants cut open a cow to investigate the cause of its death, they discovered that its internal organs had turned bright, neon green, video footage recorded by the rancher shows. Tennant and his family members, too, suffered breathing difficulties and cancers."
Kevin Drum: "My Right to Die: Assisted suicide, my family, and me" - Unfortunately, not just a long think piece. I was so sorry to read this. Whatever differences I have ever had with Kevin's approach over the years, I still think of him as One of Us, a friend, maybe even family. This was painful.
Naked Capitalism:
* Job Guarantee Versus Basic Income Guarantee
* The Obama Report Card: The Good, the Bad and the Incomplete
* 15 Ways Bill Clinton's White House Failed America and the World
A more positive review of "The Big Short: The criminality of Wall Street and the crash of 2008"
"I'm From Philly. 30 Years Later, I'm Still Trying To Make Sense Of The MOVE Bombing" - So am I, it was and is incomprehensible that this could happen in a major city, and no one in authority paid a price. "The police had come with warrants for several people they believed to be in the compound at 6221. No one knew how many weapons the MOVE folks had, or even how many people were in the compound - the police guessed that there were six adults and possibly as many as 12 children inside." And the cops blew the place up.
How Saul Alinsky scared Mayor Daley into paying attention.
What happened to democracy in the UK: "From reactionary revolution to consolidation: 11 February 1975 to 7 May 2015"
Emily goes back to the orphan elephant refuge to give birth to her baby.
If I had a car, this would look good on my bumper.
This Triumph ad may not be historically or scientifically accurate. I loved it.
The Thrilling Adventures of Ada Lovelace and Charles Babbage - the comic.
Women In Stem Collection - dresses for geek girls, but I'm not so sure, since I don't seem to see any pockets. I did like the periodic table dress, though. But a smock-style dress would be a lot better for crawling around setting cables and such.
RIP: David Bowie, 8 January 1947-10 January 2016, who wondered if there were life on Mars and who fell to Earth, and who said good-bye, and I don't even know what I can say about this. Except, I guess, this. Well, and this, of course.
* Bowie's first TV performance
* Amiri Baraka, Polarizing Poet and Playwright, Dies at 79, the former Leroi Jones.
* Professor Snape, we loved you truly, madly, and deeply: "Alan Rickman, giant of British film and theatre, dies at 69 ." Always a commanding presence as either hero or villain. And Metatron. God, this has been a terrible week.
11:08 GMT comment
All your dreams are on their way
"Dave Johnson and Marcy Wheeler wrote posts in December referring to Jimmy Carter's 'Malaise Speech' and its relationship to where the United States is today. Marcy and Dave describe some key inflection points we can expect to see in 2016, ranging from the impact of climate change policy to the Saudi/Iranian axis' impact on the Middle East and US policy. Also, the effect of the Transpacific Partnership (TPP) on American policy and politics, and the role of declining middle class wages on the Presidential election. Jay Ackroyd hosts," on Virtually Speaking Sundays.
The Washington Post fires it's only regular truly liberal columnist, Harold Meyerson "More than any other columnist for a major U.S. newspaper, Meyerson provided ongoing coverage and incisive analysis of the nation's labor movement and other progressive causes as well as the changing economy and the increasing aggressiveness of big business in American politics. He was one of the few columnists in the country who knew labor leaders and grassroots activists by name, and who could write sympathetically and knowledgeably about working people's experiences in their workplaces and communities. Since Steve Greenhouse retired last year as the New York Times' brilliant labor reporter, no other major paper has a reporter who covers unions and working people on a full-time basis. Now with Meyerson's firing, there's not one weekly columnist who understands the ins and outs of organized (and disorganized) labor."
* "Bernie Sanders calls Washington Post's column cancellation ‘unfortunate'" is the WaPo's own story.
* Politico: "Washington Post: Harold Meyerson column dropped because he failed to attract readers" - but. "In my discussion with him, Fred cited two reasons for not renewing my column. In addition to the click-count, he said there was too frequent an emphasis in my column on 'unions and Germany,' by which he meant -- my phrasing, not his -- worker rights and an alternative form of corporate governance."
* Digby: "The Washington Post just dissed the single largest faction in the Democratic Party"
* Meyerson's last WaPo column
Bernie Sanders told Face the Nation that he thought he could win over Trump's supporters because Trump says wages are too high but he - and everyone else - knows wages are too low. Interestingly, Trump did a sudden turnaround on the issue, later, saying now that wages are too low.
In case anyone was wondering where the DNC was going to find "independent investigators" of the data breach, they're probably not so independent.
Atrios actually gave Barack Obama his America's Worst Humans Award* for this one: "A political bomb is about to blow up in the Democrats' faces." But read his comments in this follow-up post.
In The American Prospect, "2016: The Year of the Billionaire: This presidential election could show how private capital and secrecy conspired to take the political process away from the American people."
"The Sudden But Well-Deserved Fall of Rahm Emanuel" - Well, he's not dead yet, but I think the party is going to be less inclined to treat him like a rock star now that even rich Republicans won't snuggle up with him anymore.
