MRDTALK: Music Row Democrats Community Blog

According to today’s New York Times, the government is relying heavily on wiretapped conversations in its evidence against Jose Padilla.

In 1997, as the government listened in on their phone call, Adham Hassoun, a computer programmer in Broward County, Fla., proposed a road trip to Jose Padilla, a low-wage worker there. The excursion to Tampa would be his treat, Mr. Hassoun said, and a chance to meet “some nice, uh, brothers.” Read the rest of this entry »

Please, corporate media, spare us the national news coverage of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s wardrobe. I know after that schlub Dennis Hastert, Pelosi is a stylistic breath of fresh air. But since the Washington Post got a righteous smackdown for its fatuous Pelosi-pantsuit coverage last November, I thought y’all would have learned your lesson. Read the rest of this entry »

No matter how much the Bush Administration disputes that we went to Iraq for oil, only the most ardent Kool-Aid drinker believes that claptrap about WMD, or bringing democracy to Iraq, or even bringing about Armageddon so Jesus can come back and claim his followers. (Please, Lord. Make it soon. They’re driving the rest of us nuts.) Since when did a bunch of oil billionaires give a crap about democracy anywhere, especially a country that has the third-largest oil reserves in the world? Read the rest of this entry »

Last night President Bush went before the American people and asked for more.

Yeah, I noticed the deer-in-the-headlights look, too. Can you blame him? He was asking for 20,000 more of our sons and daughters and $7 billion more of our tax dollars to squander in the black hole that is his monumental Iraq disaster. No, scratch that, he didn’t ask us, he told us:

So I’ve committed more than 20,000 additional American troops to Iraq. The vast majority of them — five brigades — will be deployed to Baghdad. Read the rest of this entry »

I haven’t said anything about the Don Imus flap because truly enough has been said already.

But I can’t help but marvel at news outfits like CNN, whose shameless flogging of this controversy is so hypocritical in light of their own Imus-like talking heads, Glenn Beck and Nancy Grace. It’s just a matter of time before the karmic wheel turns and CNN finds itself in the hot seat over a Beck comment (amazingly, calling Hillary Clinton “a stereotypical bitch” or Rosie O’Donnell “a fat witch” hasn’t done it yet.). Read the rest of this entry »

Since the Imus-sparked “national dialogue” about misogyny seems to have taken a backseat to the “national dialogue” about race (we are having a national dialogue about race aren’t we? Aren’t we?), I thought I’d bring this up. Read the rest of this entry »

Is this a free country or what!

John Mellencamp invited folk singer John Baez to appear with him at a concert for soldiers at Walter Reed Army hospital, but the Army nixed the idea, saying the anti-war Baez “can’t fit here.” From Editor & Publisher: Read the rest of this entry »

OK, now can we have a national dialogue about misogyny?

I realize XM is a subscription service, so comments like this aren’t likely to generate the national outrage of, say, Don Imus’ remark, but I see the same issues at play, and I think it’s long past time we put a stop to this crap: Read the rest of this entry »

I know we’ve all been really busy following the Don Imus and Anna Nicole Smith’s Baby Daddy stories, so I wanted to call this to everyone’s attention:

PARIS, April 11 — Two bombings in Algeria, one aimed at the main government building in the country’s capital, killed at least 23 people on Wednesday in a sharp escalation of the violence linked to Al Qaeda that has spread across North Africa. Read the rest of this entry »

I can’t believe after all this time I still get glazed looks when I mention the Bush family’s connection to controversial cult leader Rev. Sun Myung Moon. It’s one of those “white elephant” stories that the mainstream media refuses to cover because, frankly, it sounds too bizarre to be believed. Of course, the story is out there, as any quick Google search for “Bush Family, Rev. Moon” will reveal. Read the rest of this entry »