Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3EazmMd

YouTube: https://bit.ly/3m7GWBh

If I didn’t write about this I doubt you’d ever hear it.

But even now my inbox will be inundated with emails from people asking for their time back, others telling me my taste sucks, they need to tear me down and build themselves up. Welcome to America.

I only found “Amen Old Friend” because I wanted to listen to the entire new Doobie Brothers album, “Liberté,” and I’d be lying if I told you I liked “Amen Old Friend” from the beginning. But then came the change. And then my focus was somewhere else and my brain stopped, the music, IT WAS RESONATING!

“So afraid of
What I can see
Turned a blind eye
In your hour of need”

There’s nowhere to hear this music unless you seek it out, but why would you even look, probably not even knowing it was released. I forgot the Doobies put out a new album at the beginning of the month. I was excited about the advance tracks, but then I lost the thread, we all lose the thread.

“Life’s too short to waste this love again
Down this road that never ends
Don’t look back, let’s make amends
Amen, amen to old friends”

Live long enough and you watch friends come and go. Want to be really shocked, look at your wedding pictures, you probably won’t even be able to name a couple of the people, most you haven’t seen in eons, and probably never will again. The internet connected all of us and after the initial excitement wore off we realized why we stopped communicating. Then again, get old enough and you wonder what everybody is up to, what happened to them, how their lives played out, how yours compares.

After all, you made a lot of choices, were they all good? Very few boomers ended up where they wanted to. If they had do-overs, they’d do it differently. Marry this one, not be involved with that one. Leapt into entrepreneurship, played the political game at the company better. You keep learning lessons as you get older, but it’s always too late, you’re still encountering new conundrums, you know so much more but you realize how much you don’t know, whereas when you were twenty you knew everything.

I wouldn’t even be a Doobie Brothers fan if it weren’t for a quirk of fate. I lived with five other guys and one of their wives in a condo in Mammoth Lakes, California for the month of May 1975. Skiing every day, and when we got back to our rented abode, the 8-tracks fired up. It was an endless diet of “Physical Graffiti” and the Doobie Brothers. I thought I was over Led Zeppelin, but then I came home from skiing and NEEDED to hear “Kashmir.” As for the Doobies…once you hear “What Were Once Vices Are Now Habits” you become a fan, because there’s nothing quite like it. Smooth yet not slick. Edgy but soulful. Loud and quiet. The band I knew from the AM radio in my old Chevy was much deeper than I believed.

Then I had to buy the albums for myself.

That’s how it used to work. Music wasn’t everywhere like today. You needed a system. And you needed the records/tapes. So music was for home and car. In between, you sang the songs in your head. And if you went on a trip you couldn’t take the music with you.

And you were fans of certain acts and bought their new albums without hearing them first. But then you listened to FM radio to find out what else was great. That was the culture, you needed to know, the country ran on music, maybe the entire world. The musicians were testing limits, pushing the envelope, and then it all imploded. It was a golden era and you only know this if you lived through it and most people did not and get it all wrong. Malcolm Gladwell has a new audiobook with Paul Simon, forget that he injects his insane theories to make himself look smart, but he wasn’t even born until 1963, he missed Simon & Garfunkel, completely, the fact that the duo were seen as has-beens, on the road with Soupy Sales, and then Mike Nichols used “Mrs. Robinson” in “The Graduate” and this elevated the two of them to superstar status. It’s one thing to have had a string of hits in the sixties, it’s another to keep it going, to top yourself. Gladwell thinks Simon’s peak is “Graceland,” which is just complete nonsense, has he ever heard “For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her”? Of course not, that was a sixties activity, buying very few albums and devouring them, knowing the album tracks as well as the hits. And now the oldies stations only play the hits, if that.

And Kelefa Sanneh, the “New Yorker” writer, has a new book about major labels and “Seven Genres.” Sanneh was born in 1976, if he wants to write about hip-hop, fine, but what does this guy know about the history of rock and roll, this is the guy who popularized the inane word “rockism.” Huh?

We were addicted to the radio, to music in a way almost no one is today. And we didn’t go to the show to shoot selfies, it wasn’t about us, but them, the people on stage.

