Music Reviews-Ike Turner, Desmond Dekker

Ike Turner
When people see the words "Ike Turner" many immediately think of scenes like this. That was part of who Ike Turner was, though I would be wary of taking any fictionalized version of events as 100% historical documentation, but unfortunately it was also part of who a lot of celebrities were, including the secular saint himself  John Lennon. I try not to excuse or explain evil. However if you're living in the US you're living on land that is soaked in the blood of Indians. You're currently enjoying rights of free speech and assembly promulgated by men who owned slaves. Many of those men would be shocked and dismayed that in modern society blacks were Senators or Presidents or that women were voting. What I mean to say is that like it or not sometimes evil and good are all mixed up together. Sometimes good people make crap art and evil people make masterful art. If you happen not to like Turner's work on purely musical grounds then I understand. If you reject his work for his abuse of women, that is also your right and I won't try to convince you otherwise. I would just say you should then be willing to reject music by Muddy Waters, James Brown, George Jones, Lynyrd Sknyrd, Dr. Dre, Glen Campbell, Jackson Browne, Black Sabbath, Stan Getz, Motley Crue, Phil Spector, The Allman Brothers, Yanni, Sly Stone, Tracy Lawrence, and many others on the very same grounds.

Before Ike Turner met Annie Mae Bullock he was already a famous guitarist, songwriter, arranger, bandleader, producer, A&R man, promoter, etc who worked with such legendary names as Robert Nighthawk, BB King, Elmore James, and Little Milton. As an 11 year old Ike Turner had piano lessons from famed blues musician Pinetop Perkins. As much as people like Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley, etc Turner created rock-n-roll. He told stories of Elvis coming to see him play. Little Richard and BB King cited Turner as influences. Turner was originally a pianist and brought a very individualistic style to the guitar. He worked as a session pianist for early Howling Wolf and BB King releases. Turner also showed up as a session guitarist for some Otis Rush work. Left to his own devices Turner didn't really sound like very many other guitarists, though he was not averse to occasionally shamelessly copying other more popular guitarists. Anything for a buck.

Ike was a bandleader, not primarily a singer. Most of his best early work has other people doing the singing. You can always tell when Ike sang though because of a quite distinctive bass-baritone voice. You know how some men have a deeper voice in the early morning? Ike basically sounded like that all day, every day. Listen to his background vocals on Up in Heah.

Ike Turner switched to guitar permanently when having fired a guitarist and found a really good pianist (Bonnie Turner), he figured it would be easier and cheaper to play the guitar himself than to hire and train another musician. One of Ike's distinctive traits on the guitar was savage use of the whammy (vibrato) bar to bend notes a quarter step or more beyond the initial note. Occasionally this caused issues with tuning but it is one way you always know that it's him. He often said that he had no idea how to use the bar and figured that rough use was how to do it. I guess randomness and accidents are some times good things in art. His solos are full of cascades of bent notes and whammy bar harmonics.

Ike Turner was there at the beginning of electric rock-n-roll. As mentioned he could honestly claim to have started it. He maintained a fierce sense of swing that was present in whatever music he played, blues, country, soul, R&B, funk, hard rock, etc. From his start to his end most of the music that he wrote always was danceable. He wrote, played piano on and produced what was arguably the first rock-n-roll record, Rocket 88, and was one of the earliest proponents of amp distortion. He told different stories about this over the years. In some of the stories this tone was a pure accident caused by a car accident and damaged amp tubes, in others the tone was deliberate. In any event when Turner played guitar, he had a beautiful glassy tone, especially when he would play a slow blues. Check out his sound on I smell trouble or his demented country picking on Steel Guitar Rag. And the solo on No Coming Back anticipated heavy metal dissonance by two decades. I like his early work with vocalists like Billy Gayles and Billy Emerson. The songs below are a very small portion of his recorded output that spanned over 50 years. Post 1970 or so he really lost his way and started copying more of the current funk and rock trends. He did some nice covers, especially of Sly Stone's music but the adventurousness was gone. Fun fact, the song A Fool in Love was something Ike had originally written for a male vocalist but when he discovered that Tina could temporarily sing in the lower range, kept the recording and the rest is history...

