We are all supposed to now laze back and watch the latest Richard Curtis film: Politics, Actually, a charming tale of two 43-year-old rich men who have to run Britain together despite having different colour ties and eccentric armies of supporters tossing buns at each other in the background. Larks and hijinks no doubt ensue. But before you reach for the popcorn, can I briefly refer back to the will of the British people, before our ballots are so casually binned?
David Cameron went into this election with every conceivable advantage – a half-mad Labour leader randomly insulting his core vote; a comically biased media; a massive financial advantage over his rivals, flowing from a tax haven in Belize; 13 years out of power; a major recession – and yet he got only 36 per cent of the electorate to endorse his vision. To be fair, let's assume the 3 per cent who voted Ukip also broadly prefer it, and call it 39 per cent. Against this, 55 per cent of us voted for parties of the (relative) centre-left – the same proportion who say they want a country that is less unequal and less unfair. In any other European country, where they have democratic voting systems, it wouldn't even have been close. This would have been a centre-left landslide, with Cameron humiliated.
Elections are supposed to be an opportunity for the people to express the direction in which they want the country to travel. By that standard, this result is an insult. Don't fall for the people who say the Lib Dem vote was "ambiguous": a YouGov poll just before the election found that Lib Dem voters identified as "left-wing" over "right-wing" by a ratio of 4:1. Only 9 per cent sided with the right. Lib Dem voters wanted to stop Cameron, not install him. So before you start squabbling about the extremely difficult parliamentary arithmetic, or blaming the stupidly tribal Labour negotiators for their talks with the Lib Dems breaking down, you have to concede: the British people have not got what they voted for.
So what kind of government will we now get? There are two possibilities – and nobody (including Cameron and Clegg) knows which it will be yet. The first is a muzzled and castrated Conservatism, where the Lib Dems stop the Tories doing their worst, and smuggle some progress under the radar. There is some evidence for this. As part of the coalition deal, Clegg got the Tories to ditch a few of their ugliest policies – like giant inheritance tax cuts for double-millionaires – and got them to accept some excellent Lib Dem ones. Schools will now get a big cash bonus for taking in poor children, reversing the social apartheid in our playgrounds. There will now be considerably higher taxes on Capital Gains – the shares and second homes owned by the rich. Planes, the most environmentally destructive form of travel, will now face higher taxes. It's a shaming indictment of New Labour that they didn't do all this years ago.
Clegg deserves real credit for these changes – although it will be very hard to get any of this past the parliamentary Conservative party, who are now even more right-wing than before. To pluck just one example: an incredible 91 per cent of them don't believe man-made global warming exists. This oddball rabble are five times bigger than the Lib Dems, despite getting only 13 per cent more support.
Which leads to the second possibility: that the Lib Dems can only splash a few yellow dots on to a deep-blue juggernaut. This is what a lot of the Conservative right are gleefully anticipating. Fraser Nelson, hardcore Thatcherite editor of The Spectator, boasts this will be "a radical reforming Tory government with Lib Dem backing vocals". Indeed, it may be worse. Startlingly, during the negotiations, the Lib Dems actually talked the Tories out of their commitment to ring-fence spending on the NHS, dragging them to the right. Nelson smirked: "You gotta love these Lib Dems." In this vision, Clegg's sweet smile makes it easier for Cameron to drop the Rohypnol into our drinks.
In this febrile Dave New World, the Labour leadership election matters even more. Cameron and Osborne are committed to turning off the stimulus and cut-cut-cutting now, even though we aren't safely out of recession: check out the history books for 1937 to see what happens next. All their instincts are to cut services for people at the bottom and the middle. So long as the President of Argentina doesn't invade the Falklands, they must be odds-on to lose the next election – provided Labour gets this right.
So before the personality parade begins, Labour needs to ask – what did it get right over the past 13 years, and what did it get wrong? The right-wing policies pushed by the Mandelson Tendency that were supposed to make them "electable" were, in the end, albatrosses dragging their support down – from the City-licking that made us so vulnerable to the crash, to the one million killed in Iraq. By contrast, it was the true Labour achievements that remained popular: redistributive tax credits, doubled spending on the NHS, the minimum wage.
David Miliband is the candidate of the people who poisoned the New Labour years with right-wing fantasies. Peter Mandelson is merrily pushing him as the Blairite who can most attract wealthy donors and remains unrepentant about Iraq. His brother, Ed, is much more appealing: he gets global warming more than almost any other British politician, and injected some social democratic steroids into the Labour manifesto. Yet both Milibands – raised in a cerebral, highly political family – speak with a peevish anti-populism that doesn't communicate well.
While everyone is concentrating on the drama of two brothers standing against each other, there's a family battle that should matter more. It looks like Yvette Cooper is standing aside for her husband, Ed Balls – but she is a far more impressive candidate, and should be urgently pressed to reconsider. The politics of the next few years will feature a bunch of wealthy men shutting down SureStart centres, ending Child Trust Funds, sandpapering down tax credits, and increasing unemployment. Who better to oppose that than a down-to-earth young mum who has herself spent time on the dole when she got ill?
Cooper is rooted in the Labour tradition – her grandfather was a miner, her father was a trade unionist – but she has the ability to speak beyond it to the real Middle England, who earn on average £23k a year. In government, she piloted some of its most popular progressive policies, from SureStart to free fruit for all schoolchildren to tax credits. She defended them on TV in the election better than anyone else I saw: she's clever (a First from Oxford) but entirely normal, an unusual combination. Labour hameorraghed female voters at this election, while women in all parties were relegated to the role of silent beaming wives. It ended with a cabinet that has only one more woman than Afghanistan's. Isn't Cooper a great attention-grabbing antidote? Or do we still live in a 1950s world of brilliant women stepping aside for their less impressive husbands?
But whoever Labour chooses, it looks like we are about to face years of a ConDem coalition we didn't vote for and don't want. I hope I'm wrong and Clegg really will tame the Tories – but I'm braced for this movie turning into One Shotgun Wedding and A Bloody Long Funeral.
House Democrats had to scrap their only substantive bill of the week Thursday after Republicans won a procedural vote that substantively altered the legislation with an anti-porn clause.
Democrats had labeled their COMPETES Act -- a bill to increase investments in science, research and training programs -- as their latest jobs bill. It was the only non-suspension bill Democrats brought up all week.
