I’m a Sun ‘n Fun Virgin

Posted on March 27, 2012 by TheEastSider

The last airworthy B-29 “FIFI”, is currently touring the U.S.

I’m down in Lakeland, Florida this week at the second-largest fly-in in the United States. Sun ‘n Fun is kind of the kickoff to the flying season and like golf and the “southern swing” the weather is reliably good in this region for an outdoor event, and so the geographical location makes sense. As usual, when I travel to Florida for relaxation during the cold months, a heat wave hits the upper Midwest, mostly negating the benefit. Here we go again…

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Megafaun Glides Through Madison

Posted on March 24, 2012 by TheEastSider

Megafaun’s Phil Cook (right) and brother Brad Cook play at the High Noon Saloon Friday March 23, 2012. Photo courtesy: Eric Baillies

I had never heard Megafaun before, but was drawn by its description on the High Noon Saloon’s show calendar, “…grafting delicate banjos and stoned digressions of their previous records onto sturdy, catchy pop song structures”. Friday night (March 23) the North Carolina-based band visited Madison on the first leg of a U.S. tour after February dates in Spain and Portugal.

I went to the show expecting lively banjo but was delighted in its alternate application as part of a restrained mix of guitar, keyboard, and sometimes accordion along with plodding vocal melodies that only occasionally rose to a dull yell. Add in their opening act Field Report, featuring a similar musical style, and it was and wonderful evening of folk-rock music with some unexpected flourishes, best displayed during Megafaun’s extended jam “Real Slow”…more photos after the jump.

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Sir Elton John Conquers Madison

Posted on March 23, 2012 by TheEastSider

Elton John sings “Holiday Inn” at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Madison. He said he wrote the song in 1970, inspired by all the traveling his band had done.

Sir Elton Hercules John gave the royal musical treatment to a sold-out crowd of over 10,000 at the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Madison, Wisconsin Thursday night. Weaving through most of his 30 albums, he played crowd pleasers as well as songs from his current release The Union (2010) treating the exuberant audience to extended interludes demonstrating a mix of showmanship and mastery of the ivories.

With a massive discography, Elton John (and his band) doesn’t need a warm-up act but he found a perfect one in 2Cellos, consisting of 20-somethings Luka Šulić and Stjepan Hauser from Yugoslavia who’s dueling cello video set to Micheal Jackson’s Smooth Criminal caught fire on Youtube last spring and landed them on John’s summer tour of England and now the U.S. The handsome pair bring a youthful energy to this classical instrument, (one I played as a child) and they delighted the Madison crowd with the high-energy Criminal as well as covers of U2’s With or Without You, Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit, and ACDC’s Highway to Hell which wound up the crowd and served them on a platter to the Elton John Band. Continue reading →

Walker Should Hope for Recall

Posted on March 22, 2012 by TheEastSider

Former Milwaukee County Executive Deputy Chief of Staff to Scott Walker, Tim Russell was indicted recently on embezzlement charges.

We are approaching the Rubicon in the ever expanding FBI investigation into illegal campaign activities that may have been conducted by Milwaukee County staff members. These staff members worked at the time in the office of Milwaukee County Executive Scott Walker before he became governor. It is alleged that political work related to Scott Walker’s gubernatorial campaign may have been conducted on county time.

A John Doe Investigation was commenced with immunity offered to at least current Scott Walker spokesperson Cullen Werwie and a plea deal to a low-level staffer in Walker’s County Executive office. With three other staffers are facing charges, someone is ripe to roll over. The Cognitive Dissonance Blog has been all over this and presents a great summary of what has happened so far. At this rate, Walker better hope that he gets recalled instead of indicted.

Read Cognitive Dissonance – Walkergate: Trouble In Paradise

The War on Women: In Their Own Words

Posted on March 15, 2012 by TheEastSider

Still don’t think there is a war on women by the GOP and conservatives? This video produced by MoveOn.org has women deliver many of the patently ridiculous statements about women’s health, reproduction, and contraception made by males who are elected Republicans or prominent conservatives. It’s a clever strategy because hearing women say these words makes them exceedingly more preposterous than when they were uttered by their original orator…if that’s possible.

Making Sex Ed Like They Used To

Posted on March 13, 2012 by TheEastSider

A sex education worksheet I completed in the 8th grade. (1987) The straight forward common sense options presented here would cause media sensations today. (Click on image to view in full)

The Wisconsin Assembly this week is taking up a bill passed by the state Senate last year that will repeal the Healthy Youth Act, (Sec. 118.01) a law that according to the Wisconsin Alliance for Women’s Health “sets a minimum standard for sex education in Wisconsin – requiring that sex education taught in Wisconsin public schools to be medically accurate, age-appropriate and comprehensive”. The repeal attempt seems like another desperate attempt by conservatives to impose a failed monolithic approach to sex education.

