the sound of music

I was lucky enough to attend Linden Elementary school in the 50’s, a time when extra curricular classes such as Art, Library, Phys Ed and Music were considered just as important to the education of children as the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic. From kindergarten to the eighth grade, the students at Linden School were treated to the knowledge and care of Miss Marie Cyphers who provided all students with the richness, value and potential music could and would lend to our lives. Miss Cyphers used to tell her students you just don’t use your ears to enjoy music, you use your mind and let your imagination bolster the chords, the crescendos, and the cacophonies making each sound unique and inspirational.

For me music has always accompanied memories, experiences, and moments that for good or bad has left or leaves definite targets in my life. I hear a song, I remember when!

As I read or watch the news of August 2010, I also have begun to hear some distant melodies that seem to resonate with the ramblings of the radicals, the shouting of the sad, and the bogusness of the buffoons. Seems the creativity of lyricists seem to mesh with the ranting of the ridiculous. So now I close my eyes as Miss Cyphers had suggested and croon a not so pleasant tune.

If I Had A Gun- Gene Simmons

“He said, if I had a gun
I'd have me some fun
I'd shoot everyone
Who pisses me off today
So don't piss me off today.”

Tea party groups converged on a remote section of the U.S.-Mexico border on Sunday to show support for Arizona's controversial immigration law and hear from more than a dozen conservative speakers, many of them candidates running for office in crowded Republican primaries.

"We are going to force them to do it, because if they don't, we will not stop screaming," said former state Sen. Pam Gorman, one of 10 Republicans vying for an open congressional seat in north Phoenix. Gorman carried a handgun in a holster slung over her shoulder as she mingled with demonstrators. -msn

Seems that once again, those who bleed red white and blue, want those who they deem not so American to just bleed red. Seems that the wild west and its lawlessness, it’s laws made for some and not for all, it’s my gun is bigger than your gun insecurities has reared its head and is floating in the same rancid tea pot as the ones the Tea Bag Brigade likes to bathe in and drink from. Seems the Constitution is only strong and right when it suits the biases and bigotries of the Tea Baggers and is a useless piece of liberal hog wash when the Constitution approaches true democracy.

Can’t Buy Me Love- The Beatles

“I'll give you all I got to give if you say you love me too
I may not have a lot to give but what I got I'll give to you
I don't care too much for money, money can't buy me love.”

Billionaire Republican Meg Whitman has given her campaign for California governor another $13 million, bringing her total contribution from her personal fortune to $104 million.

The former eBay chief executive had spent nearly $100 million on her primary and general election contests through the end of June, making it the most expensive campaign in California history.-msn

Seems now a days you can buy… love, like and elections. Do a Google search on how many millionaires, billionaires are running for office. Many of them disguise their campaign ads to seemingly talk to the middle class and the poor. They speak of jobs and tax incentives, and end up being elected only to further the divide between wealth and poverty in this country.

They can buy the talents and savvy of sophisticated marketers and ad agencies, twist words, camouflage truth and dwell deeply on fear, ignorance and stupidity.

And since the boys and girls of Congress for eons like the idea of buying love, no one has made any real effort to pass campaign reform. Amazing how we have so many Americans living on minimum wage or less but billionaire Meg Whitman can use her chump change to buy an election.

Sending You Forget Me Nots- Patrice Rushen

“Sending you forget me nots,

To help me to remember.

Baby please forget me not,

I want you to remember.”

Independents who embraced President Barack Obama's call for change in 2008 are ready for a shift again, and that's worrisome news for Democrats.

Ominously for Democrats, independents trust Republicans more on the economy by a modest but telling 42 percent to 36 percent. That's bad news for the party that controls the White House and Congress at a time of near 10 percent unemployment and the slow economic recovery.MSNBC

It has only been 2 years since the 8 years of a Republican led downward spiral of an economy, which once had a surplus. It has only been 2 years since the 8 years of the Bush/Cheney tax cuts for the wealthy were introduced, regulations on anything corporate were slashed, and personal freedoms were eroded and evaporated. It has been 2 years since the Obama/Biden, Democratic majority has tried to stop the cancer created by irresponsible, unethical, selfish Republican leadership from the 8 years of lies, fabrications, and Un-American clandestine activities.

