Two more debates this week and each one will be “spiced up” with a debate rookie. Today’s California gubernatorial debate will mark the first appearance of Arnold “How many times do you get away with this — to take a woman, grab her upside down, and bury her face in a toilet bowl?” Schwarzenegger and tomorrow’s Presidential debate will mark the first appearance of Wesley Clark (more on that later).

As far as tonight’s debate is concerned, it looks like Bustamante and McClintock aren’t going to follow through on their threat to boycott tonight’s debate. I see this as both a good thing and a bad thing. A bad thing, of course, because the debate format plays to Schwarzenegger’s strengths by giving him all the questions in advance. The good side of this however is that Cruz and Tom might actually use this opportunity to team up on Arnold. Beating up on Arnold from both sides is what I call bipartisan fun!

While on the subject of the recall, I’ve also got mixed feelings about yesterday’s ruling to let the Oct. 7th recall date stand. In strictly legal terms, the ruling makes a lot of sense. The ACLU wasn’t able to show the court that punch card ballots has a significantly higher error rate than the optical ballots. Also California, unlike Florida, has clearly defined criteria for hand counting punch card ballots. But finally, as much as this hurts to say, the three person panel’s ruling relied upon the Bush vs. Gore decision when the Supreme Court said in the decision that it couldn’t be used as a precedent.

That said, I wish the ACLU had appealed to the Supreme Court just to rub that decision in their faces. No matter how the court responded to the case, it would have like contradicted their meddling in the 2000 election and shown what a shitty decision that was. As fearful as I am that the punch card ballots could disenfranchise voters and that the margin of error in the election could fall into the ballot error rate, I’m really ready for all this crap to be over.

Dammit. Just as I was looking forward to going a few days without someone trying to sell me long distance service :

A federal judge has ruled that the Federal Trade Commission overstepped its authority in creating the national “do-not-call” list against telemarketers.

The ruling Tuesday came in a lawsuit brought by telemarketers who challenged the list of 50 million people who said they do not want to receive business solicitation calls. The list was to go into effect Oct. 1.

U.S. District Judge Lee R. West said the main issue in the case was “whether the FTC had the authority to promulgate a national do-not-call registry. The court finds it did not.”

House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Billy Tauzin, R-La., and Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., said Wednesday they were confident the ruling would be overturned and believe Congress did give the FTC the necessary authority.

I hope that if there was a strong legal basis for this ruling, Congress will be quick to close whatever loophole the telemarketers are taking advantage of. Luckily for us, a “Do Not Call” list seems like one of those ideas that’s so popular that the corporate whores in both parties would be afraid to oppose it.

Looks like another international organization has chastised rich nations for screwing the poor :

The World Bank opened its annual meeting Tuesday with a blistering attack on rich countries for spending hundreds of billions more on their militaries and their farmers than they do on helping the poor.

“Our planet is not balanced,” World Bank President James Wolfensohn told delegates from 184 countries. “Too few control too much, and too many have too little to hope for. Too much turmoil, too many wars. Too much suffering.”

The failure of global trade talks this month in the Mexican resort of Cancun highlights the deep divide that must be overcome to create a stable future, Wolfensohn said in an opening address to the joint meeting of his bank and the International Monetary Fund.

He criticized rich countries for providing just $56 billion a year in development assistance to poor countries, compared with more than $300 billion they spend on agricultural subsidies and $600 billion spent on defense. Nations have committed an additional $16 billion in aid by 2006, but Wolfensohn said poor nations could easily use twice as much.

Our leaders love to sell “free trade” to the public with the idea that the poor will be helped everywhere, but when it comes time to actually help poor countries there’s always something that gets in the way. Could it be that our businesses are addicted to cheap overseas labor? I dunno….

Here was something that caught my ear during the president’s remarks this morning :

And at the same time, our coalition is helping to improve the daily lives of the Iraqi people. The old regime built palaces while letting schools decay, so we are rebuilding more than a thousand schools. The old regime starved hospitals of resources, so we have helped to supply and reopen hospitals across Iraq. The old regime built up armies and weapons while allowing the nation’s infrastructure to crumble, so we are rehabilitating power plants, water and sanitation facilities, bridges and airports.

Hmmm…let’s examine that one, shall we??

“The old regime built palaces while letting schools decay…”

Now let me see if I get this right: Over the last year, the President and Congress have come up with trillions - trillions! — for tax cuts, overwhelmingly for the rich…hundreds of billions in new money for the Pentagon…tens of billions for the airlines and corporate bailouts…and - most recently - a whopping $180 billion for farmers. And they dare to tell us: sorry, there is no new money left for public education and struggling schools.

