“Rain” Starts on March 2nd…

My ex-wife purchased, months ago, a ticket for our daughter to attend the show “Rain”.  I got Emily tickets to see a Beatles cover band a couple of months ago which she viewed as the best concert she’d been to – I am expecting that experience to be upstaged by the “Rain” concert.  Emily plays bass guitar and has most of Sir Paul McCartney’s songs memorized and she can sing them as well.

I was in the forth grade when the Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show.  I am glad that our generation produced material of interest to today’s younger generations.

Maybe we boomers are worth more than bloated health care needs.  Have any Beatles stories to share?  I have seond-hand stories, but they are the best I have to offer…

The webpage for Rain.

iggydonnelly

Where were the women?

“Lots of men in the room, nothing accomplished.  Where were the women at the Health-Care Summit? Dan Rather on the need to get more females in positions of power in America and around the world.

To be sure, some were in the room, most notably Kathleen Sebelius, secretary of Health and Human Services, and Nancy Pelosi, the first woman Speaker of the House. The Republicans had one female attendee, Rep. Marsha Blackburn from Tennessee, and the Democrats had three others: Nancy-Ann DeParle, the White House health-care adviser, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington, and New York Rep. Louise Slaughter. That’s it. Six women out of 42 attendees on a piece of legislation that deals with health care, an issue that affects all Americans.

If you were to rank countries by the percentage of women in their national legislatures, the U.S. would be somewhere around 75th, on par with places like Turkmenistan and Albania.”

What difference do you think women might make?

The Axis of the Obsessed and Deranged…

As our very own DavidB related yesterday, Frank Rich of the NYTimes wrote an interesting editorial about Andrew Joseph Stack III, the pilot who crashed his single engine airplane into the IRS building in Austin, Texas.  Rich was fascinated by the right’s reaction to this act domestic terrorism – in some cases they came close to praising the suicide mission as an expression of patriotism.  For example, Steve King (R) of Iowa said, “It’s sad the incident in Texas happened, but by the same token, it’s an agency that is unnecessary. And when the day comes when that is over and we abolish the I.R.S., it’s going to be a happy day for America.”  No one condemned the comments of King about the plane crash that resulted in the death of a single 68 year old postal worker.

Rich continues on and speculates that the political atmosphere is as poisonous now as it was in 1995 when Timothy McVeigh launched his attack on a Federal Building in Oklahoma City, OK.  I remember that time well and during that period I had a job where I often drove home late at night and to occupy myself I listened to A.M. talk radio.  The nuts were out in full force back in that day and I wonder if truly we are having a re-emergence of that painful partisanship.

I hope Rich is wrong.  See the editorial here.  What do you all think?

iggydonnelly

Monday, 3/1/10, Public Square