Tribe is back! Long live tribe!

Wow!!!

What a difference! It's clean, light, and easy to navigate. An interface that was designed to serve Marketing goals has been replaced with one that was designed to serve user's goals and the improvement is enormous and immediately noticeable! It's too bad that so much time and effort was wasted on the previous misguided redesign, but I think Tribe is back on the right track now and will only get better.

BRAVO -- GREAT JOB GUYS!

-V-

Know any Canadians?

The Famous are heading off to Toronto on Thursday to play at the NXNE (North By Northeast) music festival in Toronto. We're super excited to play there as it's our first major festival appearance. We don't know anybody in Toronto so if you have any friends there please pass on the show info to them -- THANKS!!!

FRIDAY JUNE 9
The Famous (NXNE Showcase)
The Black Bull
298 Queen St W

Pat Deighan & The Orb Weavers 9 PM
Les Kilt 10 PM
Sick Fits 11 PM
The Famous 12 AM
Yolassi 1 AM

toronto.tribe.net/event/THE...83bdc61e97

Fri May 12 -- Aquamen Reunion Show Part II

Come see what the Aquamen and *** H 3 R B A L V 1 A G R A *** can do for 4 U, May 12th at the Hotel Utah

In their 5 yrs stranded on a desert island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, the Aquamen discovered an amazing herbal concoction that acts just like V 1 A G R A that they will release to you, their adoring public. at the Hotel Utah, Friday May 12th. El Capitan Mike discovered this strange herbal elixir, a mixture of coconut husks, breadfruit rinds, yam blossoms, and 7 herbs and spices while being forced to forage for their food in isolation.

They quickly realized this wonderful blend, now available to you at low, low prices, had a quite an... er... stimulating effect, shall we say. Ensign Nat quickly set up a makeshift chemistry lab of bamboo beakers, gourd vessels, and kukubura bird beak test tubes (which handily doubled as a still for evening coconut rum brewing sessions) to analyze the potent mixture and purify it down to its most powerful essence.

It was only when he tested it on himself mistakenly, that he quickly realized there was no one to enjoy its effects with but the other 5 aquamen, the sole denizens of the island. To avoid some embarassing incidents, the former vegaquarian Nat was forced to swear off plants completely and become a carnivorous Aquamenatarian, explaining the mysterious disappearance of the 6th Aquamen, "Iron" Matt Harris.

But now, back on dry land, with plenty of outlets for the rousing effects of their 100% natural Pacific Island herbal V 1 A G R A, the Aquamen, with the help of Pollo del Mar and the Struts, release their wonderful creation on the world. Aquamaidens beware!!!

Stay tuned for their next show May 20th in New York, when they'll bring you almost zero cost drugs from overseas- Prosmack, Aquazine, Halitol, Si!pro, Vic-codin', and more!

When: Friday, May 12th, 9 PM
Where: Hotel Utah, 500 4th st. and Bryant, SF
Who: The Aquamen, Pollo del Mar, the Struts
What: $7

"Cabin boy" Vixx - Spam-master
"El Capitan" Mike - Biopiracy
"First Mate" Srini - Recipe testing
"Ensign" Nat - Going tribal
"Iron" Matt Harris - Dinner

protuberant wayside immediate boardinghouse need communion talouse persnickety function haven incipient eggs armoire boxer harbinger oxymoron aquatic peach demoralize obfuscation

RETURN OF THE AQUAMEN!

Lock up your liquour cabinets, The Aquamen are back!

That's right friends, my old band "The Aquamen" are reuniting for a show Saturday April 15th at Bottom of the Hill. "The Aquamen" are Legendary Masters of Surf-Intoxica and name their songs after their favorite drinks. Some perennial favorites include "Blue Hawaii", "Ouzo", "Gin&Tonic", "Caipirinha"....