Education, it seems, is one of those faith-based programs. Which means lots of photo ops with schoolchildren. Lot’s of compassionate rhetoric. But when it comes to new federal funding, public schools haven’t got a prayer!

“The old regime starved hospitals of resources…”

Both the National Governors Association and the Bush administration are working on proposals to convert Medicaid to a “block grant” program. If either proposal is enacted, the federal government will acquire substantial leeway to sharply curtail spending on Medicaid.

The Center on Budget and Policy Priorities calculates that if large-scale cuts in Medicaid are enacted, up to 1.7 million people nationwide will lose Medicaid coverage and become uninsured. Millions more will face significant reductions in benefits. Efforts to cover more low-income children will be stopped in their tracks.

“The old regime built up armies and weapons…”

HERE ARE THE stark numbers. The original defense budget for fiscal year 2004 was $400 billion. Bush’s supplemental request for Iraq and Afghanistan, which he announced last Sunday on television, is $87 billion, for a total of $487 billion. Let’s be conservative and deduct the $21 billion of the supplemental that’s earmarked for civil reconstruction (even though the Defense Department is running the reconstruction). That leaves $466 billion.

By comparison, in constant 2004 dollars (adjusted for inflation), the U.S. defense budget in 1985, the peak of the Cold War and Ronald Reagan’s rearmament, totaled $453 billion. That was $12 billion to $33 billion less than this year’s budget (depending on whether you count reconstruction). In 1968, at the peak of the Vietnam War, the budget amounted to $428 billion. That’s $38 billion to $59 billion below Bush’s request for this year.
. . .
The $87 billion supplemental for Iraq and Afghanistan is fairly straightforward: $32.3 billion for operations and maintenance, $18.5 billion for personnel, $1.9 billion for equipment, $5 billion for security, $15 billion for infrastructure, and so on. It’s a bookkeeping calculation: If you want to continue the mission, that’s what it costs; if you want to spend less, you have to downgrade the mission.

But there’s plenty more in the military budget that does not have the slightest connection to any clear and present (or even murky and distant) danger.

“…while allowing the nation’s infrastructure to crumble…”

Premise for the debate we deserve: This is the decade, after our serious ’80s and ’90s relapse in spending for basic infrastructure, to make the grand investments that will pay off for decades in increased productivity.

How about a big investment in energy conservation technologies in view of the California and Western shortages? Or how about the list of nearly $1 trillion in overdue infrastructure from the ’90s?

The wish list included $360 billion to fix deteriorating highways and bridges; $72 billion to improve mass transit systems; as much as $60 billion to expand and modernize airports; $112 billion to bring America’s seriously aging, insufficient supply of public schools up to minimum standards; $138 billion over 20 years to update crumbling, local, water-supply systems; and $139 billion for wastewater systems over 20 years.

Or why not move now to offset our constantly worsening highway gridlock and airport winglock by investing $10 billion to $20 billion a year in a first-class, national, rapid-rail network that connects our major urban centers on exclusive rights of way, emulating the superb systems in Europe, Japan, and elsewhere?

Despite the stock market’s recent fall, contends Jim RePass, president of the National Corridors Initiative, “We are living in the wealthiest society, in the wealthiest land, in the history of planet Earth. If we don’t build our infrastructure now, when will we?”

So here’s the question : When contrasted with the plethora of domestic budget cuts to make way for tax cuts for the wealthy, does my opposition to the vast amount of money Bush wants to spend in Iraq make me more of a “terrorist sympathizer” or a “class warrior”? Just curious…

I was asked by a friend today to help him convince his sister-in-law not to buy an SUV. I know there’s a ton of sites out there with anti-SUV info, but rather than give out a bunch of links, I figured I’d just sum up a few of the reasons I see to not buy an SUV :

1. They’re much less fuel efficient - Using the comparison tool at fueleconomy.gov makes this point clear :

Using a baseline of $2/per gallon (which is pretty normal in California), someone who drives a Yukon is going to spend more than $1500 every year versus those who drive the Civic Hybrid. Once you start adding higher car payments, higher maintenance costs, and higher insurance rates, it becomes obvious that SUV’s are a big money pit.