And if you know your Doobie Brothers history, you know that the first single off “What Were Once Vices..,” “Another Park, Another Sunday,” stiffed. The album was fading in the marketplace, and then suddenly radio started playing “Black Water” on its own initiative and the band became even bigger. “Black Water” was a Patrick Simmons track, it didn’t sound anything like the Tom Johnston radio hits, it demonstrated the band’s breadth, which was there on the albums, assuming you bought ’em and played ’em, because that was the only way you heard ’em, FM radio didn’t play everything, just a few cuts, you had to decide whether the plunge of purchase was worth it.

And now there’s nowhere for “Amen Old Friend” to be heard. It’s not hard and heavy enough for Active Rock radio, it’s not slick enough for AC, and Top 40 would never play it. It’s almost as if they didn’t even record it. That’s what classic rock musicians do now, record for themselves, if they bother to record at all, to many it’s just too depressing, so they just go on the road and play the oldies and reap the adulation and the dollars.

If this were still the seventies, and it most certainly is not, some FM station might play “Amen Old Friend” and a listener would be grabbed, since it stuck out, quiet in a way the rest of the records were not, and demand might spread the word. Then again, “Seven Bridges Road” was not embraced by radio, even though it’s now a concert staple opening every Eagles show, everybody in the audience knowing it, funny how that works.

And a lot of people going to see the dinosaurs live just want to hear the hits. Maybe they bought one album, but really they know the act from the big tracks on the radio. And then there are those who were infected, who purchased every album, the subject of Ray Davies and the Kinks’ “Rock N’ Roll Fantasy,” which has been eclipsed by the great but wholly different Bad Company cut with the same name.

“Dan is a fan and he lives for our music
It’s the only thing that gets him by
He’s watched us grow and he’s seen all our shows
He’s seen us low and he’s seen us high”

These people still exist. And they don’t only work in the business, they don’t only live in the metropolis, music penetrates the everyday life of boomers, there were not only few distractions, music was superior, you had to listen to know which way the wind blew.

And for some of us the world passed by. We were busy listening to records when everybody else went straight and started hoovering up bucks. And now that they’ve got theirs the whole scene has fallen apart. Wankers like Sanneh will tell you it’s the same as it ever was, but nothing could be further from the truth, that would be like saying that the tech of the sixties was the same as the tech of the nineties and aughts. We had tech in the sixties, color television! But it had none of the same impact as the internet.

“You would see the only one
I’d been running from
Was really me”

A lot of boomers still haven’t grown up. They’re not old like their parents. They get plastic surgery, they lie about their age, as if their contemporaries don’t know the truth. There’s no reflection, it’s all about the now, but without context life is far from rich. Then again, despite the Me Decade, most boomers weren’t really looking to unpack their identities and issues, rather they were looking for a way forward, a secret that could make life work. But the truth is no such secret exists. You get old enough and you know this.

“I was nothing but lonely
Feeling like a fool
I turned my back
On someone like you
Time has gone
Right or wrong
Don’t know what I was chasing”

We were chasing perfection, something we believed we were entitled to. And then one day we woke up and found we’d been pushed off a cliff. We no longer mattered, it was all about the Millennials and Gen-Z. We can’t turn back the hands of time, and now too many of us are alone, and too many of us are broke, living on Social Security that doesn’t pay the bills. When you get old enough, when jobs no longer matter, when totems no longer matter, when the hierarchy disappears and you’re all in it together like you were in school, one thing is for sure, you don’t want to be alone.

But at least the music helps. Then again, there’s a plague of loneliness ending too often in suicide. You’re told to pull yourself up by the bootstraps, that it’s all your fault, but the truth is some people are so far gone they can’t even start, they need a helping hand, but it’s hard to get one.

So you listen to the music. If only you had new music, that might give you hope.

All I’m saying is that if “Amen Old Friend” got a chance, if it was exposed, it would resonate with more than the old fans going to the Doobies show, we’re reflecting, we can understand the lyrics, we just can’t hear them.

Amen.

The world is falling apart. Maybe physically, with climate change. Maybe politically, with the rise of authoritarianism. But I’m talking emotionally.

There is too much information and no center. People aren’t sure where they belong anymore.

Sure, there’s a crisis of misinformation, mostly fostered online. But once you get past the effects of said falsehoods, the most interesting element is that people can post and get traction. And most people are still unaware of what they’ve written, proffered.

