Round & Round (It Won’t Be Long), Neil Young and Crazy Horse.

Burgundy Shoes, Patty Griffin.

Guilty, Bonnie Raitt.

Emotionally Gone, Bruce Robison.

Who Knew, Pink.

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Bing Crosby:

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Digby and Watertiger appearing tonight at 8 p.m. EST. Listen here!

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Apparently he didn’t make the cheerleading squad:

No matter how much Obama talks about his “tough” new financial regulatory reforms or offers rote condemnations of Wall Street greed, few believe there’s been real change. That’s not just because so many have lost their jobs, their savings and their homes. It’s also because so many know that the loftiest perpetrators of this national devastation got get-out-of-jail-free cards, that too-big-to-fail banks have grown bigger and that the rich are still the only Americans getting richer.

This intractable status quo is being rubbed in our faces daily during the pre-election sprint by revelations of the latest banking industry outrage, its disregard for the rule of law as it cut every corner to process an avalanche of foreclosures. Clearly, these financial institutions have learned nothing in the few years since their contempt for fiscal and legal niceties led them to peddle these predatory mortgages (and the reckless financial “products” concocted from them) in the first place. And why should they have learned anything? They’ve often been rewarded, not punished, for bad behavior.

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Link:

The truth is, what’s behind the Washington Consensus on schools is the agreed-upon decision to avoid doing anything about poverty.

Our national neglect of poverty is made more apparent in the argument about public schools than it is in any other policy discussion – even healthcare – because schools are where the private impact of poverty on families’ lives is finally and most definitively made public. Think about that for a moment: how the brutality of a childhood where healthy food is in short supply, books are unheard of, and homelife is filled with constant parental anxiety about making ends meet is suddenly exposed to the world in the glares of a teacher and a room full of strange of kids.

Go read the rest.

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GOP House candidate Jesse Kelly is running for Arizona’s 8th congressional district, and of course embraced that free market fetishism we’ve come to know and love at a campaign rally hosted by the Pima County Tea Party Patriots, telling a questioner it’s our job to protect ourselves from eggs with salmonella:

During a question-and-answer period, a voter asked Kelly about the recent salmonella outbreak, which led to recall of more than half a billion eggs.The voter asked if Kelly, if elected, would he help pass a law that would allow the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and other government agencies to shut down companies that have too many safety violations, such as the companies that allowed millions of eggs that sickened people to be sold to the public.

Kelly responded that he doesn’t “believe what we’re lacking right now is more regulations on companies,” complaining that “you could probably spit on the grass and get arrested by the federal government by now.”

When the voter followed up by asking, “Who’s protecting us?” Kelly responded, “It’s our job to protect ourselves.”

The exasperated voter asked once more, “Am I supposed to go to a chicken farmer and say I’d like you to close down because all of your birds are half dead?” Kelly once more answered, “There’s a new thing that comes along every day. But I know this: Every part of our economy that is regulated by the government doesn’t have fewer disasters, it has more”:

QUESTIONER: Given the salmonella outbreaks that we have seen every three weeks, with the chicken industry, with pesticides and what not that they put onto spinach in order to get the salmonella. We have rules and regulations. However there is no rule mandating that they be enforced. Is there some way when you’re in Congress that you’ll have a bill passed that says instead of having companies voluntarily change, mandate that they must change or give them the ability to shut ‘em down and that goes for mining companies or anyone who has hundreds of violations against ‘em.

KELLY: Here’s the thing with that point, that’s the first time I’ve ever had that question. Congratulations on being unique. First shot out of the box, no ma’am. I do not believe that what we’re lacking right now is a lack of regulations on business. [...] You could literally go spit on the grass and get arrested by the federal government if you wanted to right now. [...] More regulation, more federal control, giving Nancy Pelosi more power, is not the solution right now.

QUESTIONER: Who’s protecting us?

KELLY: That’s the thing, ma’am, it’s our job to protect ourselves.Because no one else is going to look out for your best interests except for you. [...]

QUESTIONER: Am I supposed to go to a chicken farmer and say I’d like you to close down because all of your birds are half dead?

KELLY: I’ve not heard a lot about that recently, obviously there’s a new thing that comes along every day. But I know this, every portion of our economy that is heavily regulated doesn’t have fewer disasters, it has more.

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Laura Nyro:

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Laura Nyro:

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Michelle Shocked:

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The Bird and the Bee:

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