Just One More Time(w/Billy Gayles) If Loving is Believing and No teasing around(w/Billy The Kid Emerson)  Up in Heah(w/Tina Turner)  You're Driving Me Insane
My heart belongs to you (duet w/Bonnie Turner)  Cubano Jump  Steel Guitar Rag

I smell trouble (w/Tina Turner) Rocket 88 (w/ Jackie Brenston)  Black Coffee(w/Tina Turner)   Baby Get it On (w/Tina Turner)  Baby Makes Me Feel Good(w/Tina Turner)
Philadelphia Freedom(w/Tina Turner)  Proud Mary (live w/Tina Turner)
No Coming Back(w/Billy Gayles)  Don't Believe Nothing(w/Tina Turner)  A Fool In Love (w/Tina Turner)

Desmond Dekker

Demond Dekker was a Jamaican singer and songwriter whose career included the similar musics of ska, rocksteady, reggae and even some things that hinted at American blues and soul. Similar to some Black American protest singers much of his best music was concerned with oppression, violence, poverty and an indomitable will to survive. He can probably be credited for launching the rude boy look in Europe, especially England. Unfortunately for Dekker his career was derailed by the death of his top producer and Svengali, Leslie Kong. As a result Dekker was somewhat eclipsed by the other reggae superstar of the seventies, Bob Marley. I had heard the song 007 (Shanty Town) growing up but sad to say I did not really become a devoted fan until by happenstance I heard the song Israelites at the end of the film Drugstore Cowboy, and was hooked (pun intended).

Even if he had never written anything else, Israelites is such an intense insistent song that it demands that Dekker's talent be recognized. The lyrics are sometimes a little hard to understand if you're not familiar with Jamaican accents but heck you can say the same thing about British rock. I can't sing the high pitched lyrics but I can kill it on the low pitched chorus. Oh, oh,,,the Israelites...

I really enjoy listening to music like reggae, ska, etc that messes around with the beat and moves the pulse someplace different than where an American would normally expect to hear it. The ironic thing of course is that reggae and ska are very much related to American blues and R&B and vice versa. New Orleans was a place that was in many ways a meeting point and melting pot for several different music genres across the diaspora. I defy anyone to listen to King of Ska and not start to dance. If you don't there must be something wrong with your tailfeather. Get it checked out ASAP!!! You wouldn't have a tailfeather if you weren't meant to shake it.

Israelites 007 (Shanty Town) You Can Get It if You Really Want  King of Ska
Big Headed(dub mix) Honour Your Father and Mother  Hippopotamus

Post-Election White Rage

Now that the election is over and it is settled who will be President for the next four years a little bit of disappointment from supporters of the losing candidate is only to be expected. That's normal. I am old enough to remember how bitterly let down some people were when Reagan beat Carter and four years later turned Mondale into his personal well lubricated hand puppet. And the Bush smiting of Dukakis also left many people in my circles of family and friends wishing that things were otherwise. But if you're a mature adult sooner or later you learn that things don't always go your way. If you happen to grow up as a minority in America you learn that lesson a bit more quickly and thoroughly than seems right, as you are seemingly always outnumbered and always outgunned. Your political or aesthetic choices or styles are usually not what is popular in the cultural or political marketplace.  If you happen to raise this issue with the majority, say expressing concern about the relative dearth of black faces on mainstream magazine covers the usual response is something along the lines of majority rules, so shut up and deal. And in our society that is a honest and valid statement.

But life goes on. So people didn't agree with your position this time. That doesn't mean that life is over and you fall into a pit of despair and depression. It's only politics after all. It's not life and death, right? You move on with your life and maybe work harder to bring people around to your point of view next time. I mean it's nothing to start bawling over or hang your head down in despair is it? I have voted for plenty of presidential candidates that did not win and more than a few that had virtually no chance of winning. That's life. You make your decision and work to get people to agree with you and hope that many people can see the obvious sagacity of your choice and convince others likewise. If they won't or can't then yes in private you might occasionally wonder at their IQ levels but you would never say that in public because not only is it an ugly and nasty thing to say about people but fundamentally it's untrue. There are simply too many people who are intelligent decent honest people who see the world differently than you do to say that anyone who doesn't see things just like you do is an evil wicked person who for amusement shoots puppies in their spare time. Not to say that there aren't people like that but they probably don't neatly line up with your political opposition.

