I heard the Louisana State University choir on tour here in Atlanta last night. There were three warm-up high school choirs that are not worth mentioning. The emcee mentioned that there were only a couple of students in the choir from Georgia and he hoped that this visit would change that. There were actually 3 Georgia Students in the choir. Two of the three were my students. I could not have been more proud of them performing in this magnificent ensemble. One seldom hears such sound in life. Particularly amazing were the presentation of the Vaughn Williams a cappella Mass in G and a pair of works by Reger and Rheinberger, Nachtlied and Morgenlied. Dr. Fulton maintained the sculpted balance of tonal qualities throughout and there was scarcely an out of tune moment in the hour of mostly a cappella singing. We got to talk for a while afterward and that was nice as well. Of my latest addition to the choir, Ellen, he said "I wish I had 12 more just like her."

Send them to LSU as long as Ken Fulton is there.

From Peter Wilson, European correspondent for the Australian.

THE Iraq war has cost the US 50-60 times more than the Bush administration predicted and was a central cause of the sub-prime banking crisis threatening the world economy, according to Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz. The former World Bank vice-president yesterday said the war had, so far, cost the US something like $US3trillion ($3.3 trillion) compared with the $US50-$US60-billion predicted in 2003. . . Professor Stiglitz told the Chatham House think tank in London that the Bush White House was currently estimating the cost of the war at about $US500 billion, but that figure massively understated things such as the medical and welfare costs of US military servicemen.The war was now the second-most expensive in US history after World War II and the second-longest after Vietnam, he said.

http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23286149-2703,00.html

for more.

The surge has worked in Iraq. Well . . . no, not exactly. After years of lies, enormous loss of life on both sides and a history of disasterous decisions by the leadership of our military (starting with the commander in chief), should we now believe that things are going swell? Not according to a reporter in Rolling Stone. This extensive article is far more than a sound bite. The reporter speaks Arabic and traveled within a joint US/Iraqi military unit. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/18722376/the_myth_of_the_surge

I doubt if you have the stamina to read it all, but I challenge you to try to work your way through it. I found this quote significant:

"The Bush administration based its strategy in Iraq on the mistaken notion that, under Saddam, the Sunni minority ruled the Shiite majority. In fact, Iraq had no history of serious sectarian violence or civil war between the two groups until the Americans invaded. Most Iraqis viewed themselves as Iraqis first, with their religious sects having only personal importance. Intermarriage was widespread, and many Iraqi tribes included both Sunnis and Shiites. Under Saddam, both the ruling Baath Party and the Iraqi army were majority Shiite."

The surge has allowed the Americans to finish partitioning Bagdad into Sunni and Shia neighborhoods. The two camps are now bitter enemies, all neighborhoods have been ethnically "cleansed." The Sunnis, who are jihadists and Al Qaida, have stopped fighting because they have been formed into armies by the US Army, paid by us and given weapons by us. They are smiling, taking our arms and money, and waiting. They are still Al Qaida and we have armed them. Behind our back, they revile us. It's all in the article. Sure this is one man's opinion, but he's been there and he speaks the language. He has talked to them privately.

A false argument on healthcare is put forward by Republicans. I just watched John McCain say that if we want universal health care then we better go to Canada or the European countries to see how it doesn't work. He said that we have the best healthcare in the world now.

Okay, when 15% of the population has no healthcare, that disqualifies us from saying that we have the best healthcare in the world.

A second point, it seems to me that Americans have always be able to reinvent ideas and make them better. So why can't we take the models of other countries' health care systems and improve them and make a new model for the world. The only answer to why we haven't already done it is that the stutus quo must be in the way of this happening. The real problem is discovered when we consider, who would be hurt by universal, single payer health care? Well health insurance companies would be out of business. Pharmaceuticals would have to restructure how they sell their drugs. No more sweetheart deals with this or that insurer. These are billion dollar companys and they don't want to change. So they'll spend millions to defeat universal healthcare, telling the public it would be terrible, lobbying the congress to do nothing. They may be so strong that no change can take place. But you can imagine.

What happens when two companies that do the same thing combine? Lots of savings--their stock goes up. Imagine 400 companies becoming one company. Don't even think of telling me that this would not work because the government couldn't handle it well. Everyone over 65, every veteran, every congressman, already has government health care. It works fine.

I expect that the money being spent by industry right now on 85% of the people would in fact cover everyone once you cut out all the middle men. You know thats right too don't you.

