Robert Reich: Beware the Looney Right, Laaurie Lewis and Roland White-Sunday eve.

Music lovers will remember or know of the Kentucky Colonels, exposed to the broader world through and identified with the Ash Grove for a dozen years, and the genius of teenage guitarist Clarence White, destined to change country music, before his untimely death in 1973.  Leader of the band, brother Roland White has evolved into a truly great mandolin player, even by his mentor, Bill Monroe's standards.  Roland makes a rare LA return Sunday 7pm,, as guest band member of the great singer/songwriter Laurie Lewis.  Hope to see some of you there.  -Ed

 

 http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/10196-focus- beware-the-looney-right

Beware the Looney Right

By Robert Reich, Robert Reich's Blog

28 February 12

My father was a Republican for the first 78 years of his life. For the last twenty, he's been a Democrat (he just celebrated his 98th.) What happened? "They lost me," he says.

They're losing even more Americans now, as the four remaining GOP candidates seek to out-do one another in their race for the votes of the loony right that's taken over the Grand Old Party.

But the rest of us have reason to worry.

A party of birthers, creationists, theocrats, climate-change deniers, nativists, gay-bashers, anti-abortionists, media paranoids, anti- intellectuals, and out-of-touch country clubbers cannot govern America.

Yet even if they lose the presidency on Election Day they're still likely to be in charge of at least one house of Congress as well as several state legislators and governorships. That's a problem for the nation.

The GOP's drift toward loopyness started in 1993 when Bill Clinton became the first Democrat in the White House in a dozen years – and promptly allowed gays in the military, pushed through the Brady handgun act, had the audacity to staff his administration with strong women and African-Americans, and gave Hillary the task of crafting a national health bill. Bill and Hillary were secular boomers with Ivy League credentials who thought government had a positive role to play in peoples' lives.

This was enough to stir right-wing evangelicals in the South, social conservatives in the Midwest and on the Great Plains, and stop-at- nothing extremists in Washington and the media who hounded Bill Clinton for eight years, then stole the 2000 election from Al Gore, and Swift-boated John Kerry in 2004.

They were not pleased to have a Democrat back in the White House in 2008, let alone a black one. They rose up in the 2010 election cycle as "tea partiers" and have by now pushed the GOP further right than it has been in more than eighty years. Even formerly sensible senators like Olympia Snowe, Orrin Hatch, and Dick Lugar are moving to the extreme right in order to keep their seats.

At this rate the GOP will end up on the dust heap of history. Young Americans are more tolerant, cosmopolitan, better educated, and more socially liberal than their parents. And relative to the typical middle-aged America, they are also more Hispanic and more shades of brown. Today's Republican Party is as relevant to what America is becoming as an ice pick in New Orleans.

In the meantime, though, we are in trouble. America is a winner- take-all election system in which a party needs only 51 percent (or, in a three-way race, a plurality) in order to gain control.

In parliamentary systems of government, small groups representing loony fringes can be absorbed relatively harmlessly into adult governing coalitions.

But here, as we're seeing, a loony fringe can take over an entire party - and that party will inevitably take over some part of our federal, state, and local governments.

As such, the loony right is a clear and present danger.

Robert Reich is Chancellor's Professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley.

 

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Sunday, March 4, 2012
Laurie Lewis & the Right Hands Tom Rozum, Chad Manning, Patrick Sauber, Andrew Conklin - Special Time 7 pm
Tickets $20.00 (On sale 02/19/2012)

Legendary mandolinist Roland White will be playing in the Laurie Lewis band on Sunday night.

Please note this Sunday night show starts at 7pm. Doors open at 6:30pm.

Since forming a musical partnership in 1986, when Tom first joined Laurie's acclaimed band, Grant Street, Laurie Lewis and Tom Rozum have recorded 12 albums and performed around the globe. These Grammy-nominated artists (for their 1995 album The Oak and the Laurel) are widely regarded as among the leading lights of modern bluegrass and are highly-prized by their peers as sidemen and producers.

International Bluegrass Music Association executive director Dan Hays calls Laurie "one of the preeminent bluegrass and Americana artists of our time." Acclaimed musician Sam Bush puts it more simply, calling her "a great singer, terrific fiddle player, fine songwriter, and one very good band leader." Laurie also performed on both the Grammy-award winning, 1997 IBMA album of the year True Life Blues: The Songs of Bill Monroe, and the Grammy-nominated Ralph Stanley & Friends' release Clinch Mountain Country.

New England native Tom Rozum "possesses an earnest tenor voice in the vein of contemporary bluegrass great Tim O'Brien, and peels off rhythmically crisp licks on mandolin and guitar." --Derk Richardson In 1998, he released his debut solo album Jubilee on Dog Boy Records.

'Without reservation, one of 1998's most rewarding acoustic releases.' --Amazon.com

In 2004, Lewis & Rozum released their third duo album, Guest House (their first for HighTone Records), a characteristically versatile and engaging offering of love songs, laments, social commentary, and freewheelin' fun in the spirit of old-time music. Laurie and Tom pay homage to such eminent influences as Woody Guthrie, Hazel Dickens, Grandpa Jones, and the inimitable Bill Monroe, adding their own distinctive touches to traditional favorites as well as performing several of Laurie's nonpareil compositions.

www.laurielewis.com

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