One of the things that is really interesting to me is how some leading Romney supporters have forgotten this truism and gone off the deep end in not only rejecting the outcome of the election but vacillate between soul numbing depression and white-hot rage at the voters who helped re-elect the President. If you remember just a few weeks back there were more than a few conservatives, fueled by speculation from sites as Drudge, Breitbart and a few others I won't mention, who were not only convinced that Romney was going to win but that Black Obama supporters, no doubt fueled by crack cocaine, rage and resentment would riot in the streets and have to be dealt with by police and/or the National Guard. Evidently some conservatives were eagerly looking forward to this. Well as it turned out not only did Obama win but the twitter tough guy calling for violent revolution and taking it to the streets and shutting this muyerfuyer down was none other than the very successful and very white billionaire real estate tycoon Donald Trump.

Mr. Trump, who as far as I know has never had to sleep on the streets, been locked up for years for a crime he didn't commit, been fired because of the color of his skin, wondered where his next meal was coming from, been abused by police or prosecutors, figure out which member of his outlaw organization was a police informant, make a choice between housing and medical coverage, or have any of a multitude of unpleasant experiences that tend to produce REAL revolutionaries, nevertheless saw fit to demand marches on Washington, suddenly decided the Electoral College was a disaster for democracy and said we should have a revolution. Right. Okay Donald. Meet us at the barricades but let us know which color Bentley you're driving so we'll know it's you. We certainly wouldn't want to throw rocks at our brother revolutionary. Power to the People!!!!

Meanwhile musician and racist nitwit Ted Nugent couldn't wait to let everyone know that as far as he was concerned the people that helped elect Barack Obama were all a bunch of "pimps, whores and welfare brats". As far as Teddy is concerned if you voted for Obama you are probably a subhuman varmint or soulless. There's not a huge amount of room for difference of opinion in Nugent's world I guess. Not much nuance. But at least you know where he's coming from. I don't think you can make a lot of mistakes about that. Not to be outdone conservative commentator Bill O'Reilly spewed forth that Obama's victory meant that the days of traditional America were over, that the white establishment was now a minority and that the reason Obama won was that people (hispanics and blacks) wanted free stuff and Obama was going to give it to them. Glenn Beck wept that sometimes God sucks. That's amazing, Beck's chosen candidate loses a few  times and Beck comes to the belief that God sucks. Hmm. And yet there are other people who have been through a few centuries of slavery, colonialism and discrimination who still seem to have a fierce and unbroken belief in and love of God. Perhaps Beck should check with them to see how they did it because it looks like his faith is a bit weak. 

Finally the gelatinous king of demagoguery himself, one Mr. Rush Limbaugh, went on air to claim that Obama won because we now live in a country of children and that therefore the adults (Romney) could not compete with Santa Claus. There's more but I think you get the idea. Oftentimes (white) conservatives criticize Blacks for identity politics. I think it is fair as we've discussed in the past to point out that some black intellectuals and even voters give Obama a pass on things they may not have let slide with other Presidents. The flip side of this though is that whites, and in these examples, white men, are not immune to identity politics any more than any other human beings are. This idea that whites are the norm and everyone else is practicing unfair identity politics needs to go. Whites were just fine with election results as long as white men won but insult voters and want revolution now that a black man won? I am shocked....

It bothers Trump so much that Obama is going to be President for another four years that he's calling for revolution? What is that about if not race? All the insults sneering at Obama voters as welfare recipients or children or subhuman are about nothing but race.  The truly ironic thing is that if white conservatives had been able to put away all the constant sneers about "welfare" and "affirmative action" and "man-child" and "monkey" and "wookie" and "ghetto crackhead" and "Kenyan" and "Muslim" and "birth certificates" they might have been able to make good arguments against some of President Obama's policies. But asking some of them to stop doing that is like asking a dog to stop licking itself. It's just what they do. And O'Reilly's comments are honest if wrong. Whites are not a minority and, depending on how "white" is redefined in America, may never be a minority. White is a somewhat nebulous description that expanded to include Irish, Italians, Jews, Arabs, and other previously "non-white" ethnic groups. Somewhere between 1/3 to 1/2 of Hispanics also identify as white. But what IS true is that the current Republican party can't win a Presidential election with 59% of the white vote. The numbers aren't there any more. It is no longer a given that whatever a majority of whites want is what the nation wants. The nation has expanded. I think, qualms about illegal immigration aside, that this is mostly a good thing.

After all Republicans should remember, everything that happens is God's will. Just relax and enjoy it. There's nothing you can do anyway. Just ask Mourdock and Akin. Don't worry, be happy. Snicker...

Thoughts?

Movie Reviews-Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter, Election, Blue Velvet, Deadfall

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Vote Your Conscience!!!!