* "Newly released emails reveal coordination after teen's death [...] The Chicago mayor's office, police and the body that investigates police shootings closely coordinated their response in the months after a white officer fatally shot a black teenager in 2014, emails released Thursday revealed."
Remember that guy who landed a gyrocopter on the Capitol lawn? He wants to primary Debbie Wasserman Scultz. David Dayen tweeted: "I would vote for the actual gyrocopter over Wasserman-Schultz."
Once again, the prosecutor sabotages his own case about cops who kill innocents. No one will go to jail for the murder of Tamir Rice.
* "The American criminal justice system is guilty of killing Tamir Rice"
* Pierce: "The Tamir Rice Shooting Reveals the Darkness at the Heart of Open Carry Laws" - Actually, I don't think this is about open carry so much as it's about police incompetence and cops who swoop in like raiders, ignoring safe procedure, and then suddenly behave like they are under threat.
Black man is pulled over by cops who just give him a warning. #NotAllCops are out of control, but the ones who are should be kicked off the force.
"Tennessee students lose voter ID challenge."
* Kentucky governor Bevin issues executive orders rolling back voting rights and minimum wage, gives Kim Davis a win: Last month, former Kentucky governor Steve Beshear issued an executive order last month that extended voting rights to roughly 150,000 ex-felons who had completed their sentences. Yesterday, newly-elected Kentucky governor Matt Bevin reversed Beshear's executive order as one of a series of executive actions that amounted to a laundry list of conservative priorities. Bevin overturned Beshear's voting rights expansion despite having previously supported legislation to that effect. Kentucky has some of the most restrictive laws in the country when it comes to restoring voting rights for ex-felons, and Bevin has previously said that he thinks the state should move to allow for automatic rights restoration. So voting rights advocates were hopeful - even optimistic - that he would leave Beshear's order intact when he took office while the legislature worked to pass a law to its effect. Instead, Bevin went out of his way to take voting rights away from people he has already said should have them. You will recall there are still questions about the election that mysteriously put Bevin in office despite consistent polling prior to the election that showed him losing - so it's certainly not surprising that he'd pull something like this.
"Edward Clarkin Is The Most Important Man In Journalism Today - And He's Probably Not A Real Person." (One reporter quit his job over this, and while I admire his position, I think he should have had a new job lined up before he suddenly cut off the family income on Christmas Eve. Nevertheless, if you'd like to help him out, I'm in favor of that, too.)
"Your Life Savings Could Be Wiped Out In A Massive Derivatives Collapse."
"Powerful Study Finds Marijuana Dispensaries Are Literally Saving Lives."
"Americans Want Cops Tested to See if THEY are on Drugs - Cops Say It's 'Unconstitutional'." Actually, I'd think it is unconstitutional, but since every damned employer in the US seems to be doing it for jobs that have nothing to do with aiming guns at people or driving a vehicle, I don't see why cops should be let off the hook. Oh, wait, they have powerful unions, that's why.
Joss Whedon pledges to give $50 to Planned Parenthood for every person who pledges a monthly donation, up to $100,000, wingers have a big sad.
The Most Undercovered Stories of 2015 (Part One)
Naked Capitalism's 5 of the Worst Examples of Biased and Distorted Media Coverage of Education in 2015
"Debunking The Big Short: How Michael Lewis Turned the Real Villains of the Crisis into Heroes"
Chris Hedges tells you prisons are even worse than you thought: "Prison State America: Inmates becoming corporate slaves in for-profit facilities."
Krugman on Privilege, Pathology and Power: "Just to be clear, the biggest reason to oppose the power of money in politics is the way it lets the wealthy rig the system and distort policy priorities. And the biggest reason billionaires hate Mr. Obama is what he did to their taxes, not their feelings. The fact that some of those buying influence are also horrible people is secondary. But it's not trivial. Oligarchy, rule by the few, also tends to become rule by the monstrously self-centered. Narcisstocracy? Jerkigarchy? Anyway, it's an ugly spectacle, and it's probably going to get even uglier over the course of the year ahead."
Bill Black doesn't think much of Hillary's position on Glass-Steagall: "So this is the same thing that your mother taught you when you said that you did it because Johnny did it. And she says, and if Johnny jumped off, you know, a building, would you jump off a building? Well, Senator Clinton says yep, we've got to jump off the building again."
Scalia: 'Don't cram' religious neutrality 'down throats of American people'"
"Economic apartheid: Explosive report shows how rich Americans have their own 'private tax system that saves them billions': The U.S. tax system is essentially regressive, and rich elites use the money they save to buy political influence." I'm sure I've mentioned this before, but there's a reason why you don't hear much about the "flat tax" anymore. Rich people don't want a flat tax - it would mean having to pay just as high a percentage as you do.
"Trickle-Down to Keep-the-Worker-Down: It's Not the 'Skills Gap' Driving Down Wages."
"History Teaches That We Have the Power to Transform the Nation, Here's How."
"Aside From The Legalistic Bribes, What Makes Politicians Tick?"
David Graeber: debt and what the government doesn't want you to know - video
"Sued Over Old Debt, and
Blocked From Suing Back" - But it's much worse than that, and it seems to me some states attorneys should be prosecuting these thieving companies.
