http://www.jambands.com
John Patrick Gatta

side note: saw this a few days ago. who doesn’t love the dead! my favorite Jerry quote that Mickey brings up is, “That’s what we’re playing with. We’re playing with magic, music magic.”

With the Core Four of the Grateful Dead split up at this moment, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, took to the road with the latest incarnation of the Rhythm Devils. As has been custom for each of Hart’s non-GD musical excursions the lineup this time around varies the previous Devils’ roster. Besides Hart and Kreutzmann, they are joined by Mickey’s longtime drumming collaborator Sikiru Adepoju plus guitarist Davy Knowles and bassist Andy Hess. Living out a Deadhead dream, Keller Williams received his horns and joined the outfit during its first leg. The Mother Hips Tim Bluhm joins them for the second leg, which begins on Aug. 21 at the Hoxeyville Festival.

Speaking from his home during a break between tour schedules, Hart, as usual, is ebullient in tackling subjects that range from why the Dead aren’t touring to the current Devils lineup, the neurological element of the concert experience for artist and audience and the Jerry Garcia Tribute Night at the San Francisco Giants game which took place two days prior to our conversation.

JPG: Catching up on recent events, at the San Francisco Giants’ ballpark, At&T Park…

MH: We set the world’s record kazoo ensemble. It went great! It was good vibes all around. Giants won. And Rex Foundation made a lot of money. Now, we’re about to give it away and Jerry is smiling. He lost weight in heaven. They had the bobblehead Jerry dolls. He was thin. He must be working out in heaven.

JPG: Well, It’s heaven. The food doesn’t have calories.

MH: I guess not. I guess they don’t have the calories in heaven. Milkshakes and hamburgers either.

JPG: That’s why they call it ‘heaven’.

MH: I hope they treat me that good. (laughs)

JPG: Just curious. Why kazoos and not some sort of drum ensemble or rhythmic handclaps with the crowd?

MH: It’s not about the kazoos. It’s about “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” It’s really hard to drum “Take Me Out the the Ballgame.” It’s a waltz. Rhythmically it’s challenged, but it’s the anthem, and it’s doable. Kazoos cost pennies compared to drums, and 9,000 kazoos… It seemed like the right thing to do at the time. It’s really hard to say. It was just a thought I had. And I thought Jerry would like the oddness, the weirdness, of doing kazoos. It just came to me in a moment. And then going for the Guinness record seemed like the right thing to do. I can’t really explain it more than that but he’s smiling.

JPG: Does it amaze that 15 years have passed quickly?

MH: It has actually. It seems like it doesn’t seem that long in some ways and in other ways it seems like forever. He’s always with me. When I think about him I can hear him. He’s with me. I can see him smile. I hear him all the time in my left ear, the ear he deafened. (more…)

I know we don’t post often on NT anymore….we are trying to get back to the good ol’ days when we had new content daily…..

Anyways…if you haven’t noticed, the corporate media has been beating the war drums lately when it comes to Iran. I know President Obama isn’t a dumb guy…..but after awhile, even the smartest folks could end up believing that if Iran gets a nuke, then the world as we know it will change forever! We have heard this before……and we’ll hear this again. Just remember, when you hear this mass display of yelling about the end of the world……they did this with Iraq, we heard it with North Korea…we heard it with Afghanistan…..just remember that the same people who own 95% of our media outlets also have a big financial stakes in the defense industry. War is very profitable for some folks….and those same folks couldn’t give a fuck about the people who are directly affected….these include the victims in the war zone, and the soldiers who have to leave their families in order to fight.

side note: the real sad truth here is Target was allowed to make these contributions because of the recent Supreme Court ruling which freed them to spend CORPORATE funds on elections. This stems directly from Bush and the people he put up on the Supreme Court, which was Roberts and Stevens. These Republicans have no idea what it means to protect the citizens of this country, all they know and all they think about is protecting corporations, since they believe corporations are just like people. the line has got to be drawn somewhere. Talk about Judicial Activism.

A few Target Corp. and Best Buy Co. institutional shareholders weighed in Thursday on the flap over the companies’ political donations in Minnesota, urging the boards of both retailers to increase their oversight of campaign contributions.

Walden Asset Management and Trillium Asset Management Corp., both of Boston, and Bethesda, Md.-based Calvert Asset Management Co. filed shareholder resolutions with both companies. Together, the three firms control less than 1 percent of each company’s outstanding shares — 1.1 million Target shares worth $57.5 million and 344,000 Best Buy shares worth $11.3 million — but they are moving the debate over the political giving to a new arena.