But the Republican motion to recommit the bill -- a parliamentary tactic that gives the minority one final chance to amend legislation -- contained language prohibiting federal funds from going "to salaries to those officially disciplined for violations regarding the viewing, downloading, or exchanging of pornography, including child pornography, on a federal computer or while performing official government duties."
That provision scared dozens of Democrats into voting with Republicans to approve the motion to recommit. After it became clear the GOP motion was going to pass, dozens of additional Democrats changed their votes from "no" to "yes." In the end, 121 Democrats voted with Republicans -- only four fewer than the number of Democrats who voted with their party.
But because of additional changes contained in the motion, Democrats decided to pull the bill from consideration immediately following the passage of the motion to recommit.
The GOP motion also stopped all funding authorizations in two years as opposed to the five years contained in the original bill, abolished each new program established through the legislation, and froze all existing programs at their current funding levels until the federal budget is balanced.
Democrats accused Republicans of playing politics with a bill designed to create jobs through investments in research and development.
"For anyone that is concerned about federal employees watching pornography, they just saw a pornographic movie. It's called; 'Motion to Recommit,'" Science Committee Chairman and bill author Rep. Bart Gordon (D-Tenn) said. "It was a cynical effort to undermine an important bill for my 9-year-old daughter, for your kids and your grandkids."
"It's absurd," Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.) said. "It's specious, and it's disgusting. And those are the nicest things I can say about it."
During a colloquy with House Republican Whip Eric Cantor (R-Va.), Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said Democrats would bring the COMPETES Act back to the floor next week.
The coalition government's move to make it harder to dissolve Parliament is a "constitutional outrage", ex-Transport Secretary Lord Adonis has said.
The Lib Dem-Tory plan will mean that 55% of MPs must approve such a move to get it through the House of Commons. A simple majority is currently enough.
Labour's Lord Adonis said it raised doubts over the coalition's legitimacy.
But Lib Dem Andrew Stunell, who helped frame the deal, said it was needed to prevent an "ambush" on the Tories.
The coalition agreement between the Lib Dems and Conservatives promises a "strong and stable" government, with elections held on fixed dates every five years. 'Ganging up'
The raising of the threshold for a dissolution vote is intended to prevent a move to hold an election earlier than that.
The Conservatives currently have 306 out of 649 MPs - a 47% share.
One seat, Thirsk and Malton, is empty, pending a by-election on 27 May, while Sinn Fein's five MPs have not taken the oath of allegiance allowing them to sit in Parliament.
We have a quasi-presidential system here, without the checks and balances
Charles Walker Conservative MP for Broxbourne
It would be impossible for opponents, even if fully united, to muster the 55% needed to dissolve Parliament, unless at least 16 Tories rebelled against their party leadership.
Lord Adonis said: "This is a brazen attempt to gerrymander the constitution which calls into question the legitimacy of the coalition from day one.
"If the legislation ever gets to the House of Lords, it will meet opposition of an intensity and bitterness not seen for many years. This is a constitutional outrage."
However, Mr Stunell, the Lib Dem MP for Hazel Grove, told BBC Radio 4's PM programme: "What the prime minister has given up with a fixed-term parliament is the right to go to the Queen at any moment and just call a general election. Obviously that's what a fixed-term parliament stops.
"On the other hand, if your threshold for a special case is only 50%, in theory it would be possible for the Tories to be ambushed by other parties, including the Liberal Democrats, ganging up against them...
"Although nobody in the partnership has any intention of doing any such thing, it was a small matter for us to say 'No, we accept your concerns and if we raise that threshold to 55%.'
"That gives you the safeguard you want and that's the way we've proceeded."
Charles Walker, Conservative MP for Broxbourne, said: "It is for Parliament to decide when it's lost confidence in the government and I think we have to look at this very closely...
"This is perhaps just a little too much for our unwritten constitution to bear."
He added: "Parliament actually runs this country, not the prime minister. Over the past 100 years, Parliament has given away huge powers to the prime minister.
"We have a quasi-presidential system here, without the checks and balances. This would be the loss of an enormous check."
When Guru died there were immediate questions asked about his supposed deathbed diatribe against his old Gangstarr colleague DJ Premier, a diatribe that also seemed to just be bigging up his latest collaborator Solar.
The other day Ipostedsome emails that had been hacked from Solar's files regarding Solar selling Guru's house and getting royalty payments changed to his personal account from EMI all while Guru was in a coma. They also proved that Solar was the author of that deathbed letter. Now the hacker speaks to 'Vibe' You can get nearly all the hacked e/mails here and the password is #fucksolar.
The right wing blogosphere is cultivating more outrage. It seems the new A-Team movie portrays the US military as the bad guys. What's peculiar here is the original TV series was was about a group of vets who the military framed for a crime they didn't commit. While this writer insists he's aware of this, there must still be indignation The Outrage
A pod of Bottlenose dolphins swim under the oily water Chandeleur Sound, Louisiana, Thursday, May 6, 2010 in the Gulf of Mexico. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
A political activist today failed in her libel action over a journalist’s blog which referred to her “Baader-Meinhof" link.
In a ruling that gives bloggers some protection against libel actions, Mr Justice Eady rejected a claim by Johanna Kaschke , a Tower Hamlets-based Conservative, against David Osler, a Labour Party member, over an article that was written in April 2007.
Ms Kaschke claimed that some of the comments linked her with terrorism. The judge at the High Court in London, however, struck out the claim as an abuse of process.
Mr Osler, a journalist and blogger, said that he only posted the material after seeing an article on Ms Kaschke’s own website and had never suggested that Ms Kaschke was involved in bank robberies, violence or terrorism.
He accepted that, although she came under suspicion in the 1970s and was imprisoned for a time, she was not guilty of any criminal offence and was paid compensation in Germany for her wrongful arrest.
He said that he had given Ms Kaschke a right of reply, which appeared on the blog in May 2007, and was prepared to join in a statement reaffirming his acceptance of her innocence.
Ms Kaschke issued proceedings in April 2008, just over a year after the blog was originally published.
Mr Justice Eady agreed with lawyers for Mr Osler that the claim should be limited to a publication proved to have happened within the 12 months leading up to the issue of proceedings.
They also argued that the claim should be struck out because the passages relied in part on words from Ms Kaschke’s own website.
Robert Dougans, a media lawyer with Bryan Cave, said: “This ruling is good news for the online media, as Mr Justice Eady was clear that ‘stale’ blog posts and articles available online but not actively linked to a site will not be deemed to have been published without actual evidence that someone has read them.”
