On Nov. 20th, 1969, James Brown recorded a song with a break that seeped deep into a myriad of musical cultures.

I know about this anniversary because as far as I can tell it’s the song I can pinpoint the closest to my own birthday, three days earlier.

The clip above is the entire 9-minute recording. I strongly recommend you hear the whole thing. I love that apparently James didn’t even have a title for the song until near the end. (”the name of this tune is the Funky Drummer. The Funky Drummer. The Funky Drummer.”)

Though the famous beat - I’m positive you’ve heard it even if you haven’t heard this song before - appeared far and wide beginning in the 1980s and early 1990s, there is a bit of tragedy associated with it - that being that while Brown made millions from the artists who sampled the beat (which appears at 5:22 in the above clip), the drummer who’s responsible for it, Clyde Stubblefield, never saw a dime.

And guess what I just learned when researching Stubblefield? Get ready to get your mind blown, after the jump:

Stubblefield was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 1943.

So in addition to Bessie Smith, one of the funkiest beats ever recorded was made by a Scenic City native.

Though the Godfather of Soul has left this mortal coil, Stubbfield is still around and making music. He now lives in Wisconsin. You would be helping correct this musical crime if you were to buy one or two of his songs on iTunes.

FURTHER READING: The Audfather has a great post on this song that’s worth your time.

Click here for a quite extensive list of songs that have sampled Stubblefield’s drum solo over the years.

Post from: The Public Interest

Joe Flower at the Health Care Blog has an innovative idea for reforming the healthcare industry: treat & trade patients the way major league owners do baseball players:

“What if your long-term health profile were a corporate asset of your health plan? What if, when you changed health plans, the new health plan had to pay the old health plan for the rights to insure you? Call this a health plan member’s Net Asset Value. If you don’t smoke; have a body mass index of 26 or below; and your cholesterol, blood pressure and resting heart rate indicate basic cardiovascular fitness and so forth, the new plan has to pay a high price for those rights, because you’re a valuable customer: You will pay your premiums, and have a lower risk of making expensive claims. If, on the other hand, you have diabetes, are obese, or smoke (or all three), you have a low Net Asset Value, or none.  The new health plan has to take on the risk of your medical expenses (in an environment where they can’t exclude you for your pre-existing conditions), but at least it does not have to pay anything to get you as a customer.

The idea would have to be established and enforced as an industry standard, presumably by some semi-governmental body similar to the Financial Accounting Standards Board, and enforced by state insurance regulators. But there is no reason that the price of such Net Asset Values would have to be set by any official body. They could be bundled and bid for in auctions that would dynamically find the true market value of a member’s long-term health status in each regional market.

Ironically, older patients who changed to a healthier lifestyle would create more value than younger ones. A 22-year-old who smokes is not likely to get COPD or lung cancer by the age of, say, 27. If a 22-year-old quits smoking, it doesn’t change their 5-year health profile as much as it would for a 60-year-old who quits smoking. So, as you get older, the health plans’ eagerness to help you get healthier increases. Yet, unlike schemes that would increase premiums for the less healthy, this eagerness is never coercive on the individual patient, and makes no assumptions about why a particular patient has a poor health profile, or how much it is actually under their control.”

What do you think?

(hat tip: Phroid)

Post from: The Public Interest

Talk about a trailblazing painting.

I’m not the first to recognize the tie between the first word in this painting’s title and a current social media site that’s all the rage:

“Did Paul Klee knowingly or unknowingly plant the idea, “make visible” the present day Twitter meme?

Look at Paul Klee’s “Twittering Machine” painted in 1922? meme?

“Klee was aware that in a conventional system of images, the sign is a ‘trigger’ to meaning. Klee wanted his signs to live in our visual awareness as facts themselves, as well as have the sense of being triggers toward meaning. Toward the end of his life, Klee immersed himself in the study of ideographs of all kinds, including hieroglyphics, hex signs and prehistoric cave images.” Modern Art Prints“

Also, check out the blog Echovar, which uses this painting as a jumping-off point to explain the Twitter’s impact on interaction.

Post from: The Public Interest

There appears to be a difference of opinion over exactly which slice of the right wing is essential to regaining victory in ‘10 and ‘12.

Rich Lowry:

“..why should Palin change? She represents less a philosophical strain on the right than an affect and a demographic. What makes her otherwise orthodox conservatism different is the plain-spoken, combative way she expresses it and the constituency she attracts. Her supporters identify with her populist, unaffected vibe and tend to be disaffected with politics as usual — they’re Palin Perotistas. A drastic image makeover would only drive them away.

Republicans need these voters more than ever given the roiling grassroots revolt against Obama’s governance. Without them, they can’t get a majority; they’d be doomed if they were ever to slide into a splinter party. If Palin is their voice and channels their energy productively, she’s part of the Republican answer to Obama, no matter what presidential politics ultimately holds for her. There’s an upside to rogue.”