Target gave $150,000 and Best Buy $100,000 to a business-focused political fund helping a conservative Republican gubernatorial candidate in Minnesota, triggering a national backlash from gay rights groups and liberals. The companies made the donations after a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling freed them to spend corporate funds on elections. The candidate, state legislator Tom Emmer, opposes gay marriage and other rights for same-sex couples. (more…)

Huffington Post

Progressive action committee MoveOn.org has released a TV ad urging Americans to boycott Target, in its latest swipe against the company for spending money on the Minnesota Governor’s race.

“Target and other big corporations are trying to buy our elections,” the ad states.

The 30-second ad calls for viewers to boycott Target for donating over $150,000 to conservative Rep. Tom Emmer’s bid for Minnesota governor. The money was reportedly put toward this political advertisement supporting the anti-gay-rights candidate, made by business interest group Minnesota Forward. (more…)

side note: forgot to put this up yesterday. enjoy

Just think of the possibilities…Imagine H.G. Wells’ most celebrated vision—the time machine—as accessible as a Hertz Rent-a-Car. Where would you go? And when??

For the millions of rock fans who have seen the Grateful Dead perform live, that decision would be made with very little deliberation. Quicker than you could say “Casey Jones,” the controls would be set for the Fillmore West in San Francisco.

The year? 1967, since on any given night at Bill Graham’s storied Bay Area auditorium, there was the distinct likelihood of witnessing the hall’s three “house bands”—the Grateful Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service and Jefferson Airplane, all sharing the same bill and presenting their new material to a small but fanatical audience.

As most music fans know, other San Francisco groups who eventually used the same Fillmore stage as their springboard to national prominence include The Doors, Santana, Moby Grape, Country Joe and the Fish and Big Brother and the Holding Company, which featured a transplanted Texas tornado of a blues singer named Janis Joplin. The combined notoriety that each of these acts achieved marked San Francisco as arguably the most fertile spawning ground for rock and roll of any city in the U.S.

Looking back from a 1988 vantage point, those Fillmore performances will never be forgotten by those lucky enough to have witnessed them; the fact that the passage of time has left them behind in another dimension (unfortunately H.G. was a novelist rather than an inventor) makes them seem magical.

But, for the Grateful Dead, it’s the other way around. Those are the magical times. Twenty-two years after the release of their debut album the Dead are more popular than ever. Their latest album, In The Dark, shocked everyone in the music business (and probably the band themselves) by becoming their largest-selling record ever. A long, strange trip? They couldn’t even have imagined how long or strange it would be.

In 1974, I was the music critic for the Philadelphia Bulletin newspaper. Being a regular writer for a major-city daily newspaper at the age of twenty-four was rewarding and gave a certain satisfaction to a young rock fan’s life. Getting paid to see and interview bands like the Grateful Dead, was, at times, so much fun, it almost seemed illegal. But someone had to do it, so…

Anyway, that summer of ’74 the Grateful Dead were booked for two nights at Philadelphia’s Civic Center. My job was to do a preview story in the Sunday Bulletin on the band. Their publicist approved an interview with Bob Weir (Jerry Garcia, I was informed, “wasn’t talking to the press”), and provided me with ticket to see a show in Providence, Rhode Island, a couple of weeks before Philadelphia, and off I went.

The interview with Bob Weir before the concert was terrific. Weir, as most people know, is a friendly, witty man and gave me more than I needed for the story.

The show that night, at the Providence Civic Center, was a five hour extravaganza, leaving everyone, band and audience alike, drained and exhausted but in a state of euphoria. A few minutes after the last encore, I noticed Jerry Garcia, wearing a dark green t-shirt, Wranglers and Acme boots, leaning against a wall backstage, winding down. I went over to say hello and asked him about a new (at the time) song from Mars Hotel they had closed the show with.

Spotting the tape-recorder I was carrying, he said “I’m not doing interviews this year,” in the same tone of voice he might use to order an after-dinner wine. “I hate all my records,” he added as an afterthought. “The Grateful Dead don’t make good records.”

Was he satisfied with the performance they had just given?

“If I was ever satisfied,” he added totally seriously, “I’d quit playing.” (more…)

Reuters
http://www.msnbc.msn.com

The city of Oakland, California on Tuesday legalized large-scale marijuana cultivation for medical use and will issue up to four permits for “industrial” cultivation starting next year.

The move by the San Francisco Bay Area city aims to bring medical marijuana cultivation into the open and allow the city to profit by taxing those who grow it.