It used to be simple. You read the newspaper, you watched the network news, and you were caught up.

If you wanted to know about music, you just turned on the radio. And in the late sixties, when FM burgeoned, you knew that Top Forty was on AM, and more esoteric, boundary-pushing stuff was on FM.

And then MTV came along and made it appear we lived in a monoculture. The edges were shorn off. If it wasn’t on MTV, it had a lot less meaning. Suddenly there were Top Forty stations on FM, getting their playlist from MTV. But then the internet came along and blew it all apart.

For a minute there, we were excited about the envelope-pushing.

Some got in in the late seventies, like Steve Jobs. Then there were others who entered in the eighties, using computers as tools, for desktop publishing, creating spreadsheets. And then came the internet revolution.

In the late nineties, there was a run on computers akin to the arrival of the Beatles and the British Invasion. Suddenly, all those who were computer illiterate and never planned to buy a computer laid down bucks just to play on AOL. Which was all point and click. It was very exciting.

And then came Napster and broadband and…

Today’s landscape looks nothing like that of twenty years ago, but the oldsters still in control keep laying their skewed, ancient templates on top of a world they no longer fit.

Let’s talk about the news business itself. If I hear one more ancient reporter talk about the death of local newspapers… Didn’t they observe the death of record stores? What do they not get? Oh yeah, most still don’t understand digital disruption. They like their assured jobs where like-minded people all travel in the same circle and everybody in Silicon Valley is screwing up the world. These reporters want someone to stop the world, and they want every innovator to get off, but that’s not how it works.

So, the aughts were about physical items. You iPod and then your iPhone. The teens were all about software. And the twenties are all about consolidation, realizing the internet behemoths have way too much power and because of their market share and monetary power they can’t be dethroned, try to compete with them and they’ll force you to sell out to them.

So, Congress missed the purchase by Facebook of Instagram and WhatsApp, and everything in the “Wall Street Journal” articles isn’t news to those living online, so once again the government is behind. No matter how much you clean up Facebook’s practices, you cannot solve the underlying problems. There aren’t enough people to police the posts, and AI is inefficient, so in truth we’re talking about the margins. It looks like the center, change must be made, but it won’t have the dramatic consequences all the bloviators believe it will.

You see there’s just too much information.

The prognosticators, the old guard in music, had this one wrong too. If Napster wasn’t shut down, if file-trading wasn’t ended, no one would make music anymore. But just the opposite occurred, with the barrier to entry so low, seemingly everybody is making music these days, and you may never hear their tunes, but you’ll have a hard time eluding their hype. Marketing has far outstripped the product. And marketing is easier. So marketing is what we’ve got. But in an on demand world the public, which hates advertising, can mostly avoid it. Apple comes down on the side of the consumer, focusing on privacy, and Wall Street and Main Street freak out, GIVE US OUR DATA! Like they’re entitled to everybody’s info, like every business entity is Cambridge Analytica.

But that’s all top-down, let’s talk bottom up.

There’s not enough time for ANYBODY to keep up. That’s right, NOBODY can keep up!

Oh, you can try by reading the “New York Times,” our national newsgatherer, just tune in Fox, they quote it all the time. But the “Times” misses so much! Stories break online first. And then if the noise gets loud enough they decide whether to cover it. Which is why every reporter is addicted to Twitter. They’re trying to keep their finger on the pulse! There are too many feeds and it’s unclear which ones you must pay attention to. You self-curate, and no one else sees the exact same things, NOBODY! Same deal with Google results, which are customized to the searcher.

So, if the mainstream news can’t keep its finger on the pulse, and if the “Times” is superior to other news outlets, how in hell is the general public supposed to keep up?

But since everyone has a microphone, the pillars of society have had their images demolished, rightly or wrongly. According to the right, you can’t trust a thing in the “Times.” But there is no alternative other than websites and social media. As for Fox News, it does almost no reporting. And for all the reporting on the outlet’s power, check the ratings, almost no Americans even watch it. After all, they’ve got more visual programming than they can watch in a lifetime!

