Lamar W. Hankins :
Here’s how I evaluated this year’s presidential candidates

Posted on May 4, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

And my quick list makes it clear to me why I voted in the Democratic Primary for Bernie Sanders.

U.S. Capitol Stephen Melkisethian sm

U.S. Capitol. Photo by Stephen Melkisethian / Flickr / Creative Commons.

By Lamar W. Hankins | The Rag Blog | May 4, 2016

After nearly four months of following the presidential campaigns in far too much detail, and after much discussion with friends (not all of whom are progressive), I borrowed an idea from Alcoholics Anonymous. I decided to make “a searching and fearless moral inventory” of the issues that really matter to me in the presidential election. I did this to clarify my values, not those of others, or to convince anyone that I am right and they are wrong.

My inventory will not be anyone else’s inventory. I compiled it without regard to what anyone else has said or written about the campaigns. The issues occurred to me in no particular order, but I think the first two represent my greatest concerns. I believe making such an inventory is worthwhile. It has provided me more clarity about why I support Sanders rather than Clinton on the Democratic Party side. When you see my priorities you will understand why it has no relevance for the Republicans.
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Steve Russell :
Terror in Trumpland: The Donald names his foreign policy team

Posted on May 3, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

The major complaint in U.S. policy shops is that Trump has picked backbenchers who do not point to any coherent policy orientation.

Donald Trump lion

The Donald roars. Graphic by DonkeyHotey / Flickr.

By Steve Russell | The Rag Blog | May 3 , 2016

In 2016, what was old has become new, what was odd has become commonplace, and what was settled scoots across the prairie like a dust cloud before a storm. Not only the United States but also much of the world is watching to see if the storm hits in November.

American Indians have involuntarily become part of the argument about foreign policy in this exceedingly strange election cycle in spite of the Supreme Court’s determination in 1831 that tribal governments represent “domestic, dependent nations.” Indian affairs moved officially from the Department of War to the Department of the Interior in 1849.
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Bill Oakey :
METRO | Truth or consequences: Prop. 1 and the ridesharing debate

Posted on April 28, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

The $2 million-plus special-interest ad campaign marks a new low in deceit and outright falsehoods.

Dollar Car crp

Adapted from Flickr / Creative Commons.

By Bill Oakey | The Rag Blog | April 28, 2016

AUSTIN — With early voting already underway for the May 7 election, some of you might still be asking, “Which way should I vote?” Well, in times past I might have suggested that you keep an eye out for good information in your mailboxes. Or, you might have been able to listen to some passionate statements from former Austin officials, and have confidence that you could believe them. But not this time… not even close!

 
Let’s get one thing out of the way first:
We should vote “No,” as in “Against,” Proposition 1

We should support the position of our current mayor, Steve Adler, who came out against Prop. 1 on Monday. Mr. Adler, who has consistently pushed for compromise in the contentious battle, stated that a vote against Prop. 1 would be “the only effective way to bring the ride-hailing companies back to the negotiating table with the City Council.”
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Alan Waldman :
14 songs and arias that have impacted my life

Posted on April 17, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

Being an atheist, I probably won’t have a funeral, but here’s what you can do to remember me.

Alan Waldman sm crp

Alan Waldman: Facing the music. Houston, 2014.

By Alan Waldman | The Rag Blog | April 17, 2016

I have always detested guns. Recently my friend Tucker Teutsch, 73 year-old brother of Texas music icon Joe “King” Carasco,” accidentally shot himself to death. It got me thinking…

I last touched a gun 59 years ago when fellow 12-year-old Texas Jewboy Richard (pre-“Kinky”) Friedman and I shot little .22 rifles at paper targets at his parents’ childrens’ summer camp, Echo Hill Ranch, near Kerrville, Texas. It was fun, but I won’t touch one again.

For many years I have asked my wife Sharon to play two songs at my funeral: John Lennon’s Imagine, which perfectly expresses my world view, and Manfred Mann’s My Name is Jack, which is a delightful fantasy view from 1968 of how I thought I would like to have lived my life.
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Thorne Dreyer :
METRO EVENT | An evening with actress Barbara Williams and her husband, Tom Hayden

Posted on April 14, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

Blues diva Leeann Atherton is also featured at this gathering benefiting The Rag Blog and Rag Radio.