The resolution passed the city council easily after a nearly four-hour debate that pitted small-scale “garden” growers against advocates of a bigger, industrial system that would become a “Silicon Valley” of pot.

“This is going to grow as an industry. And someone is going to have a high-tech producer,” Council Member Jean Quan said during the debate. (more…)

side note: I do think that California will pass this come November. In case anyone is not aware, the state will be voting to basically treat Marijuana like tobacco or alcohol. tax it and regulate it. if this happens, not only will be see other states follow, but something that never gets discussed, is all of the other ways we can use Hemp. whether it’s for making paper, clothing, fuel, or food (just to name a few, there are literally thousands of uses), this will provide jobs and opportunities for so many others, including people who choose not to smoke. it’s all good, all the way around

By , California Watch
http://www.alternet.org

A flourishing and unregulated industry of pot delivery services is circumventing bans on storefront dispensaries and bringing medical marijuana directly to people’s homes, offices and more unconventional locations across the state, records and interviews show.

The unfettered delivery of marijuana through hundreds of these services highlights how quickly California’s fabled pot industry is moving from the shadows and into uncharted legal territory. These new couriers include enterprising farmers, business entrepreneurs and even a former Los Angeles pot dealer methodically switching her former clients to legal patients.

In newspapers and on the Internet, hundreds of “mobile dispensaries” advertise a wide range of strains and other products, such as brownies and cookies laced with THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. One service delivers organic vegetables along with medical marijuana, as part of a “farm-direct” service.

Some operate in multiple counties, including jurisdictions where storefront dispensaries are banned, or make local deliveries to drop-off points, such as Starbucks parking lots and gas stations. At least three ship to clients around the state using private prescription-drug couriers.

Although delivery of medical marijuana is not a new phenomenon, advocates say the growth of these services could be a game-changer in the state’s pot war, which pits law enforcement, elected officials and community groups in some localities against dispensary owners and patients.

And these businesses could increase in popularity if voters approve an initiative on the November ballot that would legalize pot possession.

“They’re delivering the product better, cheaper, more discretely and probably at a higher profit rate than dispensaries,” said Allen St. Pierre, director of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, which advocates legalization. “These delivery services are starting to grab more and more market share.” (more…)

I know I haven’t posted in sometime now…..but I wanted to take some time to discuss what’s happening in the Gulf.

The past decade saw an increase in the thought that government, in any form, was a bad idea. Why let the government fix education, lets give it to private contractors (no child left behind). Lets privatize Social Security….the government can’t do it! Lets privatize the war effort, this got to a point that there were more private contractors then soldiers in Iraq. There’s no need to regulate the markets, it’ll correct itself! So on and so on and so on…..

Well, look what this got us? We now have a government that is being put back together, piece by piece because the GOP and all their fuckin idiotic followers, ya Tea Party…that includes you, decided they’d follow a monkey who resided in the White House. Now this monkey, who had already had a shitty track record in Texas…was allowed to trample a lot of safety measures that were put into place to avoid the bullshit we’re now experiencing.

I look back on the 2008 campaign and remember the chants of “drill baby drill”. And how that ditz Palin was screaming daily why we should drill off the coasts…and how safe it was. Now…you look at what states went to the GOP in that election, and guess what, a lot of them are on the Gulf Coast.

For years, we have been telling people who read NT that for a majority of Republicans….they actually vote against their own best interests. Here is just another example!

My message to Republican and those fucking morons who have tea bags hanging off of their hats at these rallys: OPEN UP A BOOK, READ A MAGAZINE, READ INDEPENDENT THINKERS WHO WRITE ON REAL DOMESTIC AND FOREIGN TOPICS, TURN OFF FOX NEWS, ACTUALLY, TURN OFF THE TV. IT’S ALL GARBAGE! TURN OFF THE CONSERVATIVE RADIO. THEY MAKE MAD $$$$ OFF OF YOUR STUPIDITY! WAKE UP AND REALIZE THAT YOU ARE BEING SCREWED!

If you’re one of those folks who says: I don’t know where to start! Well, I know we don’t post as much as we should, but go through our archives. Read about what happened over the last 6 years. Learn how the GOP and the Dems divided this country and then conquered us…which allowed them to put through legislation that was only good for the rich and elite…and fucked over the rest of us. As one of our founders of this country said:

This Nation was founded on the hope that the people would always question the government

–Thomas Jefferson

side note: fantastic insight!