Imagine if there were no HMOs, no insurance companies, one system for everyone. With everyone on the same plan, anyone could give you advice on what to do next about healthcare issues.

In the same field, what if there were twice as many doctors? Did you ever wonder why there aren't twice as many doctors? The answer is simple. They don't train more doctors because doctors don't want more competition. Prices would go down. It's not because there are not enough smart applicants. There are enough people who could qualify to double the number of trainees, but if there were double the number of doctors, doctors visits, doctors expertise would cost a lot less. Maybe there are some doctors who are just barely making it somewhere, but the ones I know have two or three or four houses worth a gozillion dollars. I know they spent 10 years sleepwalking in their studies, I know they made low ages during that time. But now they drive jaguars or mercedes, vacation in Greece, or Vail, and have houses full of art, etc. What they do is not magic. Their IQ's are not 200, but rather 130, and they made 1200+ on the SAT, so 2/3 of them are dummer than me. I've got nothing against doctors, but our country should turn out twice as many and they should work in every community in the country, not just in the cities, and they shouldn't make a million dollars a year. If you think about it, they are civil servants. They couldn't be trained without tax dollars could they? No.

When I hear my girls sing and look around the room and realize that I have taught them to make the beautiful sounds that they make, when I see how responsive they can be to tuning, expression, and tone quality, I am amazed at the product of our symbiotic relationship. We were all moved by last night's rehearsal.

The news says we are having a crisis in home sales because banks don't want to loan jumbo loans of more than $417,000. $417K is okay, but $417,500 seems too risky. Sheeeee.

It is interesting to see the wide ranging attacks that begin in the newspaper when someone becomes the front runner in a race. Charles Krauthammer of the Washington Post (who writes a lot of empty columns by my count), claims that Barack Obama's campaign is empty, that he has simply put hope in a bottle. He compares Obama's charismatic messages of hope to selling bottled water. Bottled water is stupid, right? But think about it. Bottled water is not popular because of some mass hysteria that has led America to want faux-spring water, but rather because, one, it always tastes good, two, it is convenient to carry around, and three, it seems to be better for us than any type of canned drink. Obama has become popular because one, he can put words together, both with his speech writers and off the cuff, words which point out the ridiculousness of the way government has been run since the attack partisanship of Newt Gingrich became the rule for Washington politics, two, the clear vision of his logic gives us hope for a change from those policies, and three, the mass enthusiasm for his perscriptions lead us to believe that this election may result in sweeping changes. By sweeping changes, I mean both a house and senate that will work with President Obama to change the course of American history for the next generation, that is, the rest of my life.

If you have been watching who is voting in the primaries you have noticed as I have that in almost every state (Georgia would be an exception), 50 to 100% more people have voted for the democratic candidates than for the repub candidates (yes that is an intentional snub of the repub party that I will continue to use as long as the repub continue to shorten the word democratic in an effort to tear down and trivialize my party.) It will be difficult to reverse that trend in the general election. Even when panic sets in among the repubs, some will not be able to abandon their principles to press McCain on the voting machine screen. And that will cost McCain their vote and it will cost every other repub candidate too. Repubs in gerrymandered fortresses will lose elections this year. There will be surprises. Maybe we'll get to sixty in the senate. If not, I hope the powers that be cut the budgets for the repubs and assign them offices in the basements of buildings that they cannot even locate.

Barack Obama is not a messiah, nor a cult leader. He is a leader whose time has come. Krauthammer is full of bunk.

I can understand why people might smoke. Apparently it makes them fell good or relaxes them or something. Then there is the whole addiction thing. But tell me why smokers in traffic, open a new pack, roll down the window and throw the plastic wrapper out the window. Or why do they open their car door at a red light and dump the ashtray on the ground? Or why does my neighbor whose wife makes him smoke in the yard, wander out to the street and rub out his butts in the gutter in front of his house and leave them there, littering his own front yard? There are many mysteries to smokers.

I heard today that 25% of the population have some type of mental illness. Having been a school teacher, I actually believe this statistic.

The Braves are throwing baseballs. Bobby Cox is planning to make this his last go round. Greg Maddux too. The world keeps turning. I've lost interest in sports where the competitors hit each other as part of the game. I watched Roger Clemens TV testifying today. If it is just his word against the trainer, I think the trainer should shut up. The trainer has nothing to lose and notiriety to gain. Roger just loses.

