Raised by the Tide

In the "best of" issue of Risen Magazine you can find a slew of really cool interviews. One of the interviews is with a man I respect a lot - Billy Corgan. When asked, "What would be a typical prayer for you?" Corgan stated, "There's this beautiful prayer that someone taught me recently. It's, um - 'I am as God created me, I cannot change my dwelling place. I'm now releasing and surrendering to God any imperfection that I've experienced of will experience. Jesus Christ is my light, my life, my love, my peace, my health, my joy, my vitality, my purity, my unity, my perfection and my freedom.'"

Coming from anyone that prayer is inspiring, but coming from Billy Corgan, a prayer like that seems to ring a little bit differently; a bit more impacting. Perhaps, a lot more honest.

Come down, Heaven

Please, anyone, tell me that Obama is not going down this route...

Sure, he's got his game together and he's appointing the right people for the jobs (or seemingly so) and he's ready to hit the ground running once in the Oval Office. But I cannot be more sick at the continued support of bail outs (especially the auto industry) and the flawed idea that a hundreds-of-billions-of-dollars economic stimulus package will help boost our economy. You know what I did with my economic stimulus check? I booked a flight to the UK. Others spent money domestically, sure. A laptop here and there, some clothes, dinners out and maybe some rims for a car. But all in all we saw how good the last one did us.

This is really frustrating, especially coming from the great hope, Obama. He wants to raise taxes 3%? He wants to bring back a 40% capital-gains tax? He wants to re-establish an inheritance tax? And then give poorly-spending Americans hundreds of billions of dollars. The logic doesn't add up. Not one bit.

Why not instead, don't raise taxes and don't try to stimulate an economy that cannot be stimulated with a couple of thousands of dollars per adult. How about setting more regulations in place to let the economy regulate itself. Citibank, WaMu and Fanny Mae don't need more money. They need more accountability.

Don't tax us more and give it right back to us in a stimulus check. That doesn't make sense. It took three (maybe four) years after The Great Depression for the horrible economy to regulate. After World War I and II, it took less time than that for the economy to land back on its feet. And it wasn't for bailouts and stimulus packages. It certainly wasn't for raising taxes. And by 'economy' I do not mean today's bear market which is based mostly on perception and fear. That is not representative of our economy.

Here's to another four years.

Returning Empty Handed

I had the pleasure of watching the DVD release of the Bob Dylan biopic, I'm Not There. Writer/director, Todd Haynes had the intuition and, well, skill to re-tell an intertwining version of the life of Dylan through six different and very unusual characters (shown in the photo above).

The story covers most of Dylan's life up until the 80's somewhere, but details everything from his very public friendships and relationships to his short-lived acting career. His family life - wife and children - are covered in the form of Heath Ledger and Charlotte Gainsbourg who do an amazing job portraying Dylan and wife.

The intertwined stories take a little while to start piecing together as they jump from one part of Dylan's life to another, but I think if you're going to cover the life of Bob Dylan you have to do it in a very non-traditional way and that is done extremely well in this film.

Lowercase West Thomas

Ok, so I didn't want dwell on this miserable prospect of the government bailing out Detroit, but I just read an amazing op-ed by Mitt Romney for why the bailout is wrong. Here's that article.

My favorite thing he said was, "Without that bailout, Detroit will need to drastically restructure itself. With it, the automakers will stay the course — the suicidal course of declining market shares, insurmountable labor and retiree burdens, technology atrophy, product inferiority and never-ending job losses. Detroit needs a turnaround, not a check."

Well put, Mitt.

In a perfect world

Since I don't want to post an entire blog about the fact that our government might actually bail out automakers on some financial level and how that's flipping insane and completely messes with the fact that non-innovative car makers should pay for not having the foresight to step into the future, I decided to mention a really cool band that you should check out. Well, at least check out their new stuff.

Head over to the myspace page and listen to The Myriad. They have kicked out some great new songs with some solid production behind them.

After giving a listen, check out their cool video for the song Grandfather Clock. It's really well done.

Until I Can See

I know this is a bit outdated, but I cannot express the joy in my heart to see the slime ball, Phil Fulmer, get the axe. Not much else to say except that I'm glad to see him go.