Billy Swan had been around the music industry for over a decade as a musician, songwriter (he penned Clyde McPhatter's 1962 memorable-if-minor hit Lover Please) and producer when he finally got his own record deal. He took full advantage of the opportunity, recording this New Orleans-influenced rocker that scooted up to #1 on the U.S. Billboard Pop and Country charts in November of '74.

(Trivia question: What song did this displace at the top spot on the pop charts, and which song knocked it off? The answer is sort of amusing, imo.)

In continuing the Christmas spirit, I'm asking you to help spread some joy by linking some good tunes. I know you've got it in you.

In this third installment of Years Of Crisis we're diving into 1958, which just so happened was the 10th anniversary of the series. Joining Edward R. Murrow was a group of Commentators whose beats covered the various global hot spots from 1948-1958. Each of them gave an assessment of how events changed the course of the world, from it's Post War (World War 2) environment to what it had become circa 1958. It appeared that every part of the globe had undergone some dramatic change in that ten year period, certainly not the least being the emergence of Communist China as a world power and the changing face of Asia in general. Africa was again a major topic of discussion, as were the developing relationships between France and Germany and the beginnings of the Common Market. Fading were the colonial powers, which began to see independence movements coming of age and spreading with Great Britain going through a reinvention of itself over the decade.

All in all, it's a fascinating document of the Post-War/Cold War world, and if it's a period of time you're the least bit curious about, worth checking out to see just how the evolution process took place in world politics.

Sometimes history just never ceases to amaze. Especially in retrospect.

Over to Geneva this week for a concert recorded live by Radio Suisse Romande's Espace 2 station. The Manderling Quartet is a new name to me, but they strike me as a solid little unit who are getting good word of mouth (and, I understand touring the U.S. in 2011). Tonight they give a nicely varied program of music by Felix Mendelssohn, Bela Bartok and Antonin Dvorak. The opus 1 Number 2 by Mendelssohn, Bartok's 2nd Quartet and the popular "American" Quartet of Dvorak.

The concert runs just over an hour and a half and it's split over two plays (as usual). The top player features the Mendelssohn and Bartok while the bottom player features the Dvorak and an encore. Funny thing, I've noticed over the past couple of years and couple thousand of these concerts that encores are something of a given lately. Everyone seems to be getting them. Not that they aren't deserved. But, it's getting to be like the obligatory encore at a rock concert. Just noticing.

Announcements are in French and are edited down to conform to time (and also because the announcer was really chatty).

And as always:

Transmission directe du concert
donné à l’Octogone à Pully
dans le cadre des concerts organisés
par «Pour l’Art et le Lutrin»

Quatuor Mandelring:
Sébastien Schmidt (Violon)
Nanette Schmidt (Violon)
Roland Glassl (Alto)
Bernhard Schmidt (Violoncelle)

- F. Mendelssohn: Quatuor à cordes no 2, en la mineur, op. 13
- B. Bartok: Quatuor à cordes no 5
- A. Dvorak: Quatuor à cordes, no 12,

Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi discusses Wall Street's recent whining about how terribly the Obama administration is supposedly treating them that John wrote about here -- Wall Street Masters still Whining about Obama's words even after the bail out. It's all GOP for them now.

Since the story is as mutually beneficial to the administration as it is to the thieves on Wall Street, Taibbi thinks it easily could have been either of them that decided to plant the story with the hacks at Politico.

A Dallas pastor who admitted that she entered a parishioner's home and removed belongings without permission is now saying that she was only trying to help.

The Dallas Morning News reported:

Sandy McGriff, 52, said she was trying to protect valuables at the home of her longtime friend Serita Agnew and made a horrible mistake.

Police accuse McGriff of stealing more than $10,000 worth of fur coats, designer purses and electronics from a home in the 2200 block of Village Way near Kiest Boulevard and Lancaster Road. She was also charged with resisting arrest.

McGriff spent most of Christmas Day in jail and was released on $26,000 bail in time for Sunday morning services at The Church of the Living God. The sanctuary is in the back of her husband's furniture store on Lancaster Road in east Oak Cliff.

McGriff invited reporters to her Grand Prairie home Monday to tell her side of the story.

She said she had been in Agnew's east Oak Cliff neighborhood on Friday evening to pick up a peach cobbler from a friend. "Something just told me to go past her house," McGriff said.

McGriff said that when she did, she saw two men coming out from the side of Agnew's house. She said she pulled her black Jaguar into the driveway and walked around the home. That's when she saw the broken kitchen window.

"My mistake was I did not call 911," McGriff said. "I just used poor judgment."

She said she cleared away shards of glass, stood on a barrel and climbed in through the window. She said she was trying to protect Agnew's valuables in case the men came back.

"I thought I was helping," McGriff said.

As Rep. Dennis Kucinich relayed to Jessica Yellin on CNN, he's not waiting for his the GOP in Ohio to redraw their congressional districts before warning his supporters that we're likely to see his eliminated.