He said that would provide some protection for bloggers and online media pending any legislation to tackle the problem of the internet and “multiple publication” giving rise to endless potential libel lawsuits.
He said that the “multiple publication rule” still existed and that meant that each time a blog posting was downloaded there was a separate cause of action, no matter when the posting was originally put online.
However, he added: “This case means bloggers now can rest assured that just because a posting is available on the internet it will not be deemed to have been published. A claimant will need to put forwards real evidence that an old blog post has actually been read.”
The judge said that he was quite satisfied the posting did not link Ms Kaschke to terrorism in the sense of suggesting in any way that she was directly linked with it or that she approved of the extremist activities.
Mr Osler, he added, was merely choosing to highlight an unusual event in the history of someone who was at the material time active in politics in London.
Striking out the claim, he concluded that if a jury found in favour of Ms Kaschke, the damages would be very modest and out of all proportion to the time and money spent on the cost of a two-week trial.
He added: “It is an important consideration for the court to have in mind on any abuse application that the fact of being sued at all is a serious interference with freedom of expression.
“That may be appropriate in the majority of libel actions, where it is necessary to countenance such interference in order to vindicate the rights of another person in respect of whom a real and substantial tort has occurred.
“But the court must be vigilant to recognise the small minority of cases where the legitimate objective of vindication is not required or, at least, cannot be achieved without a wholly disproportionate interference with the rights of the defendant.”
Jackie Leven & Gordon Brown, alumni of Kircaldy High
Despite his clunky name-dropping of Arctic Monkeys early in his premiership, its hard to think of Gordon Brown as a rock and roll man. It was amusing then to learn at a gig last night that Brown is an exact contemporary of Jackie Leven, a great musical maverick who I often think of as Britain’s lost rock star. Leven is probably the most talented singer-songwriter never to have become a household name, producing neglected masterpieces since 1971, while leading a dramatic and colourful life.
Both Leven and Brown are 59 years old and hail from Kircaldy in Fife, where they attended Kircaldy High School. One of the pair became the first schoolboy in Scotland to be busted for drugs, formed cult band Doll By Doll, was nearly murdered in a vicious mugging which left him unable to talk or sing for a year, became a heroin addict, lost his girlfriend to the Dalai Llama’s bodyguard, self-cured and established an addiction charity of which Princess Diana became patron and has released over thirty albums rich with poetry, melody and the metaphysics and mysteries of life. The other became Prime Minister.
At an intimate gig at the Slaughtered Lamb in London to launch his latest wonderful album, ‘Gothic Road’, Leven (one of the great raconteurs, though not always the most reliable of narrators) described a recent encounter with his old school mate (who, it must be stressed, Leven considers a “political hero”).
On his new album, Leven collaborates with that great English troubadour, Ralph McTell. In October, 2009, McTell was honoured by the UK Parliament’s All Party Folk Music Group at a special award ceremony in the House of Commons, to celebrate his lifetime’s contribution to folk music. Leven was invited as McTell’s guest. It was, according to Leven, an extraordinary event, in which grown MPs started to sniffle and blubber during McTell’s iconic Streets Of London, until a wave of weeping swept through the room and reached the stage, causing McTell himself to break down in tears.
Afterwards, Leven claims he was standing with McTell when the Prime Minister approached to be introduced to McTell. Obviously he needed no introduction to Leven, who was greeted (to judge by Leven’s comedic performance) with a slightly suspicious “Oh, hello Jackie.” “Hello Gordon.”
Brown had a question about McTell’s classic ballad. “I have heard that when you originally wrote Streets Of London it was actually Streets Of Paris. I suppose you changed it to London for sound economic reasons?”
“No Prime Minister,” responded McTell. “I was living in Paris at the time I wrote it, but half way through I realised that I was really writing about London.”
Brown was not to be dissuaded from his theory, however. “All the same, I am sure that sound economic reasons must have played a part in the change.”
Despite the status of his interrogator, McTell was getting politely annoyed with this suggestion. “No, Prime Minister,” he insisted. “I was a young man and I wasn’t thinking about things like money, I was just trying to write the best song I could, and express my feelings about London.”
Brown was, apparently, not entirely satisfied with this version of the song’s creation. “That’s as may be,” he said. “But, of course, I assume you are aware that many of the conditions you describe in that song have been alleviated under New Labour.”
Where some hear poetry, others hear only statistics …
‘Gothic Road’, which will be released by Cooking Vinyl on April 4th. It contains a beautiful duet with McTell on ‘Cornelius Whalen’, a tribute to the last of the Jarrow marchers.
If you haven’t yet heard Leven’s work, despite my many entreaties in the Telegraph, then I urge you to put that right. You could start with ‘Gypsy Blood’, his lost masterpiece with his band Doll By Doll, and then catch up with some of his remarkable solo work, perhaps ‘The Mystery of Love Is Greater Than Death’ (1994), Fairytales For Hardmen (1997), Defending Ancient Springs (2000) or ‘Troubadour Years’ (under his alter ego Sir Vincent Lone) (2009).
Things must be tough over at Atlantic Records and its parent WMG. First label group president Lyor Cohen is selling his $28 million NYC townhouse and now Atlantic is asking fans to help fund an artist's second recording for the company.
While working on his sophomore album for Atlantic Records, trip-hop artist Natty is recording a separate stripped down collection of original songs. But rather than pay for the project, Atlantic has teamed up with fan-funding platform Pledge Music to ask Natty's fans to throw down the cash.
To encourage fans to invest, Natty's offerings offerings include £8 for the EP, introducing Natty from stage for £70, a private acoustic concert in your own home for £600 - £5,000 (not sure why there's such a wide price range), all the way up to Natty remixing your track for for £1,200. Atlantic hasn't announced if they'll be taking their normal full royalty from Natty on the EP. We only know that they won't be sharing the money with the fans that paid for it.
The right wing blogosphere is outraged that the new A-Team movie portrays the US military as the bad guys. I suppose the righties have completely forgoton the
There are songs that are better, there are songs that are worse, there are songs that'll become your favorites and others you'll probably lift the needle for when their time is due. But in the end, Exile On Main Street
spends its four sides shading the same song in as many variations as there are Rolling Stone readymades to fill them, and if on the one hand they prove the group's eternal constancy and appeal, it's on the other that you can leave the album and still feel vaguely unsatisfied, not quite brought to the peaks that this band of bands has always held out as a special prize in the past.