2. They’re horrible for the environment - This one really should be obvious. As the Sierra Club has pointed out repeatedly, the SUV’s loophole around fuel efficiency standards makes them much worse for the environment :

Cars and light trucks consume 40 percent of the oil used in the U.S. every day — some 8 million barrels — and emit 20 percent of U.S. carbon pollution that is causing global warming. Raising Corporate Average Fuel Economy Standards (CAFE) standards is the biggest single step the United States can take to reduce oil consumption and curb global warming.
. . .
CAFE standards slash urban smog by reducing carcinogenic hydrocarbon emissions, a key ozone smog precursor. Since less gas is used by cars and light trucks, less oil has to be refined, transported and pumped into gas tanks. Increasing CAFE standards will be much better for the environment than the diesel SUVs being developed by the auto companies. While switching to diesel improves fuel economy somewhat, doing so would sharply increase the pollution that causes soot and smog that triggers asthma attacks and causes cancer — a lousy trade-off for public health.

The second way the environment is helped is through lower carbon emissions, reducing the atmospheric buildup of greenhouse gases. Over its lifetime, a typical SUV emits more almost 100 tons of CO2 and today’s average new car emits 70 tons over the same lifetime and driving assumptions. Ford’s “Valdez” Excursion will emit 134 tons of CO2 overt its lifetime. The more efficient the truck or car, the lower the CO2 emissions.

If the Yukon above uses three times as much gas to go the same distance as the Civic, it only makes sense that it makes three and a half times as much pollution. That doesn’t take into account the other factors like the SUV’s heavier body and more powerful engine.

3. Oil money supports terrorism - Considering that members of the House of Saud likely had a hand in the 9/11 attacks and that a few cents from every dollar you spend at the pump ends up in their pockets, it doesn’t take a rocket scientists to realize that oil money supports terrorism.

Use this argument at your own risk. Since we all buy gasoline, if you’re arguing with someone about this too much, you’ll probably just come off as an elitist hypocrite.

4. SUV’s are less safe than passenger cars - When people buy SUV’s they think they’re encasing themselves in some sort of automotive armor that will protect them from all the hazards of the road. As the Transportation Department pointed out, that’s completely false :

The number of people killed in sport utility rollover crashes rose 14 percent last year as total highway deaths hit a 12-year high at nearly 43,000, the government reported Thursday.

The Transportation Department also reported that car crash injuries fell to an all-time low in 2002. Child and pedestrian deaths also went down as did fatalities involving large trucks.

But in 2002, SUV rollover fatalities jumped to more than 2,400 victims, an increase of 14 percent, the government said. Sixty-one percent of all SUV fatalities involved rollovers.

“Sure”, you might say, “but SUV’s can’t be that much more unsafe than passenger cars.” Nope, sorry. The same loophole that allows SUV’s to get around CAFE standards also applies to safety features as well.

SUV’s do not have to meet the same safety standards as passenger cars. The double standard exists due to arcane federal rules classifying SUV’s as light trucks. Less rigid rules mean occupants of SUV’s are not protected by the side-impact crash safety standards or strength requirements for bumpers required on standard passenger cars. According to The Truck, Van and 4×4 book, 1998 by Jack Gillis, the “newly adopted roof strength standard does not go far enough to effectively protect occupants in a rollover situation.”

The Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, a research organization for the insurance industry, has conducted crash tests of SUV’s. The results have been mixed, at best. In a test designed to show how well vehicles protect the driver and passengers in a crash, midsized SUV’s were given a rating of “good”, “acceptable”, “marginal” or “poor”. None of the 13 SUV’s tested was rated “good.” Five were rated as “acceptable,” three as “marginal,” and five as “poor.” Popular models including the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Nissan Pathfinder earned “marginal” ratings. “Poor” ratings went to models such as the Chevy Blazer, GMC Jimmy and the Isuzu Rodeo. The tests measured how well head restraints and bumpers performed and damage to the vehicle’s structure.

In addition, the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety looked at driver death rates. The largest SUV’s had fewer driver deaths than average. However mid-sized and smaller SUV’s - like the Nissan Pathfinder, Suzuki Sidekick, and Jeep Wrangler - had driver death rates substantially higher than average. In examining deaths per million passengers, SUV’s had nearly the same death rates in accidents as small cars, but substantially more fatalities than mid-sized or large cars.

Damn, and I haven’t even gotten into the fact that SUV’s also make the roads more dangerous for the rest of us on the road….