By Ram Dass and Ralph Metzner, Brain Waving

http://www.alternet.org/story/146942/

LSD is a drug that produces fear in people who don’t take it. –Timothy Leary

It’s now almost half a century since that day in September 1961 when a mysterious fellow named Michael Hollingshead made an appointment to meet Professor Timothy Leary over lunch at the Harvard Faculty Club. When they met in the foyer, Hollingshead was carrying with him a quart jar of sugar paste into which he had infused a gram of Sandoz LSD. He had smeared this goo all over his own increasingly abstract consciousness and it still contained, by his own reckoning, 4,975 strong (200 mcg) doses of LSD. The mouth of that jar became perhaps the most significant of the fumaroles from which the ‘60s blew forth. (more…)

side note: NASA released a great photo from their satellite showing the oil heading out to the ocean. the spill looks massive in this photo. check it out here.

GREG BLUESTEIN | AP
huffingtonpost.com

Federal scientists said Wednesday that a small portion of the oil slick from the blown-out well in the Gulf of Mexico has reached a powerful current that could take it to Florida.

National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration scientists said they have detected light to very light sheens in the loop current, which circulates into the Gulf and takes water south to the Florida Keys and the Gulf Stream.

The agency says that any oil would be “highly weathered” and could evaporate before reaching Florida. And it might never reach the state at all. But scientists said diluted oil could appear in isolated locations if persistent winds push the current toward Florida.

The Coast Guard announced Wednesday that tar balls washing ashore in the Florida Keys were not from the Gulf spill, but that did little to soothe fears the oil could spread damage along the coast from Louisiana to Florida.

The U.S. and Cuba were holding talks on how to respond to the spill, U.S. State Department spokesman Gordon Duguid said, underscoring worries about the oil reaching the loop current and being carried to the Florida Keys and the pristine white beaches of Cuba’s northern coast. (more…)

side note: unfortunately this is real.

By Luis Amate Perez
alternet.org

If you were a cynical 12-year-old boy like I was, then the words Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers will bring to mind bitter thoughts of cheesy dialogue, bright spandex uniforms, and choreographed live-action anime fight scenes, all overdubbed and irritatingly formulaic. Other children (many, actually) fell in love with the show, and its popularity continues to grow as new generations are taken in by the bright colors and trademark teamwork of the heroes. I hadn’t thought about the Power Rangers in years until I learned that one of the show’s stars, Jason David Frank (who played Tommy Oliver, The Green Ranger) is the founder of a Mixed Martial Arts clothing line for the Christian Fighter/MMA enthusiast called Jesus Didn’t Tap.

Jesus as the One True Warrior

The thought of a man who spent his formative years delivering campy dialogue and roundhouse kicks (all while wearing a fierce ’90s ponytail) now marketing the Lord with Mixed Martial Arts was intriguing, to say the least. The Mighty Morphin’ alumni already boast a convicted murderer, an actress who died young in a car crash, and now, with Jason David Frank, an anointed fighter and proselytizer.

Frank has swapped the full-body Power Rangers getup for MMA shorts, four-ounce gloves, and a muscular frame with so many tattoos the man looks graffitied. He has a 2-0 record in the cage (his wins coming via omoplata submission and TKO) and according to TMZ, Frank even has his eyes set on fighting Jean Claude Van Damme. (more…)

side note: about 6 months ago I watched a show on the Discovery network about our planet and what we are doing to it. For the first time I looked at the environment in a different way. Most believe that we’re ruining the planet with our waste, whether it be the water, the land or the air. We cut down forests, pour toxic chemicals into our water systems and we pump smoke into the atmosphere.

But the show’s point was that the earth has been through much worse then anything we can do to it. if we don’t clean up the mess, the planet will be unlivable for us. because if we cut down a forest, it will just take a few thousand years to grow back. the air will eventually be cleaned, and the water too. the animals, earth will produce new ones. But if we keep on this track, we’re the ones that are going to be in trouble, not earth.

by William Rivers Pitt
Truthout.org

“I wanted to destroy everything beautiful I’d never have,” wrote Chuck Palahniuk in his novel,”‘Fight Club.” “Burn the Amazon rain forest. Pump chlorofluorocarbons straight up to gobble the ozone. Open the dump valves on supertankers and uncap offshore oil wells. I wanted to kill all the fish I couldn’t afford to eat, and smother the French beaches. I wanted the whole world to hit bottom … I wanted to breathe smoke. I wanted to burn the Louvre. I’d do the Elgin Marbles with a sledgehammer and wipe my ass with the Mona Lisa. This is my world, now.”