The Stones have never set themselves in the forefront of any musical revolution, instead preferring to take what's already been laid down and then gear it to its highest most slashing level. Along this road they've displayed a succession of sneeringly - believable poses, in a tradition so grand that in lesser hands they could have become predictable, coupled with an acute sense of social perception and the kind of dynamism that often made everything else seem beside the point.
Through a spectral community alchemy, we've chosen the Stones to bring our darkness into light, in each case via a construct that fits the time and prevailing mood perfectly. And, as a result, they alone have become the last of the great hopes. If you can't bleed on the Stones, who can you bleed on?
In that light, Exile On Main Street is not just another album, a two-month binge for the rack-jobbers and then onto whoever's up next. Backed by an impending tour and a monumental picture-book, its mere presence in record stores makes a statement. And as a result, the group has been given a responsibility to their audience which can't be dropped by the wayside, nor should be, given the two-way street on which music always has to function. Performers should not let their public make career decisions for them, but the best artisans of any era have worked closely within their audience's expectations, either totally transcending them (the Beatles in their up-to-and-including Sgt. Pepper period) or manipulating them (Dylan, continually).
The Stones have prospered by making the classic assertion whenever it was demanded of them. Coming out of Satanic Majesties Request, the unholy trio of "Jumpin' Jack Flash," "Street Fighting Man" and "Sympathy For The Devil" were the blockbusters that brought them back in the running. After, through "Midnight Rambler," "Honky Tonk Women," "Brown Sugar," "Bitch" and those jagged edge opening bars of "Can't You Hear Me Knocking," they've never failed to make that affirmation of their superiority when it was most needed, of the fact that others may come and go but the Rolling Stones will alway-ways be.
This continual topping of one's self can only go on for so long, after which one must sit back and sustain what has already been built. And with Exile On Main Street, the Stones have chosen to sustain for the moment, stabilizing their pasts and presenting few directions for their future. The fact that they do it so well is testament to one of the finest bands in the world. The fact that they take a minimum of chances, even given the room of their first double album set, tends to dull that finish a bit.
Exile On Main Street is the Rolling Stones at their most dense and impenetrable. In the tradition of Phil Spector, they've constructed a wash of sound in which to frame their songs, yet where Spector always aimed to create an impression of space and airiness, the Stones group everything together in one solid mass, providing a tangled jungle through which you have to move toward the meat of the material. Only occasionally does an instrument or voice break through to the surface, and even then it seems subordinate to the ongoing mix, and without the impact that a break in the sound should logically have.
One consequence of this style is that most of the hard-core action on the record revolves around Charlie Watts' snare drum. The sound gives him room not only to set the pace rhythmically but to also provide the bulk of the drive and magnetism. Another is that because Jagger's voice has been dropped to the level of just another instrument, burying him even more than usual, he has been freed from any restrictions the lyrics might have once imposed. The ulterior motives of mumbling aside, with much of the record completely unintelligible--though the words I could make out generally whetted my appetite to hear more--he's been left with something akin to pure singing, utilizing only his uncanny sense of style to carry him home from there. His performances here are among the finest he's graced us with in a long time, a virtual drama which amply proves to me that there's no other vocalist who can touch him, note for garbled note.
As for Keith, Bill and Mick T., their presence comes off as subdued, never overly apparent until you put your head between the speakers. In the case of the last two, this is perfectly understandable. Wyman has never been a front man, and his bass has never been recorded with an eye to clarity. He's the bottom, and he fulfills his support role with a grace that is unfailingly admirable. Mick Taylor falls about the same, chosen to take Brian's place as much because he could be counted on to stay in the background as for his perfect counterpoint guitar skills. With Keith, however, except for a couple of spectacular chording exhibitions and some lethal openings, his instrumental wizardry is practically nowhere to be seen, unless you happen to look particularly hard behind Nicky Hopkins' piano or the dual horns of Price/Keys. It hurts the album, as the bone earring has often provided the marker on which the Stones rise or fall.
Happily, though, Exile On Main Street has the Rolling Stones sounding like a full-fledged five-into-one band. Much of the self-consciousness that marred Sticky Fingers has apparently vanished, as well as that album's tendency to touch every marker on the Hot 100. It's been replaced by a tight focus on basic components of the Stones' sound as we've always known it, knock-down rock and roll stemming from blues, backed with a pervading feeling of blackness that the Stones have seldom failed to handle well.
The album begins with "Rocks Off," a proto-typical Stones' opener whose impact is greatest in its first 15 seconds. Kicked off by one of Richards' patented guitar scratchings, a Jagger aside and Charlie's sharp crack, it moves into the kind of song the Stones have built a reputation on, great choruses and well-judged horn bursts, painlessly running you through the motions until you're out of the track and into the album. But if that's one of its assets, it also stands for one of its deficiencies--there's nothing distinctive about the tune. Stones' openers ' of the past have generally served to set the mood for the mayhem to follow; this one tells you that we're in for nothing new.
"Rip This Joint" is a stunner, getting down to the business at hand with the kind of music the Rolling Stones were born to play. It starts at a pace that yanks you into its locomotion full tilt, and never lets up from there; the sax solo is the purest of rock and roll. Slim Harpo's "Shake Your Hips" mounts up as another plus, with a mild boogie tempo and a fine mannered vocal from Jagger. The guitars are the focal point here, and they work with each other like a pair of Corsican twins. "Casino Boogie" sounds at times as if it were a Seventies remake from the chord progression of "Spider and the Fly," and for what it's worth, I suppose I'd rather listen to "jump right ahead in my web" any day.
But it's left to "Tumbling Dice" to not just place a cherry on the first side, but to also provide one of the album's only real moves towards a classic. As the guitar figure slowly falls into Charlie's inevitable smack, the song builds to the kind of majesty the Stones at their best have always provided. Nothing is out of place here, Keith's simple guitar figure providing the nicest of bridges, the chorus touching the upper levels of heaven and spurring on Jagger, set up by an arrangement that is both unique and imaginative. It's definitely the cut that deserved the single, and the fact that it's not likely to touch number one shows we've perhaps come a little further than we originally intended.