I’m sure there are plenty of good reasons to avoid buying an SUV that I’ve forgotten (feel free to post them in the comments). One thing to keep in mind when trying to convince a friend or family member not to waste their money on an SUV is that your’re tying to convince them. Don’t be confrontational or rude. Simple point out that SUV’s are more expensive, worse for the environment, and less safe. If you do your job right, they’ll make up their own minds that SUV’s are a bad purchase. Remember : You can catch more flies with honey than with vinegar.

Man, it sucks to be Bustamante today, huh?

A California judge on Monday ruled Lt. Gov. Cruz Bustamante, the front-runner to replace Gov. Gray Davis in a recall vote, must return to Indian tribes large donations that skirted state campaign laws.

However, Sacramento County Judge Loren McMaster said that there was no basis for finding that Bustamante’s campaign had “intentionally violated the law,” an opinion that his supporters said cleared his name.

Judge McMaster’s decision blocked Bustamante from using $3.8 million in donations from seven Indian tribes to either fund his current campaign or to underwrite another ad campaign featuring the candidate in opposition to a ballot measure.

So how much longer do you think Cruz will be able to hold on to his “frontrunner” status before the Chickenshit Movie Star outspends his way into the lead?

R.I.P.

Jay Morton , a one-time writer and artist for the Fleischer animation studios who coined the famous “faster than a speeding bullet” introduction for the animated “Superman” cartoons, has died. He was 92.

Morton, who lived in Boca Raton, Fla., died of a brain aneurysm Sept. 6 in a hospital in Charlotte.

The New York City-born Morton studied art at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn before going to work for the Fleischer studio in Miami in 1937. As an artist, he worked on Felix the Cat, Betty Boop, Popeye and other cartoon characters, said his son, Alex.

Morton also wrote about 25 of the early animated “Superman” cartoons, in which he initially described the comic book superhero as “faster than a streak of lightning, more powerful than the pounding surf, mightier than a roaring hurricane, this amazing stranger from the Planet Krypton, Superman.”

But he soon reworked the introduction to the now-familiar: “Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings in a single bound…”

For those of you who haven’t seen them, you should definitely pick up this collection of Fleischer Superman cartoons :

The year is not quite over yet, but I think we’ve already got a winner of the “Lame-Ass Analogy of the Year” award. But I’m getting ahead of myself here. By now, I’m sure you’ve heard about the Justice Department going overboard trying to defend the more Orwellian parts of the PATRIOT Act :

After months of increasingly noisy protests, fears of Big Brother run amok and government warnings about needless “hysteria,” the Justice Department gave its first public accounting today of how many times it had used its newfound counter-terrorism powers to demand records from libraries and elsewhere.

The answer is zero.

Department officials and their supporters pointed to the goose egg as evidence that the raging public debate over the government’s expanded powers has been much ado about nothing. In this case, they argued, public fear and mistrust of government appear to have outpaced the reality of what federal agents are actually doing.

I suppose it’s a good thing that they haven’t actually demanded anyone’s library records yet, but just because they haven’t used the law doesn’t make the law any more just.

Let’s pretend for a moment that I was in charge of the world and for some reason I decided to pass a law that makes it legal for the government to kidnap babies from the mall in order to grind them up and make sausages to feed people in prison. After a couple years of protests over my cruel baby-killing law, I reveal that I haven’t in fact ever exercised the law. That might make people feel a bit better, but it doesn’t change the fact that I can still legally kidnap and murder babies. To a much lesser extent, that’s the situation that Ashcroft is in right now.

Now this leads me back to the “Lame-Ass Analogy” award that I mentioned above. Knowing that it’s not enough to just claim that the law hasn’t been used yet, a Justice Department spokesman resorted to the most pathetic justification I could possible imagine :

“Given the potential for abuse of library and bookstore records, I can see no reason why if this authority was not needed to investigate Sept. 11 it should stay on the books any longer,” said Representative John Conyers Jr., ranking Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.

Mark Corallo, a Justice Department spokesman, scoffed at the idea that the department’s power to examine library records should be repealed simply because investigators had not had to use it yet.

“The same people who would argue that,” Mr. Corallo said, “would argue that if a police officer has never had to fire his weapon in 20 years on the force, we should take his weapon away from him because he’ll never have to use it.”

There are so many ways this last statement was retarded, I don’t know where to begin.

First of all, a police officer’s ability to defend himself in the line of duty is in no way analogous with the the Justice Department’s ability to gather information. It’s absurd. It would make a little more sense if he tried to use the example of a police officer trying to investigate a crime without a search warrant, but even then the comparison is hopelessly flawed.