But Newsweek’s Evan Thomas counters:

“Governing effectively requires a “big tent” approach to politics. To pass the New Deal and win reelection three times, Franklin D. Roosevelt built a coalition of labor, Northern liberals, and Southern conservatives. In a body politic that swings right, swings left—but never too far without swinging back again—it is impossible to win a governing majority without a coalition of true believers and moderates.

The two greatest postwar presidents understood this. Dwight Eisenhower governed in the 1950s by deftly uniting center and right, and Ronald Reagan did the same in the 1980s. They needed to be flexible to the point of gross expediency. To placate the far right, Ike shamefully refused to stand up for his friend and fellow statesman Gen. George Marshall, who was ludicrously attacked by Sen. Joe McCarthy as “soft” on communism. Reagan piously gave lip service to the right-wing social agenda while doing nothing to further it by legislation; he also chose George H.W. Bush to be his vice president and allowed the ultrapragmatic James A. Baker III to run the White House. The “Gipper” talked tough about the Russians–while doing more than any other president to foster détente. With a slyness that belied their smiling patriotism, Eisenhower and Reagan confused and occasionally exasperated their own followers. But it’s no coincidence the Eisenhower ’50s and Reagan ’80s were periods of unusual peace and prosperity.”

I tend to side with the latter point of view.  From where I sit, this recent spate of ideological purging of moderates on the right is going to push a Reagan- or Eisenhower-esque presidency further off in time, not closer.

And I’m not saying Palin has to - or should - “change.” She is who she is, which is someone, in my opinion, who won’t realize the value of gaining the support of moderate Republicans and independent voters before it’s too late.

What do you think?

NOTE: You can read everything I’ve written on this blog since last January on Sarah Palin by clicking the “Sarah Palin” link at the bottom of this post. You can read everything I wrote about her during the 2008 election season here.

Post from: The Public Interest

So where the heck have I been for the past two weeks?

I suppose an explanation’s in order.

As you may know, my primary job here at NewsChannel 9 is writing and producing newscasts. For most of the past couple of years, my duties have solely been for the 5pm newscast. But with the departure of NewsChannel 9’s Kim Fields, I’ve been saddled with double the duty. In addition to anchoring, Kim also produced the 5:30 (I “boothed” both newscasts). But for the past couple of months I’ve had to produce both the 5 and the 5:30 newscasts. Latricia Thomas, the current producer/anchor for the WDSI Fox 61 News at Ten newscast (WDSI has long had a contract to use our facilities for that), will assume Kim’s 5:30 producing/anchoring duties soon. But we are waiting to hire the right person to fill her position. So here we are.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Writing and producing an hour’s worth of news is common throughout the local TV news industry, in markets across the country. It is quite a handful, and comparable to the exercise you see above. As you might imagine, it takes a lot more constant work on my part to pull off, especially with the standards of excellence that I try to reach every day. And the efforts to reaching this goal intensify in November, which is one of the biggest ratings months of the year.

So with this new (and, I hope, temporary) workload, something has had to give. And so my blog posts here at the Public Interest have dropped off considerably compared to earlier in the year, when it was common for me to write six to eight posts a day. This is in addition to my activity on Twitter, which I’ve tried to continue, because I believe it to be a valuable service - and, more importantly to my point, one that doesn’t take up as much of my time.

So I’m sorry about the lack of posts here. I wish it were otherwise. Frankly, I wish I had all day to contribute to this blog, because I’ve come to realize this is one of the things I was born to do. I may not work in television news my whole life, but I do know I will be blogging (hopefully) until my dying day.

So I’m not going anywhere. And as I said, I hope the hiring situation will resolve itself soon, and I can resume doing what I love. I will try to do a better job writing new posts when I find something that can be blogged quickly, time permitting.

Please bear with me in the meantime.

FURTHER READING: By the way, I’ve noted with interest other bloggers who have recently said they need to take some time off - check out the “I’m taking a sab-blog-tical” posts at Jane Q. Public, Anonymous Liberal, and Office Naps.

UPDATE: I’ve learned the work conditions described above will persist through the end of the year, but I have reason to believe they’ll change back to normal soon after that. So stay tuned, & again, bear with.

Post from: The Public Interest

Today’s a big day in Iran - 30 years ago, the hostage crisis began.

Track how the day is being marked by the government, internal dissidents, and our own government here.

My blogging time is limited, so please check out my prior Public Interests posts on the Iran question here.

Post from: The Public Interest

Local blogger Christian Hoeferle was barely two decades old when one of the most significant events of his home country, Germany, happened.

In a must-read post at Chattarati, Hoeferle recalls the mood at the time:

“Amid this emerging uproar, the GDR celebrated its 40th anniversay in October 1989. During his visit to the festivities in East Berlin, Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev publicly said: “Trudnosti podsteregajut tech, kto ne reagirujet na shisn,” or, “Difficulties lurk for those who do not react to life.” This quote was later transcribed to mean: “Those who are late will be punished by life itself”.