Kucinich To Supporters: Where Will I Run If My District Is Eliminated?:

As a result of the post-Census reapportionment, Ohio has lost two House seats, going down from 18 districts to 16. And as such, it's widely believed that Kucinich's seat could be chopped up -- ironically, Kucinich's political real estate could be redistributed among his neighbors by Ohio's Republican legislators. As he writes in an e-mail to his supporters:

I will not wait until the Ohio Legislature produces a new map to start thinking of the options. The question will not be: Who is my opponent? The question will be: Where is my district? Seriously.

We are going to have to prepare for a different kind of election, possibly in a different place because my district may be eliminated. We are going to have to organize in a different way, now. The question will remain: Where?

(h/t Heather)
As I saw every talking head, editorial columnist and pundit inside the Beltway continue to hammer home this idea that Social Security must be "fixed" on the backs of those of us who will retire in the next 15 years or so, I wondered if I missed the Frank Luntz memo on Social Security. As it turns out, I did. The reason I missed it is because it was written in 2005 during the privatization debate, a time I desperately tried to forget.

As with Luntz' health care reform memo, there are several required themes which Luntz has instructed conservatives to hammer home. He must have refreshed it and sent it out again to the Washington Post and cable outlets this week.

In my post yesterday, I pointed to Samuelson and Gerson editorials in the Washington Post which said, in essence, Boomers have to take the hit because it's just the right thing to do. Here's a quote from Luntz' 2005 memo:

3. To achieve “generation fairness,” we have a responsibility to save Social Security RIGHT NOW so that our children and generations to come receive the same benefits we have enjoyed.

4. It would be easier to turn away and leave the tough decisions to others down the road. But we do things in life not because they are easy but because they are necessary — no matter how hard they are. And delay just makes the solution more difficult and costly.

Here's the language Samuelson used:

We have a fairness dilemma: Having avoided these problems for decades, we must now be unfair to someone.

and this:

The trouble is that hardly anyone admits that accomplishing these goals must include making significant cuts in Social Security and Medicare benefits for baby boomers.

Another Luntz talking point:

5. Social Security is a financially broken system; it will start going bankrupt in 13 years and will be completely bankrupt in a matter of decades. For the tens of millions of Americans who depend on Social Security, this is simply unacceptable.

6. Washington has done a terrible job managing the Social Security Trust Fund. A 1.6% return on your Social Security dollars is unacceptable. It’s time to give the American people a say in how THEIR money is invested and the opportunity to do better.

Gerson:

Obama's liberal base contends that the Social Security trust fund is not in immediate trouble. But this argument depends on an elaborate accounting trick. The trust fund is not filled with assets - gold bullion and Apple stock. It is filled with debt issued by the government to itself. The surpluses of the trust fund are in fact liabilities for the government as a whole. And these illusory surpluses are regularly used to subsidize the rest of the budget. The scheme begins to collapse in 2037, when promised benefits for Social Security recipients will suddenly drop by about 25 percent - unless the system is reformed.

This is how Frank Luntz turns the full faith and credit of the US Government into a negative. On the one hand, the argument goes like this: Debt (aka treasury bonds) must be paid off, and Social Security obligations hamper that effort. On the other hand, Social Security trust funds have been raided to pay for government activities and exchanged for bonds. In other words, twist it up and scare people by telling them the US government might not be able to meet its obligations while arguing for privatized accounts which invest in Wall Street securities.

But wait! There's an answer for the Wall Street investment problem too. And never forget, this was written in 2005, pre-meltdown:

For the people to trust Wall Street, Wall Street -- and Washington -- must be put in their place. “Wall Street” is America, and Washington will just spend it all. Amidst all the scandal and corruption within the Financial Services industry, it is important that Wall Street be seen as the driving force of the American economy, and as far removed from scandal as possible.

If you must address these scandals, then bring Washington into the mix, Make it a choice: Wall Street or Washington. Neither should control our money. We should make the choice ourselves. And any new system should enforce the principle of accountability.

Oh, the twists and turns. I'll leave you with this quote from the memo under a header that says it all:

DICK CHENEY WORDS THAT WORK

The Social Security system is in trouble. It’s been a fantastic program. It’s been there for 65 years. It has provided benefits for senior citizens over that period —for my parents. And it means a great deal to millions of Americans. I want to make absolutely certain that the first thing we do is guarantee the continuation of those benefits and keep those promises that were made.

But I have two daughters, and they seriously question whether or not there will be any system left for them. And that’s because of the demographics at work.

We know how many people are going to reach retirement age. We know when that Baby Boom generation is coming along. We know its going to drive .the system into bankruptcy unless we reform it.

Every single time they parrot these talking points, I'm going to point it out. I just need a catchy category title.
Luntz Lies? Pundit Panderings? Help me out here.

(h/t to Michael (paxromana5777 on Twitter) for finding the Luntz memo)

As Susie reported earlier, it seems right-wingers have brains with overdeveloped fear centers.