As the election approaches it appears as if the President or his major party opponent may have a more difficult road to (re-)election than he or his partisans initially anticipated. So we see some bloggers, political leaders or media personalities scurrying forth to invoke fear and hurl insults against independent minded people who are not going to vote for either major party candidate. They congratulate themselves on their supposed wisdom in their voting choice and demand that others do likewise. They trot out their favorite policy hobby horse to convince you that you MUST vote for their candidate. If that doesn't work then they insult your intelligence or question your membership in whatever involuntary racial/gender group to which you happen to belong. Finally if all this fails to persuade you they'll trot out the spectre of the OTHER GUY getting to make appointments to the Supreme Court and talk ominously about the 2000 election. If their guy wins they will be back to mock you as a loser. And if their guy loses they will rush back to spew putrid vitriol in your general direction. Nader and Perot loom large as betes noires for them.


Ho-hum.

My conscience and vote belong to me. Nobody else. Anyone who lectures me that I am somehow "wasting" my vote by not voting for their favored candidate can kindly go attempt an aeronautical anatomical impossibility with a rapidly revolving tasty pastry.

One man with courage makes a majority. To thine own self be true. Whether you want to vote for either major party candidate, any small party candidate, write in a candidate, or refrain from voting altogether, it is your sacred right to express your political preference. That's right, your political preference, not anyone else's. You have the right to dissent. Your vote is not owed to anyone except yourself. Remember that regardless who you support next week. Vote or do not vote as you like. Someone who tries to convince you that your vote won't count unless you vote as THEY see fit is really nothing more than a bully. Don't let their fear determine your vote. Your issues and beliefs are just as important as anyone else's. Stand up for what you believe. Let your conscience be your guide. Let justice be done though the heavens fall.

ObamaCare and Healthcare Costs: Revisited

A classical economics truism is that in an efficient market there is no way to make one person better off without making another person worse off. This is often used as an excuse not to make any changes. This could also be why the study of economics often seems to attract people who are invested in maintaining the status quo. This argument's weaker form is something that many people would agree with even though it tends to be associated with right-wing libertarians. This idea, famously made popular by libertarian speculative fiction author Robert Heinlein is TANSTAAFL (There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch). This means that every decision we make has costs and consequences. We need to account for these when we make policy choices. Again, someone who likes the status quo will piously invoke this saying and then refuse further investigation to see what the actual costs are. That's wrong.

But it's also wrong for someone who wants to change the status quo to ignore the unpleasant fact that there usually are costs. We have to at least review the costs to see if they're worth the change. This ultimately slides into a bit of utilitarian type of thinking, which is ok if you're trying to decide what a taxicab badge should cost or how much your property tax should be, but may not be the correct frame to use in questions of justice. For example no one, well few people anyway, will question the cost of liberating slaves or giving women the right to vote or stopping the arrest of homosexuals for being homosexual. If those things are right, then costs simply don't matter and you're probably a pretty cold heartless SOB for even bringing that question up.

So then if you want to change something but don't want people to think about costs you definitely need to frame the change as a question of justice. If you don't want change and wish to avoid arguments about justice you need to focus on costs and unintended and unforeseen consequences. We saw some of this play out in the arguments over ObamaCare. However as it turned out both sides (pro and con) strongly believed they had an excellent argument about justice (the individual mandate vs. the numbers of uninsured or the importance of universal birth control coverage) and as a result the popular discussions over the PPACA didn't really focus on costs. Rather cannily the Obama Administration and Congress set up the legislation so that most of the more unpleasant changes would arrive AFTER the 2012 election. Well that election will shortly be completed and absent an extremely unlikely sequence of events the PPACA is here to stay. As a result companies and organizations have begun to adapt to the law's less pleasant incentives. It's important to realize that these things aren't bugs. They're features.

Over the next 18 months, between one quarter and one half of Americans who get insurance coverage through their employers will pay more of their doctor bills themselves as companies roll out health care plans with higher deductibles, benefits consultants say. The result: sticker shock.

"They have huge out-of-pocket costs before they get any insurance coverage, it's a real slap in the face," said Ron Pollack, the executive director of Families USA, a health care advocacy group. High-deductible plans set a threshold for medical expenses that an individual must pay for, often in the thousands of dollars, before insurance kicks in. Studies show people on these plans are three times more likely to delay or skip care than people on traditional plans, where doctor or emergency room visits are covered by a relatively low co-payment.

These plans have been around for years, pushed by employers, insurers and industry experts who believe that consumers with "skin in the game" will drive demand for better quality care at a lower cost. It is a rationale also backed by President Barack Obama's Republican challenger Mitt Romney.