Side two is the only side on Exile without a barrelhouse rocker, and drags as a result. I wish for once the Stones could do a country song in the way they've apparently always wanted, without feeling the need to hoke it up in some fashion. "Sweet Virginia" is a perfectly friendly lazy shuffle that gets hung on an overemphasized "shit" in the chorus. "Torn and Frayed" has trouble getting started, but as it inexorably rolls to its coda the Stones find their flow and relax back, allowing the tune to lovingly expand. "Sweet Black Angel," with its vaguely West Indian rhythm and Jagger playing Desmond Dekker, comes off as a pleasant experiment that works, while "Loving Cup" is curiously faceless, though it must be admitted the group works enough out-of-the-ordinary breaks and bridges to give it at least a fighting chance; the semi-soul fade on the end is rhythmically satisfying but basically undeveloped, adding to the cut's lack of impression.
The third side is perhaps the best organized of any on Exile. Beginning with the closest thing to a pop number Mick and Keith have written on the album, "Happy" lives up to its title from start to finish. It's a natural-born single, and its position as a side opener seems to suggest the group thinks so too. "Turd On The Run," even belying its gimmicky title, is a superb little hustler; if Keith can be said to have a showpiece on this album, this is it. Taking off from a jangly "Maybellene" rhythm guitar, he misses not a flick of the wrist, sitting behind the force of the instrumental and shoveling it along. "Ventilator Blues" is all Mick, spreading the guts of his voice all over the microphone, providing an entrance into the gumbo ya-ya of "I Just Want To See His Face," Jagger and the chorus sinuously wavering around a grand collection of jungle drums. "Let It Loose" closes out the side, and as befits the album's second claim to classic, is one beautiful song, both lyrically and melodically. Like on "Tumbling Dice," everything seems to work as a body here, the gospel chorus providing tension, the leslie'd guitar rounding the mysterious nature of the track, a great performance from Mick and just the right touch of backing instruments. Whoever that voice belongs to hanging off the fade in the end, I'd like to kiss her right now: she's that lovely.
Coming off "Let It Loose," you might expect side four to be the one to really put the album on the target. Not so. With the exception of an energy-ridden "All Down The Line" and about half of "Shine A Light," Exile starts a slide downward which happens so rapidly that you might be left a little dazed as to what exactly happened. "Stop Breaking Down" is such an overdone blues cliche that I'm surprised it wasn't placed on Jamming With Edward. "Shine A Light" starts with perhaps the best potential of any song on the album, a slow, moody piece with Mick singing in a way calculated to send chills up your spine. Then, out of nowhere, the band segues into the kind of shlock gospel song that Tommy James has already done better. Then they move you back into the slow piece. Then back into shlock gospel again. It's enough to drive you crazy.
After four sides you begin to want some conclusion to the matters at hand, to let you off the hook so you can start all over fresh. "Soul Survivor," though a pretty decent and upright song in itself, can't provide the kind of kicker that is needed at this point. It's typicality, within the oeuvre of the Rolling Stones, means it could've been placed anywhere, and with "Let It Loose" just begging to seal the bottle, there's no reason why it should be the last thing left you by the album.
Still, talking about the pieces of Exile On Main Street is somewhat off the mark here, since individually the cuts seem to stand quite well. Only when they're taken together, as a lump sum of four sides, is their impact blunted. This would be all right if we were talking about any other group but the Stones. Yet when you've been given the best, it becomes hard to accept anything less, and if there are few moments that can be faulted on this album, it also must be said that the magic high spots don't come as rapidly.
Exile On Main Street appears to take up where Sticky Fingers left off, with the Stones attempting to deal with their problems and once again slightly missing the mark. They've progressed to the other side of the extreme, wiping out one set of solutions only to be confronted with another. With few exceptions, this has meant that they've stuck close to home, doing the sort of things that come naturally, not stepping out of the realm in which they feel most comfortable. Undeniably it makes for some fine music, and it surely is a good sign to see them recording so prolifically again; but I still think that the great Stones album of their mature period is yet to come. Hopefully, Exile On Main Street will give them the solid footing they need to open up, and with a little horizon-expanding (perhaps honed by two months on the road), they might even deliver it to us the next time around.
A renegade Thai general was shot in Bangkok on Thursday as the military planned to encircle the barricaded encampment of antigovernment demonstrators.
Gen. Khattiya Sawatdiphol, 59, better known as Seh Daeng, was allied with the protesters. He was struck in the head by a bullet during an interview with this reporter. The Associated Press reached an unidentified aide to the general who described his wound as “severe.”
The general, an incendiary figure who was in charge of security for the protesters, had been called a terrorist by the prime minister, who named him as the chief obstacle to a compromise plan to end a two-month sit-in here in return for an election in November. The latest violence is the most serious since a failed crackdown in April that killed at least 25 people.
Commanding his own paramilitary force of former Rangers, he was suspended without pay from the armed forces. A special committee was considering whether to strip him of his rank.
In an interview on Sunday, he denied being responsible for any violence. “I deny!” he cried in English, with a laugh, when asked about the dozens of bombings that have set Bangkok on edge and about the mysterious black-shirted killers who escalated the violence on April 10 that killed 25 soldiers and civilians. “No one ever saw me.”
A tentative deal had been reached between the protesters and the government of Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, only to fall apart this week.
Witnesses heard a loud blast followed by bursts of automatic gunfire near the heavily guarded Silom area, which is close to the protesters’ encampment, The Associated Press reported.
Last month TorrentFreak exclusively revealed that Disney Enterprises and Paramount Pictures in association with Sony Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox, Universal Studios and Warner Bros. (collectively as the MPA) had begun threatening CyberBunker owner CB3ROB Ltd with legal action over their hosting of The Pirate Bay.
The MPA stated that since CB3ROB knows that The Pirate Bay is “an infringing site”, then the company had to take responsibility for bringing those infringements to an end – in other words, stop providing the site with hosting and bandwidth. Failure to comply would result in the MPA taking legal action against CB3ROB in Germany.
After receiving new information from a previously reliable source, we can now confirm that the MPA have made good on their threats.
It appears that Columbia Pictures, Disney Enterprises, Paramount Pictures,Twentieth Century Fox, Universal, and Warner Bros. have obtained a preliminary injunction against CB3ROB Ltd from the Regional Court of Hamburg.
The injunction, which was granted without an oral hearing, states that the CB3ROB company (and its Managing Director Mr. Sven Olaf Kamphuis personally) are hereby prohibited from connecting The Pirate Bay website and associated servers to the Internet.
