Mike's Noise

Virtual Victrola - April 29 edition - 4x4's: Jones-Smith, Inc.

On a cold winter's night Chicago in early 1936, record producer John Hammond patiently spun the radio dial in his car, searching for music.  His exploration of the airwaves resulted in his discovery of the Count Basie Orchestra, broadcasting live from the Reno Club in Kansas City.  The band was rough and occasionally out of tune, but their energetic playing and solid, swinging rhythm section thrilled Hammond.  He immediately told his friend Benny Goodman about his discovery, and the two of them made plans to visit Kansas City and hear the band in person.  Upon meeting Basie, Hammond convinced him to take his band on the road, and made arrangements for Basie to begin an engagement at the Grand Terrace Ballroom in Chicago.

But Hammond did not get a chance to record the Basie orchestra for another three years, for Jack Kapp, the shrewd president of Decca Records, met with Basie -- without Hammond's knowledge -- and offered him a recording contract.  Heartbroken and angry at the paltry sum that Kapp offered Basie, Hammond insisted that at least some of Basie's men owed him a recording session.  Basie agreed, and brought a quintet consisting of himself, drummer Jo Jones, bassist Walter Page, trumpeter Carl "Tatti" Smith, and tenor saxophonist Lester Young into a cramped Chicago recording studio on November 9, 1936.

The studio was so small that in order to fit a piano, the musicians, and portly singer Jimmy Rushing all in the same room together, Jo Jones could only bring his high hat cymbal stand and snare drum.  But under Hammond's direction, the group turned out four astounding performances in a date that Hammond later described as, "the only perfect, completely perfect recording session I've ever had anything to do with."

Because Basie was under contract with Decca at the time (though he had yet to record for them) these records were released under the name "Jones-Smith, Inc.", a play on Jo Jones and Carl Smith's last names.  On subsequent reissues and foreign issues, the records were credited either to Count Basie's Blue Five or the Count Basie Quintet.

The Tunes:

Shoe Shine Boy
Download jonessmith_inc_shoe_shine_boy.mp3

Evenin'
Download jonessmith_inc_evenin.mp3

Boogie Woogie
Download jonessmith_inc_boogie_woogie.mp3

Lady Be Good
Download jonessmith_inc_lady_be_good.mp3

Don't they try people for treason anymore?

Just in case you've been living under a log for the past week, the CIA announced last week that Mary McCarthy, a policy analyst at the agency, engaged in a "pattern of behavior" that included leaking information about purported secret "CIA torture camps" located in Europe that allegedly have been used by our government to detain and interrogate Al Qaeda suspects.  The Washington Post's Dana Priest recently won a Pulitzer Prize for her stories based on McCarthy's leaks.

Rush Limbaugh today:

Mary McCarthy leaks the secret CIA prison story to Dana Priest of the Washington Post. Some speculate this may have been a sting operation. I don't know about that. The only thing I know about this is the important thing to remember, is that the Democrats are on record as wanting us out of Iraq and think it's a big boondoggle, but they claim to be on board with the war on terror, and her leaks had nothing to do with Iraq. Her leak on these prisons, if they exist, is where Al-Qaeda terrorists captured on the battlefield were being held. Mary McCarthy and Joseph Wilson served at the National Security Council together at the same time. Both had African portfolios. Does Dana Priest's husband serve as Joe Wilson's agent, in effect getting him speaking gigs. And some are asking was it Mary McCarthy who sent Joe Wilson to Niger? Our friends at the PowerLine blog point out that it's hard to keep up with all these revelations coming out about Dana Priest, the Washington Post reporter who published the secret prison story, got a Pulitzer Prize for it, and Mary McCarthy, the Democratic Party activist and now fired CIA bureaucrat who leaked this story to Dana Priest -- and yes, she was an activist.   She contributed $5,000 in soft money to the Democratic Party. She contributed $2,000 to the Kerry campaign in 2004. Dana Priest is married to William Goodfellow.  Now, William Goodfellow is the executive director of something called the Center for International Policy, and if you go to the Center for International Policy's website, you'll find its mission statement, which reads: "promoting a foreign policy based on cooperation, demilitarization, and human rights." Pure liberalism, pure leftism! It appears that the Center for International Policies idea of 'demilitarization and human rights' is best exemplified by Cuba," if you read their website. They love Cuba, Dana Priest's husband's website and organization. But when you read their mission statement, that they "promote a foreign policy based on cooperation, demilitarization and human rights," you have to know that they are surrenderers and they are appeasers, and they do not recognize enemies. There are connections, interesting connections among the Center for International Policy. They operate the Iraq policy information program. Joe Wilson is part of it. Dana Priest is part of it. This is not just guilt by association. Dana Priest herself participated in an anti-Iraq war program put on by her husband's group, the Center for International Policy, along with Joe Wilson and even other more unsavory characters -- and if you go to the right websites you'll find pictures of Dana Priest sitting next to Joe Wilson, or close to him, and others at seminars put on by Dana Priest's husband at the Center for International Policy.