But now corporate America's adoption of high-deductible plans is accelerating, partly because of Obama's health care reform, which requires insurance plans to provide more expansive coverage such as preventive care.Several industry surveys forecast a two-percentage-point increase in the number of companies offering only high-deductible plans in 2013 to about 19 percent, and a larger jump of anywhere from 5 to 25 percentage points in 2014.

LINK

This is a really important concept. Because insurance companies are being forced to provide more expansive coverage, can no longer correctly and routinely rate coverage differently by gender and age and must include people on their parents' coverage until age 26, their costs will increase. In order to mitigate some of that cost increase the insurance companies intend to share this cost with the sucker insuree. As the article briefly references there is also a philosophical belief among the people who brought you "health care reform" that a big reason behind health care cost rises is that people just demand and consume too damn much health care. And how better to cut down that demand than to raise the price, hence the increase in high deductible plans. See how well this works out for everyone? Well maybe not you but heck at least more people will have health care coverage and everyone gets free birth control!! YAY!!!!

The problem with this line of thinking is of course that with few exceptions no one just runs down to his or her doctor and starts requesting hysterectomies, colonoscopies or angioplasties just for the heck of it. No one looks at their health care coverage plan, sees that he only has a $250 co-pay for major procedures and promptly books himself into the hospital for a weekend dialysis session. I mean for just $250, how could you pass up that deal?

People go to the doctor or hospital when they're sick, when a loved one urges it, when an insurer or employer demands it, or for a regular check up (yearly, quarterly, monthly, etc). Price isn't really a consideration. The demand for doctors is not very elastic. I will switch car washes if the new car wash costs $1 less and has the same quality. The same is not true of doctors. Trust is a huge element here. When I "shop around" for doctors I am more concerned with trust, experience and expertise than with cost. Lower cost doctors might actually give me a BAD feeling. Money matters but doctor and patient do not share the same level of knowledge. If my doctor tells me I need to undergo this procedure or take this medicine, generally speaking I am not qualified to question his decision or try to jaw him down about costs. At best I can go with a gut feeling or maybe get different opinions but if every doctor I see says "Yes you need to take this medicine and/or have this procedure done or you will die/be crippled/live in horrible pain for the rest of your life" then that's what I'm probably going to do. No one who is having a heart attack demands to be taken to Dr. X instead of Dr. Y because he has a 10% off coupon from Dr. X. Very few of us could afford to pay the true cost of a required procedure. That's why we have insurance. Delaying your car's scheduled oil change until next month's paycheck is one thing. Ignoring that new spot on your body or that cough that won't go away involves an entirely different set of consequences.

As the higher deductible plans roll out employed people will pay more out of pocket for health care coverage. This contradicts the President's breezy assertion that "If you like your health care plan you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away no matter what." I guess strictly speaking it's still your health care plan but the price will have gone up and the coverage may have shrunken. So it really won't be what you had before the PPACA. This makes employed people unambiguously worse off.

This really stinks because as an employed person I lacked real complaints about my health care coverage. And for those who didn't have health care coverage because they weren't employed or their employer refused to offer the benefit, I would have supported opening up Medicare/Medicaid for them. That would have made more sense than the PPACA but because the Administration was determined to keep the private health care industry happy it made the decision not to go down that path. So if you're employed you get to enjoy higher deductible plans and most likely higher premiums as well. Let the good times roll!!

Time will tell if PPACA was a good idea. I think not. Others may think differently. But at the very least we should all realize that it was not cost-free. There really ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

Thoughts?

Sununu, Powell and Racism

It's silly, a little tiring and probably bad for my blood pressure to keep up with and blog about every stupid utterance that comes from major party campaign surrogates, especially racial shots from right-wing Republicans. It is what it is. But every now and then someone says something which goes a bit beyond the normal silliness and fluff of election year political statements and reveals something a bit uglier.

This was the case with former Bush Chief of Staff, former New Hampshire Governor and Romney campaign adviser John Sununu who, when asked about General Colin Powell's endorsement of President Barack Obama, could only sputter that it must have been because both men are black. Right.

When you take a look at Colin Powell, you have to look at whether that's an endorsement based on issues or he's got a slightly different reason for endorsing President Obama," Sununu said, adding: "I think when you have somebody of your own race that you're proud of being president of the United States, I applaud Colin for standing with him."