The injunction relates specifically to The Pirate Bay offering torrents which allow users to download the following movies – The Bounty Hunter, Alice in Wonderland, Our Family Wedding, Green Zone, Repo Men and Cop Out.
The Court agreed that CB3ROB and Sven Olaf Kamphuis are liable for infringements on the above movies pursuant to the “Störerhaftung” principle. Also known as “disturber” or “interferer” liability, it means that someone who is knowingly connected to infringements can become the subject of an injunction, without actually carrying out those infringements themselves.
From the information currently available, in order to satisfy the Court it appears that CyberBunker have to either disconnect The Pirate Bay from the Internet, or the operators of the site have to do something that has never happened in the site’s history – remove the torrents listed in the injunction on copyright grounds.
The penalties for failing to comply appear to be very severe indeed.
The Court can fix a fine of up to 250,000 euros for each recorded case of infringement on the above movies. In the event that the fine cannot be enforced, it appears that Sven Olaf Kamphuis is being threatened with up to 2 years in jail.
“We have no information about this,” CB3ROB told TorrentFreak. “No letters have reached us or our attorneys.”
Q: There must have been a ton of outtakes from those sessions. How come you didn’t release more?
A: I went through a lot of stuff but then I started asking questions if it was really from “Exile” or not. And then I had to work out, well, what does that mean? It wasn’t all recorded in one go. I had to define for myself what the “Exile” period was. The first song recorded for “Exile” and eventually used for the album was “Loving Cup.” That was [a demo] in 1969. As far as unreleased things, I tried to avoid songs that had already been heavily bootlegged. I chose alternative takes of some songs, and others not so well known. One of them had some kind of vocals on it, which was “I’m Not Signifying.” The rest had no vocals or words, just [rhythm] tracks. So I wrote melodies and lyrics for those. That was my main thrust. I wasn’t interested in finding take nine of “Tumbling Dice.” I’m sure it’s there, it’s just that I’m not that interested in it personally. So for “So Divine (Aladdin Story),” “Following the River,” “Plundered my Soul,” I started from scratch on vocals. There was nothing in terms of melody or lyrics. The most challenging one was “Following the River,” because the chorus doesn’t go where I would expect it to. I was quite pleased with it in the end. All of the tracks had working titles, some of which I left on, like “Sophia Loren” and “Aladdin Story.” But “Following the River” was originally called “Wally’s Whistling Saw.” I wasn’t going to stick with that title for a romantic ballad.
Q: What was it about these particular tracks that made you want to finish them as opposed to all the others that must’ve been in that archive?
A: Between us -- and Don Was had quite a lot of input -- these tracks were not that heavily bootlegged. They weren’t as well known as others. And these were the ones that sounded most interesting, that felt musically quite diverse.
Q: Were the original “Exile” tracks remixed at all?
A: The original album hasn’t been touched, except being remastered. It’s been remastered about five times since released originally. Don and I did the remix on the unissued songs in the spirit of “Exile.” We kept it in the feeling of the original, we didn’t employ extra sampling or any sort of new tricks.
Q: Were you surprised by anything you found in the “Exile” archives?
A: Some were a bit loose, they were unfinished and very raw. But “Plundered my Soul” was very together, no mistakes, no messing about, very arranged, very thought out, obviously very together. The same with “I’m Not Signifying,” we didn’t really have to do anything. Others were a bit more loose, they went on and on, got a bit repetitive, so we had to do a bit of editing. I didn’t do any vocals on the alternate tracks. Keith did a guitar overdub on “So Divine,” he did a bit on that. But most of Keith’s things were all done. I did some acoustic overdubs and I did some harmonica on “I’m not Signifying,” along with the horn line. I did vocals, percussion, acoustic guitar, and a bit of background vocals.
Q: During the original sessions, was it tough whittling down to the original 18 tracks. Could it have been longer?
A: Probably, but at that time, it was released on vinyl. And short sides on vinyl gave you the best fidelity. That was quite good to have it the way it was set up, to have four sides, in the mastering process you got a better and hotter fidelity the shorter the side was. When you had 30-minutes-plus music on the side of a vinyl record, you lost volume and bass end as the record moved to the center. So we thought 18 tracks was good for a double album, and would give us a good, loud, rocking sound.
Q: You’ve never been particularly enthusiastic about “Exile” when you’ve been asked about it in subsequent interviews. Why is that?
A: I was being slightly annoying because people would always say, “Isn’t that your favorite?” And I would be a bit rebellious, just to annoy people who kept asking me if it was the best Stones record. I don’t have favorite records. I’m more familiar with songs when you put them on a set list for a show. It’s not a period, it’s just a song. And since you don’t play the whole record in a concert, you don’t really hear it as a record. You pick your favorites and find out what works live. For that reason, I don’t have a favorite Stones record.
Q: But “Exile” is now routinely cited as the best Stones record.
A: And it is a great record. What’s interesting about it is that it has so many sides to it, so many different musical styles, very bluesy, and it has soul, gospel, and the other quirky little bits that perhaps you wouldn’t have put on a record with only 12 songs. You would’ve thrown out stuff maybe like “Just Wanna See his Face,” but on a more sprawling record like this you could afford to let those things go. Which perhaps explain why it wasn’t immediately reviewed as stunningly wonderful. But after a while people get to appreciate the breadth of it.
Q: The record didn’t get great reviews at first
A: Oh, yeah. You know what reviewers do, they play the first three songs and then review the record.
Q: Thanks, man.
A: [Laughs] But you know what I mean. You can’t take in 18 tracks in a day. It’s hard. So you get through those four sides, it could take a while to really get the full picture. It’s a lot of stuff to get through. It took a while for the record to be appreciated for what it was.
Q: A lot of mythology is attached to the record about the working conditions not being the greatest.
A: It wasn’t ideal at the beginning. It took a while to pull the place together. Even a studio that’s brilliant is like that. It takes a while to make it work. There were a lot of teething problems with the studio. We had some experience doing that already. It was a few different rooms. It wasn’t perfect acoustically. We had to work at getting a really good drum sound, which is always the most difficult thing. An acoustic instrument only, that is always the challenge in these places. You want to get a great drum sound, and that was difficult. There were a lot of breakdowns of power. Once it got going. You get used to these surroundings. I think in the end it wasn’t that difficult.
Q: Did you do it in Keith’s house because you were worried he wouldn’t show up anywhere else?
