BC/DC & Black Crowes Live Videos
Click here:
http://homepage.mac.com/macaronia/Toads/iMovieTheater45.html
Among other live clips, you can see an awesome cover of Fearless from October as well.
"On Tuesday night President Bush will stand before the Congress and the nation, to deliver his annual State of the Union address. We are sure to hear a rosy tale of an economy on the rebound, a blossoming democracy in Iraq, a terror network on the run, and a Gulf Coast region rebuilding better and stronger than ever before. As is most often the case with this Administration, the rhetoric does not match reality.I agree that the President will likely spout platitudes about how well his administration is managing our nation, and that most of what he says will either be completely untrue or generously lacking in truthful details. I also predict that, shamefully, few if any of the major media outlets will attempt to point out the obvious distortions of reality that will make up the bulk of his speech. Perhaps I will be mistaken about the media, but there's little doubt that the State of the Union will be another embarrassing chapter in this administration's complete disregard for anything resembling the actual state of our country.The facts are clear. Our economy is struggling and leaving tens of millions of Americans behind. According to the non-partisan National Journal, since President Bush first stood before Congress and the nation in 2001, the median income in this country has decreased, the jobless rate has jumped from 3.9% to 4.9% and the number of families living in poverty has increased from 8.7% to 10.2%. Our trade deficit has doubled. Inflation has gone up. Personal bankruptcies have gone up. Consumer debt has gone up. College tuition has gone up. And, the price of gas has gone up. All the while, this Administration has turned a $128 billion federal budget surplus into a $319 billion deficit."
"Poverty does not know partisanship, yet it has countless pundits. With poverty comes expendability and a reduction in worth. In times of peace poverty is war, and in times of war the impoverished simply disappear. I have never believed that wars have ever produced anything other than victims, no matter their outcomes, no matter the beliefs that started them or those that saw them through. Those who pay the price for the follies of those that have never had to spend a day worrying about where their next meal is coming from are precisely the ones that have to. They carry the rifles, they dodge the shells, and they represent the faceless corpses that flash across our television screens on a daily basis. They are the shelters of the dreams of madmen, nameless automatons forever at the disposal of those deemed of best quality."
What then was the reason for avoiding the FISA court? President Bush suggested that there was no time to get the warrants. But this cannot be true, because FISA permits wiretaps without warrants in emergencies as long as court approval is obtained within three days. Moreover, there is evidence that the President knew the warrantless wiretapping was illegal. In 2004, when the violations had been going on for some time, President Bush told a Buffalo, New York, audience that "a wiretap requires a court order." He went on to say that "when we're talking about chasing down terrorists, we're talking about getting a court order before we do so.On the reasons for going to war with Iraq:
A President can commit no more serious crime against our democracy than lying to Congress and the American people to get them to support a military action or war...That both Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon were guilty of misleading the nation into military action and neither was impeached for it makes it more, not less, important to hold Bush accountable.On the sanctioning of torture:
President Bush recently proclaimed, "We do not torture." In view of the revelations of the CIA's secret jails and practice of rendition, not to mention the Abu Ghraib scandal, the statement borders on the absurd, recalling Nixon's famous claim, "I am not a crook."
...Under the War Crimes Act of 1996 it is a crime for any US national to order or engage in the murder, torture or inhuman treatment of a detainee. (When a detainee death results, the act imposes the death penalty.) In addition, anyone in the chain of command who condones the abuse rather than stopping it could also be in violation of the act.
...The evidence before us now suggests that the President himself may have authorized detainee abuse.