~ Ford, a Texas-based writer, contributes essays on music, Texas life and cultural issues regularly to The Agonist

Danny Huston flew in from California week before last to explore the possibility of a film based on Contrabando. I decided not to write about this, thinking to do so would be name dropping of sorts, like look at me, I’m running around with someone famous.

More after the jump, which you will want to read ~spk

Leah and I spent three hours picking in the garden last night. It has evolved into an every afternoon ritual for me. If I miss a day, the next picking will be extra heavy and some vegetables will be overripe. Not good for those wishing to participate on the social scene.

We didn’t can anything last night, but instead put a bunch of tomatoes on the stove to reduce into sauce, which we hope to can tonight. We have a couple of five-gallon cans of serrano and jalapeno peppers. Two days worth of okra sitting in a bucket. I need to give them away. The irrigation machines are running at Belmont—I need to meet with the man and figure out how to run them, cowboys are scheduled to work our cattle at Gonzales, which means I need to buy feed, vaccines, etc, the publicist at HarperCollins needs to talk, my horses…

I once bought marijuana in Mexico, smuggled it to the United States and sold it. Some of the farmers I bought from lived in the mountains of Durango. They would not accept dollars so I had to convert my money to Mexican pesos in order to buy their product.

One year, the exchange rate was $1 to 150 Mexican Pesos. A year later $1 was worth 250 Pesos. Another year later, $1 bought 2,500 Pesos. Eventually, it took 10,000 Pesos to equal a dollar. Figuring amounts of money in Pesos became so complicated that the government cut three zeros off of the amounts and created a “new” Peso.

The dollar was also losing value during those years. If you had Mexican Pesos in a safe over this period, their value against the dollar fell to 1.5% of what it had been. Or in other words, that money lost 98.5% of its value when compared to a dollar.

Leah and I drove to San Antonio last night to see An Inconvenient Truth and bumped into Sean-Paul Kelley and his wife Tatiana. Sean-Paul had told me he was going to see the film but we were late getting there and the 7:30 showing had already sold out. Luckily it was being shown on two screens and we got into the 8:00 pm screening. After the movie we had time to visit for a few minutes.

Now I know why Al Gore cannot win the presidency.

An Inconvenient Truth presents interesting facts and observations, all indicating impending doom due to the various things we’ve talked about here at the Agonist: overpopulation of the planet, changes in weather and the environment, etc, with lots of scientific evidence to support the hypotheses. Then Gore somehow makes it seem as though all of this could have been avoided if we just would have elected him and listened to what he says. By the end of the movie I got the distinct impression he was begging for a mandate to return to the political arena. Part environmental movie, part campaign ad. The two don’t mix well.

Originally Posted 11/9/05 -- this movie is now available in DVD -- watch it! It is what The Agonist is all about ~ qB

My wife and I traveled to Austin to see Good Night and Good Luck. It seems the media censorship the movie documents is still alive and well here in the USA. My hometown has a theater that shows nine movies, New Braunfels has twelve screens and San Marcos fourteen. None elected to air the show, in favor of enlightening shows like Saw-2 and other equally important films.

Al-Zarqawi, one of the world’s leading terrorists, was killed in Iraq today. He was a particularly nasty bastard; fond I am told of beheading people. It would seem that killing him then is a good thing.

But when the bombs fell, six others were killed. I am reminded of something Amado Carrillo, an infamous Mexican drug dealer reportedly once said: Better that six innocent men are killed than to let one guilty man get away. When he says this, we recoil in horror. We now jump for joy because Zarqawi is dead.

Don’t get me wrong. If any piece of shit on this planet deserved to die, it was Zarqawi. But the following question arises: If Jesus had to die so his spirit could be more effective from beyond the grave, infect more people, if you will, then does not killing an evil bastard also release his spirit so that it too can infect more people?

by Don Henry Ford Jr.

My back is killing me. It had gotten better last week while hauling hay. Then yesterday I picked peas and peppers and spent time working on my knees. A mistake. Somehow this seems to aggravate the condition. I’m convinced it’s not muscle pain but instead something to do with a disc in my lower back.