"Quebec cop pepper sprays father driving his kids to school." So, they're hiring idiots as cops north of the border, too.
Beat the Press: "The Effort to Divert Class War Into Generational War: Lessons On Economics You Won't Get from Jeff Bezos"
David Dayen: "America Is Not Becoming More Liberal: "
"'Every president has been manipulated by national security officials': David Talbot exposes America's ;deep state'" in an interview at Salon about his book, The Devil's Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of America's Secret Government.
"So-Called 'Post-Capitalism' is Just Another Crappy Capitalist Snowjob." It's very trendy to make up stories about how the robots will do all the work or whatever fantasy they're having about how wonderful things are getting, but it's simply not true.
"Michael Moore just exploded the right's biggest lie [...] In a brilliant move, Moore has made his most patriotic film yet without shooting a single frame in the United States."
"When the Boss Says, 'Don't Tell Your Coworkers How Much You Get Paid'," it's illegal, but most workers don't know their rights.
John Ehrlichman explains the drug war in a few sentences.
Eisenhower and the Cold War Arms Race: 'Open Skies' and the Military-Industrial Complex by Helen Bury (review)
"A generation of failed politicians has trapped the west in a tawdry nightmare : A cosseted, arrogant elite has presided over a swift decay in the very liberal values it claims, with bombs and guns, to be defending."
Why you should always buy the men's version of almost anything
"All Muslim Life in America Is Seen Through the Lens of Terrorism"
"How Popular Music's Lyrics Perpetuate American Idiocy"
Sara Robinson, whose blogging - about hate groups and about how we can communicate with people who identify as conservative - I have long admired, has rejoined the blogging community with her own site. She ended her introductory post with this: "Unitarian Rev. Forrest Church, son of Idaho Senator Frank Church, gives us our benediction: 'We must first let go of the things that will not save us. Then we must reach out for the things that can.' If this blog has a mission, it's to become a place where we embrace the task of figuring out what we need to let go of, and what might bring us to slightly less imperfect future."
Mark Steel on David Cameron's generosity: "Money's no object for flood defences - unless they're too expensive."
This discrimination against white guys has to stop.
* Is Steven Moffat a, um, schlong?
"Muslims hilariously troll the hell out of ISIS after their call for new jihadists ends up on Twitter."
"Small Bavarian Town Fights Back Against Neo-Nazis in Hilariously Perfect Way."
Dave Barry's 2015 Year in Review - He says it was the worst year ever.
RIP: Meadowlark Lemon, Harlem Globetrotters' Dazzling Court Jester, Dies at 83 - An amazingly gifted athlete and comedian who became a much-loved legend to many. Watch A history of Meadowlark Lemon, The Harlem Globetrotters, and his Bucketeers in 15 minutes.
* Stevie Wright, singer for the Easybeats whose influence on Australian rock was enormous, at 68. Simels says: "One of the saddest rock stories ever, alas -- it's amazing he lived as long as he did. The bottom line, however -- as I've said here on numerous happier occasions -- is that the Easybeats deserve to be thought of as right up there with the whole Stones/Who/Kinks pantheon, which is to say along with any great Sixties band who wasn't The Beatles. Seriously -- they were that good."
* "Lemmy, Motorhead frontman, dies aged 70 after cancer diagnosis."
* Natalie Cole, singer and daughter of Nat 'King' Cole, dies aged 65. Here she is doing "Gotta Serve Somebody".
* William Guest of Gladys Knight & the Pips, at 74
* Trapper John: "Wayne Rogers M*A*S*H Star Dead at 82."
I haven't had a chance to listen to this yet (and not entirely sure that I can), but BBC World Drama did a radio play called "The Great Charter" that might be interesting: "This innovative drama charts the fight for rights and freedoms in the 21st Century's supra-state - the Internet - to mark the 800th anniversary of Magna Carta. It powerfully re-imagines the conflict which gave birth to the original Magna Carta in a fictional future to explore the current debate around digital rights." I think it will still be available to listen to up to the 21st.
Solstice Sun at Lulworth Cove - gorgeous.
Read Ken Liu's amazing story that swept the Hugo, Nebula and World Fantasy Awards, "Paper Menagerie". You'll love it.
Sir Terry Pratchett remembered by his daughter, Rhianna Pratchett: "We got a number of tear-inducing letters from fans who were nearing the end of their lives and took great comfort in imagining that the death that came for them would be riding a white horse called Binky. Dad had done something with more success than anyone else - he made Death friendly."
Of course, Christopher Lee has top billing among the voice actors in Soul Music. Terry Pratchett's Discworld Soul Music Part 1: "Soul Music is a seven-part animated television adaptation of the book of the same name by Terry Pratchett, produced by Cosgrove Hall, and first broadcast on 12 May 1997. It was the first film adaptation of an entire Discworld novel (following the Welcome to the Discworld short, which was based on a fragment of the novel Reaper Man)." Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7
Rehearsal: Somtow conducts Star Wars
Aretha sings for Carole King.
Simon & Garfunkel recently performed "Bridge Over Troubled Water".
16:25 GMT comment