 I don't usually pay attention to endorsements because I don't really think they mean what they used to mean but I think I would have read about or remembered the uproar if Colin Powell had endorsed candidates for President like Shirley Chisholm, Dick Gregory, Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Cynthia McKinney or other humans who met the American standard for blackness. However I think all of those people struggled along the campaign trail without the Powell endorsement. Watch the Sununu video below.

This is a really interesting statement because it reveals some things about how Sununu sees the world and how he sees Black people. The immediate question that comes to my mind is whether Sununu will vote for Romney because both he and Romney are white? I would venture to guess that Sununu would say no and claim that he's voting for Romney because of issues x, y, z. But he's evidently unwilling to extend that same presumption to Colin Powell, strictly because Powell happens to be black. Never mind any of Powell's achievements, statements, beliefs, worldviews, experiences or the experiences of people who have worked with and for Colin Powell.  In a slip of the tongue Sununu showed that to him race trumps all. I guess all of those Black people who constantly voted for one white candidate or another are invisible. And when whites voted for whites that was just fine. But you blacks all stick together see. 

Many times people like to tell themselves that racism or us-them thinking is an artifact of the lower classes, the working classes, the kind of people who drive pickup trucks, own lots of guns, wave Confederate flags and have to take a shower as soon as they get home from work. Well, no it's not. Sununu is a very accomplished man and he's also a Mensa member. Chances are he's smarter than you are. But intelligence is no barrier to racist thinking. Sununu has eagerly taken on the role of Romney's attack dog, the Gregor Clegane that every now and then slips the leash and bites someone before the candidate rushes up and puts the muzzle back on the beast. Sununu has a history of race-baiting or outright racist remarks about the President and/or his supporters. So he's doing his job. His remarks are no accident. He didn't slip the leash; he was unleashed. He's appealing to a very ugly (small??) portion of the Republican base, one which doesn't really think that anyone black has any business being in the White House unless they're serving tea. The ironic thing is that given Sununu's Southern European/Middle Eastern origins, it wasn't that long ago in American history that his "whiteness" could be questioned. And in some places in Europe it still would be. And how in the world does someone who was born in Cuba of all places get the nerve to lecture the President of the United States on "how to be an American"? The only answer to this is that to a lot of people, too many people, American = whiteness. The election of a black man to the Presidency makes it painfully obvious that American <> whiteness. And it never did, really. This country was mixed from the start.

If you've read this blog before then you know I'm not really a huge Obama fan. There are legitimate honorable reasons to vote for either major party candidate or any other candidate that best suits you. The irony is that Obama has mostly governed (feminist and gay rights sympathies aside) as a center-right politician, as what used to be called a Rockefeller Republican. His race has excited the far right to primal screams of hatred and disgust at the idea of "losing their" country and constant evocations of Obama as "an affirmative action president" (witness Donald Trump's fascination with Obama's grades and birth certificate or Palin's fascination with Obama's blackness). But Obama's race may have also made people on the left who would otherwise be up in arms over unemployment, entitlement reform and civil liberties mute their opposition, precisely because they don't want to be on the same side as some right-wing yahoos. The fact that Sununu feels comfortable calling a woman journalist and a news organization "groupies" shows that should Obama win re-election some right-wingers will literally explode from the dissonance between what's in their heads and reality. Of course the same is true of some on the left if Romney pulls it out. And either way I'll be there to laugh at the loser. Count on that. But my bigger concern is that whichever millionaire wins the election there will still be numerous Americans who think just like Sununu does. And many of those people are comfortably ensconced in positions of power in businesses and organizations where they can hire, fire and promote people. Some of them are even in law enforcement or politics. Think they'll be fair minded? It's not for nothing that Col. Wilkerson said that the GOP, his party, is full of racists.

QUESTIONS
1) Was Sununu out of line?
2) Does he owe Powell or the President an apology?
3) Should the President make a stronger statement about Sununu?
4) Why hasn't Romney been pressured to drop Sununu?

Book Reviews-77 Shadow Street, Mickey Cohen, Ultimate Autos

77 Shadow Street
By Dean Koontz

I used to read Dean Koontz as avidly as I read Stephen King. Koontz was a favorite. I think he was a favorite of a lot of people since between them, King and Koontz titles used to easily take up one-half of horror section shelf space in many bookstores. However tastes change as we age and it's been a long time since I read any of Koontz's work. A few weeks back I saw this rather hefty paperback on sale for almost nothing so I picked it up. The story wasn't original but there are some talented writers who have claimed that there are very few original sci-fi/fantasy stories, just classic themes that are reworked according to a writer's individual taste and skill.