And what are they REALLY scared of? Why, Teh Gay, of course:

Two of the nation's premier moral issues organizations, the Family Research Council and Concerned Women for America, are refusing to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference in February because a homosexual activist group, GOProud, has been invited.

"We've been very involved in CPAC for over a decade and have managed a couple of popular sessions. However, we will no longer be involved with CPAC because of the organization's financial mismanagement and movement away from conservative principles," said Tom McClusky, senior vice president for FRC Action.

"CWA has decided not to participate in part because of GOProud," CWA President Penny Nance told WND.

FRC and CWA join the American Principles Project, American Values, Capital Research Center, the Center for Military Readiness, Liberty Counsel, and the National Organization for Marriage in withdrawing from CPAC. In November, APP organized a boycott of CPAC over the participation of GOProud.

As Steve Benen observes, they must be scared of getting cooties or something. Mustang Bobby at Shakesville has more.

You'll also note that many of the groups listed as stepping out from CPAC are groups newly listed as hate groups by the SPLC. They may be bitching and moaning about that, but then they keep proving its accuracy on a daily basis.

Former White House spokesperson Dana Perino who I'm quite sure is living comfortably enough that these austerity measures she's touting won't ever affect her life style informed the rest of us that we'd better take Paul Ryan's "Roadmap" seriously and be ready to "eat our spinach" so the wealthy in this country can keep their tax cuts.

Of course, no mention of spinach eating for the rich was involved in this conversation. Tucker Carlson proved that he can be every bit as a big of an annoying hack as Sean Hannity filling in for him this week and the Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore thinks that we need to do 15-20% spending cuts across the board to eliminate government programs to get our deficit under control.

I'm quite sure after listening to his blather for years now that he doesn't think any of those cuts should come from our military industrial complex and instead should come from those pesky government agencies that do things like making sure our food isn't poisoned, or regulating the fat cats on Wall Street or anything else that prohibits corporations from running amok and protects the working class.

What these talking heads like Moore of course ignore is we already got a full dose of trickle-down, regulation free economics from the Bush administration and we see how well that worked out for most of us. Some "spinach eating" for the wealthy and those who outsource our jobs is exactly what we need but the yappers in the media are going to keep up the drum beat that the have-lesses in this country who don't want to sacrifice sufficiently are just somehow not patriotic or "serious" or "adults".

The Philadelphia Unemployment Project demonstrating to save AdultBasic, the State of Pennsylvania insurance program to cover the unemployed. The Blues have refused to extend the contract.

Why did the insurance industry try so hard to destroy the credibility of Michael Moore's "Sicko"? Because once Americans saw what other countries had, they would begin to see what was possible -- and that would be bad for health insurers.

I'm pretty sure Americans would feel the same way if they saw the kind of safety net available to citizens in other countries -- Germany, for instance. Via Democrats Ramshield, an American expat, writing for Alternet:

The European Union has a larger economy and more people than America does. Though it spends less -- right around 9 percent of GNP on medical, whereas we in the U.S. spend close to between 15 to 16 percent of GNP on medical -- the EU pretty much insures 100 percent of its population.

The U.S. has 59 million people medically uninsured; 132 million without dental insurance; 60 million without paid sick leave; 40 million on food stamps. Everybody in the European Union has cradle-to-grave access to universal medical and a dental plan by law. The law also requires paid sick leave; paid annual leave; paid maternity leave. When you realize all of that, it becomes easy to understand why many Europeans think America has gone insane.

Der Spiegel has run an interesting feature called "A Superpower in Decline," which attempts to explain to a German audience such odd phenomena as the rise of the Tea Party, without the hedging or attempts at "balance" found in mainstream U.S. media.

[...] The piece continues with the sobering assessment that America’s actual unemployment rate isn’t really 10 percent, but close to 20 percent when we factor in the number of people who have stopped looking for work.

Some social scientists think that making sure large-scale crime or fascism never takes root in Europe again requires a taxpayer investment in a strong social safety net. Can we learn from Europe? Isn't it better to invest in a social safety net than in a large criminal justice system? (In America over 2 million people are incarcerated.)

Unlike here, in Germany jobless benefits never run out. Not only that -- as part of their social safety net, all job seekers continue to be medically insured, as are their families.

In the German jobless benefit system, when "jobless benefit 1" runs out, "jobless benefit 2," also known as HartzIV, kicks in. That one never gets cut off. The jobless also have contributions made for their pensions. They receive other types of insurance coverage from the state. As you can imagine, the estimated 2 million unemployed Americans who almost had no benefits this Christmas seems a particular horror show to Europeans, made worse by the fact that the U.S. government does not provide any medical insurance to American unemployment recipients. Europeans routinely recoil at that in disbelief and disgust.

[...] It's important to note that no country in the European Union uses food stamps in order to humiliate its disadvantaged citizens in the grocery checkout line. Even worse is the fact that even the humbling food stamp allotment may not provide enough food for America’s jobless families. So it is on a reoccurring basis that some of these families report eating out of garbage cans to the European media.

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