Make sure you read the PowerLine post that Rush referenced above.  I agree with John Hinderaker that we shouldn't enter into fits of wild speculation regarding possible conspiracy theories, but I find it interesting that conspiracy nuts on the Left, who see an evil Karl Rove plot behind everything the White House does, seem to have no interest whatsoever in any of the connections between Priest, McCarthy, and Joe Wilson.  Or, for that matter, the interesting fact that according to the UN, no hard evidence of those secret torture camps even exists.  Did McCarthy give Dana Priest nothing but a giant red herring fabricated by others in the CIA solely to trap leakers?  Inquiring minds should want to know.

And true to MSM form, ABC News just published an eye-rolling piece about the patriotism of leaking.  If you don't have time to read it, here's a shorter version: Leaks?  Hey no big deal.  Everybody did it, even ol' Ben Franklin!  Again, one wonders why ABC News failed to discover this interesting fact during the outcry over the "outing" of Valerie Plame.

Deep Washington insiders have long speculated that there is a coordinated effort by CIA employees loyal to the Democrat Party (and especially the Clinton Administration) to whitewash the Clinton Administration's performance on national security matters (e.g. Sandy Berger's pilfering of classified documents from the National Archives) while torpedoing ongoing policy initiatives by the Bush Administration.  Could this be an opening round of "auditions" for senior positions in a possible Hillary Clinton administration?

Whatever the reasons, it will be fun to watch Democrats -- who previously demanded the heads of "leakers" on a silver platter -- defend this woman as a great American hero for violating her sworn oath as a CIA operative and possibly endangering countless lives, just to get even with a President she doesn't like.

As one commenter put it, don't they try people for treason any more?

Here's a nifty graph depicting the web of connections between the players in this story, via WizBang:

Gasoline Prices

Why are gasoline prices so high?  Here are a few common sense answers from the standpoint of economics.

1)  Prices are high because high prices cause a decrease in consumption.  Obviously gasoline refiners and distributors feel that they will not be able to keep up with fuel demand this summer, so they are trying to decrease consumption by raising prices.  (See reason #4 for why this is so.)

2)  Prices are higher in densely-populated urban areas.  See this map at Heavy Lifting for more details.  Urban areas sell more gasoline, so they have a higher fuel demand.  Urban areas (especially California) also tend to impose much more regulation on the formulation of gasoline.  Specially-blended fuels are more difficult to make and therefore cost more.

3) Commodities speculators are partly responsible for driving the price of oil to astronomical levels.  It is important to understand that the price quoted for a barrel of oil that you hear on the evening news is not what oil is actually selling for today.  Rather, it is a speculative price offered by commodities traders, based on what they think oil will sell for in the near future.  One of the ways that commodities speculators make money is to buy those commodities at a low current price, speculate a higher future price, and then sell "futures" at a nice profit.

This is not to say that current tensions in the Middle East are not a legitimate cause for concern.  But the Middle East is not the only arena in which oil prices are set.  Oil companies must factor future prices into their current manufacturing costs, less they end up with huge cash shortfalls.