Barbara Williams & Tom Hayden

By Thorne Dreyer | The Rag Blog | April 14, 2016

Event: An Evening With Barbara Williams and Tom Hayden
What: Benefit for The Rag Blog & Rag Radio
Musical performance: Leeann Atherton and Band; Barbara Williams
When: Tuesday, April 26, 7-10 p.m.
Where: The High Road on Dawson
Address: 700 Dawson Rd., Austin, TX 78704
Suggested donation: $15 (includes $5 food ticket)

AUSTIN —  Barbara Williams, the renowned stage and screen actress, singer, and author, is joined by her husband, peace activist and ’60s New Left leader Tom Hayden, at a benefit for The Rag Blog and Rag Radio on Tuesday, April 26, 7-10 p.m., at the High Road on Dawson, 700 Dawson Road, in Austin. The High Road is the former Elks Lodge, and is located on Dawson just south of Barton Springs Road.

Austin blues-rock singer-songwriter Leeann Atherton and her band will perform, as will Barbara Williams, backed by members of Leeann’s band. There will be a cash bar and a Mexican buffet provided by La Peña. A suggested donation of $15 — which includes a $5 food ticket — will benefit the New Journalism Project, the Texas nonprofit that publishes The Rag Blog and sponsors Rag Radio. The High Road on Dawson can be reached at 512-442-8535. Go to the Facebook event page here.
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Steve Russell :
Antonin Scalia was a Federalist, sort of,

Posted on March 31, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

and therefore would not approve of President Obama making a lame duck appointment to replace him, right? Wrong.

Antonin Scalia DonkeyHotey

The late Justice Antonin Scalia. Caricature by DonkeyHotey / Flickr.

By Steve Russell | The Rag Blog | March 31, 2016

Once upon a time, in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, there was a patriotic organization of lawyers and academics called the Federalist Society. They were alarmed by federal court decisions that appeared to favor non-white persons and prefer human persons over corporate persons.

Over the years, they gained virtual veto power over judicial appointments by one of the major political parties and they opened chapters in every major law school, to catch new lawyers before deviant ideas could take hold. By 2012, four justices of the Supreme Court were Federalist Society members — Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, and Samuel Alito.
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Thorne Dreyer :
RAG RADIO PODCASTS | Julia Mickenberg, Rich Reddick & Kate Catterall; Leng Wong & Anu Naimpally; scott crow; Jim Hightower; and The Melancholy Ramblers!

Posted on March 30, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

We dive into higher ed, live on the Asian-American hyphen, get anarchic, go populist, and dig us some honky-tonk.

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Kate Catterall, Rich Reddick, and Julia Mickenberg in the KOOP studios, March 25, 2013. Photos by Roger Baker / The Rag Blog.

Interviews by Thorne Dreyer | The Rag Blog | March 31, 2016

The following podcasts are from recent Rag Radio shows with host Thorne Dreyer. The syndicated Rag Radio program, produced in the studios of Austin’s cooperatively-run KOOP-FM, has an international audience and has become an influential platform for interviews with leading figures in politics, current events, literature, and cutting-edge culture.

♦ ‘The Future of Higher Education’: Julia Mickenberg, Rich Reddick & Kate Catterall

Julia Mickenberg koop studioUT-Austin professors Julia Mickenberg, Rich Reddick, and Kate Catterall teach a unique grant-funded experimental collaborative course at the University of Texas at Austin called “The History and Future of Higher Education” that was inspired by the goal “to make UT the smallest big university in the world.”  We discuss this innovative course and the larger questions of higher education in America.

Read the full show description and download the podcast of our March 25, 2016 Rag Radio interview with Julia Mickenberg, Rich Reddick, and Kate Catterall, here — or listen to it here:

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Ivan Koop Kuper :
METRO | Saying goodbye to Mike Condray and remembering Liberty Hall

Posted on March 29, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

Thanks to Condray and crew, Houstonians were treated to many an unforgettable evening of history-making performances.

Mike Condray 1

Mike Condray. Photo from the Kuper Group Archives.

By Ivan Koop Kuper | The Rag Blog | March 30, 2016

HOUSTON — On Bruce Springsteen’s 1998 multi-album box set of miscellaneous recordings, Tracks, “The Boss” performs a live acoustic version of his composition, “This Hard Land.” Within the song, he poignantly sings, “Hey Frank, won’t you pack your bags and meet me tonight down at Liberty Hall / Just one kiss from you my brother, and we’ll ride till we fall.” This was Springsteen’s way of paying homage to the music venue where as a young man, he blazed a musical trail deep into the heart of the southern United States as part of a promotional tour after being signed to New York-based Columbia Records.

Springsteen was also giving a tip-of-the-hat to Liberty Hall owner, Mike Condray, who, in March 1974, took a chance and booked this unknown New Jersey road warrior into his Houston music venue, four continuous nights, to the delight of the city’s live music aficionados.
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Jeff Shero Nightbyrd :
METRO | Deep in the heart of Texas: The guns
of August

Posted on March 29, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

Mass shootings of the innocent are commonplace now. But Charles Whitman, the Texas Tower sniper, shocked the nation’s psyche.