Secondly, for this analogy to hold any weight, he’d have to use as an example, something that was previously illegal but is now legal. The library/bookstore provision of the PATRIOT Act was added because the Bush Administration convinced the country that they desperately needed in order to effectively fight terrorism. If it’s been two years and it hasn’t been used once, then it obviously can’t be that important to the “War on Terror”. As far as police officers are concerned, as far as I know, they’ve always had guns.

Third, it’s dishonest to compare the needs of a single individual to the needs of a vast organization. Sure, the hypothetical police officer has never needed to use his gun, but that doesn’t mean that somebody in this hypothetical police force hasn’t used it in the last 20 years. (In fact, I’ll go out on a limb and say if all of the police in this country haven’t needed to use their firearms once in the last twenty years, then maybe getting rid of their guns would be a good idea.)

And finally, like I said earlier, the hypothetical police officer’s gun would be needed in dire life or death situations. To apply the Justice Department’s library rules and the war on terror in an analogous way, it would require a situation like this :

“Sir, we’ve just received word that an airplane has just hit one of the towers of the World Trade Center.”

“Quick! Get the library on the phone. We’ve got to find out what this guy was reading!”

This situation is definitely absurd, but it’s no more absurd than the Justice Department’s reasons for having the right to violate our civil liberties.

What a surprise! The rich are getting richer :

After two years of declining wealth, the aggregate net worth of the wealthiest 400 U.S. citizens climbed 10 percent in the past year to $955 billion, thanks largely to a recovering stock market, according to the annual list released by Forbes magazine.

Topping this year’s list are the usual suspects: Bill Gates, worth $46 billion, Warren Buffett at $36 billion, and Paul Allen at $22 billion.

With the rally in tech stocks, Internet players made the biggest moves on the list. Amazon.com CEO Jeff Bezos added more than $3 billion to his net worth, Yahoo! executives David Filo and Jerry Yang nearly tripled their wealth.

And the poor are getting poorer :

Nearly 1.4 million more people in the United States fell into poverty last year — almost half of them children — even as the country emerged from recession, according to a Census Bureau survey.
. . .
About 12.4 percent of the U.S. population, or nearly 34.8 million people, lived in poverty in 2002, according to the bureau’s American Community Survey, to be released today. That was up from 12.1 percent, or 33.4 million, in 2001.

Roughly 17.2 percent of children, or 12.2 million, lived in poverty in 2002, up from 16.4 percent, or about 11.5 million, in 2001.
. . .
Robert Greenstein, executive director of the liberal-leaning Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, blamed the increase in poverty on rising unemployment and the government’s failure to promote more child tax credits for low-income families and stronger unemployment insurance.

…but I’m sure these two stories are completely unrelated. When asked for comment, Pres Bush said “Pay no attention to what those unpatriotic traitors are saying. War!! Tax Cuts!!!”

For those of you who don’t know me personally, let me warn you. I’m a big Beatles fan. No, strike that, a huge Beatles fan. I’m not one of those fans that wears nothing but tie-died t-shirts that say “Imagine” or someone who has Beatle versions of everything from toothbrush holders to salt & pepper shakers to underwear. (I’ve met those kinds of people before and they’re craaazy.)

No, I’m the kind of Beatles fan that tries to collect as much of their music that I can. Since high school I’ve collected at least 100 CDs of various bootlegs. For that reason I’ve been paying a lot of attention to the news that the Beatles are finally releasing the original version of their Let It Be album (as I mentioned in this post). Seeing Kevin Drum’s post on this makes me realize that I’ve been meaning to post something on this subject for a while now. In short, this release, like just about everything they’ve done over the last 30+ years, is a complete screwup.

In the 33 years since Let It Be was released, there have been numerous bootlegs of the original” version of the album. As Apple’s official press release notes, the upcoming release is an attempt to release the album “as nature intended” :

When The Beatles first set out to make the album in 1969, they intended to record an album that would be a return to live performance of just the bare necessities of the band, no studio effects or overdubbing of voices or instruments would be allowed. However, caught in the turmoil of the break-up of the band, the album was re-produced by Phil Spector and never released as The Beatles had originally meant it to sound. Until now.

