Come on and Slam, It’s the John Simoneaux Jam

This weekend marks the 13^th annual John Simoneaux Memorial Jam.  The Jam kicks off Friday night with a pre-jam from 8:30 until midnight.  Saturday night the real Jam begins lasting from 5 until midnight.  The Jam will be held simultaneously at both Sundown Tavern and Ponchatoulas.  The cost is $5 Friday for the pre-jam and $10 Saturday (the price Saturday covers 7 hours of live music as well as a meal).  T-shirts will be on sale both nights for $15.  All proceeds from the event go to an endowed scholarship for guitar majors at Louisiana Tech.

Kylie Howard (16) had the winning design in this years Johnny Jam t-shirt contest.

Notable bands appearing include: Roadhouse Disciples, Ruston Road Kings, Monty Russel, Keith Patterson, Donavan Hatcher, Kenny Bill Stenson, and Danny Witherington.  The Ruston Road Kings will only be playing on Friday night as they will be busy working at the event on Saturday.

Local musicians are invited to sign up to play at the invite.  Bands and individuals will be able to sign up at the door.  Event coordinator Ken Carter stresses that you don’t have to be a part of a formal band in order to play at the event.  Last year two groups of musicians, who met for the first time at the event, played on stage together and had one of the most incredible performances said Carter.

The pre-jam Friday will be hosted by the Ruston Road Kings.  On Saturday there will be a silent auction lasting until 8 pm.  Raffle tickets will be sold both days.  A Taylor electric guitar priced at $1,998 will be given to the winning raffle ticket.

A raffle will be held for this Taylor electric guitar valued at nearly $2,000.

Saturday is also St. Patrick’s Day.  Carter hopes “to see a lot of St. Patty’s revelers out and about.”  In the words of a cajun friend Carter tells everyone, “yall come pass a good time.”

The John Simoneaux Jam has become something of a Ruston institution.  Sundown employee and lifelong Ruston resident Ryan Martin said, “Every year I look forward to seeing the John Simoneaux Jam, even though this year I’ll have to be working through it.”

The Jam commemorates the life and musical career of musician John Simoneaux.  Simoneaux hailed from New Orleans and came to Louisiana Tech to study guitar.  Simoneaux became an influential part of the Ruston music scene until his death in January 2000.

Here’s a sample of music from the 2009 Johnny Jam.

Why does Delware Punch taste so good? *Hint* it’s the taste of national secrets

The infamous wikileaks has released some emails suggesting Osama Bin Laden might not have been buried at sea in accordance with Muslim tradition.  The emails are allegedly from Fred Burton, vice president of the American private intelligence firm Stratfor.  In the leaked emails Burton says, “Body bound for Dover, DE on CIA plane. Than [sic] onward to the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Bethesda.”   However, subsequent emails support the theory that Osama Bin Laden’s body was in fact buried at sea.

The disturbing part of this story is frankly how believable it sounds.  I feel like we’ve been conditioned to understand that our government does do some rather unpleasant things under the rather and that’s ok, because we can trust them.  The more seedy actions of the CIA are not widely known by the general public.  And I more than suspect that the MOST unpleasant things are not known by anyone outside the loop.  If you told the average person that the CIA conducted mind control experiments (often on soldiers) from the 50’s until they (SUPPOSEDLY) ended in the late 70’s, you might get an “oh really” but either they are not surprised by the revelation or simply don’t care.  But thanks to the Freedom of Information Act and the courage of a number of ex-CIA employees, we do know that MK-Ultra (the CIA’s mind control experiment) did exist.

In July 1995 the CIA released a large number of documents detailing their over 20 years of research into the potential of human psychic ability.

A CIA wet dream.

A large area of focus concentrated on remote viewing.

It seems totally bizarre and like something out of a camply Sci-fi movie but this is the real deal.  What’s even more nuts is that they actual had some success.  This is what our government does in the name of national security.  So as dubious as the evidence may be that Bin Laden’s body is anywhere other than the ocean floor, it also seem incredibly reasonable considering how government secrets have been hidden and manipulated in the past.

Rise of the Super Pac

I’m sure those of you still brave enough to watch 24-hour news channels have heard the phrase “Super PAC” tossed about a lot lately.  Much less frequently do any of these “talking head” attempt to explain to the public exactly what these Super Pacs are or what they do.  Considering Super PACs have not been a part of ANY past presidential elections, I think the public deserve a reasonable explanation.