4)  Our refining capacity still remains limited.  Some of the refining capacity at coastal facilities damaged by Rita and Katrina last fall still has not been restored.  And then there is the MTBE controversy.  MTBE is an oxygenating agent added to gasoline by Federal mandate.  But MTBE was found to cause groundwater pollution, so Congress ordered MTBE to be replace with ethanol.  This about-face has cost gasoline refiners a massive amount of money, and the resulting modifications that oil companies have been forced to make to their refineries has further reduced gasoline refining capacitiy.  Gasoline shortages are popping up in a few areas around the nation because of this.  Kim Priestap at WizBang has more on this problem.

5)  Federal and State government earns a very healthy income from gasoline taxes.  Between 1977 and 2004, government revenues from fuel taxes were roughly double the amount of profit made by oil companies.  According to the Department of Energy, around 25% of the average price we paid at the pump for gasoline in 2004 ($1.85) was Federal and State fuel taxes.  The Federal government taxes gasoline at 18.4 cents per gallon; states tack on additional taxes.

Through a commenter on the WizBang post referenced above, I found this page, which has virtually everything you could want to know about gasoline prices.  Make sure you scroll up and down from the link anchor.

You'll note that none of these reasons has anything to do with "price gouging" by oil companies.  If we want to do something that will make a real difference in gasoline prices, we should start by addressing the five items I've listed.  Anything else is just mindless folly.

Who is more evil - Exxon or the UAW?

Predictably, people are up in arms over the $400 million retirement package offered by ExxonMobil to its departing CEO Lee Raymond.  It's an outrage, they say, that a single person should be compensated so generously when the rest of us are suffering through the indignity of paying $2.75 per gallon for gasoline.  Raymond is being offered such a lucrative package because he helped pull off the merger of Exxon and Mobil Oil, and led the company to a record profit for 2005.  Many people consider making money a sinful act for a business.

But before you jump on the "hang the rich" bandwagon, perhaps you should read these four stories about troubled US automaker GM, which posted a $10 billion loss for fiscal 2005:

Promises That Cannot Be Kept (George Will)
(Did you know that UAW employees must be kept on full salary even if there are no assembly line jobs available for them?  Imagine paying employees $100,000 a year in salary and benefits to watch safety videos and play Trivial Pursuit.)

No Reason To Leave GM (Detroit Free Press)
(And why should Lillian Winkle want to leave?  She gets paid $74,000 per year by GM to sweep floors and empty wastebaskets.)

That 'Little Blue Pill' Costs GM $17 Million Per Year (Detroit Press)
(And health benefits for current employees, retired employees, and all their dependents currently add over $1500 to the sticker price of each car GM sells.)

Where Would General Motors Be Without The United Automobile Workers Union? (Mises Institute)
(Did you know that the average union assembly line employee costs GM $74 dollars per hour?)

I find it curious that government spending watchdogs bemoan our nation's debt, accusing us of living high on the hog at the expense of our children and grandchildren.  Yet these same people seem to have little or nothing to say about suicidal contracts that manufacturers are forced by unions to sign, contracts that threaten to bankrupt those companies and cost investors billions in capital as well as cost retirees their pensions and benefits and current employees their jobs.

By the way, the "Jobs Bank" engineered by the UAW forces General Motors alone to pay out between $750 and $900 million in salary and benefits per year to unproductive union employees.  Factor in what other unionized auto makers are forced to pay each year, and you'll get a number that dwarfs Lee Raymond's retirement compensation.  And automakers pay this money out every year.

There ain't no such thing as a free lunch.  But unions are happy to offer one to employees, and then blame the ensuing financial difficulties on the "greed" of American business. 

But I wonder who is truly greedy.
____________________________________

Just a few weeks ago, France considered repealing some of its stifling labor laws and allowing companies to fire workers age 26 and under, within the first two years of employment, without giving a reason.  Violent mobs squelched those reforms, and so France remains stuck with a national unemployment rate that hovers around 10%, and an unemployment rate among young immigrant males -- French society's most 'at-risk' group -- reaching as high as 50%.  Compare that with America's national unemployment currently around 4.7%.

French companies are reluctant to hire employees if they are stuck with them regardless of how poorly they do their jobs, or whether or not the company makes money.  So very few get hired.  And the fortunate ones literally live off the backs of the unemployed, thinking "I've got mine, and I'll be damned if I'll let you take it away from me."