It has been 2 years of the party of “No”, and the amnesia has settled in so quickly that a majority of Independent voters want to bring back the bad old days? Amazing how the dumb remain dumb, the rich pay to dumb down the masses, and how history can repeat itself without too many people realizing it.

Two Faces Have I-Lou Christie

“Two faces have I

One to laugh and one to cry

Two faces have I

One to laugh and one to cry

Will I ever laugh again

She’ll never see my cry.

Will I walk with a smile on my face

Knowing I live a lie”

Campaigning as a family-values conservative, Ben Quayle first denied then admitted that he wrote for a sex-steeped Arizona website.

The racy website's founder, Nik Richie, said Quayle used the alias "Brock Landers," the name of a character from the 1997 movie "Boogie Nights" about porn stars in California, and wrote lines such as: "my moral compass is so broken I can barely find the parking lot." The website, now known as TheDirty.com, recently reposted the 2007 entries.

Quayle said he couldn't recall what his posts involved or when he made them.

This came out just days after Quayle sent a campaign mailer showing his wife and two young girls, with the words, "We are going to raise our family here." He and his wife have no children; the girls were his nieces. Campaign rival Vernon Parker accused Quayle of "renting a family."-MSNBC

It seems that if you invoke anti Obama sentiment, anti gay rhetoric, anti abortion smears, tax breaks for the rich slogans, drill baby drill arguments, and no regulations for corporation’s they all equal communism then all other immoral, unethical irresponsible behavior goes unnoticed and unimportant.

You can cheat on your wife but denounce same sex marriages. You can talk about how it is for the children but cutting education budgets or firing teachers because they are unionized are great values for the kids. You can talk about God’s plan and how he created all of us in his image, but deny global warming and refuse to believe that Gods creations, like wildlife, flora and fauna are dying or dying off. You can be like Ben Quayle, refuse to remember or own up to the past and promise “that was made up then and this will not be a made up now’, and run for office as a liar, a fake, and a phony.

I Started A Joke-Bee Gees

“I started a joke,

Which started the whole world crying,

But I didn’t know that the joke was on me, oh no.

I looked at the skies,

Running my hands over my eyes,

And I fell out of bed,

Hurting my head, from the things

That I said.”

U.S. military leaders inherited a faulty strategy for the war in Afghanistan at the end of the Bush administration and are still working to “refine the concepts,” the U.S. commander said in an interview airing Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

In his first interview since taking over as head of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan, Gen. David Petraeus told NBC’s David Gregory that when “a lot of us came out of Iraq in late 2008 and started looking intently at Afghanistan, we realized that we did not have the organizations that are required for the conduct and the comprehensive civil/military counterinsurgency campaign.”-NBC

Over 4000 US troops almost 250,000 Iraqi’s and Afghans, thousands of allied soldiers have died since this joke was started by two men who have yet to find their conscience. They both remain alive, kissing their wives each day, speaking to their children every day earning lots of money writing memoirs and pontificating about the wars they invented. They never acknowledge for more than a patronizing moment the sacrifices the average American has made in fighting these self promoted wars. They get their backs all bent out of shape when they are accused of lying and throw out the God Bless America harangue that they indeed have made America safer.

They are alive to see history report on the past and those who they sent to war are not around to find the truth. Isn’t it wonderful to hear WE MADE A FEW MISTAKES, and talk about how WE will move forward so as to not make those same mistakes? For a whole generation of 18 to 24 year olds who have died, or are now disabled or suffering the scars of mental anguish those past mistakes can never be fixed. Not a funny joke at all.

Music lasts forever. We still sing songs from ancient civilizations, and recite the lyrics created by generations of ancestors. Music can have such amazing memory and meaning. I listen to the current events of 2010 and somehow the music associated all sound scary and serious. They all, no matter what tempo, style, genre (were originally written) seem to have the sound of a funeral march. I am sure Ms. Cyphers could not even persuade her students to close their eyes and think lovely thoughts.