Some of Leah’s friends asked her how much we’d charge for jars of food. I got mad. Then I told her $20 a jar. She looked at me like I was crazy. Never mind the fact that I am. I’ll give this stuff to friends but I am not selling it. There’s too much work in it. My time is worth something. Later I told her that I’d trade out work. Their money is no good with me.

Reviewed by Don Henry Ford jr.

Hank III, grandson to the Hank Williams, has released an album of merit, titled Straight to Hell. I’d never heard of the man or his music until Low Down aired on our local radio station. I liked what I heard and immediately bought the CD. I was in for a surprise. My first thought was, there’s no way I can write about this guy. He seemed to advocate a self-destructive lifestyle—much like the one that claimed my youth. A picture of a man blowing his brains out with a double barrel shotgun and depictions of demonic looking creatures on an insert sealed the issue. This crap ain’t worth my time.

Ron Paul | May 15

A recent article in BusinessWeek magazine by James Mehring paints a stark picture of the ongoing decline of the U.S. dollar. The dollar has lost 5% against a blend of worldwide currencies just since April, falling to a 12-month low against the Euro and an 8-month low against the Japanese yen. Overall, the dollar fell 28% against other currencies between 2002 and 2004. It then rebounded slightly, but even the cheerleaders in the American financial press cannot shrug off this latest decline.

Of course the real measure of just how far the dollar has fallen can be found in the price of gold, which has reached a 25-year high of more than $700 per ounce. It’s much more accurate to measure the dollar against a stable store of value like gold, rather than against other fiat currencies. Gold has nearly tripled against the dollar since 2001, when the price was $250 per ounce. By this measure the dollar is losing value at an alarming rate.

Remember, gold is static. Gold isn’t going up, the dollar is going down. And it’s going to continue until the American people demand an end to deficit spending by Congress and unrestrained creation of new dollars by the Federal Reserve and Treasury department.

MSN

By Jim Jubak

Move over, Exxon Mobil. Step aside, BP (BP, news, msgs). Run away home, Chevron. There's a new set of oil bullies on the block. And they're named Russia, Iran, Venezuela and Chad.

...

The clout of these new bullies really results from their stranglehold on the world's big pools of discovered and discoverable oil.

Let's take the discovered, or proven, reserves first. Of the global oil giants, Exxon Mobil has the biggest proven reserves -- 11.2 billion barrels, according to Energy Intelligence Research.

by Don Henry Ford, Jr.

Sometimes there is no solution to a problem, just a choice between options, all of which present further complications. Chuck Bowden would say we don’t have a problem with Mexican immigration, just a new reality.

I think it’s an unavoidable reality.

A few things to consider in the debate on Mexican immigration: Mexico has over a third the population of the United States, yet an economy only 4% the size of its northern neighbor. That 4% includes some $30,000,000,000 in remittances sent from workers here in the United States to family members at home. In other words, on average, Mexicans must live on about 10 to 12% of the money we do with prices at similar levels.

by Don Henry Ford Jr.

Everywhere I go, I hear people talking about how expensive gasoline is. I've caught myself doing this, especially after filling the tank of one of our vehicles and seeing numbers I’m not accustomed to register on a gas pump.

Three is just a number.

My current project involves cultivating a garden without the use of tractor or any gasoline or diesel powered equipment. Instead I’m using a hoe. Let me tell you, after a couple of hours of this, $3 for a gallon of gasoline and a rototiller to go with it looks pretty cheap.

Likewise, when I think about making a trip to San Antonio and back, a roundtrip of some seventy miles, $10 worth of diesel for my pickup truck is nothing compared to the energy and time I would expend walking this distance, riding a bicycle or sitting in a horse-drawn wagon. The truck takes less than an hour each way—on foot or with horses--it’d take a day to get there and another to get back. I’d have to eat, feed and water horses, or in the case of walking or riding a bike, nurse blisters and sore muscles.

It’s truly amazing just how much energy a few gallons of petroleum-based fuel contain and how much work can be accomplished with it.