Moral?  I don't think so.

Virtual Victrola - April 22 Edition - 4x4's: Gene Krupa's Swing Band

This week, the Virtual Victrola features four recordings by a pickup band under the leadership of drummer Gene Krupa.  The records were made in Chicago in February 1936 and helped establish trumpeter Roy Eldridge as a new force to be reckoned with in jazz.

During the time these records were made, the Benny Goodman orchestra was in the midst of an extended engagement at the Congress Hotel in Chicago.  Benny was Gene's boss, and for this session Gene enlisted mostly fellow Goodman bandmates: singer Helen Ward, Goodman, pianist Jess Stacy, and guitarist Allan Reuss.  To this lineup he added three black musicians: Chicago native and bassist Israel Crosby, tenorist Leon "Chu" Berry, and trumpeter Roy Eldridge.

The real newcomer among these musicians was Roy Eldridge. Eldridge had played on a few recordings made by Teddy Hill during the previous year, and while those performances were good, they contained nothing like the fierce explosion of energy that Eldridge released during this session, notably during his solo on "Swing Is Here."  Perhaps Eldridge, knowing that Goodman had recently employed trumpeter Bunny Berigan, was ready to show Goodman that he was just as capable of sparking a recording session as Berigan was.  Whatever the reason, Eldridge practically launched his career with these records.

Interestingly, Eldridge, Crosby, and Berry all would soon join the Fletcher Henderson orchestra and continue to record as highly sought-after sidemen.  Eldridge remained a top attraction well into his 60's, until a stroke left him unable to play the trumpet.  And he spent several years during the 1940's as a featured trumpeter and singer in Gene Krupa's big band.  The only member of this group to die before his time was Chu Berry, who perished in an automobile accident in 1941, just as he was poised to overtake Coleman Hawkins as the king of the tenor saxophone.

Krupa also brought along Helen Ward, Benny Goodman's girl singer.  Helen was a superb singer and talented pianist who possessed perfect pitch and was as easy on the eyes as she was on the ears.  Her joyous performance on "I'm Gonna Clap My Hands" is a perfect example of how the right singer can add the perfect touch of class to a good jazz recording.  And her vocal on "Mutiny In The Parlor," combined with Eldridge's muted trumpet solo, illustrates how strong jazz players can rescue a mediocre song from the doldrums and turn it into a fantastic performance.
_______________________________________

The Tunes:

I Hope Gabriel Likes My Music
Download gene_krupas_swing_band_i_hope_gabriel_likes_my_music.mp3

I'm gonna Clap My Hands
Download gene_krupas_swing_band_im_gonna_clap_my_hands.mp3

Mutiny In The Parlor
Download gene_krupas_swing_band_mutiny_in_the_parlor.mp3

Swing Is Here
Download gene_krupas_swing_band_swing_is_here.mp3

_____________________________________

Next week, the Virtual Victrola will wrap up the 4x4's feature with Count Basie's first recording session, four classic 1936 sides that introduced the jazz world to the President of the Tenor Saxophone, Lester Young.  See you then!

If you ever wondered what the Girl Scouts did with their unsold cookies ...

(Cracking good, to boot!)

No good deed goes unpunished

Here is an interesting New York Times article that describes the strain felt by Texans who absorbed hundreds of thousands of Hurricane Katrina evacuees, and then took a direct hit from Hurricane Rita.

In East Texas, state officials are seeking roughly $1 billion in new federal block-grant money to house people whose homes were destroyed by Hurricane Rita.

Texas officials concede that their coast was not pummeled nearly as badly as their neighbors in Louisiana, but they argue that their residents did not evacuate and were now trying to live in squalid, mold-infested conditions.

"I have been to the Ninth Ward," said Mark Viator, chairman of the Recovery Coalition of Southeast Texas, speaking of the most devastated neighborhood in New Orleans. "There is debris in the Ninth Ward, but you don't have people. We say, send the money where the people are."

