I'm surprised I was able to get back here. I get booted off a lot of forums.

Yes, I like folk music. Like all kinds (even opera sometimes). I was trying to find some public domain info on 'Old Joe Clark' when I stumbled across this forum. That's how I come across most forums...when I'm not expecting them. And if you think Y'ALL are distressed by the things I post, imagine how the grannies on the recipe exchange feel.

Folk music...let's see...Astral Weeks, Gordon Lightfoot...but that's a bit modern. Tupelo Honey...I've listened to that a hundred times I bet. I like Texas music, which includes an incredible range from blues to jazz to country-western...conjunto, German polka. Woody Guthrie spent a lot of time in Texas. Honky Tonk music is great. Webb Pierce, Lefty Frizzell. Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys...decades ahead of their time...incredible musicians. I've given up TV because it's just too much wasted down-time, but I play music sometimes when I'm browsing the internet.

TV...it's a BIG mis-information machine right now, folks. Some of those people reporting KNOW they're lying to us...they are reporters and have checked their facts and sources, but then their stories get edited. Like, what happened to Iraq's 12,000 page inventory of weapons? They issued two copies for the U.N. Security Council, then the United States swooped in and seized both copies. Later, the sanitized report was released...only 3,000 pages long. That's NINE THOUSAND PAGES which outlined how the Bush and Baker families and hundreds of American and European businesses sold Hussein weapons. Someone told me that isn't even mentioned on the evening news.

The film I was talking about earlier...how it is canned and then saved for later use...during the Gulf War we were shown film of dead people in northern Iraq. Gassed by Hussein. Well, that footage was taken TEN YEARS BEFORE, just after Bush # 1 approved the sale of that gas by the Baker family to Hussein. But the footage was saved for ten years and then presented as a 'new atrocity' when Bush needed it.

And on top of TVs function to misinform and misdirect, I've begun to wonder about it's subliminal purposes. It seems every program synopsis I read now has someone torturing someone else. We're being conditioned to view torture as acceptable, and that's bogus. Torture is NOT acceptable, but if you see cops torturing night after night after night on TV, you'll come to think it's just the way things are.

During the 1960's, a lot of people thought Gilligans Island was real. The network running the show got dozens of calls and letters per week begging them to please rescue those poor people. Serious letters. And that was just a goof. But you can bet Army psy-ops made some notes on the phenomenon. And today, with the ADDITION of subliminal messages and cues on top of scenes of torture, I suspect Americans are being taught to accept their own torture.

So, I think you see my dilemma. Sure I want to go back to the way things were, but I can't. I've learned too much recently. And if I seem overly enthusiastic about this stuff, just go into a sports bar at playoff time and look at the incredible amount of energy being flushed down the urinal. Sad. Really sad. One terrorist act away from martial law and concentration camps, and people won't even adjust their lives just a little bit to preserve their way of life.

Sorry I rambled. On to the grannies now.