Tammy listens?

Well, Ms. Ether, Crayons, friends Donna and Beth, and I all showed up at one of Rep. Tammy Baldwin's listening sessions tonight. I'm glad she hosts these things, as it feels more effective to speak to her face-to-face than to send emails, write letters or sign petitions. I'm not so sure how much actual listening takes place, or what good it does. Oh, well.

Anyway, I was not prepared to speak, as we didn't decide if we were really going or not until practically the last minute, but I signed up to speak anyway. Over the next few minutes, I mentally composed some points upon which to touch. I decided against writing them down, partly bcause I didn't have any paper, but also because I wanted to look at her while I was speaking. The first few people who spoke were all quite organized. Most, but not all, were there to speak about impeachment or things related. One gentleman in particular expressed many of the things I was going to mention, and a few more as well. He spoke very calmly and was really very effective. A few more people came next, including our friend Beth who was very, very good in her presentation and hit upon a number of issues that others had neglected.

Eventually it was my turn. I was a bit nervous, so I don't remember exactly what I told her, but I think it was something like this:

"Thank you for being here with us tonight. What he said (pointing to the gentleman I mentioned earlier)! Furthermore, I'd like to hrhrhghelllbbbelmphg jkerosptew hgkdlkdhgkdlkdhgkdlkd mukmukmuk brblbrblbr, grbl floogn bikit! Sorry. I'm done." (wipes drool from chin).

Then Ms. Ether spoke. She is always impressive at these things. I was too busy wondering what I had just said to remember what she said in any detail. I'm sure she will have a good post about it, though.

All in all, the sentiments of those who came were overwhelmingly in favor of impeachment. There was a great deal of frustration with the Democrats in congress. A few other issues were presented before we had to leave, but that was definitely the theme of the session.

Tammy, who is one of the more progressive representatives in the house, was sympathetic, but she also made a number of excuses about why that won't work, why it takes so long blah blah blah.

I was particularly disturbed by her response to a man who asked her for an explanation of her votes on bills relating to Israel and Palestine. She really did a great political-weasel-dance on that question. I thought he raised some very valid points (of course I did, since he agreed with me), and she evaded giving him a straight answer quite skillfully. A number of people said things to the effect of "this is Madison, Wisconsin. Do the right thing. We've got your back." I don't think she really got that bit.

Excuse me while I go put on a dry shirt. This one is still a bit damp. From the drooling, that is.

11/27/07: Update Alert! After musing a bit on what I had written above, I have this to add.

Impeach the Moron

In the event that anyone cares, I thought it might be interesting to give some background information about the music I put up here. If this is painfully dull, someone please tell me and I won't do it anymore.

I'll start with Impeach the Moron. This was the first real attempt I ever made at multitrack recording at home using a computer based system. It was a painfully long process since I could only work on it when I wasn't at work, a band rehearsal, gig, kid's school event, etc. Furthermore, there were four people in the family competing for the one computer we had at the time and I had to learn how to use some fairly complicated software and was constantly forgetting how make certain things work.

I wanted to do something to illustrate what a total imbecile we have in the White House and decided that The Moron, himself, could make the point much more eloquently than I could. That meant hours searching for audio clips. Some were easy to find (the White House website was one of the best sources) and some not so easy. For instance, the "I'm a war president" line was one that came from his Meet the Press interview. I knew it was out there somewhere, I knew the date it was broadcast, but I just could not find an audio clip anywhere. I got the feeling that someone, somewhere, didn't want me, or anyone else for that matter, to have access to it. I did find it eventually (thanks to On Lisa Reins Radar.) Then more hours sifting through them, cutting out the parts I wanted to use, arranging them so they sounded like a song (at least to me) and trying to match volume levels for each clip.

I started the whole business with a little piece I had written on acoustic guitar, but accidentally played it much slower than I had originally planned, but I ended up liking it that way. Then I added some percussion sounds. I used a large mixing bowl for the bass drum sound, hand claps, a little lizard-shaped percussion thing that Ms. Ether had given me, a doumbek, and wood blocks I had made for my kids from scraps I scavenged at work. A bass guitar track followed, then two more guitar tracks. Somewhere during this whole process I started dropping in all the Bushisms, continually adding, deleting and rearranging. When I though I had finished, or at least decided that it was time to call it finished, I enlisted Michael Massey, an immensely talented professional musician friend of mine and extremely nice guy, to help me mix it all together and show me a few tricks and short-cuts. Of course, it sounded fine in his studio, but after further scrutiny on other sound systems, I realized something was not right in the bass frequencies. There was a constant low-end rumbling that no one else seemed to notice, but once I heard it, it drove me crazy. I didn't really want to impose on Mike's time any further, and I think he may have thought I was having audio hallucinations, so I went ahead and tried to figure out where it was coming from. It ended up being on the original guitar track upon which the whole piece was built. The A-string was vibrating any time it wasn't being fingered. So I wiped out the track and recorded it over again differently, remixed it and that's pretty much it. I've sent the song around to places like Air America, but not many people have responded, so I don't know if they even bothered to listen to it. A member of the local chapter of Veterans for Peace asked me if they could use it at a rally and Greg at In Your Face Radio, an internet station, asked for permission to play it, but that seems to be all the interest it has generated to date. All that work! But it was fun, so what the heck. On to the next.

It worked!

It worked! "Impeach the Moron" will now play at the proper speed! Tomorrow, the world! You can hear it by clicking the triangle-shaped play button on the Quicktime player on the sidebar. If it doesn't work for anyone, it may be that you don't have Quicktime on your computer. If that's the case, you probably ought to have it and you can get it here.