Forget three networks, forget pay cable, forget basic cable. Now there are all these streaming platforms, seemingly every DAY Netflix introduces new product. Not only can no one keep up, if they’re not overwhelmed and dive in, they’ll find that most of what they’re watching no one else is, leaving them isolated.

This isolation is America’s problem. Greater than online misinformation. Everybody’s got their own smartphone with content customized for them and there are no points of connection, there is no overlap. And the end result is you feel disillusioned and depressed. It’s like Mickey Mouse in “Fantasia,” you can never catch up.

So you’re looking for a group, a tribe. That’s the power of Republicans, the right wing, you belong! And stunningly, elected officials feel they must be on the Trump train even though they were elected and he was not. You want to feel like you’re included. As for the deep issues, most people are unaware of them. Immigrants are coming for your job and the Democrats are socialists who will eradicate the American way of life. That’s enough, that’s all most people have got. But they can sit with their buddies and feel like they belong. And there’s always information online to support your position, ALWAYS!

As far as getting someone to leave their tribe… They’re never going to do it unless there’s a ready-made tribe eager to embrace them, make them feel warm and fuzzy. And the only people who’ve been able to do this are cults. And the truth is the right is akin to a cult, they’ll embrace seemingly anyone. As for the Democrats? They’re in disarray, living in the last century, the aughts at best, and with Manchin and Sinema their lack of cohesion is on display, adding fuel to the fire of the other team.

But forget politics, most people do. Most people are really damn busy.

Let’s start with your job. Either you’re making big bucks and your issue is keeping up with the Joneses or you’re making few bucks and your issue is staying alive. Numbing, back-breaking work, then you go home, play with your kids, drink, watch TV and do it all over again.

But now the issues have come home. Critical race theory. What are your kids being taught? I mean that’s important, right? We’ve been told forever to think for ourselves, should we just let the school board have its way?

And once again, this isn’t about politics so much as the individual. You’re told that you must care about everything, otherwise the world as you know it will come to an end, so you should do your best to get involved, get your voice heard, correct? That’s almost more important than your position, as long as you align with your tribe.

So you’re sitting at home..

What are you gonna eat?

Well, should you go to the store or have your groceries delivered? Should you order in via Uber Eats? Should you worry about eating too much junk food? There are so many more choices than before, so many decisions to be made that you become fatigued with the most basic issues.

And then you sit in front of the flat screen…

Or should you fire up your internet-connected device. Where you can watch what’s on the flat screen or endless videos on YouTube, and TikTok and Snap…

Or maybe you should just play videogames.

And maybe you’ve got a clearly-defined passion. But then one day you become tired of it, you’re looking for more stimulation, WHERE SHOULD YOU GO? The tyranny of choice is overwhelming.

The fashion industry says baggy is in and skinny is out. The public didn’t get the memo, turns out most people are still wearing skinny jeans. None of the traditional power-wielding entities have the dictatorial power they once did.

As for clothing… You can buy a shirt for five bucks, maybe even less. Parents can’t digest this, a kid can have a closet akin to a Beverly Hills housewife for the same price of school clothes decades ago. And not only do kids have to keep up on their social media feeds, they’ve got to look the part when they leave the house, assuming they do, but of course they all have to go to school, unless they’re home-schooled, where even if the kids get a better education, they’re not integrated with society, they only hear one opinion and lack socialization, they don’t know how to hang with other kids, never mind get along.

So you’re gonna dive in, get your handle on what’s going on.

Well, first you watch “Squid Game,” bigger than any other entertainment product at the moment, Adele doesn’t even have a fraction of the power. And why are most people watching it? BECAUSE EVERYBODY ELSE IS WATCHING IT! They yearn to belong.

But after “Squid Game,” then what? “Ted Lasso” is already in the rearview mirror, no one’s talking about it anymore. They say the new season of “Succession” is secondary, but you haven’t even caught up with the old seasons. And you can do your own research, forget all the misinformation out there, an agile surfer can hoover up a wealth of information unavailable anywhere else but online. And you find a great show, and you talk to people about it and…no one has seen it. And you can’t convince them to. The investment is too great, and they don’t know who to trust. So the smarter and more informed you are the more isolated you become.

