Monday, October 01, 2018

Cher and Ann Wilson

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That’s  Isaiah's "Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Barbra Clones" and he also did  "Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Hogwarts" this past weekend.

 Me?  I did  "Kat's Korner: Ann Wilson sings of and for the boys" and  "Kat's Korner: Cher gives us another classic."

 Most of the e-mails I got on the two are about Cher's album which we all seem to agree is a must-have.  Blake e-mailed, for example, "DANCING QUEEN is the Cher album you have to own and have in your collection."  It is wonderful.  

 Most of the e-mails are about which is Cher's best performance on the album.

 I had 92 e-mails on that.  You know I'm lazy but, with Martha & Shirley's help, I tabulated them.  In order, here are the top five.

 1) "S.O.S."
2) "The Winner Takes It All"
3) "The Name of the Game"
4) "Mama Mia"
5) "One of US"

 74 e-mails were about the above songs.

 The remaining 18 were, in order:

 1) "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)" -- five votes
2) "Fernando" -- five votes
3) "Dancing Queen" -- four votes
4) "Waterloo" -- three votes
5) "Chiquitita" -- one vote
So that's what the favorites are right now (first five list).  That can change.  There are many times when I listen to an album and have different favorites.  And there are albums that I really like -- like the Rolling Stones' BIGGER BANG, for example -- that I love even more as the years pass.

On Ann Wilson, five of you were very unhappy with my review.  To which I say, listen to it, maybe I'm wrong.

And, hey, create a website to get your voice out there.  You can e-mail me if you do (use common_ills@yahoo.com so Martha and Shirley can let me know) and I'll note it here with a link.

I love Ann Wilson.  She's got one of the best voices in rock.  But this album is too much like the one before (HOPE & GLORY) and not as strong.  Maybe if she'd done it live?  Maybe if she'd worked with someone other than the guy who used to work on Heart's early albums?  Maybe if she'd chosen better songs?

And seriously, how do you do an album that's supposedly noting the important passings of music legends and not include Prince?

I'm still shocked by his death.  And how do you not honor him.  Even if you reduce it to his hits -- "Little Red Corvette," "Sign of the Times," "Kiss," "The Most Beautiful Girl In The World," "Purple Rain," "Thieves in the Temple," "U Got The Look," "When Doves Cry," "Contorversy," "I Wanna Be Your Lover," "I Could Never Take The Place Of Your Man," "If I Was Your Girlfriend," "1999," etc -- and ignore his album tracks that were never singles, he has a solid cannon to chose from.

And don't give me, "He's soul!"

He's not soul and anyone saying that is trying to be racist.

He impacted the world of rock.  In the summer of 1984, the three finest rocks albums were by him, Bruce Springsteen and Tina Turner.

I'm not really thrilled with the notion that the Eagles can appear on the album -- country -- but Prince can't.  And if you're saying Prince isn't rock, what the hell is Amy Winehouse doing on the album?

She was never rock.  She never pretended to be.  I love her music to this day.

But when you're puttin Amy Winehouse on the album, you've got no reason to ignore Prince.

At the end of the day, I offered my take on the album -- which is an opinion.  I can be wrong and if you disagreed with me on the album, take comfort in that.  And maybe use it to start your own site.

I cover women.  I'm not rushing to write the same oh-my-God-he's-God review of Bob Dylan or Bruce Springsteen. 

That's what most male critics have done over and over. 

If you love Ann Wilson, it's because you appreciate all that she's done -- and she's done a lot.  Other than Stevie Nicks, I can't think of any woman who has been more attacked by critics than Ann & Nancy Wilson.  So, if you're a fan, great, start a site and get your voice out there.


Closing with C.I.'s "Iraq snapshot:"


Monday, October 1, 2018. The KRG held elections and much more.

Let's start with some good news.  Neera Tanden finally found the man of her political dreams.  For years, people would caution her, "Neera, be practical.  You're just not impressive enough to land Satan."  But Neera had her heart set on being the First Lady in Hell and now, thanks to her merger with Bill Kristol, she's as close to that position as she's ever been.  Caitlin Johnstone (CONSORTIUM NEWS) reports:

  In a conference at the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, “Resistance” leader and professional left-puncher Neera Tanden met with Iraq-raping neocon Bill Kristol to discuss bipartisanship and shared values. While leprechauns held hands and danced beneath candy rainbows and gumdrop Reaper drones, the duo engaged in a friendly, playful conversation with the event’s host in a debate format which was not unlike watching the Pillsbury Doughboy have a pillow fight with himself in a padded room after drinking a bottle of NyQuil.
To get the event started, the host whose name I refuse to learn asked the pair to discuss briefly what common ground such wildly different people could possibly share to make such a strange taboo-shattering dialogue possible.
“Issues around national security and believing in democratic principles as they relate to foreign policy,” replied Tanden. “And opposing authoritarianism, and opposing the kind of creeping populism that undermines democracy itself.”
Neera Tanden, in case you are unaware, is a longtime Clinton and Obama insider and CEO of the plutocrat-backed think tank Center for American Progress. Her emails featured prominently in the 2016 Podesta drops by WikiLeaks, which New Republic described as revealing “a pattern of freezing out those who don’t toe the line, a disturbing predilection for someone who is a kind of gatekeeper for what ideas are acceptable in Democratic politics.” Any quick glance at Tanden’s political activism and Twitter presence will render this unsurprising, as she often seems more concerned with attacking the Green Party and noncompliant progressive Democrats than she does with 
advancing progressive values. Her entire life is dedicated to keeping what passes for America’s political left out of the hands of the American populace.
Kristol co-signed Tanden’s anti-populist rhetoric and her open endorsement of neoconservative foreign policy, and went on to say that another thing he and Tanden have in common is that they’ve both served in government, which makes you realize that nothing’s black and white and everything’s kinda nebulous and amorphous so it doesn’t really matter if you, say for example, help deceive your country into a horrific blunder that ends up killing a whole lot of people for no good reason.


Following the above PDA, Tanden and Kristol are said to have retired to the two-star American Inn & Suites in Orange, California -- the cheapest accommodations near Yorba Linda and the Richard Nixon War Criminal Library and Museum -- which is where the two-some plan to hold both their reception and their first animal sacrifice.  Remember, boys and girls, the happy couple is registered at fetish stores near you.

Not sure whether The Problem From Hell Samantha Power was the couple's matron of honor or their handmaid, but she did crawl out from under her rock to Tweet.

 4 minutes ago
You mean like you guys with Israel, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, Egypt, Maidan, Kosovo...
Russia likes sovereignty, except that of Ukraine, Estonia, Georgia, Moldova, Montenegro, the United Kingdom, the United States...
1 reply10 retweets33 likes
 
 




I guess he told her.  I don't think people have laughed so hard at Samantha Power since those wedding photos.

Meanwhile, the KRG held elections Sunday.

 4 hours ago
Draw media's approximate breakdown of the seats the political parties gained in 30 September : 40-42, 21-23, 11-13, New Generation: 7-9, : 7-8, 5-6.
3 retweets14 likes
 
 




Like their hero and former leader, the party of Jalal Talabani just can't get it up which is why the PUK still can't come in first place.  If the results hold, this will be an improvement over third place to Gorran but long gone are the days when Kurds flocked to the Talabani's PUK.  Not even 80% of the votes have been counted so these numbers are not complete and things remain fluid.  KDP spokespeople are stating that they have 45 seats but, again, these numbers can change.  The results thus far appear to have sent Gorran into silence.


  1.  5 hours ago
movement’s media expressed their joy after the polls ended and counting started, claiming that they have gained a big victory, but later they stopped covering results when they found out they were wrong.
1 like
 
 



Talabani hand-puppet Joel Wing looks at the early results and the KDP having won twice the seats as the PUK to insist that this means "the KDP - PUK domination" will continue.  The results thus far indicate only KDP domination.


  1.  4 hours ago
: Latest result on the Kurdistan Region's Parliamentary Election For updates, follow here:
1 reply4 retweets16 likes
 
 




Only the anti-Barzani nut job Joel Wing could look at the current results and see good news for Talabani's PUK.  Some early results are showing the KDP with 46% of the votes and the PUK with 17%.  The PUK is not dominating anything.  That's why they started their usual crap of "voter fraud!" before the UN told them to knock it off.  Joel Wing has been either an idiot or a liar when it comes to the KRG repeatedly.  Wasn't it 2012 when he was telling us that Massoud Barzani had lost all support?  Bless crazy Joel Wing and the corporate press that props his tired ass up.



This morning on NPR's MORNING EDITION, Jane Arraf was hitting the crack pipe as she insisted
"the interesting thing is there are opposition parties."  She then goes on to call Gorran an older party.  Gorran, created by CIA seed-money does not have a long history.  "We did not see a lot of people," Arraf insisted of the one polling place that they went to in the morning and stayed all day.  It's really great that she can go to one polling place out of all the polling places in the three provinces -- not "regions," NPR -- and feels she can extrapolate from there.

Extrapolate?  I'm being kind and using it in place of "lying."

Jane always speaks for the prime minister -- whomever that is.  So this is a really hard time for her as Hayder al-Abadi is supposed to be on his way out and no one has emerged yet to be considered the new prime minister.  Poor, Jane.  It was so much easier when she was at CNN and could just broadcast whatever Saddam Hussein wanted her to.

One thing that is known about the elections yesterday:




  1.  57 minutes ago
's [journalist who was assassinated in 2013 in Kalar] widow Shirin Amin, will be a new MP of faction at the parliament. .
2 retweets11 likes
 
 





Yesterday, Isaiah's "Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Barbra Clones" and "Isaiah's THE WORLD TODAY JUST NUTS "Hogwarts" and Kat's  "Kat's Korner: Ann Wilson sings of and for the boys" and  "Kat's Korner: Cher gives us another classic" went up.  New content at THIRD:



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