$3 a gallon for gasoline may sound like a lot of money. Truth is, it’s still cheap when compared to other forms of energy and it’ll have to get a lot more expensive to change people’s habits. I heard that if we would just reduce our fuel consumption by 3% that the price of fuel would fall.

But we won’t. Not yet.

by Don Henry Ford Jr.

I neglected paying bills again, so I set out with checkbook in hand only to discover that all the places I needed to go were closed for Good Friday. Why we call this day good, I’ve never quite understood.

The day marks the day we killed Jesus. What’s good about that?

Or this? We killed him again today.

How, you ask?

I believe Jesus left his Spirit behind when he died and he lives through us. When we do a kind act for one of his, we do this for him also, when we commit an evil act against one of his, we commit this against him also.

We killed Jesus today, both in passive and active ways. Passively by allowing people to do without food, shelter and medicines because other matters were of more import to us. Actively with weapons of war, errant bombs and bullets, spent uranium and the passage of laws that in the end will deprive people of a decent living.

by Don Henry Ford Jr.

I haven’t written much lately. Truth is I’ve been out hoeing around. Tomato and pepper plants that is.

I had started a novel using a colorful cast of characters based on real people with the premise that I would take them into the future and a catastrophic breakdown. But predicting calamity seems too much like prophesying to me and I haven’t received any divine inspiration to pass along, nor do I want to join the ranks of false prophets. So I am going to set it aside. But I feel the need to write—something.

For me, fiction was easy enough from the confines of a prison cell. There, accessing a dream world took me away from reality. A reality I wanted no part of. Now however, I feel the need to stay engaged.

BY JAMES MCMURTRY

To see the original you have to register with MySpace.com. So I'm posting the article in its entirety. James won't mind

Once at a show in Plano, Texas, a woman took it upon herself to dance around in front of the stage with a handwritten sign that read, "Keep Politics Out of Music." She hadn't liked the anti-Bush rant that I had inserted into the song "Levelland." I wonder what she thought of the works of Woody Guthrie, John Lennon or Bob Dylan? Would she have been equally as offended by the sentiments expressed in the songs of Merle Haggard, Toby Keith or Clint Black? Was it politics in music that she objected to, or more specifically, my politics in my music? I probably lost a fan that day, not the first or the last.

By Congressman Ron Paul

03/30/06 ICH" -- -- Before the US House of Representatives, March 28, 2006

(video of the speech also available at the link).

The top Neo-Con of the twentieth century was Woodrow Wilson. His supposed idealism, symbolized in the slogan “Make the world safe for democracy,” resulted in untold destruction and death across the world for many decades. His deceit and manipulation of the pre-war intelligence from Europe dragged America into an unnecessary conflict that cost the world and us dearly. Without the disastrous Versailles Treaty, World War II could have been averted – and the rise to power of Communists around the world might have been halted.

Little reminder about bush and his war, just in case anyone out there thinks I'm getting soft on the lying bastard.

http://www.bushflash.com/3.html

Americanaroots.com

I normally avoid writing about a performer with only one CD to his or her credit. For Mindy Smith I make exception. Maybe it’s the angelic voice. The good looks. Excellent song writing. A message I identify with. The fact that she seems a pure-hearted woman.

It’s all of the above and more. Mindy is a wonderful, complex performer, unafraid to pour out heart, emotion and spirit for all who’ll listen—one of the more talented new performers around—and living proof that not everything coming out of Nashville is garbage. Course, Mindy isn’t from Nashville. Even worse than that. She’s a Yankee. From Long Island, no less...

by Don Henry Ford Jr.

Winston Churchill once said something along these lines: Capitalism is the worst economic system, besides all the rest. And, The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessings; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries.

Just about all left-leaning sites I read refer to capitalism as the enemy, the worst and greatest evil we face in this world.

I don’t see it that way.

Is it good?

No.

Is it fair?

No.

Communism and socialism, in theory, sound like good systems, more in line with the teachings of Christ. However, unless everyone involved is committed to making them work and plays by the rules, the reality once applied to this world becomes a dysfunctional disaster for all except a chosen few.