I heard that the sun has been unusually quiet of late and that some scientists believe we may be entering a period of cooling. Global warming, global cooling. Too much to understand. We could be speeding along on a crash course with a big hunk of dark matter, say the size of Texas cubed, which we wouldn't notice until about a week before it splashed into the Atlantic and split the planet in two, wiping out everything except roaches. I doubt if the petty things we worry about on a daily basis are worth worrying about on a cosmic scale.

Patches is a lovey dog. She wants to be close to someone all the time. She is lying on my foot at the moment.

The conservatives are not happy with John McCain. Let's say that in another way. The conservatives are not happy.

We keep hearing that conservative values are the values of Christianity. So Republicans should lead the way in programs for the poor. Rather, they eschew welfare, healthcare, affirmative action, or anything that smacks of indigent aid. They poor will be better off when they pull themselves up by their bootstraps. If they taught school for a year they'd realize that there are people who are not going to be successful capitalists.

Conservative values are sound fiscal management. Ronald Reagan's administration gave tax breaks to the rich and doubled the national debt. George W. Bush's administration has followed that example. As an investor, the years of the Bush administration have been a financial disaster. Fortunes hoped for in retirement have dimished to 1/2 to 1/3 of plans that had been made, plans that would have worked in most of the past 100 years. The saying "the stock market has averaged 12% a year over the past 100 years," has been cut in half, barely staying ahead of inflation, a disaster for retirement planning. The wealth of the middle class under Republicans is rapidly diminishing. The wealth of the super rich is escalating at unprecedented rates.

The conservatives are not happy. Nothing will solve that.

It is a gift to go to an opera production. As poor school teachers, we bought the least expensive tickets and sat in the second balcony, six rows from the back wall. Nevertheless, I could hear and see well from there from my small, uncomfortable seat in the brand new Cobb Center. Yet as I read the program, ticket sales raise only 42% of the Atlanta Opera's revenues and the nine pages of donors at the end of the program paid for 58% of the cost of my listening to Carlisle Floyd's Cold Sassy Tree. There were empty seats scattered around so there was a risk in playing the little known 8 year old work. Floyd has a great name doesn't he? There were many strengths in the production which was directed by Star Trek's Q, John de Lancie. The sets, were spare, but effective and beautiful. Costumes a little too new looking for rural Georgia and much to nice and clean for the milltown crowd. There was a uniform color pallate which gave the stage a uniform look. Can't decide if I liked that. Floyd's weakness seems to be that he is his own librettist. He wrote numerous silloquys for the principals and at times he leaves the artists singing his semi-melodic arias for ten minutes at a time without reaching a cadence. The music director would stop the music and wait for applause from an audience who was uncertain if it was really a time to show appreciation because of the lack of strong cadences.

The singers were all good. Chorus parts were limited but they handled them well. The small parts were covered with beautiful tone quality and strength, many by local artists, including our friend Brent Davis, who was the bad guy baritone and murderer, Hosie Roach. Way to go Brent. The principals were wonderful, although John McVeigh as Will Tweedy was a little light weight at times and was completely covered in ensembles by Erin Wall (Love Simpson) and Kristopher Irmiter (Rucker Lattimore). Wall was pretty amazing on a part that is pretty angular at times. Irmiter was very convincing vocally and as the character Rucker, who must be at least 20 years older than the bass-baritone. I wanted to hear them both sing a more traditional aria.

The opera is slow. It starts and ends well but slows to a crawl at times. I don't see it bringing in lots of new opera goers. Compare it to the fabulous "Wicked" on Broadway and well, there is no comparison. The comic relief, Timothy Mix (Clayton McAllister) was a fine singer and a welcome change of pace in act two. Melodically, it was as though Floyd ran out of music before the finish and the beautiful moments in the long opening act, with the support of wonderful orchestra colors, kudos to the percussionists, were missing from the finale. The closing chorus number was pale compared to the wonderful settings of Blest Be the Tie and the Doxolgy in act one.

I must say that Floyd handled using dialect, the vernacular of Georgia, very well. If you remember the phaux-southern of George Gershwin in Porgy and Bess, then you know how easy it is to miss the real thing in dialect and come off as a caricature. The combination of rural and southern language was very effective in this piece and the singers were able to handle it well.

Overall I have to say thank you to the Atlanta Opera. It was an impressive cast and production and I'm glad I was there to see and hear it.

Democracy. Capitalism. These words are icons for America. They are religious words. Sacred. If you favor any restraint of capitalism you are the embodiment of evil. If you favor any redistribution of the wealth created by capitalism, you are a dreaded communist, or lately, you are a terrorist.