This is our world now, indeed. All those terrible things Palahniuk’s protagonist wanted to do, well, most of them are happening or have already happened. The Louvre is still there, for now, and neither the Marbles nor the “Mona Lisa” have been violated, but as for the rest of that rant … yeah, they’re pretty much fact. (more…)

side note: this is too good. enjoy! the paragraph below was the intro on skepchick.com’s website, just to give you an insight to what the clip is about. click here to see the original

by Rebecca Watson
http://skepchick.org

I’m not really the biggest fan of prank phone calls in general, but this is comedy gold. Prophet Woody Martin is some asshole televangelist who preys upon ignorant and gullible people who believe he has magical powers granted to him by Jesus. He gives away “Blood of Jesus Oil” that he claims can cure alcoholism. FunTimeInternet gave him a call about it.

By Chris Hedges
www.alternet.org

As we devolve into a commodity culture, in which celebrity, power and money reign, the older, dimming values of another era are being replaced.

It is hard to muster much sympathy over the implosion of the Catholic Church, traditional Protestant denominations or Jewish synagogues. These institutions were passive as the Christian right, which peddles magical thinking and a Jesus-as-warrior philosophy, hijacked the language and iconography of traditional Christianity. They have busied themselves with the boutique activism of the culture wars. They have failed to unequivocally denounce unfettered capitalism, globalization and pre-emptive war. The obsession with personal piety and “How-is-it-with-me?” spirituality that permeates most congregations is narcissism. And while the Protestant church and reformed Judaism have not replicated the perfidiousness of the Catholic bishops, who protect child-molesting priests, they have little to say in an age when we desperately need moral guidance.

I grew up in the church and graduated from a seminary. It is an institution whose cruelty, inflicted on my father, who was a Presbyterian minister, I know intimately. I do not attend church. The cloying, feel-your-pain language of the average clergy member makes me run for the door. The debates in most churches—whether revolving around homosexuality or biblical interpretation—are a waste of energy. I have no desire to belong to any organization, religious or otherwise, which discriminates, nor will I spend my time trying to convince someone that the raw anti-Semitism in the Gospel of John might not be the word of God. It makes no difference to me if Jesus existed or not. There is no historical evidence that he did. Fairy tales about heaven and hell, angels, miracles, saints, divine intervention and God’s beneficent plan for us are repeatedly mocked in the brutality and indiscriminate killing in war zones, where I witnessed children murdered for sport and psychopathic gangsters elevated to demigods. The Bible works only as metaphor.

The institutional church, when it does speak, mutters pious non-statements that mean nothing. “Given the complexity of factors involved, many of which understandably remain confidential, it is altogether appropriate for members of our armed forces to presume the integrity of our leadership and its judgments, and therefore to carry out their military duties in good conscience,” Archbishop Edwin F. O’Brien, head of the Archdiocese for the Military Services, wrote about the Iraq war. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, on the eve of the invasion, told believers that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was a menace, and that reasonable people could disagree about the necessity of using force to overthrow him. It assured those who supported the war that God would not object. B’nai B’rith supported a congressional resolution to authorize the 2003 attack on Iraq. The Union of American Hebrew Congregations, which represents Reform Judaism, agreed it would back unilateral action, as long as Congress approved and the president sought support from other nations. The National Council of Churches, which represents 36 different faith groups, in a typical bromide, urged President George W. Bush to “do all possible” to avoid war with Iraq and to stop “demonizing adversaries or enemies” with good-versus-evil rhetoric, but, like the other liberal religious institutions, did not condemn the war. (more…)

Michael Zimmerman, Ph.D.
www.huffingtonpost.com

In case you had any doubt, the last nail was just placed in the coffin of intelligent design (ID). And, in case you had any doubt, that last nail joins many others that have been in place for quite some time.

The latest attack appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (PNAS) and provides conclusive evidence that the design of the human genome is incredibly imperfect, or, in other words, very far from being intelligently structured. As John Avise, a University of California-Irvine biologist, noted in the paper, his focus “is on a relatively neglected category of argument against ID and in favor of evolution: the argument from imperfection, as applied to the human genome.”

The basic concept of intelligent design comes in two parts and is as simple as it is satisfying for those unwilling to think deeply about the natural world, science, or the nature of religion. Part one, stretching way back to the ancient Greeks, notes that nature is so perfectly integrated that it must have been designed just as we see it. Part two, largely attributed to Lehigh University biologist Michael Behe, says that while some aspects of nature might certainly have changed (evolved?) over time, others are so complex that they must always have existed in the form we find them in today. Indeed, he coined the term “irreducibly complex” to explain such structures. Change anything at all in these irreducibly complex structures and they fail to work.

Both parts of ID are spectacularly wrong. (more…)