It’s even worse in music. We keep hearing that it’s a hip-hop nation, that only pop has a chance of competing, yet the new IFPI report says that rock is the dominant world genre. Huh? Then how come it isn’t in the Spotify Top 50? I mean how many people are even listening to that? Maybe it’s just a sliver of society. And the playlists are created by humans manipulated by those controlling recordings and 60,000 tracks are added each and every DAY! No wonder many people give up, just go back to the old tunes, and when they burn out on those, they watch TV or play videogames… But if you say you’re burned out on the oldies you’re a pariah. But if you say you only listen to the oldies you’re a pariah. You can no longer fit in!

The biggest bands in the world can come to your town and you don’t even know. Then again, do you want to go for over a hundred bucks? Now it’s a Broadway show, not a concert.

And if everybody says something good, you’d better not say it’s bad. Because then you just show you don’t get it. So stifle your personality to fit in, otherwise you’ll have no friends.

And the old tribes have been blown apart. It’s not only the news reporters, but the music cognoscenti with their black leather jackets, telling everybody what is good and what is bad. No one is listening to them anymore, no one has the time, no one even cares. If anything, they feel liberated to be able to listen to what sounds good to them. Never mind all of the pariahs of the past being seen as godhead today, like the Carpenters.

Doesn’t matter the age. Babies are registered for elite schools. The truth is you could fall behind before five and never really recover. Unfortunately, this is true, therefore parents spend uber amounts of time piloting their kids’ lives. Never mind the enrichment programs piled up to make their kids’ college applications look good.

As for the kids… You can’t leave home without being accompanied by a parent. Furthermore, you live in a police state, your parents track your phone. And there is a camera everywhere. You’re locked down, and you can feel it. Maybe you can band together with like-minded kids online and influence the discussion, like the TikTokkers who got tickets for Trump’s appearance in Oklahoma, but you can’t keep the tribe together, not only does everybody have other interests, there’s not another topic everybody can rally around. Just like Coldplay and Dave Matthews owe their huge ticket numbers to being the last acts to have made it before MTV/VH1/TV music paradigm imploded, Trump gained his national fame before network TV eroded to the point of minimization. I never even watch network TV, do you?

And then the old paragons of entertainment news keep telling us what’s coming. We don’t want to know what’s coming, just tell us if it’s worth paying attention when it’s here!

And we can’t go against our tribe, no way. You know what your tribe thinks, what it believes in, that’s bedrock. And it’s not only politics. If you go against the groupthink you’re soon squeezed out. So not only is everybody busy hoovering up information to try and stay abreast of what is going on, they’ve got to keep up their image on social media and in real life.

And everything we were told was important is sinking. Sports… As for the Super Bowl, it’s got nothing to do with the game, it’s a national holiday with some of the best visual entertainment of the year, i.e. the commercials, and you know everybody is watching it, so you can argue about the quality of the commercials thereafter. The commercials outstripped the game DECADES AGO! The day after that’s all anybody wants to talk about. Credit Steve Jobs, the outsider. Who bought more consecutive time than anybody and created a mini-movie, not only introducing the Macintosh but showing Madison Avenue there was a new way to sell a product, that was BETTER!

And there are still disrupters. Elon Musk being one. They keep selling more Teslas. Diehards, environmentalists buy them, but who are the rest of these purchasers? Maybe people are afraid of laying down big bucks for a gas-guzzler that will be worthless in only a handful of years, like your old MacPlus… Hell, you don’t even want to have an Intel Mac! As for a 3G phone… All those technophobes are about to have their main communication method wiped away.

We need more points of communication. We need national rallying points. We need to make society more fluid. Then again, the odds of achieving the American Dream are higher in Europe, never mind Canada. That’s right, you can play the lottery, but your odds of moving up the economic food chain have never been worse. Meanwhile, you keep being told it’s your fault! You just need to work harder. But so many of these people are working multiple jobs and still falling behind economically. As for socially, emotionally, they’ve got almost no time for the rabbit holes delineated above.

So the gossip sites are still full, but you don’t know who most of the people are. Even if you’re in the target demo. Kinda like that old saw that if you’ve got a tech problem ask your youngster to tackle it. That turned out to be untrue, oldsters were better at solving tech problems, hardware and software. Then again, a lot of these problems have evaporated, with better equipment and operating systems.

