Forty years ago today, Dr. Martin Luther King was violently taken from us. I’m just an average middle class white guy from a little town in Iowa who was 4 months old when was killed. On this day it, it’s hard to realize that I’m older now than he was when he died. It’s harder still to imagine how much he was able to accomplish in his short life and how little I have done to make anyone’s life better. But the hardest thing to accept is how much our culture sugarcoats his message to valorize his soaring words of love and wisdom without accepting the harder parts — the yoke of courage and determination that it takes to stand up against the evil that power can create, no matter what the cost or how difficult the journey. We hold him up as a modern day prophet, but we don’t hold ourselves to his message.

In any event, so many people have so many better things to say about his life and his legacy. I can only add my sense of awe that in 39 years, he was courageous enough to to do more for humanity than I will ever do in a lifetime. May he continue to rest in peace.

Exactly one year ago today, one of the big stories of the day was how Hillary Clinton’s campaign was breaking all sorts of fundraising records as she took in $26 million in the first quarter of 2007. The latest numbers I’ve seen shows that she’s raised about $170 million and spent nearly all of it, with almost $9 million in outstanding debts. Right now she’s about $30 million behind Barack Obama’s campaign. So on one hand it’s not all that surprising to hear that she’s having to loan her campaign money — serious money — just to make it through the Pennsylvania primary.

So, explain this to me, how does her campaign have the audacity to run this ad about how she’s the most prepared to deal with the country’s current financial crisis:

I mean, come on, she can’t even manage her own campaign budget, and she thinks she has the “experience” to deal with the US financial crisis. NO WAY IN HADES! And what idiot is calling about this stuff at 3 in the morning anyway, like it’s possible for any one person to single handedly make everybody’s mortgage payment so the sub-middle class can continue to spend like happy monkeys as they transfer more money they don’t have into the pockets of the Wall Street barons who still don’t think they have enough as they decide to lay off a few more thousand workers before we have our first cup of coffee in the morning.

Sheesh.

The other point is that all the campaigns combined have raised somewhere in the neighborhood of $800 million so far in this Presidential contest (with the Democrats vastly outraising and outspending the Republicans). ALMOST ONE BILLION (with a B) DOLLARS!?!?!?! And most people who thinking about these things guess that the McCain and whichever Democrat makes it through the primary bloodbath will need to raise and spend an additional $500 million apiece (another BILLION dollars) this fall.

And what do we, the people, get for all that money? A President who has to spend more time worrying about how to pay for the next barrage of television ads and robocalls than on real policy issues? Do we really get our money’s worth?

I wonder if we the people will wake up on Wednesday, November 5th with a hangover feeling like Eliot Spitzer asking ourselves if the hooker we had just blown all that money on was really worth the $2 billon. Personally, I don’t think any amount of head or hope is worth that much.

Well, as I suspected, Ramiele was voted off this week. No surprises there. I think she actually sang the song better tonight through the tears. It’s funny how I didn’t realize how short she is on TV until she was stuck between the two tall blonds.

Anyway, the highlight of the show for me was the performance by The Clark Brothers, the winner of last summer’s “The Next Great American Band.” Their version of “Gimme Shelter” still gives me the shivers just thinking about it.

Those guys are all great musicians and I was glad to see them again - NOW, they need a new song. Their version of “This Little Light of Mine” is great, but in this day and age, it’s starting to get old.

Like most people, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the overall quality of all the top contestants in the 7th edition of Idol. While some are definately better than others, unlike the past seasons there is no one who I just can’t believe actually made it this far. So with that intro out of the way, my thoughts on tonight’s performances of Dolly Parton songs:

Brooke White opens the show with “Jolene,” one of my favorite Parton songs…sung by Dolly. Brooke is one of my top 2 favorite females this season, but this performance didn’t really stand out. She was solid, but it never really gelled into something that will be remembered.

David Cook is my favorite to win the thing. His performance of “Little Sparrow” is once again arranged nicely to fit his style, although it’s not quite up to some of the other performances he’s given in the last few weeks. Still, another solid reason to think that he’s got the most potential to be a truly original performer after he finishes out the season.

Ramiele Malubay is probably the heavy favorite to leave after tonight. To use one of Simon’s favorite criticisms, she would fit in perfectly on a cruise ship, Holiday Inn lounge or state fair.

Jason Castro sang “Traveling Thru’,” which I don’t think I’ve heard before tonight. He really needs to start stepping up his performances. The cute, goofy grin of his is not going to keep him through the elimination rounds for too many more weeks if he doesn’t get back to the form he demonstrated several weeks back on “Hallelujah”

Carly Smithson is my other favorite female performer this season - whenever she doesn’t fall into her Celine Dion wanna be mode. Tonight, she didn’t as she delivered a nice dialed down version of “Here You Come Again.” Simon may have a point about her outfits…maybe it’s because I’m not a big fan of huge tattoos and those things on her arms just completely turn me off.

David Archuleta: I’ve never really been on this kid’s bandwagon. Sure, he’s dialed in a couple of great performances, and he has an incredible voice and raw talent…but he doesn’t seem to claim anything as his own. It’s like he spits out everything that comes at him externally and doesn’t connect with anything inside. That’s the only explanation I can think of for that stupid Up With People song he sang last week. Granted, he’s only 17 with much more life to be lived and experiences to be experienced…and it will be something special to listen to when (or if) he finally, really clicks, but until then his version of “Smokey Mountain Memories” would be fine for Star Search, but I would never buy that record.