KGSR in Austin and KNBT New Braunfels are playing the first single from the Dixie Chicks new album. These women have cojones.

The lyrics from the front page of their website:

lyrics after the jump

by Don Henry Ford Jr.

Hector Galan invited me to attend the screening of Los Lonely Boys, Cottonfields and Crossroads yesterday in Austin at the SXSW music and film festival. I had a vested interest in going; Hector recently acquired an option to the documentary film rights of my book.

Life gets in the way. The phone rings. Someone needs hay. I decide to move a grain drill from Seguin to Belmont—the damn thing is sixteen feet wide and between road construction and too much traffic, the trip leaves me frazzled. I look at my watch and realize I barely have time to make it if I leave without changing clothes or cleaning up.

I saw a segment today on ABC’s Good Morning America show concerning men’s rights and child-bearing. Being a glutton for punishment and derision, I thought I’d raise a few questions for those that favor a woman’s exclusive right to choose.

Young people often succumb to the drive to procreate and then later have regrets. In the case of a woman, if she becomes pregnant, she has the legal right to terminate a pregnancy—to get rid of an unwanted mass of reproducing cells. The argument goes that she should not be forced to carry an unwanted child.

But what happens when two people have casual sex, the woman becomes pregnant and decides to have the baby even though the man does not want to be a father? He is saddled with paying child support payments for this unwanted child for the next eighteen years. It Texas, he will go to jail if he doesn’t.

It has become common practice among young women, primarily from poor homes with bleak prospects for the future, to get pregnant intentionally. A cornucopia of entitlement programs await them, plus the prospect of receiving regular child support payments.

Why is it that women have the right to say they don’t want to be required to accept responsibility for a mistake they make, but think it OK to deny a man the same right? Should a prospective father be able to say he wants nothing to do with a mass of replicating cells and forego his rights and responsibilities to the child it becomes when the woman insists on carrying the child to term against his wishes? One young man says he should be able to and is taking the matter to court.

Row vs. Wade, for men.

Hit post and run for your life. ~ Don

You’re president of the United States. It’s Sept. 12th following the day of the attack on the world trade center. You have information that as advertised, the world’s supply of easily accessed and refined oil is peaking and soon will be outpaced by demand.

Before that happens, most of the oil that remains lies below countries inhabited mainly by members of radical Islamic faith—not true followers of Muhammad’s teachings—but instead people who hate westerners and consider them infidels, who fail to recognize Christians and Jews as worshipers of Allah. Leaders of these people are organizing, setting aside nationalistic tendencies in favor of unification against what they see as the enemy—Westerners meddling in their affairs.

A catastrophe looms. If these radical leaders wrest control of the Middle East and its oil and cut the west off in favor of new emerging powers like China, western economies will collapse. Collapse as in substantial reductions in quality of life—lack of food, mobility, and shelter, even fuel to heat homes.

You are in control of the most sophisticated and powerful army on the planet.

What do you do?

We all know what he did.

But is there anything he could have done to stop the polarization and conflict sure to come when there’s simply not enough to go around?

What do you do?

Ford writes regularly on music, Texas and cultural issues for The Agonist

A BUZZFLASH INTERVIEW

This isn’t some ugly conspiracy by corrupt American presidents. This is what’s called realpolitik. Tolerating the existence of a narco-state in Mexico is preferable to having an economic collapse in Mexico. Successive presidents have looked at the facts and made the same decision. ... It’s simply confronting reality. ... The effort of the border patrol to stop illegal immigration is also simply for show, because if we really bottled up Mexico and a half million people a year couldn’t come north, the economy would collapse.

Buzzflash

Upcoming article written for Americanaroots.com

by Don Henry Ford Jr.

Writing about Bleu Edmondson presents a dilemma for me. As many of you who've read my stuff would know, I once lived life on the edge and like to write about performers that have been to that place, turned their back on it and moved on. Well Bleu's still there. Not only is he there, he embraces the life and runs with it for all it's worth. From my perspective, watching him is akin to watching a slow motion car wreck.

The challenge is recognizing his abilities without glorifying the lifestyle (or for that matter condemning him--he without sin, throw the first stone).