This week's installment of the Presidential iPod Commission is a fine ditty from the young indie rock sage Bright Eyes. Bright Eyes is the musical vehicle of Conor Oberst, a young singer-songwriter from Nebraska. Looking like a young Bob Dylan, he actually performed When The President Talks to God on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno a few weeks ago. You may download a free mp3 of the song and watch the video of the Tonight Show performance here. Don't ask me how or why NBC (General Electric) gave him airtime. The executives probably never listened to the song.
I'm glad he received that exposure. The song deserves it.
When the president talks to God Are the conversations brief or long? Does he ask to rape our women's rights And send poor farm kids off to die? Does God suggest an oil hike When the president talks to God?
When the president talks to God Are the consonants all hard or soft? Is he resolute all down the line? Is every issue black or white? Does what God say ever change his mind When the president talks to God?
When the president talks to God Does he fake that drawl or merely nod? Agree which convicts should be killed? Where prisons should be built and filled? Which voter fraud must be concealed When the president talks to God?
When the president talks to God I wonder which one plays the better cop We should find some jobs. the ghetto's broke No, they're lazy, George, I say we don't Just give 'em more liquor stores and dirty coke That's what God recommends
When the president talks to God Do they drink near beer and go play golf While they pick which countries to invade Which Muslim souls still can be saved? I guess god just calls a spade a spade When the president talks to God
When the president talks to God Does he ever think that maybe he's not? That that voice is just inside his head When he kneels next to the presidential bed Does he ever smell his own bullshit When the president talks to God?
I doubt it
I doubt it
I doubt it too. What do you think God tells President Bush?
Torturing prisoners, rather than making the U.S. safer, puts us all in greater danger. Herbert:
People have been murdered, tortured, rendered to foreign countries to be tortured at a distance, sexually violated, imprisoned without trial or in some cases simply made to "disappear" in an all-American version of a practice previously associated with brutal Latin American dictatorships.All of this has been done, of course, in the name of freedom.
We are what we have always been. It's just that the mask has slipped. Think of Birmingham and Watts, of Wounded Knee, of the Phillipines and Cuba, of Central American wars fought over fruit, of Hiroshima and Hanoi, of steel strikes and all the rest of the places where American brutality has surfaced.
We remember what we want to remember, most of the time. We are not all evil, but we've never been what we wanted to be, either. And it's grieving for the death of the myth, the dream, the goal, that makes us Progressives instead of Republicans, I think.
What keeps me awake at night is that this is our tax dollars at work. Sometimes I think about it and makes me very uneasy: no matter how much I protest, a huge chunk of the money I pay in taxes is being used in these neocon adventures. I know there's not much of an alternative to that and this is how our society works, but I feel used: they take the largest part of my tax dollar to finance delusional crusades around the world, something I strongly oppose. Then they turn around and tell me they are doing it on my name.
It blows.
In the meantime public schools are going to hell, teachers are paid miserable salaries, our infrastructure is decaying at an alarming rate, and more Americans than ever have to get around without health insurance.
This week's installment of the 
