Wednesday, September 17, 2008

McCain Truth Watch: The Great Regulator

An open letter to John McCain:
The 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act removed Depression-era safeguards banning banks from offering investment, insurance, and commercial banking services. Gramm-Leach-Bliley also reduced the Securities and Exchange Commission's regulatory oversight of financial markets. This set the stage for the subprime mortgage crisis that led to the current financial meltdown on Wall Street, which you describe as an economy in crisis.  Senator McCain, you supported this bill, a bill with provisions that created what one of your television advertisements calls a betrayal of the American worker. My questions are these: As a senator, was your support of Gramm-Leach-Bliley a betrayal of the American worker? As president, will you act to repeal Gramm-Leach-Bliley?...




I haven't written much about music lately because of the election. But I'd be remiss in not recommending Patricia Barber's The Cole Porter Mix. Barber is not only that rarity in jazz -- a gifted songwriter, singer, and pianist -- she has a special place in my life because I took Premium T. to see her quartet on our first date. She's at the top of her game on Cole Porter, where she and her quartet perform ten of the great man's songs as well as three written by Barber in the Porter style. And if you think that's hubris carried to a ridiculous extreme, judge for yourself. On "Snow," she conjures Porter's inimitable wit:
Do you think of me like fat
Irresistible as cream
On your lips, on your hips
Like chocolate, like a dream?
On "The New Year's Eve Song," she captures Porter's remarkable emotive power by echoing his brilliant "So In Love," one of the greatest songs in the history of musical theatre:
will He kiss her on New Year's Eve
after the last guests leave
then kiss her again, will He
peek in the mirror while She

knowing he's watching her tease
stripping the gown with ease
bare as the New Year She
so in love with her is he
Barber's lovely, unique contralto is in splendid form throughout, as is her always tasteful piano playing. Superb from beginning to end...

Finally, don't miss this assortment of campaign ads past, presented by John Dickerson of Slate:

5 comments:

Sylvia K said...

I wonder what his answer would be???? I'll look for the album, sounds like my kind of thing.
Thanks as always!

Frank Partisan said...

Cole Porter is the most difficult of the Pan Alley composers to sing. If a word is messed up there is no improvising.

I liked the video.

mouse (aka kimy) said...

that vid was fantastic....

although the current crop of political ads look a lot slicker, many of the messages and the tactics seem the same.

every time I hear the bit about ford being a healer I cringe - yeah, the man who pardoned nixon. I think that act opened up a pandora's box and in the long run for the republican party ushered in reagan and the helped create the party of lies and deceit....

if mcsame and ms pain get in I will have lost all hope and faith in the united states....right now I still have hope that our electorate isn't that brain dead and/or stupid...

I think I have to listen to some music now before I go off on some meltdown rant! cole porter can help...

K. said...

S: You'd see a rhetorical tap dance that you'd never forget!

M: Take heart! This thing isn't over by a long shot. Obama has a lot paths to 270, more than McCain. Obama can get elected by carrying all of the states Gore was credited for plus one. Any one, such as New Hampshire or Colorado or Virginia. Gore didn't win Ohio and -- as we all know -- was cheated out of Florida, so neither of those are requirements.

All: The Eisenhower ad is in a class by itself, but my fave is the one of the typical Republican about to have a stroke over the possibility of Goldwater being president.

Molly The Dog said...

Adding to all you leftist bloggers, the thought of one out of five VPs, as was said in the video, ending up being the president leaves me with chills when I think of Sarah Palin answering that phone at 3am. She'll probably turn to her husband, who she'll have made Secretary of Defense, and ask for advise. After all, he too can see Russia from his porch.