Sherry Chandler

Rating the Governors at Political Wire:

In Kentucky, Gov. Ernie Fletcher (R), never seen in positive territory in 15 months of tracking, has fallen 27 points in the past six months. Fletcher is at Minus 49.

Why is this man running for re-election? [Note: I need to add an explanation that -49 is the difference between Fletchers positives (27) and his negatives (73).]

[Update: Charges against Fletcher dropped:

“The governor acknowldges that the evidence strongly indicates wrongdoing by his administration with regard to personnel actions within the merit system,” according to the court order filed today.

“Further, the governor hereby states that these actions were inappropriate and that he regrets their occurrence and accepts responsibility for them as head of the executive branch of state government.”

I love these careful parsings of the language.]

From Trudy Rubin’s op-ed in the Baltimore Sun:

When the United States toppled Saddam Hussein, it upended a regime whose Sunni leaders repressed a predominantly Shiite population. U.S. leaders thought Iraq was dominated by a secular middle class. They believed an Iraqi democracy led by elected Shiite officials would encourage Iranian Shiites to overthrow their regime.

Reality bit hard. Iraq’s Shiite majority was predominantly religious. Shiite political leaders, who had spent their exile years in Tehran, would not drop their ties with the Iranians.

By removing Mr. Hussein, the United States made Shiite Iran the strongest power in the region. Urged on by their ayatollahs, Iraq’s Shiite majority voted in the second Shiite-led government in the region, dominated by religious parties. This Shiite revival helped other minority Shiite movements in the region, such as Lebanon’s Hezbollah, to strengthen their position.

R. J. Eskow on What Dylan Said:

A lot of people have commented on music piracy, including me, but nobody’s done it as succinctly as Bob Dylan in his latest Rolling Stone interview. After knocking modern records for their bad sound, he said:

“I remember when that Napster guy came up across, it was like, ‘Everybody’s gettin’ music for free.’ I was like, ‘Well, why not?It ain’t worth nothing anyway.”"

That boy better be careful. He’s spent forty years refusing the title of “voice of a generation.” If he doesn’t want to be a spokesman he shouldn’t talk so much sense.

The full quote:

“Brian Wilson, he made all his records with four tracks, but you couldn’t make his records if you had a hundred tracks today. We all like records that are played on record players, but let’s face it, those days are gon-n-n-e. You do the best you can, you fight that technology in all kinds of ways, but I don’t know anybody who’s made a record that sounds decent in the past twenty years, really. You listen to these modern records, they’re atrocious, they have sound all over them. There’s no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like — static. Even these songs probably sounded ten times better in the studio when we recorded ‘em. CDs are small. There’s no stature to it. I remember when that Napster guy came up across, it was like, ‘Everybody’s gettin’ music for free.’ I was like, ‘Well, why not? It ain’t worth nothing anyway.’ “. . .

Free Lunch # 35 hit my mailbox last week. As usual, it provides a chapbook-sized collection of accessible poetry, including the Free Lunch Mentor program in which, in this issue, Denise Duhamel introduces Ysabel Fernandez-Acuna. Fernandez-Acuna gives us three mother poems that are edgy, comic, and fresh. “Unemployed,” for example, a prose poem in one long tumbling sentence begins like this:

When I tell my mother I need a job she says just don’t write obituaries because you will think a lot about death and dying and me dying and you will grow sad, wear even more black than you already do and for fun you will write your own obituary, you know you will, like you did in sixth grade…

Other poets included in this issue are Philip Dacey, Simon Perchik, Carol Hamilton, and Ron Koertge. Koertge’s “The Birth of Cool” is one of my favorites and typical of what you might call the Free Lunch mood:

The Birth of Cool

I liked it when somebody pulled a gun,
a car careened toward a precipice,
a circus train flew off the tracks.

But I loved the usherette. Her white
jacket and slacks. Her little white cap.
Her crossed arms and tapping foot.

When Charleton Heston rushed to save
the sexy aerialist, my usherette tinkered
with her flashlight.

Even after the house lights went up,
the way she strolled toward the red Impala
while her boyfriend pampered his hair,

she seemed to me like a city protected by snow.

— Ron Koertge

I love that last line. It makes the poem.