"Like Jon Spencer fronting a surf band, the Aquamen were amazingly tight, precise, sloppy and scattershot all at the same time. Songs about drinking, drinking and, well, drinking."
- San Jose Metro

""Throw in countless surf compilations, a pinch of what made the Kinks sassy, and some of the Hi-Fives' reckless abandon, and you come pretty close to the Aquamen's sound. The Aquamen are a perfect party band; you could see their crowd whooping and hollering to a sound track for a demented Frankie and Annette movie."
- SF Bay Guardian

Don't miss this one night of boozed-up, punked-out musical mayhem!

SATURDAY APRIL 15th

Polkacide
THE AQUAMEN (Reunion 2006)
Uni and her Ukelele
$8, 21+, Doors at 9, show at 10pm

Bottom of the Hill
1233 17th Street (17th @ Missouri)
San Francisco, CA 94107
415-621-4455

First show of 2006 -- Friday Jan 27th at Cafe Du Nord

Well it's been a long time since our last live show so I'm really looking forward to this one... We'll be playing with sci-fi rockabilly outfit The Phenomenauts (see photo) and TribeTV stars Teenage Harlets. Should be a blast -- hope to see you all there! We're on at 10.

FRIDAY JAN 27th

The Phenomenauts
The Famous
Teenage Harlets

at Cafe Du Nord
2170 Market St, San Francisco
Doors at 8, Show at 9 -- $10, 21+


THE PHENOMENAUTS
Founded officially in 2000, the act has its roots in Space Patrol, a polka-themed '80s cover band that played all its songs on homemade instruments. These days Commander Angel Nova, Corporal Joebot, Major Jimmy Boom, and Captain Chreehos use more traditional intruments, but their mix of pop, psychobilly, and rock'n'roll is anything but normal. Decked out in bizarre astronautical outfits, the band members enliven their shows with such "Phenoma-gadgets" as the Theramatic-Helmerator (protective headwear outfitted with a theremin) and The Streamerator (a leafblower modified to launch streams of toilet paper into the crowd).

THE FAMOUS
Like an Old West duel between ‘50s country and ‘90s indie rock, The Famous arrange a standoff between the Pixies in a cowboy hat and Hank Williams on speed, six-shooters loaded with punk and rockabilly, and whaddya know - that bastard alt-country genre gets shot square in the forehead, with a stray bullet no less.
-West Coast Performer

TEENAGE HARLETS
harlet style rock and roll has no politics, no tiresome monologs, no talking, no tuning, and no fancy knobs, dials or effects. they play non-stop four on the floor rock that you could drink, dance, f*ck or fight to (for the record the harlets prefer the first three). maybe it's the west coast tone mixed with east coast aggression or maybe just a dash of genius floating on a gallon of insanity.. or maybe it's just the government cheese.

Read it and weep... how FEMA went from top-notch to forgotten stepchild

Here's a timeline that outlines the fate of both FEMA and flood control projects in New Orleans under the Bush administration. Read it and weep:

January 2001: Bush appoints Joe Allbaugh, a crony from Texas, as head of FEMA. Allbaugh has no previous experience in disaster management.

April 2001: Budget Director Mitch Daniels announces the Bush administration's goal of privatizing much of FEMA's work. In May, Allbaugh confirms that FEMA will be downsized: "Many are concerned that federal disaster assistance may have evolved into both an oversized entitlement program...." he said. "Expectations of when the federal government should be involved and the degree of involvement may have ballooned beyond what is an appropriate level."

2001: FEMA designates a major hurricane hitting New Orleans as one of the three "likeliest, most catastrophic disasters facing this country."

December 2002: After less than two years at FEMA, Allbaugh announces he is leaving to start up a consulting firm that advises companies seeking to do business in Iraq. He is succeeded by his deputy and former college roommate, Michael Brown, who has no previous experience in disaster management and was fired from his previous job for mismanagement.

March 2003: FEMA is downgraded from a cabinet level position and folded into the Department of Homeland Security. Its mission is refocused on fighting acts of terrorism.

2003: Under its new organization chart within DHS, FEMA's preparation and planning functions are reassigned to a new Office of Preparedness and Response. FEMA will henceforth focus only on response and recovery.