And then we’re told we’ve got to be able to fix our devices when the truth is in many cases we want them to break so we can buy new ones! And even if you can fix it, the cost is prohibitive. VCRs were a thousand bucks. You fixed ’em. Then they were under a hundred and you threw them away and bought a new one. Now they no longer exist. Kinda like the EU mandating connections, USB-C. Well, they missed USB-A and Mini-USB and…if you’re stopping the wheels of progress, you’re hurting society. Apple threw over their initial iPod multipin connector for Lightning, don’t you think they would have wanted to support all those radios with docks in hotels? But they knew Bluetooth was gonna rule in the future when most people did not. Heard anybody complain about the lack of a headphone port in their smartphone recently? Remember when that was a big thing? As for iPods, Apple had to stop making them because they could no longer source the parts!

And speaking of parts, do you put thousands into your old car or get ripped-off on a new one, if you can find one. Yes, there’s a chip shortage. And shipping delays too, you’re being told to do your Christmas shopping NOW!

Meanwhile, there’s no one at the center leading the way. The artists are all mini-brands. Hyping themselves to high heaven, just so make sure everyone on Vanuatu gets the memo Adele has a new album. The rest of us are overwhelmed. Adele’s new album isn’t even out and I’m tired of it and her.

But the marketing machine rolls on.

And money is everything, because if you ain’t got it, not only do you fall behind, but your whole damn family. So those with the money and the power, they don’t want to let any of it go. Even worse, they think they DESERVE IT! Why should they question this? They’re part of a tribe that has been told for years they are the job creators, they worked really damn hard to make it, no one is bringing them down to earth. Hell, Bloomberg thought he was entitled to be President, and as soon as we got a look at him it was clear…NO WAY!

And then you’ve got people without portfolio, like Yang, who say they can fix it all. When have rank outsiders fixed a business? The lifers have acquired expertise. Andrew Lack blew up Sony Music and now no one even remembers him, never mind Bob Morgado. Hell, Time Warner no longer even owns Warner Music. And the cable system and HBO were sold off in pieces.

Confused yet?

Like I said, no one can keep up.

And what’s the use of keeping up? It’s easier to just live in the echo chamber of your tribe, that will keep you warm at night.

I’m overwhelmed. And if you tell me you’re not, you’re lying.

I was just talking to an English musician who is afraid to go on the road. Covid is raging, people aren’t wearing masks and he doesn’t trust the government. Which has pooh-poohed and botched the Covid response:

“Covid: UK’s early response worst public health failure ever, MPs say”: https://bbc.in/3jovPlN

As you will remember, it was just a month ago or so that Covid infections suddenly dropped in the U.K., no one knew why, maybe it was never going to come back. But now:

“UK government accused of being ‘willfully negligent’ as Covid cases mount”: https://cnn.it/3m4P1qu

“On Thursday it reported 52,009 new infections, the highest mark since July. 

The government has nonetheless ruled out moving to its ‘Plan B’ approach, which would see the introduction of vaccine passports and mandates in line with many European countries.

‘We are sticking with our plan,’ Boris Johnson said Thursday. ‘The numbers of infections are high but we are within the parameters of what the predictions were.’

But in a scathing intervention on Wednesday, the British Medical Association (BMA) said Johnson’s government ‘has taken its foot off the brake, giving the impression that the pandemic is behind us and that life has returned to normal.'”

And the rest of Europe is freaking out:

“UK’s neighbours criticise Covid policies as cases begin to surge across EU – Several European nations have questioned British response but there are growing signs of fresh wave across continent”

But it’s always sunny in Philadelphia, er, the United States, because we’re different, we’re immune, right.

It wasn’t like we didn’t get a heads-up on the Delta variant. It was crawling all over the U.K. and Europe before it got here. And it was here for quite a while before anybody took action. And now there’s a new variant. As a matter of fact, it’s already here:

“COVID-19: New, infectious strain of Delta variant detected in the US”: https://bit.ly/3m2LU2d

Rust never sleeps, nor does Covid. You might be out living your life willy-nilly, but Covid keeps mutating and each new iteration is MORE TRANSMISSIBLE!

But we can’t take further action in the U.S. because of people’s FREEDOM!

Yeah, right.