Democracy. One man, one vote. That seems fair but the powerful do not like this idea. One man who thinks like them, one vote, is more like it. The majority of the wealthy have banded together to say that they are America. They say what benefits them and their billions, benefits America. They say that without their hardworking lifestyle and business acumen that America would fail. This is not true.

Unfortunately capitalism weighs negatively on democracy. One of the pillars of democracy is freedom of the press. But to have a voice that is heard, your newspaper, your radio station, your television station must make a profit and stay viable. Thus appeal to the masses is essential. Frankly, the masses are not that interested in foreign relations, relief for indigents, or even health care as long as they are personally covered by insurance. We are self centered. We believe if we are okay then other folks should take care of themselves. So we tune in to see Brittney Spears or whoever the latest blonde bimbo is, being hauled off to jail or rehab. That draws the viewers and raises commercial cash and allows just enough time for news coverage to cover a few sound bites that never explain the news.

If you want to understand an issue you had better be prepared to do some research. You first have to research the spin meisters because when you look up any subject now, the power brokers have flooded the internet with sites that appear to be unbiased with names like "the Heritage Foundation," which are actually spin factories, trying to influence any who are seaching for facts. It is perhaps more difficult than ever to get answers today. I have some questions though.

Why do we not have universal health care for our nation? Many nations have it. The Republicans lead us to believe that it would be ruinous for America. It hasn't ruined Iceland or Germany. If we are so great, why can't we do it better than other places? We spent a trillion dollars bombing and killing a million Iraqis. Could we spend a trillion on health care?

Why are there 10,000 people living on the streets in metro Atlanta? Women, children and old people as well as those good for nothings you might think deserve to be on the street. I passed an old man with a long, dirty white beard, pushing a shopping cart piled up with possessions along Highway 85 in Fayetteville the other day. Fayetteville! That's way out in suburbia. He was bundled up and redfaced, wearing untied boots, and carrying a garbage bag over his shoulder. Walking toward me, he rolled his cart in the lane of traffic and I had to move over to keep from hitting him. I guessed him to be about 50. He was white. I wondered what his story is. He has a story, a long one. Is it a story of addiction, of mental illness, of disaster and tragedy? Is he a veteran, haunted by memories of horror and brutality like my cousin? Many of these people used to have a place in mental institutions until Ronald Reagan stopped the flow of money for mental illness and put them on the street.

Why are more people per capita in jail in America than any other country? Are we safer because of it? Is it cheaper to jail them than educate them?

Why is the government defunding the public shool system? In Georgia, during the current governor's reign, funding for public schools has gone from 85% state funding to 55% state funding. You can hear the creaking and groaning that this is causing on the system. Property taxes are way, way up. In poor counties they can't make up the difference. Class sizes are sky rocketing. Music and Art have to go. The one thing that is proven to create more graduates and raise test scores is low class sizes. Republicans call that "throwing money at the problem." I want to say, "You better throw money at the problem. Lots of it. And soon." I'm convinced that Republicans have a national strategy of defunding public education in order to break the back of public school systems. Their goal is to use federal and state tax money to fund private education. They want to fund segregated schools, and not just white schools, but class schools and religious schools, schools to teach creationism as science, to rail against abortion, to insinuate that blacks are inferior and that jews are to be hated. What other purpose could defunding the schools have? It is not to make them better!

I have other questions, but you probably quit reading before now anyway since you are used to those cute little sound bites (bytes) on TV. Sorry no word on Brittney.

The newspaper tells me that Lake Lanier has only risen 8 inches with the January rains, and that we have only received half the normal rainfall for the month. I have a bucket sitting on my patio, that has been out there for about a month and I went out and measured the water in the bucket this morning. Eight and three quarters inches of water that has been subject to evaporation for a month. Granted it has been frozen solid about half the time. I don't know who measures the water at the weather station but maybe they should put the rain gauge outdoors.

From the New York Times. This is George Bush's answer to the terrorist attack on the twin towers.

Iraq Conflict Has Killed A Million Iraqis: Survey
By REUTERS
Filed at 1:55 p.m. ET
LONDON (Reuters) - More than one million Iraqis have died as a result of the conflict in their country since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, according to research conducted by one of Britain's leading polling groups.

George W. Bush is a criminal and will take his place in history alongside other heinous war criminals, weilding power to destroy the lives of uncounted innocents.