In this case the story is about The Pendleton, a old mansion with a troubled past that has been changed into a swank hotel. Every so often, usually about 38 years, there are problems, apparitions appear, people kill other people or simply disappear. So basically this is a haunted house story. Obviously this immediately reminded me of Stephen King's The Shining or Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House  or Richard Matheson's Hell House but not in a negative way. I was eager to see what a master writer like Koontz did with this format. I will have to go back and check some of his older works but my immediate impression is either that Koontz has become a lot more long-winded since last I read him or perhaps a writer of his skill and success has a slightly different relationship with editors than some neophyte would. I found myself struggling with this book's length. There are some long books where you find yourself frantically turning the pages because you can't wait to see what happened next.  For other books though you frantically turn the pages because you really want the book to end because you have other things to do. Don't get me wrong, uninspiring Koontz is still better than 90% of other genre writers but this story could have easily been chopped in half and not lost that much. It was over 500 pages. That was just too much for me. The story feels stretched out. There is a lot of detail about what each character is seeing. 

Koontz isn't a political ideologue but he does lean conservative and as he usually does in his books, takes a few shots, some deserved, some not, at liberal ideologies. But his real ire is reserved for those that think they have a right to control other people's lives, no matter what their politics may be. This comes through loud and clear in his writing and certainly is on display here. Koontz despises bullies, supernatural or not.
In The Pendleton, the thirty eight year period of calm has expired and the residents start seeing things that can't be real-things from other times and perhaps even from other dimensions. However as a few of them find out the hard way what they're seeing is real and can kill them. Until it's too late they don't try to get out of the hotel. I didn't like this because it seemed to me like they all should have left almost immediately. Anyway it will be up to the hotel residents (some plucky single mothers and their children, a lawyer, a no-nonsense ex-military man, some dedicated or lazy hotel workers, a mentally deranged contract killer with serious Oedipal issues, a drunk Senator, a scientist with a secret, etc..) to find out what's going on, how the events are connected to one of them, and save themselves and maybe the world. Portions of the story are also told from the POV of the entity behind all the strange events.

Again, I liked the setup but was just a bit disappointed in the delivery. YMMV. If you haven't read Koontz I would still strongly urge you to try him but would suggest his earlier works. When he's on he's as good a writer as anyone out there. He, like King, usually has some sharp insights into human nature. I just didn't think this book ranked with his classic work.





Mickey Cohen:The Life and Crimes of LA's Notorious Mobster
by Tere Tereba

When someone says Mafia you probably think of a Italian/Sicilian gangster who's going to make you an offer you can't refuse. In 20th century American organized crime history the Italian element was dominant. However although the Mafia is not an equal opportunity employer, organized crime as a whole certainly is. Until roughly the late forties or mid fifties the Italian element in organized crime was roughly equal in power with other Caucasian ethnics, primarily Jewish Americans. As one crime expert put it, "The Italians had the muscle, the Jews had the moxie and they all made money".
We don't speak of Jewish American crime families today because classic Jewish American criminal groups weren't structurally set up the same way as Italian American mafia families. The Jewish gangster organizations tended to be one or two generation operations, and often disintegrated upon the death of the founding boss. There doesn't appear to be a Jewish criminal analogue to the NY Five Families, which have been in their current form for almost a century. But from the late forties to the early sixties in southern California there was one dominant organized crime boss and his name was Mickey Cohen. He fought off all attempts to steal his crown, both from within and from outside the organized crime fraternity.

Cohen first came to prominence when he attracted the attention of legendary infamous crime boss and killer Benjamin "Bugsy" Siegel, the Syndicate big shot who arrived in California to organize rackets for the benefit of the New York and Chicago mobs. Cohen, then a robber and killer for hire, had robbed a Siegel backed gambling game and initially refused to return the money. After Siegel coldly explained the facts of life and death to him Cohen saw the light and gave the proceeds back. Siegel admired the younger man's guts and brought him into his West Coast operations. Cohen, who had his own Cleveland and Chicago patrons, rose swiftly in Siegel's organization, becoming Siegel's top bodyguard and second-in-command.