And then there’s that bozo Washington State football coach Nick Rolovich who decided to get fired rather than get vaccinated. Now he’s suing for illegal termination: https://es.pn/3C7qR41

Ain’t that America. No one can lose out. Everyone thinks their way will prevail. You see Rolovich is a “devout” Catholic, and therefore he deserves an exemption.

What hogwash.

You’ve got to read this article:

“Many are searching for vaccine mandate loopholes. These are the people trying to stop them.”: https://wapo.st/3B4tN0b

“Almost all of Troup’s applicants for religious exemptions objected to taking a vaccine developed using fetal cell lines (whose origins can be traced back to cells from electively aborted fetuses several decades ago). So Troup and his team devised a strategy: Those employees would have to sign an agreement not to take any other medical treatments developed using fetal cell lines. Among the 28 medications on the list: Tylenol. Motrin. Preparation H. Claritin. Benadryl. Tums.”

“‘I very gently and politely asked, “Well, you know, tell me: What medicines on that list…do you think were not developed with fetal cells or tested on fetal cells?”‘ Troup recalls. ‘The response was this diatribe about how evil the vaccine was, how much harm it causes, how data and reports are being covered up. Which told me that it really wasn’t about fetal cells at all. It’s all about a vaccine hesitancy.'”

In other words, the claimed religious exemptions are just b.s. And we should call everybody on their b.s. I’m sick and tired of the minority holding sway over the majority.

Fewer than 13% of Americans are anti-vaccine: https://bit.ly/3Ga7bPu This happens again and again, with guns, abortion, taxes on the rich, the majority supports the foregoing, but it never ever goes their way. You think there’s not pent-up anger?

And the both sides media gives attention to anybody who causes a ruckus, who expounds upon their bogus position loudly, when the truth is they should be ignored or their position skewered.

It’s hard to have faith in America today. Manchin takes money from fossil fuel companies and therefore there can’t be strict climate controls. Yes, that’s America, where companies are not only people, they’re immune to the long hand of the government. People in West Virginia want what’s in Biden’s infrastructure bill:

“In deep red West Virginia, Biden’s $3.5tn spending proposal is immensely popular – Working-class people – even Trump voters – understand the Build Back Better plan will benefit them”: https://bit.ly/2Zg48EA

And then there’s the inane Republican January 6th position. Nothing happened, there is no need to investigate…BUT WE SAW IT WITH OUR OWN TWO EYES!

As for Steve Bannon… That’s what I want to do, next time I get a traffic ticket, just not show up. Maybe I’ll claim a religious exemption when they come after me. Or sue saying I should be paid by the police for stopping me. Everything up is down.

And most of America knows it.

But this is the same America playing by the rules while the rest do not.

Do you know why Covid raged in the south over the summer? BECAUSE EVERYBODY WENT INSIDE! You need the A/C to survive. And as soon as the weather cooled, they went back outside and infection rates went down. And then it got cold again in the north and people went inside, and BINGO!, increased infection rates, especially amongst the unvaccinated.

But the vaccines don’t work, you know that, right? And they kill your immune system and by December everybody who gets a booster will no longer have an immune system. PEOPLE E-MAIL ME THIS IDIOCY EACH AND EVERY DAY! They’re in a paper war, albeit online. There are endless sites preaching this nonsense. If you believed these people you’d think millions of people have died from the vaccine and it’s new and experimental and while we’re at it, we should eliminate the need for any vaccines, while we hobble government’s right to take action. No masks, no mandates… It would be utterly laughable if it wasn’t so scary.

So America is open for business. And since the nincompoops are not abiding by the rules, the rest of the population shrugs its shoulders and gives up too. It’s like letting the wild child in school ride herd over the rest of the students, and you know that never happens, because there are CONSEQUENCES! Actually, there are consequences for the unvaccinated, they could die. But the fact that the vaccinated can die too means the vaccine doesn’t work. But the truth is the unvaccinated get infected and die at a much higher rate. And the vaccinated are infectious, can spread Covid, for a much shorter period of time than the unvaxxed. But good luck convincing these flat-earthers like Kyrie Irving of the truth, which is everywhere if you just look. But oh no, better to do your own research than depend upon experts. I’ve got it, you’d rather fly in a plane built by Facebook followers. Or maybe go to their health clinic. THEY DON’T EXIST! No one is holding them back, the main problem is THEY’VE GOT NO EXPERTISE!

