Completely Wrong – Let Me Explain….

Posted by thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard on October 14, 2012
Posted in: Completely Wrong, Politics. Tagged: . Leave a comment

Mitt Romney is completely wrong!

If you don’t believe me, go to Google Images and search on “completely wrong”.  What do you see?  Page after page of pictures of Mitt.

Maybe Google isn’t enough for you so let me make the case…..

Wrong For Foreign Policy

  • In Israel’s pocket (willing to do whatever his buddy Bibi asks)
  • Insults our best allies in his only foreign trip during the campaign
  • Itching to get us into a war with Iran
  • Will undo all of the foreign policy gains made by President Obama

Wrong For The Economy

  • For tax cuts for the super rich
  • For adding to the tax burden of the middle class
  • For 2 trillion more for defense than requested by the military
  • For gutting the safety net for the poor
  • Bottom line… the economy will be right back where Bush left it

Wrong For Women

  • For repeal of the Roe vs. Wade supreme court decision legalizing abortions (even in the cases of rape, incest, or to save a mother’s life)
  • For repeal of President Obama policies ensuring access to birth control

Wrong for Homosexuals

  • For rejection of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell Policy of President Obama
  • For making gay marriage illegal

Wrong For Minorities

  • Doesn’t give a shit about the minorities (Romney admits he does not care about the 47%, a huge portion of which is composed  of minorities)
  • For voter suppression
  • For anti-immigration policies
  • Bottom line….Civil Rights gains over the last 100 years at risk

Wrong for the Health Care system

  • For repeal of the Affordable Care Act (commonly known as Obama care)
  • Has a vision of health care for the poor (go to the emergency room) is the least cost effective approach possible
  • For destroying the Medicare system that currently provides guaranteed health care for  senior citizens
  • Replaces Medicare with a voucher system that doubles the cost for senior citizens while the profit of insurance companies soar

Wrong for the Environment

  • For a “Drill Baby Drill” approach (includes pristine wilderness areas) in conjunction slashed environmental protections
  • For coal companies
  • For the oil companies
  • For repeal of President Obama imposed fuel mileage standards
  • For the Keystone pipeline across the US to help oil companies get Canadian tar sands to the Gulf of Mexico – environmental issues be damned

Do I need to say more?

Completely wrong for me….completely wrong for you!  (thanks to sodahead.com for the picture)

Paul Ryan Is Eddie Munster – See For Yourself!

Posted by thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard on October 13, 2012
Posted in: Completely Right, Doppelgänger, Politics, The Munsters. Tagged: , , , . Leave a comment

I honestly thought I was the only one that noticed this resemblance…..Paul Ryan is Eddie Munster!

Stay tuned tomorrow when I will show you why this resemblance makes perfect sense…..I will give you a hint:  A rotten apple never falls far from the family tree.

I apologize to Eddie Munster for making this comparison!

Denying Reality….And Still Completely Wrong

Posted by thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard on October 12, 2012
Posted in: Completely Wrong, Politics. Tagged: . Leave a comment

Thanks to Huffington Post for the following headline and article!

The 6 Studies Paul Ryan Cited Prove…

Mitt Romney’s Tax Plan Is Impossible

Paul Ryan finally had enough time to go through the math of the Romney tax plan during the vice-presidential debate. He didn’t use it. Ryan filibustered instead. About the most specific he got was citing “six studies” he said vindicate the plan’s mathematical plausibility.

Except they don’t.
Romney’s tax plan is a three-legged stool that doesn’t stand. Here’s how it works — or doesn’t. Romney wants to 1) cut tax rates across the board by 20 percent, 2) cut tax expenditures to pay for these tax cuts, and 3) maintain progressivity. The problem, as the Tax Policy Center pointed out, is there aren’t enough tax expenditures for the rich to pay for all the tax cuts for the rich. Romney’s plan only works if he cuts out the tax cuts for the rich, raises taxes on the middle class, or explodes the deficit. In other words, Romney can pick two, and only two, of his tax goals — what Matt Yglesias of Slate calls the “Romney Trilemma”.
That sound you hear is the three-legged stool falling down.
All this hasn’t stopped a fight against the tyranny of arithmetic. The defenses of the Romney tax  plan generally fall into three broad categories. The first assumes the plan will set off magic growth of the monster variety; the second assumes Romney defines “middle-class” differently than he does; and the third assumes Romney would eliminate tax expenditures he has indicated he would not eliminate. Let’s briefly consider the six such “studies” that Ryan cited — most are actually blog posts — in turn.
1. Harvey Rosen paper. Rosen, a professor at Princeton, assumed Romney’s lower tax rates would kickstart enough growth to pay for the revenue hole those lower tax rates would create. This seems dubious.Alan Viard and Alex Brill of the conservative American Enterprise Institute (AEI) have argued that it seems unlikely revenue neutral tax reform would have big growth effects — incentives don’t change even if tax rates do. And besides, the Tax Policy Center used aggressive growth estimates from Romney adviser Greg Mankiw’s work to test Romney’s plan. It still didn’t add up.
2. Marty Feldstein Wall Street Journal op-ed. Former Reagan adviser and current Harvard professor Feldstein argued Romney’s plan works if you assume growth would be much stronger and if you define middle class as households making less than $100,000 rather than households making less than $200,000. This latter figure is the one Romney has used when he has said his plan would not raise taxes on the middle class.
3. Marty Feldstein blog post. Feldstein was less aggressive with his growth estimates this time, but he stuck with his definition of middle class as households making less than $100,000. He also assumed Romney might cut tax preferences for employer health-insurance, make municipal bond interest taxable, and eliminate the child tax credit for households making more than $100,000.
4. Matt Jensen blog post at AEI. He argued Romney might cut tax preferences for municipal bonds and life insurance buildups. But this might go against Romney’s promise not to cut tax preferences for savings and investment — and would only pay for half of Romney’s revenue hole, according to the Tax Policy Center.
5. Curtis Dubay blog post at Heritage. He argued Romney might cut tax preferences for municipal bonds and life insurance buildups — yes, again — and that Romney might tax inheritances on a “carryover basis” after eliminating the estate tax. In plain English, heirs would have to pay capital gains for the price an asset was bought for, rather than the price it was inherited at. But as Suzy Khimm of the Washington Post notes, Dubay overestimates how much revenue this change — which, remember, is just a guess about what Romney would do — would generate.
6. Romney Tax Reform White Paper. This is just his advisers arguing by assertion that the plan works.
In other words, Romney’s plan only works if you assume he has a different plan or use a magic growth asterisk. And that means we have no idea what he would do if he wins. Does he care more about his tax rate cuts, about not hiking taxes on the middle class, or not increasing the deficit? His adviser Kevin Hassettsuggested they would back off the high-end tax rate cuts if it would increase the deficit, but Romney quickly denied that. He’s also denied reality, by relying on studies that only prove his critics’ point.