Siegel later ran afoul of boyhood pals and fellow organized crime bosses Meyer Lansky and Lucky Luciano as well as the Chicago Outfit when he refused to share the national wire service and was suspected of skimming casino gambling funds. After Siegel's assassination, Cohen took over his California operations and expanded them greatly. He was contemptuous of the local Los Angeles Mafia family and survived several assassination attempts from what was widely considered to be the "Mickey Mouse Mafia". Cohen had a severe case of OCD, perhaps bought about by his early poverty and STD infection. His OCD would save his life multiple times. Once when a would be Judas shook his hand to mark him for assassination, Cohen immediately left for the bathroom to wash his hands and so missed the ensuing drive-by. Another time Cohen noticed a scratch in his Cadillac fender and bent down to inspect it at the exact time that a rifleman from a rival mob was taking a shot. Some of the attempts on Cohen's life were set up by police. Loquacious, dangerous and rather greedy the dapper Cohen had his fingers in just about every major criminal enterprise in Southern California. Extortion, loan sharking, bookmaking, gambling, pornography, prostitution, and narcotics were his bread and butter. Cohen's legal businesses included clothing stores and ice cream shops. Cohen also had several links to the film industry. He ran an extremely lucrative sexual blackmail business. One of his employees, an bisexual gigolo named Johnny Stompanato, was the lover of film legend Lana Turner. Stompanato was allegedly killed by Turner's teen daughter. Angry at the lost income, Cohen released private and rather intimate love letters from Turner to Stompanato and threatened to release even more intimate film.

This book details Cohen's rise from desperate childhood poverty to lowly thug and goon to Siegel's gofer and later crime boss in his own right to his fall from grace via federal tax evasion convictions. The second conviction finally reduced and perhaps broke his power. This is the true life story which inspired most of the LA noir film and book stories from LA Confidential to Raymond Chandler's works. There is a lot of information about the LAPD. For whatever reason although I was used to thinking of that department as extremely brutal I didn't think of them as particularly corrupt. This book explodes that misconception. The original crime bosses in LA were often Anglo/Irish high-ranking police officers! 
It wasn't until the arrival of Siegel and Cohen that power was passed and even then there remained numerous ties between the criminals, the businessmen, the lawyers, the film studios, the judiciary and the police and prosecutors. Everybody was dirty. This was a fascinating story based on both primary and secondary documents. Tere Tereba did a really good job of setting the stage and telling the story here. I like all the information she dug up on old Hollywood. Heck, this book is as much about the underside of Hollywood as it is about organized crime. See if you can find the 60 Minutes interview in which Cohen insults LAPD chief William Parker as a "sadistic drunk degenerate". There are oodles of info on Richard Nixon, Shirley Temple, RFK, Frank Sinatra, Billy Graham and many other famous names. Cohen was always good for a snappy quote. During a Senate hearing when he was accused of living badly and being surrounded by violence, the pugnacious little gangster responded "Whaddya mean surrounded by violence? People are shooting at me!!!"




Ultimate Autos
by Tom Stewart

What car or truck do you drive? Why do you drive it? Do you enjoy driving it or was it simply something that was practical or within your budget? Do you care about style and performance and showing off or do you simply care about safely getting from point A to point B? Well with gasoline remaining above $3/gallon most of us have to at least consider the fuel economy of what we drive. And most of us are not millionaires or billionaires so even if we wanted something much nicer than we have, chances are we couldn't afford it.
But if money wasn't an option, would you get something different? If so, then Ultimate Autos: The Kings of Bling might be a good place to start looking. The book is somewhat dated; it was first published in 2006. However many of the cars listed within are still in production in later updates. All of them are head turners. These are cars I will probably never own or drive but a man can dream can he not. If you need to ask the dealer or manufacturer how much any of these vehicles cost, you really need to go buy something less expensive.

The coffee table book lists cars which are the prettiest, the highest performing, the most expensive and the most well made. The book is broken up in seven sections (GTs, Convertibles, Euro Supercars, Sedans, SUVs, US Supercars, and Concepts). Each vehicle gets a number of lavish photographs, (the book's paper is glossy and fits the subject matter very well) ,detailed specs and price, and historical production analysis and comparison. Some of the vehicles discussed include the Ford GT, Brabus Maybach, Ferrari FXX, Aston Martin Vanquish, CXT 7300, Hummer H1, Holden Efijy, Maserati MC12, Pagani Zonda, Bentley Azure and many others. Since I happen not to have a spare $400,000 (roughly the median price of the vehicles listed) laying around I won't be purchasing any of these in the next few weeks but if you happen to have that sort of cash and aren't doing anything with it this book might excite your interest and a trip to your local dealer or made-to-order manufacturer.