Let It Be?Naked?s track listing differs from the 1970 release; background dialog, ?Dig It? and ?Maggie Mae? have been taken off the album and ?Don?t Let Me Down? has been added to the running order, which now is as follows: Get Back, Dig A Pony, For You Blue, The Long And Winding Road, Two Of Us, I?ve Got A Feeling, One After 909, Don?t Let Me Down, I Me Mine, Across The Universe, Let It Be.

Let It Be?Naked will be issued together with a bonus fly-on-the-wall disc that features extracts from tapes of The Beatles at the time of first making the Let It Be album and movie in the Sixties.

The 20-minute bonus disc is a unique insight into of The Beatles at work in rehearsal and in the studios in January 1969.

Sounds pretty cool, right? Well, yes and no. Any new release by the Beatles is cool, but like so much that they’ve released since their breakup, this is a pretty half-assed effort.

There have been a few different mixes of the Get Back album that have laid claim to being the official de-Spectorized version. Of the many versions that have circulated, this is the most common tracklisting :

1. The One After 909 (Lennon/McCartney) 3:06
2. Rocker (Lennon/McCartney/Harrison/Starkey) 0:46
3. Save The Last Dance For Me (Pomus/Shuman) 1:19
4. Don’t Let Me Down (Lennon/McCartney) 4:26
5. Dig A Pony (Lennon/McCartney) 3:45
6. I’ve Got A Feeling (Lennon/McCartney) 2:52
7. Get Back (Lennon/McCartney) 3:08
8. For You Blue (Harrison) 2:46
9. Teddy Boy (McCartney) 3:41
10. Two Of Us (Lennon/McCartney) 3:29
11. Maggie Mae (Traditional) 0:41
12. Dig It (Lennon/McCartney/Harrison/Starkey) 4:21
13. Let It Be (Lennon/McCartney) 3:55
14. The Long And Winding Road (Lennon/McCartney) 3:40
15. Get Back Reprise (Lennon/McCartney) 0:42

Notice anything different from the tracklisting in the press release? Where’s Teddy Boy, Rocker, and Save The Last Dance For Me?

What’s even worse is there’s only twenty minutes of bonus material on the second disc? Are they crazy? The Beatles spent a whole month having everything they did recorded and they could only scrape together twenty minutes of bonus material? There are more than fifty two-disc bootlegs of the raw session tapes circulating in the bootleg community. Granted, those collections are 95% shit, but there’s at least another disc worth of good material there.

If I had my way, I’d release the Get Back album in two versions. The one disc version would simply contain the tracklisting mentioned above with the original artwork (that was later used for the Beatles Red/Blue albums). A more expensive “deluxe” version would be a three disc collection that contains the original album, the complete rooftop concert, and a third disc full of outtakes and alternate versions.

So why the skimping? There have been whole books written about this subject alone, but the simple answer is that the Beatles (1) still can’t get along and (2) care more about their “legacy” than making a lot of money. In the effort to get everything done “just right”, the Beatles have squandered many, many opportunities to make a ton of money and release some of the stuff that’s been circulating as bootlegs for years.

Among the releases that fans have been begging for, here’s a few that are no-brainers :

Remastering Their Entire Catalog - Did you realize that the only versions of the Beatles albums that are available commercially are the ones that were hastily mixed and dumped on CD in 1987? While every other popular band from the era has had multiple remixed and remastered versions of their albums released, Beatles fans are still waiting for Apple to correct the mistakes they made back in 1987.

The Mono/Stereo Versions - Did you know that there were stereo and mono versions of all of their albums released during the sixties, often with different takes and overdubs. While the Zombies and the Beach Boys have done the right thing by releasing CDs with both versions of their classic albums, the Beatles still haven’t released the mono version of Sgt. Pepper on CD (despite the fact that their mono version was the “true” version in their minds).

Complete Ed Sullivan Performances - For many Americans, the first time they ever heard the Beatles was on the Ed Sullivan show. Despite this, these performances have never been issued on CD (okay, never officially released).

Live at the Hollywood Bowl - This already came out in the seventies. Where’s the CD?

The Decca Audition - Prior to being signed to EMI, the Beatles performed a great audition for Decca records that contains the only recordings of some of the songs they often played live.

Songs They Gave Away - Did you know that some big hits from the 60’s were given away by the Beatles to other artists? Bad to Me, Come and Get It, and World Without Love were all written by Paul or John. Why hasn’t this stuff been collected?

I can’t believe I’m actually saying this, but I wish the Beatles were as money obsessed as the rest of the music industry.

And now back to our regularly-scheduled Bush bashing…