So now what happens.

Well, we need more mandates and vaccine cards/documentation. But we can’t even get voting laws passed, never mind the infrastructure bill, because one party keeps on saying no and Manchin and Sinema are whored-out to their donors as opposed to their constituents. After all, you can’t continue to win without money!

We’ve got to close the window on these crybabies, like they do in reasonable countries, like France. The country is no longer a punch line. You can go unvaxxed, BUT YOU JUST CAN’T GO ANYWHERE! It’s your CHOICE! Why can’t we have the same damn thing in America?

Then there’s that story that Paul Stanley’s guitar tech died of Covid, HE FAKED HIS VACCINATION CARD! That was on the radio. Don’t take it to the bank without further confirmation. But the bottom line is the guy did have Covid and he did die. How’d you like to work with that prick?

And it’s not only the wingnuts, it’s the above the law rich too:

“Broadway folks bragged about forging COVID tests to go to Tonys parties”: https://bit.ly/3C3Pj6r

Seems like you’re a sucker if you obey the rules.

Meanwhile, Biden is afraid of his shadow while the right wing press keeps going on about the drop in his approval ratings…WHICH THEY’RE CAUSING! It’s the do-nothing right wing congresspeople who are doing their best to shut down the government, LITERALLY!

And no one can see further than their nose. The big problems? We can’t afford to tackle them. This is like the jerk who refuses to buy health insurance and then gets into a major accident or gets cancer or… Oops! Then we end up taking care of this freeloader. But who is going to take care of us on climate change… NOBODY! And it’s happening while we speak:

“Climate Change Poses a Widening Threat to National Security – Intelligence and defense agencies issued reports warning that the warming planet will increase strife between countries and spur migration.” https://nyti.ms/3E5GQA6

It seems like the goal of many Americans is to be an ostrich, they never learned this parable in school. Then again, many believe God will save them, you know, that old powerful man in the sky. And you’ve got to know, just like they want monoclonal antibodies, just like when they go to the hospital to treat their infection, they want a complete pass when they wake up and need science. They’re picking and choosing. Let’s see, why don’t we let Boeing pick and choose which parts they install in the airplane. As a matter of fact, Boeing is screwing up building their planes, and who is holding them to account? THE GOVERNMENT! Which wastes all your tax money and should be drowned in the bathtub. Yeah, right.

So Covid could die out. It’s possible. But past is prologue, and looking at the U.K….it appears that a new wave is on the horizon, HOLD ON, IT’S COMING!

And no one is immune.

“One in three music industry jobs were lost during pandemic”: https://bbc.in/3vxT3dX

“One in three jobs in the British music industry were lost during the Covid-19 pandemic, according to a report from trade body UK Music.

The research said there were 69,000 fewer jobs in music in 2020 than in 2019 – a drop of 35% – due to the ‘devastating impact’ of coronavirus.”

You may want to go to the show, but there may be no show to go to! Ticket sales have slowed to a crawl, so many of the big acts are delaying their tours.

Yes, we live in a society, networked, where the actions of one affect the actions of another. You won’t get vaccinated so other people are scared to go to the show and then there is no show… You call this victory?

Strict mandates. Vax cards. Masks. That’s the only way to improve the situation.

Do I expect this to happen?

NO!

Stevie Van Zandt, aka “Miami Steve,” aka “Little Steven,” aka “Silvio Dante,” has written an autobiography, “Unrequited Infatuations.” We dig into the process of writing the book, and we also cover the landscape from New Jersey…back to New Jersey! Growing up with the radio, the greatness of the Beatles, struggling in Asbury Park, failing to make the E Street Band, going straight and doing construction, playing the oldies circuit, making the E Street Band, going solo, returning to the E Street Band and appearing in “The Sopranos” and… Steven says he’s not good with money, but he’s had a jam-packed career, his life is rich with experiences, listen as we go deep!

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/stevie-van-zandt/id1316200737?i=1000539270201

https://www.stitcher.com/show/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast

https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9ff4fb19-54d4-41ae-ae7a-8a6f8d3dafa8/the-bob-lefsetz-podcast?returnFromLogin=1&