It was the signal many had been waiting for: the Soviet Union would not stand in the way of the liberation movements in Eastern Europe. And it was Gorbachev’s answer to Ronald Reagan’s famous appeal in June 1987: “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

It was then that we realized: This is serious. However, we still didn’t expect change to happen so quickly. Just a few weeks later, on November 9th, 1989, GDR leaders formally opened the borders. For the first time, East Germans were free to travel to the West. My family sat at home in front of the TV, watching in awe as people lined up in droves at the checkpoints. By the thousands, they crossed the inner-German border to get their first taste of the West.

All of a sudden, the worldview of an entire generation crumbled like the Berlin Wall. Every TV station in Germany covered the events live from Berlin and the border checkpoints. We watched as people from East Berlin and West Berlin climbed the Wall around Brandenburg Gate despite the fact that East German border patrol was still there, guns in hand. We looked at each other in disbelief and wondered: what’s next?

…

This year marks the 20th anniversary of the Fall of the Wall and the 19th anniversary of German reunification. As a “Generation X-er” this is a big deal. I grew up in a divided country with a guilt complex. Today Germany has regained much of the respect it had lost throughout the 20th century. We are far from being a perfect nation, but the peaceful revolution of 1989 tought us an important lesson: Germans can change their destiny without violence. We’ve come a long way.”

Post from: The Public Interest

Former Reagan economist Bruce Bartlett notes some similiarities between the Great Depression and this, the “Great Recession:”

“Unfortunately, the current crisis is caused by the same deflationary forces that caused the Great Depression. Monetarists dismiss this argument on the grounds that the money supply has not only not fallen, but in fact has risen sharply. At the end of September, the money supply (M2) was up by $523 billion over a year earlier–a substantial increase. For this reason, they dismiss the idea that government stimulus was necessary to get the economy moving again.

What my monetarist friends forget is that that the money supply impacts GDP through the velocity multiplier. Normally, it is around 1.9. But it fell to 1.86 in the third quarter of 2008, 1.76 in the fourth quarter, 1.7 in the first quarter of 2009 and 1.69 in the second quarter before rising a bit to 1.72 in the third quarter.

This may not sound like much, but a decline of 10% in the velocity ratio has exactly the same macroeconomic effect as a 10% decline in the money supply. If velocity were still at 1.9, third-quarter GDP would have been $15.8 trillion instead of $14.3 trillion. In other words, there would be no recession.

Getting velocity to rise presents policymakers with the same problem they had in the 1930s and requires the same solution: Government spending has to compensate for the falloff in private spending, which should be $1.5 trillion higher based on M2 of $8.3 trillion at the end of September.

The main differences between today’s crisis and the Great Depression is that the deflationary pressure is less than a third of what it was in the 1930s and policymakers today reacted much more swiftly and more appropriately than they did after 1929. Those who think the government should have done nothing risked turning the current downturn into another Great Depression. Thankfully, their advice was ignored.”

Post from: The Public Interest

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Daniel Larison reads the tea-leaves:

“Something I don’t understand about the national GOP’s elevation of the NY-23 race to such a high profile is why they think nationalizing House races favors them. Nationally, the GOP remains toxic and its party ID continues to be very low. Nationalizing the race gains the GOP nothing in a traditionally supportive district, but it potentially saddles their preferred candidate with all of their baggage from the past several years. It is also mimicking the absolutely failed Republican tactics of almost every special election of the last three years. With depressing regularity, GOP attack ads have warned voters against such-and-such a candidate siding with Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, when most people outside of Washington don’t know and couldn’t care who these people are. The leading role Palin has had in backing Hoffman, which has also triggered something of a stampede of other national Republicans to try to match her bid for conservative activist support, has to be something of a dream come true for Chris Van Hollen and the DCCC considering her genuinely poor ratings with non-Republicans.

The GOP seems to be making what ought to be an easy win into a national Phyrrhic victory in which the relative strength of conservative activists inside the party becomes vastly exaggerated and identifies the flailing, failing party even more closely with its conservative members. This will make it very difficult for conservative activists to disassociate themselves from the outcome of the midterms next year. What I find strange in the fixation on NY-23 is that the off-year gubernatorial elections probably serve as a much better indicator of large-scale movements in public opinion. Larger, more diverse electorates in large states are involved in Virginia and New Jersey. If things go as I expect them to with a Republican pick-up in Virginia and a Democratic hold in New Jersey, the message will be rather muddled. It will mean that Virginia will have chosen a Northern Virginia moderate who successfully ran away from his earlier social conservatism while New Jersey re-elected an incumbent who was thought to be highly vulnerable and discredited by corruption. Those results could be explained by pointing to the nature of the electorates in both states, but this does not lend itself to a triumphant narrative of Republican resurgence fueled by true believers. The point here is not to write off conservative insurgents or reject protest candidacies provoked by the failures and mistakes of state and local party leaders. These are appropriate and sometimes necessary responses to elected and party officials’ blunders. What also matters is being willing to acknowledge that the political landscape is not necessary what we wish it is or think it ought to be.”

Post from: The Public Interest

Above: Newt Gingrich points out that national politicians on the right who’re trying to influence a local election aren’t necessarily doing something that can be defined as “conservative.”

Post from: The Public Interest