A: No, not really. He rented a house with a lot of room, and there weren’t a lot of studios in that part of the world at the time. We had done previous recording in my house with the same mobile back in England. We did some tracks on “Sticky Fingers,” like “Bitch” and “Moonlight Mile” on the mobile, so it wasn’t a major issue.
Q: What was the songwriting like with Keith? Were you collaborating head to head, or bringing your own stuff in?
A: There was some stuff from England that we brought, licks and half bits of songs. We had stuff recorded in London like “Shine a Light.” And there were riffs born in that basement, like “Ventilator Blues,” “Rocks Off.” We had bits of everything from everywhere, and then we took it to LA to finish it off.
Q: So do you think it’s overstated how big a role that basement played in the way the record came out?
A: We recorded a lot of stuff in there, and it was a very important part of the record. How much is complete conjecture. Would it have sounded the same at Sunset Sound? Probably not. The way you record, the people around you, are what gives each record its personality.
Q: Was the constant party a distraction?
A: We were separate from all that down in the basement. We were cut off from the rest of the house, and people didn’t come down and do a lot of gawking. There wasn’t a peanut gallery, like a regular studio where you could stand in the control room behind glass. There was nowhere to watch from. Once we went to the basement, we were working. They didn’t bother us in the basement much. People get very bored watching people record.
Q: Jimmy Miller gets slagged sometimes as the producer for the murky sound. How do you feel about his role?
A: I think Jimmy was a good producer. At the beginning of his production work with us he had more authority than the end, to be honest. He was enthusiastic, always good with time signatures, that was a forte of his because he was a drummer. He did have a good attitude to time signatures, which is always useful. I’m very involved in time signatures, because just getting to the groove was important, and he was always good with that. Producing can be all kinds of roles. Help pick the good songs, you might have 25 and you have to tell the writer that something isn’t quite up to snuff, because writers think everything they write is always brilliant.
KEEF
Q: How come we didn’t get more unreleased stuff besides the 10 tracks?
A: That would be a whole ‘nother album. It’s amazing how much stuff was left behind. It was a very prolific year that year. We went through everything we could find. It was an enormous backlog. This was the best we had. Some of them were like 40-year bells going off. “Wow, we didn’t finish that one?”
Q: How did “Plundered my Soul” get left off the original?
A: It was difficult. That was why “Exile” became a double album. The record company wanted a single album, but the damn thing had a life of its own. We probably could’ve made it a triple. We tried to make a single, but it became impossible, like cutting babies in half. Q: Did you feel like the band was in a great place musically?
A: The vibe was very good. It was a long, hot summer. Not recording in a studio was unique for us, as it was for anybody at the time. Once things got going, it had its own rhythm. With every album you make you go in with that feeling. But maybe that we really were exiles put some extra bite into it.
Q: Really? I know you had some tax problems back home, but it wasn’t like you guys were homeless?
A: Yeah, I didn’t mind living in the south of France, actually. But it was more of a collective feeling. “Hey, none of us are going home tonight.” That attitude pervaded the mood, and made us get down to work.
Q: There’s a lot of mythology about your nocturnal habits, Keith. How big of a party animal were you at Nellcote?
A: There were very late nights, for sure. I heard loads of stories too, but that was upstairs, baby, because where I was I didn’t see much debauchery. Yeah, it’s true: There was a continual party going on in the house. But I couldn’t write songs, make a record and debauch at the same time, man.
Q: Band members were coming in and out during the sessions. It sounded very casual, bordering on haphazard.
A: It was. A lot of those tracks came about with only two or three guys around, as we waited for everyone to show. It would be just me and Mick [Jagger], or me and Charlie [Watts]. An idea would start and you worked on it. It was haphazard. The first few weeks especially, no one quite knew their asses from their [expletive]. But once we got into the swing of things, it was like a bunker down there, and a lot of hard work got done.
Q: It was hot, instruments going in and out of tune. That can’t be a good thing for recording.
A: Yeah, all true. There was an overcome and adapt spirit about it. But if it was really terrible we wouldn’t have stayed down there that long.
Q: Then you went to LA to finish the album. How come?
A: We couldn’t do anything more to it in Nellcote. It was a great place for cutting the tracks, but it’s not a place to do vocals or any other overdubs. But the bone and the muscle was done down there in that bunker.
Q: Judging by his comments, Mick wasn’t happy with the album when it came out.
A: All I can say, as far as Mick’s concerns, I haven’t met a lead vocalist yet who thought his voice was loud enough. But then again, Mick and I and [producer] Jimmy Miller mixed it, I don’t quite get [his complaints]. But I watched him working on this [reissue] and he’s really been digging it, hearing more things than he did at the time.
Q: What about the remix of the older material?
A: My approach was basically hand’s off, don’t touch. I don’t want to do any fancy, modern ideas on top of a 40-year-old record. My job was to guard the sanctity and purity of the original tracks. But there was some overdubbing of vocals on some of the extra tracks. There was one track where we heard an acoustic guitar, then about one-third of the way through another acoustic guitar because I string must’ve broken, so I overdubbed that. I wouldn’t touch the original tracks with a barge bull.
Q: Jimmy Miller was criticized for some of his original production, which some listeners thought was a bit murky. How do you feel about it?
A: I very much like what he did with us. I don’t think another guy could’ve pulled it off. He was a great producer, great friend. He had a lot of good ideas, and he was a damn good drummer himself.
Q: Did it help that he was musician himself?
A: Yeah. It definitely made a difference. He wasn’t just a sound artist. He could play it too.
Q: Was Charlie at all threatened by Miller as a drummer?
A: Nah! Drummers love each other. They go into immediate conversation about tom toms and paradiddles (laughs).
Q: “Exile” is generally perceived as the best Stones album. Do you understand why that is?
A: Maybe because it was a double. I couldn’t put my finger on why people like it. It holds up with time. I can still listen to it, and that says something. I enjoyed gong back through it. Going back through the tracks, I could smell that basement and all the dust. It was very evocative.
Q: People view it as the quintessential Keith record in the Stones catalog. Do you agree?
A: I get it that people would think that from the fact that it was done in my house. But I never thought of those sessions as a different balance between me and the rest of the band. You’re in the middle of it, and your perception of things can be a bit blurred, especially with me.
Q: American roots music factored heavily into a lot of the songs. What inspired that?