Kristy Lee Cook I’ve been wishing for her to be the next to leave for 4 weeks now. Last week she pulled out a solid performance of one of the songs I hate most (the god-awful jingoistic “God Bless the USA”, but that’s another story) and I knew that she would make it through to this week. And then this week’s performance of “Coat of Many Colors” suits her county fair country style to a T, so she’ll probably make it through again this week (sorry Ramiele), but next week she’ll be gone (if I had my way).

Syesha Mercado: I’ve always felt that she’s a little too “musical theater” in her performances, but she has been getting better. Tonight’s version of “I Will Always Love You” was one of her best this season, but I wasn’t really knocked out about the way she combined the original version and the Whitney version. It didn’t really gel all that great for me.

Michael Johns has all the rock star frontman moves down, that’s for sure. He’s got a nice voice, but it’s almost a one-trick pony from week to week - which was the fatal flaw of big southern rock voiced Amanda Overmeyer. But this week, he really changed it up on “It’s All Wrong. But It’s All Right,” which in my humble, don’t know what the hell I’m talking about opinion, was the best performance of the night.

One final thought on tonight’s show. With all the griping of the judges in the past weeks about some of the performances sounding “old-fashioned”, that comment was not uttered a single time to any of tonight’s performers, even though pretty much all of them could be categorized that way. I wonder why. Could it be that they didn’t want to give any kind of perceived slight to the “modernness” (or lack there of) of tonight’s guest? Hmmm.

A bit delayed, I just found out awhile ago about the the new agreement between Comedy Central and South Park creators to launch a new site (http://www.southparkstudios.com) where, among other activities, you can view every single complete episode of all 12 seasons of South Park free and legally. Yeah, I know everyone has been able to see the South Park’s online for “free” for years…the cool part is now you can do it without fear of infecting your computer with the latest virus or jack booted thugs bursting through your door and confiscating your computer (assuming the jack booted thugs make it through all the traps and obstacles you’ve laid out for them on the way to your secret downloading lair)…but I digress.

The only caveat is that the new episodes will be up for 7 days after the 1st airing, then taken down until 30 days after the episode first airs. But then the episode is up for good. So, if you go check it out now, you can see Major Boobage…but you’ll have to wait until later this month to check out Britney’s New Look.

Two interesting stories of note this weekend:

Ira Glass and This American Life spent the entire show this weekend focusing on examples of how the current executive branch of the US Government essentially decides that it doesn’t have to follow the law whenever it doesn’t feel like following the law.  These aren’t stories of “big” issues like getting into a war under false pretenses or about struggles between congress and the President, but stories of how the executive branch screws up the lives of every day Americans in some kind of twisted power grab. And the fact that you have probably not heard about these low-level things makes it all the more hideous.

Then…

60 Minutes told the story of Murat Kurnaz, a German citizen of Turkish decent who picked the wrong time to learn more about his religion as he was taken into custody (kidnapped by the US really) in Pakistan and held for 5 years in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay. Continually interregated and tortured….even as the US and Germany knew for years that he was innocent.  A high power request from the German Chancellor is what it took to finally get him free…and the US denies that anything bad happened to him while in custody and continues to consider him a threat to all our safety. Kurnaz has written a book about his experience that has just been released in English (”Five Years of My Life: An Innocent Man in Guantanamo” Amazon). I’m hoping to get my hands on a copy soon to read more about his story.

I’m just an average guy. I like to think I’m firmly in the middle of the road on most things. I’m not surprised or outraged at the government. Not that I don’t think that some things are going horribly, horribly wrong, but anybody who knows anything about history knows that people in power will almost always act in increasingly desperate measures to maintain and expand their power. It’s one of the sad truths about the human animal.

But what I am building up an increasing amount of outrage about is the absence of a large scale outbreak of  rage of the people? Why aren’t we standing up and demanding for what is right? And most especially, why am I not standing up for what is right? Why am I not in the streets screaming for justice and demanding that we live by the moral standards that our leaders say they pledge to uphold? I’m torn and I’m sick to my stomach and feeling completely helpless to do anything.

And then this morning, Henry M. Paulson, Jr. announces his plan for the government to increase their regulation of the financial market. I’m torn about this as well. On one hand something has to be done to reign in the lesser angels of our nature. The drive that the people with the power and the money have to gorge themselves on the profits they earn by ripping off people without power and money. On the other hand, we are in the middle of the crisis now. This is not a good time to blindly give any governmental body a blank check to increase their control. In many ways, this is very much a parallel to the days and weeks after September 11, 2001, when we as a people demanded that the government do something to protect us…and look what happened…the stories I heard this weekend and a great big yawn…no not even a yawn…nothing but silence from the population.

You might read this and place me firmly in the revolutionary left of the political spectrum. But I’m not. You’ll find out as time goes on that all sides of the political spectrum piss me off. My basic philosophy is that we need government to set some basic rules of fair play and then referee the game, blowing the whistle at a foul every now and then. But, on the other hand…if you give the governing body too much power, then suddenly we the people will find ourselves with none.

The question is…where is that line?

I don’t have the answer today. Maybe that’s why I’m not out screaming in the street at this horrible, horrible injustices. I just pray that I’m not going to hell for my inaction and indecision.

This site used to be the home of a little out of the way web radio station called Raw Egg Radio. Well, life happens and one thing leads to another and it got to the point where I couldn’t afford the time or money to keep the stream on the air, so I reluctantly had to hang up my spurs (spurs on a chicken?). Anyway, I’ve decided to rush to join this blog bandwagon years after the train has left the station, but none-the-less, we’ll give her a shot.

The idea of this blog? Well, there is no one idea. I’ll talk about music, movies, politics, whatever hits me at the moment. Maybe no one will read it. Maybe no one will care. But hey, it can’t be any worse than wasting time by watching videos like this on YouTube.

So, give me a few days to get the site set up and we’ll see what happens.