November 8, 2013 - Binghamton, New York. Heading for NERFA and a Sunday gig there with Tim Mason as Bone Collectors - I am one of many musicians joining spoken word artists in our showcase Sunday at 11 am. Prior to that I'm in Groton, Mass. Saturday night at Second Hand Prose($5 cover). Heading over to the Percolator Coffeehouse, a music series at Piedmont Hall in Somers, Connecticut to catch an acoustic set of my good friend Nenad Bach's there (he is called "the Lennon of Croatia" - I might even get to play something!) later that night (7 pm). After that, a trip through the Midwest to the House Concert in Oklahoma City on the 15th, a return to Alaska for a few days, then back on the road for House Concerts in the Cleveland area (11/22), DC (11/23) and the short Salon performance in Philadelphia (11/24). Following Thanksgiving it is a December 1st House Concert in Austin and then back into the studio for a week before returning to Alaska. A busy Winter schedule - much driving and music and poetry and visiting friends. Life is good that way....
I continue to watch the unfolding of the Edward Snowden papers with some fascination. I suppose this is our modern day equivalent of the Pentagon Papers. Those revelations about the Vietnam War helped bring an end to an Administration. Will Snowden? I think it is possible. What each new revelation - spying on 60 million Spaniards, spying on major search engines and hundreds of millions of Americans, spying on our allies, not just our enemies - has done is undermine any moral authority we had in the world. All of it has either been done under the nose of the President, with his full complicity or in front of him with little or no awareness. In either case it is appalling to know that the man who was elected in part to dismantle the Bush security state has done more to strengthen it than I could have ever imagined his predecessor doing.
Oddly, there are things that could have been done. Fire the NSA and other security personnel who lied to Congress would be a simple start. At the very least they have committed a crime. Theirs was far worse than Snowden's as we have only found out about it because of Snowden's revelations. This goes unreported but is worth noting - they would never have revealed the extent of their spying or lying to Congress and the American people without Snowden. That's why we protect the right to dissent. If this President meant his high oratory, believed the convictions he so eloquently voiced during his campaigns, he would be outraged. But he is... silent. He apologies for the screw up of the online rollout of the Affordable Care Act, but when it comes to this.... nothing. To be fair, he's apologized to the World Leaders - the allies whose cell phones we listened to, web surfing we tracked, but to Americans? Nothing but repeated denials of the extent of the activities, that are subsequently and repeatedly proven to be untrue. No apology. Mr. President, at least fire somebody.
I've been thinking about all of this for way too long so, before anyone else comes up with it, I wanted to put in writing my latest idea that could help resolve all this. It also offers a chance to pay down the debt (which is apparently more important than Americans' privacy). Here it is: I propose renaming the NSA the National Storage Agency. Fire the existing leadership and bring on board all the tech people hired to fix the Affordable Care Act website. Using all the NSA facilities and their expert staff of mathematicians they can become a Geek Squad and a Cloud Storage facility all in one. Computer crash? Contact the NSO - for a modest price they can restore all of your information even if you never contracted them to store it in the first place. Can't remember your last web search, or need to search for a phone record or two for tax purposes? For that same modest fee, just call your experts at the NSA. The beauty of this is that we have everyone's material stored so citizens of other nations can purchase our services as well. NSA a public relations problem? No more! Now it is the source of all recovery programs and the debt is paid down to boot. And, because we won't have to conceal our activities any longer, we can save even more expenses. Seems like a win win to me..... And for those of you who think I shouldn't make fun of this, that I am not taking it seriously enough, why should I? The President doesn't seem to....