Cowboy Confessional

Interesting how people who don’t believe in God are so prone to want to play the part.

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“Price” and “value” are different.  Those who understand the difference and can locate those who don’t, will obtain wealth.

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We sadly expect hypocrisy from politicians.  It appears to be an occupational hazard.  Yet once in a while this disorder metastasizes itself to the point one would expect the patient to expire instantly.

Such is the case with Jackson Mississippi mayor and Michael Bloomberg love slave Frank Melton.  Like his fellow lemmings, Melton sprinted straight for the steep cliffs of Bloomberg’s gun control mania, seeking desperately a quick political death through suicidal displays of heard mentality.  But this is all one can expect from a rodent.

One might also expect such a staunch and monosyllabic advocate of civil rights restrictions to avoid being associated with firearms in general, and their misuse in particular.  Yet Master Melton knows no such bounds, demonstrated by his confession to willfully breaking state laws concerning concealed carry of firearms.  Melton pleaded no contest to carrying a concealed gun on the campus of a Mississippi College School of Law, and carrying a gun into a church and into a park, also illegal in the Magnolia State.

I wager $20 that this little crime will not be mentioned at Bloomberg’s next gathering of gun control advocating mayors. 

I emphasized the word “little” above because once again we see that laws do not apply equally to the citizens as they do to our temporary hired help we call “elected officials.”  Seems that Melton’s first confessed offence — carrying a concealed firearm on a college campus – is a felony in Mississippi … or a least was.  Somehow Melton managed to get that charge reduced to a misdemeanor.  Melton received six months of probation and a $1,500 fine instead of hard time.

Now that’s a crime.

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I was at a songwriter’s event in Berkeley (and what the Sam Hell an ex-cowboy is doing in Berkeley, California is another question altogether) when a competition judge warned the participants “You’ll stand a better chance if your song has a bridge.”

Being cut of rough cloth, I thought this notion absurd and an insult to songwriters who have avoided bridges like they would avoid cheap whiskey (which describes mainly me, though bridgeless folk like Tom Waits come to mind too). 

A bridge is just another tool, and by itself does not make a song better or worse.  But it is a tool to change the audiences expectations and add variety.  Like a drummer who knows when to drop a beat in order to get the audience to anticipate a changing verse, a bridge establishes a change in the song, and breaks up musical monotony.

But necessary?  No more necessary that tits on a nun.

Take one extreme example, James McMurty’s Choctaw Bingo.  Search all you like, you will never find a bridge in the entire song which rivals a Wagner opera in length.  McMurty uses other devises to keep energy and audience attention, including interludes between stanzas that foreshadow lyrical reentry, and lyrics that rivet attention.

Bridges have their use, and should not be discounted.  But almost every pop-tune has a bridge and nobody remembers pop-tunes a year after they hit the top ten (well, aside from the Beatles … but that’s a whole different side of beef on which to chew).  Writing a good song requires writing the words and music that convey the emotion you want people to feel, and even the longest bridge won’t cross a chasm between your concealed emotion and a bored audience.

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Do liberals have a genetic deficiency in mathematics?

I ask in all due seriousness (or at least as much seriousness as I can summon) given their poor record in predicting the cost of government programs.  I give the libs ample windage in as much as government is chronically ineffective, inefficient, and inane, and predicting any part of it outside of uncontrolled growth is like shooting flies from afield.

Several years back liberals in Canada ramrodded a national firearm registration system, claiming that it would cost a mere pence.  Several years later the scheme produced an expense report some 1,646% times the original projected cost.  Anyone can be a little over budget, but there is a might gap between a cost overrun and a cost runaway.

Universal health care is the next sham in the left’s agenda, and the first unmasking of truth has taken place in (where else) Massachusetts, home of Ted Kennedy and other benefactors to the distillery industry. 

In raw, out-of-pocket dollars, the plan is now priced at double what was pitched to voters.  This does not include rate increases for hospitals, physicians, and managed care organizations which when passed along to consumers will double the cost again.  All added together, the MassBackward Universal Insurance Sham will cost about 530% more than the politicians originally predicted.

Truth be told (a rarity in politics I assure you) the liberals are not that bad at basic mathematics.  They are much better at marketing, and know that voters routinely perform rough cost/benefit analysis on issues.  The good people of Massachusetts felt a little socialism was acceptable as long as the price was kept low.  Now that the true price has been confessed, recalling the pesky partisans who perpetrated this perversion is in order.

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