Friday Word Of The Week #13 – Dream, Dreams, Dreamer (2 of 4)

Posted by thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard on October 12, 2012
Posted in: Word Of The Week. Tagged: , , , , . Leave a comment

This is my second of four Friday Word of the week posts focused on the root word “dream”.  I like the songs in this post a lot…a little spacey, a little moody, and a great duo.  Who could ask for more?  As always let me know what you think.

Daydream – Robin Trower

Rainy Day, Dream Away – Jimi Hendrix Experience

Your Wildest Dreams – Moody Blues

Beyond My Wildest Dreams – Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris

Still dreaming of a second term for President Obama!  How about you?

And The Answer Is….

Posted by thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard on October 11, 2012
Posted in: Great Rock Stories, Protest Songs, Who Is Sitting In. Tagged: , . Leave a comment

Pete Townshend!

Pete put Thunderclap Newman together in 1968 to help out John “Speedy” Keen who had been a roommate of, and chauffeur for, Pete.  The studio band consisted of Speedy (vocals, drums, guitar) along with Andy “Thunderclap” Newman (piano), and Jimmy McCulloch (guitar), and Pete Townshend (bass).  On the record Pete was listed as Bijou Drains.  Pete also produced their one and only album, Hollywood Dream.  Something in the Air, written by Speedy, was a number one single in England in 1969.

Fun Fact: Something in the Air was originally titled Revolution.  It was renamed due to song of the same name by The Beatles.

When they toured in 1969 Jim Pitman-Avery replaced Pete on bass and Jack McCulloch played drums.  The initial three members stayed together through 1971 with a variety of musicians filling in on bass and drums.

After the band broke up:

  • Speedy recorded a couple of solo albums, played as a session musician, and was a record producer.  He passed away in 2002 as a result of heart problems.
  • Jimmy went on to play with Stone the Crows, a reformed Small Faces,  and more famously with Wings.  He died young at the age of 26 as the result of a heroin overdose.
  • Andy went on to record a solo album.   In 2010/2011 he put together a new Thunderclap Newman band which recorded an album, Beyond Hollywood.

Before we leave Thunderclap Newman behind I strongly recommend you checkout this video tribute to the band lovingly put together by JimmyMcCullochFan and posted on YouTube.  It includes some interesting commentary by Pete Townshend.

RIP Speedy and Jimmy!

As always, let me know what you think.

Who Is Sitting In #5

Posted by thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard on October 10, 2012
Posted in: Rock History, Who Is Sitting In. Tagged: . Leave a comment

This is the fifth in a series of posts that highlight classic rock songs which feature someone interesting sitting in on the recording session.  For this series I post the song on one day and identify who is sitting in the following day.  I hope you enjoy the concept and maybe learn some interesting music history in the process.

My selection for this post is a song called Something In The Air,  a great single from Thunderclap Newman from 1969.  It’s a good one!   Listen to the song and see if you can tell who was sitting in.  (Hint: In this case the person sitting in was doing a lot more than just sitting in on bass!)

The answer will be posted tomorrow along with some additional background information.

Mitt Romney Has Identified The Problem And It Is……Big Bird

Posted by thebestmusicyouhaveneverheard on October 10, 2012
Posted in: Completely Wrong, Politics. Tagged: . Leave a comment

In the debate last week Mitt Romney announced that his solution for dealing with the National Debt is to drop the Government subsidy for the Public Broadcasting Company that brings children throughout the country with great educational TV programs like Sesame Street (featuring Big Bird).  Big Bird is the cause for all that ails this great country and Mitt Romney is gunning for him!

Check out this video from the Obama campaign calling him out for this ridiculous stance.

Vote Obama….Save PBS and Sesame Street!