April 2004 Archives

Kerry is the one candidate who, having experienced the horror of war, is less likely to favor sending American soldiers to kill and die on false pretexts.

I just wish he'd say that more often. It's brief, to the point, people can understand it and get behind it.

I was in New Orleans last weekend with Miss Julie from Baton Rouge and we went to Jazz Fest and had a terrific time. If you love good music (and especially if you love good food), this is the place to be. Here's a bit about the festival:

Mahalia Jackson, often called the greatest gospel singer, returned to her hometown to appear at the first New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival in April of 1970. While attending the Louisiana Heritage Fair in Congo Square (then known as Beauregard Square), she and Duke Ellington, who also appeared at the event, came upon the Eureka Brass Band leading a crowd of second-line revelers through the Festival grounds. George Wein, producer of the Festival, handed Ms. Jackson a microphone, she sang along with the band and joined the parade…and the spirit of Jazz Fest was born.

This spontaneous, momentous scene—this meeting of jazz and heritage—has stood for decades since as a stirring symbol of the authenticity of the celebration that was destined to become a cultural force.

The Festival has always blended in a wide mix of internationally renowned guests, among them: Aretha Franklin, Miles Davis, Bob Dylan, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Santana, Sarah Vaughan, Paul Simon, Jimmy Buffett, Max Roach, B.B. King, Dave Matthews Band, Patti LaBelle, Tito Puente, the Allman Brothers Band, Joni Mitchell, Al Green, Linda Ronstadt, Lenny Kravitz, Sonny Rollins, Bonnie Raitt, James Brown, Celia Cruz, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Hugh Masekela, Cassandra Wilson, Willie Nelson, The Temptations, Burning Spear,Van Morrison, LL Cool J, Abbey Lincoln, Erykah Badu, Dave Brubeck, Gladys Knight, Youssou N’Dour and many, many others.

What a country! E Pluribus Unum, indeed.

More pictures here.

P.S. For good measure, we went to Camille's Cajun Cafe out on highway 190. Heh.

Saw Prince Bandar on Meet the Press Sunday morning. Is there a smoother operator on the planet? I doubt it.

His appearance seemed timed to coincide with a PR counter-offensive designed to defuse bad feelings toward the Saudis in the wake of the Iraq war and its aftermath. He managed to skillfully deflect most of Tim Russert's hammering on numerous topics including Saudi financing of terrorism.

He also addressed the whole issue of oil prices yadda yadda yadda and whether or not the Saudis had "secretly" pledged yadda yadda yadda to keep prices low in the run up to the election yadda yadda yadda. Bandar made the case that this has been standard procedure for decades. Whatever.

I figure that he's damned if he does (keep em low, i.e., between $22-28 per barrel of crude) and damned if he doesn't.

[FYI: Oil prices are currently at $38 per barrel.]

Then I caught myself and remembered that only a fool would believe that the Saudis do anything that doesn't benefit themselves first.

But I digress...

There was a chilling moment, right at the end of the interview, when Russert asked for Bandar's comment about Senator Schumer's (D-NY) urging that POTUS "to take immediate action to safeguard the integrity of the American electoral process by deporting Prince Bandar and cancelling his diplomatic visa," presumably for meddling in American electoral politics.

To which a smiling Prince Bandar replied, "Senator Shomer [sic] is really a much, much nicer person in private when I meet with him than he is on TV. And, second, I have an advice for him. Make your words soft and sweet. You never know when you have to eat them."

Heh.

P.S. The reference to "Senator Shomer" was a weird slip-up -- he might as well have called him "Senator Jew."

Today is my birthday; I'm 51 years old. A couple of things occur to me:

• You don't get wiser with age, but you do get more perspective.
• The thirty-five years that separate 16 from 51 passes in a heartbeat. Trust me.
• The older you get, the more you become like your true self.
• Age is just mind over matter; if you don't mind, it don't matter.

P.S. How old would you be, if you didn't know how old you were?

Rosemary Esmay's birthday is today. Go on over to her new blog here and wish her a happy birthday.

I asked her once if there was any truth to the rumor that she was the illegitimate child of Bill Bennett and Janis Joplin. She just smiled and turned away.

Later she came back (tires squealing and guns blazing) and shot out the windshield of my car while I waited at a traffic light.

"Hey you jerkoff! Is it true that you're the bastard spawn of Mort Kondracke and Susan Estrich? Bwahahahahahahaha!"

She let fly with another shotgun blast and blew out my right front passenger window. I ducked. She left skid marks as she pulled away from the intersection.

I could hear sirens in the distance and dogs barking. She was long gone. I sat up in the front seat and dusted the broken glass off the dashboard.

Many happy returns, Queen.

Katie does Hillary. Read the interview transcript here.

Two things stuck with me:

Couric: “When you hear that people say, she can't really be supporting John Kerry. Because if he wins, that screws up her political future."

Clinton: “You know, people make a lot of money talking about me, don't they? They just get on those shows, and they talk away. There's nothing I can do. And that's one of the great lessons I try to convey in my book, which my mother implanted in me as a young girl. Is you can either be an actor in your own life, or a reactor in somebody else's.”

The other quote went like this:

Couric: “Are you sorry you gave the President authority to go to war?”

Clinton: “I don't regret giving the President authority. I regret the way he used that authority.”