Back in 2008 the political world reeled from the results of a surprising Supreme Court decision.  The political action group Citizen’s United had promoted and televised the political film, “Hillary: The Movie.”  The FEC moved to block the televising of this movie because Citizen’s United received some of its backing from corporate dollars.  At the time, corporate money was more limited in the means by which it might contribute to elections.

In a very close 5-4 decisions the Supreme Court sided with Citizen’s United not only overruling the judgment of the lower courts which had previously ruled on the case, but, as Justice Steven said in his dissent, had rejected a century of history.  The majority decision removed previous legal blocks on corporate electioneering and argued that legally restraining corporations from contributing to political campaigns violated the first amendment.  Stevens noted that corporate campaign spending had been limited by law since the Tilman Act in 1907, which made illegal any corporate spending in the arena of politics.

There is a great deal of debate regarding the legal classifications of organizations.  Often they are treated as individuals for the purposes of legal matters.  So it is not an entirely new argument to claim corporations possess the rights of individuals expressed in the constitution.

In his dissent Stevens makes a strong argument against the treatment of organizations as individuals under the law.  Stevens argues that despite the contributions corporations make to society, they are not members of it.  He notes specifically that corporations are unable to vote or run for office and that because many corporations are controlled by foreign residents their interests may not be the same as those of voting citizens.  He goes on to say that “our lawmakers have a compelling constitutional basis, if not a democratic duty, to take measures designed to guard against the potentially deleterious effects of corporate spending in local and national races.”

The new freedoms granted to traditional Political Action Committees to accept and utilize corporate dollars led to birth of the Super PAC.  These organizations have changed the politically arena.  In the Republican primary this year we’ve seen one effect of the huge cash flow now available to these candidates in the form of a huge increase in attack ads.

Recently the Obama campaign has stated that they will utilize Super PAC dollars in this year’s election despite Obama having been highly critical of the Citizen’s United decision.   Former Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold responded saying “it guts the president’s message and the Democratic Party’s message.”  “They [Super PACs] can raise unlimited amounts of money from wealthy individuals and corporations” said Feingold, “and often they can do it in total secrecy.”

USA Today published a recent article stating that 25% of the money funding Super PACs has come from 5 individuals.  One of the five Sheldon Adelson, who operates the Venetian in Las Vegas, has donated $10 million dollars to the Gingrich campaign.  “I’m against very wealthy people attempting to or influencing elections, “said Adelson ,” but as long as it’s doable, I’m going to do it.”

The problem with Super PAC’s is that they play a large part in determining the major players in an election.  The massive influx of money insures that with proper media saturation the Campaign with the most money makes it to the ballet.  Though Feingold notes this isn’t the only reason for Romney’s success in the primary, “I’m sure Super PACs have had some role, but the fact is that Romney has terrible opponents.”  Be that as it may, when the primary ends and the real campaign begins we’ll we get to see what effect Super PACs really have, and what the winner will do to support the small pool of individuals and corporations who payed for him to be there.

NYPD Use Colleges To Stalk Muslim Students

The NYPD has been monitoring colleges in order to spy on Muslim students.  Officers posed as students on campus as well as infiltrating online college networks.  The reason for this surveillance initially came from an anonymous tip about a student who wanted a to be a “martyr.”  This mystery student was never found by the NYPD.  This revelation puts another smear on the NYPD after their recent scandal with anti-muslim training videos.

What’s the value of privacy in a post-9/11 world?  I think as a country we need to step back a bit and look at how we’re handling this.  This is not WWII and yet sometimes it feels like the threat of racial internment looms over the horizon.  I recognize that there are people around the world who do wish to promote acts of terror within the U.S., but there comes a point where enough is enough.  I remember as a kid being able to go to Canada with only my driver’s license and a copy of my birth certificate.  Now border screenings absolutely require a passport and screenings are tougher than ever.  And let’s not even get into airport screenings.

But’s ok, as long as we end the threat of militarized paintball.

The future of terrorism.

It’s all getting a bit ridiculous.  Oh, and to make things better, the whitehouse has been funding this.  I hope we can find a way to get through this as a country.  9/11 changed our world view.  We felt vulnerable as a people for the first time probably since Pearl Harbor. But we do we let off the gas a little bit?  This forceful obsession with safety has lead us into a decade of war which has made us as many enemies as we have eliminated.  I think ultimately the path to ending terrorism starts with promoting mutual understanding between our cultural.  That doesn’t mean agreeing with them.  There’s a lot I vehemently disagree with when it comes to radicalized religion.  However, without taking the time foster some sort of understanding and mutual respect, we’re guaranteed to be at each others throats for many years to come.