A: It certainly wasn’t conscious. But after all we’d been touring America for six years pretty much constantly. I think “Exile” gave us a chance to pick out the things we heard in America. We do play American music, rock ‘n’ roll and blues. So a lot of things came out from working in America all those years. Within the Stones there are never meetings or a setting out of goals. The band is all about capturing a certain feel, and first you have to find out what that is. When you do, you go to work.
Q: How was your relationship as a guitarist different with Mick Taylor than with [his predecessor] Brian Jones?
A: Brian and I worked very close together as far as rhythm and leads were concerned. With Mick Taylor, he’s far more of a soloist, and I had to adjust. It was great fun to reinvent the sound of the band, because Mick certainly changed it a lot. He’s a beautiful player and it’s just a matter of finding the new slot. And I enjoyed playing with him. I was really pissed off when he left.
Q: Did you write specifically with his guitar playing in mind?
A: That goes along with songwriting. When you’re down there doing it, you can put the break into it. What’s beautiful about songwriting is just piddling around on the guitar and there it is, and something appears out of nowhere. The rest is trimming, editing and thinking. The best time is when it comes out of nowhere. That’s when I love it.
Q: How did you and Mick write at Nellcote?
A: We were trying to keep up with the band. We’d say, we haven’t got a song for tomorrow yet. We were scrambling writing them on the spot. “Happy” came like that one afternoon and several others. “Tumbling Dice,” that came quick. Started as a song called “Good Time Women.” The only difference was that we still didn’t have the lyrics, but it’s the same riff.
Q: How did you determine you’d sing “Happy”?
A: I did it before Mick arrived that day. He shows up and says, “Wow, great, there’s one I don’t have to do.” Mick joined in on the choruses. That’s what I mean by working quickly. We’d start at 2 and by 5 it’s done.
Q: I can’t imagine the record label was happy when you turned in a double album.
A: The record company wanted to cut it in half. There was quite a fight in a way, lawyers and blah-blah. The damn thing had a life of its own, insisted on being a double, and Mick and felt strongly about it. We got our way.
Q: What’s in the immediate future for the band? A: I don’t know. I’m seeing the guys in a week or so. We’ll probably kick around some ideas then. There’s no road work this year, but maybe we’ll do some sessions.
Q: Would you like to make a new record?
A: I would, I sure would. When I see the guys, you have to take the temperature of everybody, because everybody’s gotta want to. Greg Kot @'Chicago Tribune'
I think I will be sticking with my boots of the 'real' "Exile" outtakes thanx!
Voyager 2, which has been traveling through the solar system since the late '70s, has suffered a data formatting glitch that is preventing NASA from interpreting the content of its scientific data transmissions. Control and diagnostic transmissions are unaffected, which should enable the engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to troubleshoot the problem, provided they're patient—it currently takes nearly 13 hours for transmissions from Earth to catch up with the probe.
According to a statement released by the JPL, the problem first became apparent on April 22nd. Data from the scientific transmission, which currently reports on the conditions at the very edge of the solar system, began coming through with improper formatting, making it impossible to interpret the contents. Engineering data is still intelligible, so the JPL staff is expecting that it will be possible to figure out what's going wrong and introduce a fix. Serious attempts at repair were delayed by a planned roll maneuver, and only started on Friday. With a round-trip time of over a day, however, progress will undoubtedly be slow.
According to an Associated Press report, engineers think that there's been a fault in the memory that stores the formatted data prior to transmission. This either corrupted its current contents, or has introduced some bad bits into the onboard memory. It should be possible to either reset the bad memory, or program the system to stop using the errant hardware entirely.
Voyager 2 is currently the second-most distant human-made object, trailing its twin, Voyager 1, by about 3 billion kilometers (Voyager 1 is now 16.9 billion kilometers—about 10.5 billion miles—from Earth). Right now, the probes are near the turbulent sector of space where the solar wind pushes up against interstellar space. Both probes are expected to cross into interstellar space within the next few years, providing our first in-place observational data from outside the solar system. They'll also record what happens at the boundary itself—they may cross it several times, given that its precise location fluctuates with changes in solar activity.
"...The second and much more fundament problem is the raising of the bar of a no confidence vote in the government to 55% rather than simple majority of those MP’s present and voting. This is a major and fundamental alteration in our constitution and what is being changed is not a right of the PM but a power if the Commons.
"The British constitution is very simple: he who commands the confidence of the House is PM, he who loses that confidence must resign. I simply do not see how such a rule is credible or can be enforced: a majority is a majority is 51%, not 55% or 60% or 80%. But once one concedes the concept on anything other than a simple majority for a confidence vote, then the way is open to Governments to protect their position by passing legislation demanding ever higher majorities before they are forced to resign.
"Indeed why not go the whole hog and pass legislation saying that nothing less than a 100% majority will be sufficient to force the government of the day to resign! As well as being politically dangerous, there is also the fundamental paradox that this legislation need only be passed by a simple majority. If the 55% it had been in place in 1979 when a no confidence motion in the Labour Government tabled by the SNP, and backed by the Tories was carried by one vote, then Callaghan could have stayed in power!
"As well as being politically unjustifiable the 55% rules raises the question of whether the House’s inherent ability to bring down government’s can be limited by legislation. One could of course always try and pass a bill to reverse this 55% doctrine by a subsequent act of parliament and such a bill would of course only need 51% of MP’s in its favour. However to become legislation obviously it would need to pas through the Lords as well, so in effect surrendering the long stop power to bring down the Government to the Lords!"
"All contributions by corporations to any political committee or for any political purpose should be forbidden by law" was said by what renowned progressive US President?
Answer HERE
Oil and gas stream from the riser of the Deepwater Horizon well May 11, 2010. This video is from the larger of two existing leaks on the riser. This leak is located approximately 460 feet from the top of the blowout preventer and rests on the sea floor at a depth of about 5,000 feet.
As a college educator I hear it from my friends outside of the academy, especially those of my friends who lean to the right. Intellectuals are suspect. Somehow in America, being smart is a bad thing according to the political right. I will never forget a good friend, who is a staunch conservative sent me an article that smears President Obama by comparing him to a college president. The article is
HERE He was interested in what I thought. My response was, "how is having a smart president a bad thing?" I never received an answer, which is too bad since that discussion has so much potential. Now, in America, that discussion has risen to the top again with Obama's nomination of Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court. HERE Then there's the history teacher's room being vandalized by Tea Partiers: HERE
We have a quasi-presidential system here, without the checks and balances 