Charles Whitman

Charles Whitman. Image from The Cactus (1963) / Austin History Center.

By Jeff Shero Nightbyrd | The Rag Blog | March 29, 2016

With introduction by Thorne Dreyer

On August 1, 1966, 25-year-old engineering student, Eagle Scout, and former Marine sharpshooter Charles Whitman murdered his wife and mother and then took three rifles, two pistols, and a sawed-off shotgun to the observation deck atop the iconic Texas Tower at the UT-Austin administration building and for an hour and a half mowed down students and random pedestrians on the grounds below, killing 14 and wounding 32 others. Among those injured were our dear friends and colleagues Sandra Wilson and Claire Wilson (no relation), who lost her unborn child and her fiancé. Claire was saved by John Fox, Austin personality and musician now known as Artly Snuff, who, along with James Love, carried her to safety.

In her 2005 oral history of the shootings, Pamela Colloff wrote, “The crime scene spanned the length of five city blocks . . . and covered the nerve center of what was then a relatively small, quiet college town… Hundreds of students, professors, tourists, and store clerks witnessed the 96-minute killing spree as they crouched behind trees, hid under desks, took cover in stairwells, or, if they had been hit, played dead.” Coloff, as cited by Texas Monthly, wrote that Whitman “introduced the nation to the idea of mass murder in a public space.”
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Lamar W. Hankins :
Republicans’ rejection of the Constitution is a disservice to America

Posted on March 26, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

They have been distorting the history of the Supreme Court nomination process to justify
their political desires.

Merrick Garland and Obama

President Obama announces the nomination of Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court. Public Domain photo.

By Lamar W. Hankins | The Rag Blog | March 27, 2016

The Supreme Court nomination process is being fought out between Republicans and Democrats, with no thought given to its effect on the biggest plurality in the country — independents.

Neither a Republican nor a Democrat, I am an independent.  For the last 24 years, I have voted for candidates all over the ballot.  I have voted in both Republican and Democratic Party primaries.  I find the range of views within both of the major parties incoherently disparate.  But what concerns me today is that the intransigence of one of those parties’ elected officials is denying me and all other independents (as well as most Americans) a properly functioning federal government.
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Alan Waldman :
TELEVISION | In the Brit mystery series ‘Grantchester’ a vicar and a village cop solve numerous murders and other crimes

Posted on March 25, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

The estimable Robson Green stars in this rural whodunnit, whose exciting second season returns to P.B.S. on Sunday, March 27.

Grantchester

By Alan Waldman | The Rag Blog | March 26, 2016

[In his Rag Blog column, Alan Waldman reviews some of his favorite films and TV series that readers may have missed, including TV dramas, mysteries, and comedies from Canada, England, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand and Scotland. Most are available on DVD, Netflix and/or Netflix Instant Streaming, and some episodes are on YouTube.]

Grantchester is yet again one of those smart, well-made, excellently performed British procedural cop shows, this one set in the small Cambridgeshire village of the same name, back in 1953. James Norton stars as Anglican priest (and former Scots Guards officer) Sidney Chambers who develops a sideline in sleuthing, with the initially reluctant help of Detective Inspector Geordie Keating (the always wonderful Robson Green). The series is based on The Grantchester Mysteries collections of short stories, written by James Runcie. His father was a WWII tank commander and later the Archbishop of Canterbury.
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Henry Mecredy :
The Edsel tragedy

Posted on March 23, 2016 by Thorne Dreyer

Ford was able to command vast numbers of person-hours of labor but these creative efforts went entirely unmanifested in social good.

1958 Edsel Roundup crp

1958 Edsel Roundup. By Josephew at en.wikipedia / Creative Commons.

By Henry Mecredy | The Rag Blog | March 24, 2016

The Edsel, a car introduced by Ford in 1958, is famous in postwar American history as a costly failure. It sold poorly and its production was cancelled after little more than two years; it is written about even in the 21st Century as a cautionary case study. The Edsel fiasco has stimulated a large literature with abundant ironies, interesting personal and corporate stories, a few nice jokes (“Every Day Something Else Leaks”), and even some sober business reflections. All of these ignore some actually important points.

According to a number of histories and contemporary articles, the Edsel was conceived as a tool to wrest away from General Motors and Chrysler a significant portion of the so-called mid-price auto market. It was intended, in other words, to substitute the Edsel for cars already in production; already fulfilling the exact role for which the Edsel was designed.
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