The End Is Near?

A conservative newsblog claiming that Cheney's leaving after the 2006 midterms! Don't get your hopes up; if this is even remotely true, there's a catch: this is Rove's way of vetting the GOP candidate for 2008, who would actually be eligible for serving TWO FULL TERMS all the way through 2017. That would make my son high school age before this troll left office, derailed another Middle Eastern country, armed North Korea, ended Social Security and gave the leftovers to wealthy people, issued a fatwa against all non-reactionary-knee jerk-freak out-conservatives, declared war on California, exiled free thinkers and helped orchestrate terrorist attacks just before every election while organizing a massive jailbreak for all of those who will hopefully serve time after being bought off by Jack Abramoff. I don't have enough foul language in my vocabulary to describe the contempt I have for the forty-third president and his administration; I truly believe he will go down in history as the worst president this nation has seen. He's divisive, wasteful, he failed to serve the needs of the people, violated the Constitution in several ways and created enough political tension to bring about an end to politics as we know it.

All of this reads like the Springsteen message boards since the release of the the news that Bruce will be making a Pete Seeger cover album. Die-hard fans have railed on The Boss for myriad reasons: Pete Seeger's music "sucks", he's not writing his own material, he's too liberal, he should keep politics out of music, it's not the E Street, blah blah blah. Naysayers be silent! The man's an artist, not an organ-grinder; he's going to do what he wants. Don't kill the messiah, find a new one if you don't like what he's done. All I think is that if the man took Steinbeck/John Ford dialogue and turned it into smashing political commentary ten years ago, then he'll weave some magic with straight-forward folk; he's already pushed the boundaries of "folk" storytelling anyways, have patience that something cool will come of this. In our political climate, don't tell me that Bruce couldn't do something cool with "Turn Turn Turn" and yes, I know the lyrics are from Ecclesiastes 3, the song nonetheless is Seeger's as he assembled the piece as we know it. Bruce has covered Woody Guthrie and even Dylan; hell, he's close enough that he could put out a record of cover versions of his own songs and I'd buy it. If anyone knows Pete Seeger's music, he or she would know that such radically liberal music of a half-century ago during the McCarthy era the the birth of the modern civil rights movement has much much relavance in today's world. I'm interested.