Henry Bowie, who lives in Port Arthur, a city with high unemployment and many poor residents, is the sort of person Mr. Viator thinks should get federal housing money. His house is a patchwork of broken roofing, and light is visible through the floorboards because the house is off its foundation. Black mold grows up the sides of the walls, but Mr. Bowie, who undergoes dialysis three times a week, remains there with his wife and teenage son.

... Mayor Guy N. Goodson of Beaumont, where thousands of homes were damaged, said he would like to see federal reimbursements for debris removal there rise to 90 percent of costs from 75 percent, equaling what it was in Louisiana. Mayor Goodson said his area suffered inattention because its residents had done the right thing: evacuating and rebuilding without complaint after Hurricane Rita cut its path.

"There is a great disjoinder in people's minds about disaster," he said. "You see wildfires, you see a tornado, and who can forget the pictures of the Ninth Ward. A vast majority of our area is wind damage. And unfortunately from a sensory standpoint, people just don't coordinate these two very similar disasters."

There's much more in the article about the problems Houston is facing, but I chose to excerpt some details about southeast Texas.  I'm a native of that area, and I have seen firsthand the destruction that Hurricane Rita caused.  Like the people living in Mississippi, the sensationalism-driven news media has simply ignored the plight of this area.  But it is real.

A final thought -- all of the people living in water-damaged and mold-infested housing along the Gulf Coast in the wake of these two hurricanes are going to provide doctors and other medical professionals with a living laboratory of diseases and health ailments caused by exposure to mold and chronically damp environments.  Many people (particularly in the construction and insurance industries) have dismissed the idea of mold-related diseases as a fantasy cooked up by greedy lawyers.  We'll see if they change their minds now.

Was Saddam teaching foreign terrorists how to make IED's?

Every now and then I venture over to Power Line or Free Republic to check on the progress being made in the effort to translate thousands of documents confiscated from Saddam Hussein's files by US military forces.  An Arabic-speaking Free Republic member named jveritas has been steadily publishing his translation work over the last few weeks, and he has recently uncovered some interesting stuff.

Take this document, for instance, which dates from 1999 and includes an intelligence budget request written by a senior chemist.  His line items?  More money for research into perfecting IED's (improvised explosive devices, the dreaded "roadside bombs" that have killed and wounded so many of our troops) and more money for "training of the Arab Feedayeens," which is the common term used to describe foreign terrorists. 

Or this one, dating from early 2003 (just prior to our invasion) entitled "Recommendation on how to use the Arab Feedaeyeens (Suicide Martyrs)."

If both of these documents can be corroborated, then they provide conclusive evidence to support some very important facts that are continually denied by Democrats, peaceniks, and Saddam apologists:  namely that Saddam Hussein actively supported the training of foreign Arab terrorists, and that Hussein planned to use bands of terrorists to continue a low-intensity "hit and run" war using IED's in the event that his own regime fell.

Unfortunately, the US either did not know about this plan, or failed to realize its effectiveness.  Either way, we focused our efforts on eliminating the formal Iraqi military and as a result we had few contingency plans for dealing with these terrorists.  We failed to stop them before they became entrenched among the Iraqi population.

As I mentioned in a post just a few days ago, radical jihadists in the Arab world see Americas as soft and cowardly, running at the first sight of blood.  If true, Saddam's ultimate strategy would seem to be based on this attitude.  Even if Saddam himself was defeated, the terrorists that he trained and equipped could continue to attack the Americans, and quite possibly force them to abandon Iraq before stability was achieved and before a stable government was created.  Thus America would win the battle (defeating Saddam) but lose the war (establishing a free and democratic Iraq).

This is the same strategy that Iran thinks will be successful against the United States.  Even if we beat them in a direct confrontation, and even if we take out their nuclear capability, the current Iranian leadership envisions a continuing war driven by suicide bombers and terrorists loyal to the current radical Shi'ite Muslim regime, operating around the world and within the US, possibly for decades.  It is their belief that we will eventually tire of the constant bloodshed and finally "surrender" to their demands, whatever that means.

Are they right?  Only time will tell.

When you look in the dictionary under "slow news day" ...

... you should find items like this one:

Man Rediscovers Gift Fruitcake From 1962

Too bad the Pulitzer committee has already announced this year's winners.

