Music Friday: "Black Man in a White World"

Thankfully justice was meted out in the Ahmaud Arbery case. 

We still have to do so much better, however, regardless of how the psychopaths on FoxNews stir up racist white people and scare people about "critical race theory" or how schools are indoctrinating kids about this or that. 

Fuck FoxNews. 

Fuck Tucker Carlson. 

Fuck racists.

Fuck 2nd amendment idiots. 

"A Shot in the Dark" by Roger Ebert

In "A Shot in the Dark," I like the way Ebert points out his opponents' beliefs and how they don't cohere with their stance against universal health care, Romneycare, Obamacare, and the Affordable Care Act.

As he says, "Many of the opponents of Universal Health Care identify themselves as Christians, yet when you get to the bottom of their arguments, you'll find them based not on Christianity but on Ayn Rand capitalism. Financial self-interest and the rights of corporations are more important to them than loving their neighbors." 

A recent study also indicates that the expansion of Medicaid in states is probably saving lives. However, Kevin Drum, a blogger for Mother Jones, has a good take on the study with graphs and a link to the original study.

And here's another of Ebert's blog posts titled "The Body Count."

Music Friday: "Hoping Machine"

With the shootings in Tuscaloosa, Alabama and Aurora, Colorado this past week, it's easy for me to get angry, morbid, and even more misanthropic than I already am.

I just don't get it. 

Today "Hoping Machine" from New Multitudes is speaking to me. A video and the song's lyrics are below.

If you''re not familiar with the album, it's a collaborative album by Jay Farrar, Anders Parker, Will Johnson, and Yim Yames. They're playing Woody Guthrie songs.

Hoping Machine

Lyrics by Guthrie, Music by Farrar

Don’t let anything knock your props out from under you.
Always keep your mind clear, let your plans come out of mistakes.
These are the plans, and nothing can tear down
Made out of things that have already been torn down.

Whatever you do, wherever you go,
Don’t lose your grip on life, and that means
Don’t let any earthy calamity knock your dreamer and your hoping machine.

Music is the language of the mind that travels,
Carries the key to the laws of time and space.
Lonesome train whistling down the silent wail of wind,
Life is the sound, creation has been a song.

Whatever you do, wherever you go
Don’t lose your grip on life, and that means
Don’t let any earthy calamity knock your dreamer and your hoping machine

Out of order...

Quick to manufacture their schemes and ideas
Faster than any turn a tide can wash you out.
Word is the music, and the people are the song.
Tomorrow's chances feel like a singing god.

Whatever you do, wherever you go
Don’t lose your grip on life, and that means
Don’t let any earthy calamity knock your dreamer and your hoping machine.

Out of order...