Do You Ever Think Of Me, Laura Cantrell.
I Never Meant To Hurt You, Laura Nyro.
A Movie Script Ending, Death Cab for Cutie.
5 O’Clock in the Morning, Colleen McFarland.
Nothing But a Miracle, Diane Birch.

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Bruce Cockburn:

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I’m going to be largely offline for the weekend, as there’s a wedding to attend (no, not my own).

Anyway, I’m sure Dr. S. and others will be helping to take up the slack, and I’ll have a few posts coming up when I return.

in my absence, please don’t feed the trolls. You can sometimes forget which people are reasonable human beings and which are complete fucking fruitcakes who can’t even keep track of their multiple personalities.

And now, Gene Vincent!

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NO FUCKING DOI:

The Bush administration insisted that “enhanced interrogation techniques” — torture — were necessary to extract information from prisoners and keep Americans safe from terrorist attacks. Never mind that it was immoral, did huge damage to this country’s global standing and produced little important intelligence. Now, as we had feared, it is also making it much harder to try and convict accused terrorists.

Because federal judges cannot trust the confessions of prisoners obtained by intense coercion, they are regularly throwing out the government’s cases against Guantánamo Bay prisoners.

A new report prepared jointly by ProPublica and the National Law Journal showed that the government has lost more than half the cases where Guantánamo prisoners have challenged their detention because they were forcibly interrogated. In some cases the physical coercion was applied by foreign agents working at the behest of the United States; in other cases it was by United States agents.

By the time you get done reading the whole thing, your desk will have a six-inch deep imprint of your forehead. And here’s one last paragraph to gt you started:

Even in cases where the government later went back and tried to obtain confessions using “clean,” non-coercive methods, judges are saying those confessions too are tainted by the earlier forcible methods. In most cases, the prisoners have not actually walked free because the government is appealing the decisions. But the trend suggests that the government will continue to have a hard time proving its case even against those prisoners who should be detained.

The Bush Administration fucked it all up, the whole ball of wax. Bin Laden’s still alive, we lost in Iraq, we’re going to lose in Afghanistan, and now we have one more reminder of what happens when you put an incompentent C+ legacy student and his CIA father’s corrupt chums in charge of the government: when you try to skirt the law and due process, you end up losing.

All of this was, of course, predicted by the rational people. Not that it matters.

So my remaining question is, when do we hang Jay Bybee and John Yoo on national TV from RFK Stadium?

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(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace, Love and Understanding, Elvis Costello.
Love Has No Pride, Bonnie Raitt. Actually, yes it does. But it’s still a great song.
Lines Around Your Eyes, Lucinda Williams. What a great middle-aged love song.
A Place Called Home, Kim Richey. Can’t hear this song without seeing Fred’s death in “Angel.”

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kd lang does Jane Siberry:

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Check out that vintage 80s look! Rosanne Cash with Carl Perkins, covering what I’m pretty sure is a Steve Forbert song:

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The Stones cover Robert Johnson:

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This has been going around Facebook all day:

Thank me later.

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I remember this commercial, which appeared about a week before the AIDS crisis exploded.

Action AIDS is one of the many non-profit human services organizations in Philadelphia, and their name is pretty self-explanatory. Like most non-profits, Action AIDS is under the gun due to the economic calamity we’re living in. (And may i add, the economic collapse as disproved the entire notion that the corporate sector, rather than the government, should be responsible for funding human services: when profits dry up, so do the donations).

Anyway, Action AIDS has a fun little fundraiser all over the city tonight: Bar AIDS. Here’s the description, via facebook:

On Thursday, Aug. 26, from 5:30 on to at least midnight, a dozen local coffeehouses and bars will donate a portion of their proceeds to the local fight against HIV/AIDS. Here’s a list of the places where every dollar you spend will make a difference — whether it’s on a cappuccino or a Coors lite. (We also added details of any other specials they have going that night.)

COFFEHOUSES

* Cafe Cret
* Small Oven Bakery at Tutti Frutti

BARS

* Bike Stop
* City Tap House — $2 local beers, 5-7pm
* Fergie’s Pub
* Knock Restaurant & Bar — 1/2-price apps, including gourmet wings, sliders + flatbreads
* Tabu — $5 open bar, 9-10pm
* Tavern on Camac
* Westbury
* Woody’s — $5 Effen vodka, all nite long
* Uncle’s
* XIX at Hyatt Bellevue

You can easily find the addresses via Google, and you can find me at Fergie’s Pub after 6:00 PM, where I’ll be hoisting a pint or two in the fight against AIDS. I hope you’ll be there too! AIDS is a shitty disease to have, and you can help raise money to fight it by drinking beers.

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