It didn’t used to be that way; my own experience with sex education in schools seemed normal and non-controversial. During a recent move, I did a massive sort through some old papers and discovered a couple of sex ed worksheets from eighth grade (1987) that would likely cause Rick Santorum to throw up a lung and Rush Limbaugh to heat up and float away. Continue reading →

Scotty, We’re Coming For You!

Posted on March 12, 2012 by TheEastSider

Solidarity Sing-a-long Celebrates a Year of Serenades

The Kissers sing "Scotty We're Coming For You" during the anniversary celebration of the Solidarity Sing-a-long at the High Noon Saloon in Madison. The song was written by band member Ken Fitzsimmons in order to express not only the anger of the times but of the solidarity shown by "such a hugely diverse group of people".

One way to defeat the enemy is to kill them with kindness. That’s what the Solidarity Sing-a-long has been doing for over a year, singing to Scott Walker and friends, reminding them that the spirit of the people of Wisconsin will not be broken. To celebrate a year of “peaceably assembling”, Solidarity Sing-a-long participants, past and present, gathered with a stellar line-up of musicians at the High Noon Saloon on Monday, March 12, which lies at the foot of Madison’s “Capitol hill”.

Walker and his allies have tried many different ways to break the spirit of the opposition against his policies including casting the protesters and activists as outsiders fomenting unrest amongst the good citizenry of Wisconsin. When that didn’t work, they limited access to the capitol through security checks under the dubious guise of protecting the legislative process. Yet the people of Wisconsin continued to sing in that refrain from The Kissers…Scotty, We’re Coming For You! Continue reading →

The Day Suffrage Suffers No More

Posted on March 12, 2012 by TheEastSider

Honorable Judge Richard Niess

Today was an eventful day in the fight against voter ID laws. In Wisconsin, ACT 23 was permanently struck down by a Dane County Circuit Court judge in a ruling released this afternoon (March 12). In Texas, a Federal court blocked a similar law that opponents claimed unfairly disenfranchised Hispanic voters. This on the heels of a law enacted in South Carolina, that was recently blocked by the U.S. Justice department, that holds veto power over certain civil rights laws in several southern states.

Voter ID has long been a favorite cause of Republicans in Congress and state houses to “combat voter fraud”. The claim of voter fraud has been a dubious one since there still remains little evidence that organized and widespread fraud exists. It surely does not exist on a scale that requires additional laws such as voter ID. While voter fraud does exist, annecdotal evidence does not a threat to democracy make. What is a threat to our democracy are laws like ACT 23 which harm whole groups of citizenry by throwing up barriers to voting in the spirit of, if not the actual method of poll taxes which were outlawed by 1966. Continue reading →

Hiding in Plain Sight

Posted on March 11, 2012 by TheEastSider

The MacIver Institute seems to claim through the posting of the picture on the right that no one showed to the March 10, 2012 rally commemorating the death of collective bargaining in Wisconsin. However the MacIver camera was not pointed at the crowd, and a photo by Jenna Pope tells a different story. Photos courtesy Jenna Pope (left) MacIver Institute (right)

Thursday night Jon Stewart cheesed Sean Hannity for trying to prove Barack Obama is a radical through ancient footage of him speaking in support of a controversial professor while Obama was President of the Harvard Law Review. (See video below, be sure to look for sandwich guy) It was so ancient Stewart spent the first two minutes of the introduction waving around an actual VHS tape.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart

Stewart’s point was that Hannity was trying to bring down the president three years after a plurality of voters were quite comfortable with turning over the reigns to him. So Hannity is a little late to the party with this one as are the folks at the right-leaning (some would say falling over) MacIver Institute. Late Saturday (March 10) they posted a picture of the capitol square in Madison which suggested no one showed for the rally.

Another series of photos was taken by activist Jenna Pope which proves its hard to hide tens of thousands of people. The Beast’s Ian Murphy (and at least one-time David Koch impersonator) adeptly deconstructs MacIver’s closing of the barn door after the horses have left, pointing out that its all about the angles.

Read Ian Murphy’s post at The Beast

Sustained Fire

Posted on March 11, 2012 by TheEastSider

Organizers estimate that 65,000 people gathered for a rally to mark the one year anniversary of the passage of Act 10, the legislation that eliminated collective bargaining for public unions in Wisconsin. Photo by: Nice Nice

It was a year ago that Act 10 was passed by the Wisconsin legislature over howls of protest from an obvious majority of Wisconsin citizens. On this brilliantly sunny and warm Saturday (March 10) an estimated 63,000 gathered for a rally on the State Street steps of the capitol to mark the occasion. In a scene that could easily be taken for a year ago, rally attendees filled the approach to the capitol as well as the adjoining streets and into the 100 block of State street.

The weather today was identical to a year ago (except 30 degrees warmer) when we gathered at the capitol for the last of the big rallies and somewhat mourned the loss of the initial fight to “kill the bill” that had passed the night before. I remember the final speaker that day, actor and Green Bay native Tony Shalhoub, urged us to continue the fight and turn our focus to recalls. We promised we would, but many of us wondered if we could sustain the anger and fire that brought all of us in Wisconsin together.

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