The first world war of the 21st century

Following yesterday's suicide bombing attack at a Tel Aviv falafel stand (perpetrated by a 17-year old Hamas member, and rationalized by Palestinian leaders as an act of "self-defense"), Israel's ambassador to the United Nations Dan Gillerman made these observations:

Recent statements by the Palestinian government, Iran and Syria, including one by Hamas on Monday defending the suicide bombing, "are clear declarations of war, and I urge each and every one of you to listen carefully and take them at face value..."

... Since January, he said, 11 major suicide terrorist attacks have been prevented and 90 potential suicide bombers have been arrested.

While Israel regrets any loss of life, it will not sit idly by and allow "human bombs" or rockets to penetrate the country and kill Israelis _ and he asked whether every country wouldn't do the same to eliminate a similar danger.

"The danger I must add, not just to Israel but also to the whole free world, and to civilization as we know it, as this axis of evil and terror sows the seeds of the first world war of the 21st century," Gillerman said. (emphasis added)

Israel has not been squeezed this hard by belligerent foes since 1967.  If this ends up (as it probably will) with Israel taking military action against these three nations, there is not doubt in my mind who will win.  Study the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War if you don't understand my prediction.

Yesterday, Rush Limbaugh noted this article by Amir Taheri: "The Frightening Truth of Why Iran Wants The Bomb."  Taheri explains,

Last Monday, just before he announced that Iran had gatecrashed "the nuclear club", President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad disappeared for several hours. He was having a khalvat (tête-à-tête) with the Hidden Imam, the 12th and last of the imams of Shiism who went into "grand occultation" in 941.

According to Shia lore, the Imam is a messianic figure who, although in hiding, remains the true Sovereign of the World. In every generation, the Imam chooses 36 men, (and, for obvious reasons, no women) naming them the owtad or "nails", whose presence, hammered into mankind's existence, prevents the universe from "falling off". Although the "nails" are not known to common mortals, it is, at times, possible to identify one thanks to his deeds. It is on that basis that some of Ahmad-inejad's more passionate admirers insist that he is a "nail", a claim he has not discouraged.

... Now, he boasts that the Imam gave him the presidency for a single task: provoking a "clash of civilisations" in which the Muslim world, led by Iran, takes on the "infidel" West, led by the United States, and defeats it in a slow but prolonged contest that, in military jargon, sounds like a low intensity, asymmetrical war.

In Ahmadinejad's analysis, the rising Islamic "superpower" has decisive advantages over the infidel. Islam has four times as many young men of fighting age as the West, with its ageing populations. Hundreds of millions of Muslim "ghazis" (holy raiders) are keen to become martyrs while the infidel youths, loving life and fearing death, hate to fight. Islam also has four-fifths of the world's oil reserves, and so controls the lifeblood of the infidel. More importantly, the US, the only infidel power still capable of fighting, is hated by most other nations.

According to this analysis, spelled out in commentaries by Ahmadinejad's strategic guru, Hassan Abassi, known as the "Dr Kissinger of Islam", President George W Bush is an aberration, an exception to a rule under which all American presidents since Truman, when faced with serious setbacks abroad, have "run away". Iran's current strategy, therefore, is to wait Bush out. And that, by "divine coincidence", corresponds to the time Iran needs to develop its nuclear arsenal, thus matching the only advantage that the infidel enjoys.

... At the same time, not to forget the task of hastening the Mahdi's second coming, Ahamdinejad will pursue his provocations. On Monday, he was as candid as ever: "To those who are angry with us, we have one thing to say: be angry until you die of anger!"

His adviser, Hassan Abassi, is rather more eloquent. "The Americans are impatient," he says, "at the first sight of a setback, they run away. We, however, know how to be patient. We have been weaving carpets for thousands of years."

It is probably true that the United States will not attack Iran during the next two years, unless something unforeseen -- which clearly indicates an imminent threat to most reasonable people -- happens as a direct result of Iranian policies or military action.

But I can't be too sure about Israel.  When another nation threatens to wipe them off the map, they tend to take those threats seriously. 

Michelle Malkin has more on the new "axis of terror."