Summer 2004: FEMA denies Louisiana's pre-disaster mitigation funding requests. Says Jefferson Parish flood zone manager Tom Rodrigue: "You would think we would get maximum consideration....This is what the grant program called for. We were more than qualified for it."

June 2004: The Army Corps of Engineers budget for levee construction in New Orleans is slashed. Jefferson Parish emergency management chiefs Walter Maestri comments: "It appears that the money has been moved in the president's budget to handle homeland security and the war in Iraq, and I suppose that's the price we pay."

June 2005: Funding for the New Orleans district of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers is cut by a record $71.2 million. One of the hardest-hit areas is the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, which was created after the May 1995 flood to improve drainage in Jefferson, Orleans and St. Tammany parishes.

August 2005: While New Orleans is undergoing a slow motion catastrophe, Bush mugs for the cameras, cuts a cake for John McCain, plays the guitar for Mark Wills, delivers an address about V-J day, and continues with his vacation. When he finally gets around to acknowledging the scope of the unfolding disaster, he delivers only a photo op on Air Force One and a flat, defensive, laundry list speech in the Rose Garden.

So: A crony with no relevant experience was installed as head of FEMA. Mitigation budgets for New Orleans were slashed even though it was known to be one of the top three risks in the country. FEMA was deliberately downsized as part of the Bush administration's conservative agenda to reduce the role of government. After DHS was created, FEMA's preparation and planning functions were taken away.

Actions have consequences. No one could predict that a hurricane the size of Katrina would hit this year, but the slow federal response when it did happen was no accident. It was the result of four years of deliberate Republican policy and budget choices that favor ideology and partisan loyalty at the expense of operational competence. It's the Bush administration in a nutshell.

reprinted from:

www.washingtonmonthly.com/archi...23.php

FEMA Chief faces questions over resume

FEMA Chief Michael Brown faces questions about whether he padded his resume detailing his experience in emergency preparedness. Read the full story at:

sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi

For fans of BBC's "The Office" this part is priceless:

"Brown's official biography on the FEMA Web site says that his background in state and local government also includes serving as 'an assistant city manager with emergency services oversight' and as a city councilman.

But a former mayor of Edmond, Randel Shadid, told The Associated Press on Friday that Brown had been an assistant to the city manager. Shadid said Brown was never assistant city manager."

This would be funny instead of tragic if political cronyism like this didn't cost lives. Read more about Brown's woefully inadequate background in disaster experience:

www.dailykos.com/story/200...12637/3211

And Brown isn't the only FEMA official with scant experience in disaster management:

www.montereyherald.com/mld/mo...672.htm

There's a national disaster and the Republican party wants to... repeal the estate tax?

Originally posted at www.salon.com/politics/wa...n/index.html

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

The Republican Party's priority? The estate tax

The U.S. Senate approved $10.5 billion in emergency disaster relief for Katrina last night, and the House of Representatives is expected to approve the measure this morning.

Republican National Committee chairman Ken Mehlman has other priorities in mind. In an e-mail he sent yesterday, Mehlman called on the Senate to eliminate the estate tax. And he urged his supporters to call their senators -- "today" -- to demand that they get on board with the plan.

The message arrived in our in box at just about the same time Scott McClellan was pushing away criticism of the president by saying, "This is not the time for politics."

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid has asked Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist to table talk of the estate tax in the wake of Katrina, saying that members of the Senate "would have great difficulty explaining why we were debating the estate tax during our first days back when we know hundreds of thousands of families are suffering."

What should Washington be doing next? Blogger Stirling Newberry has put together the kind of agenda that neither the president nor Senate Democrats seem capable of developing on their own: Provide funding to restore transportation along the Gulf Coast by cutting 5 percent across the board from the pork-laden transportation bill Bush just signed; postpone enactment of the bankruptcy bill for six months in areas hit by the hurricane; and restore funding for flood control throughout the nation by imposing a 1 percent surtax on incomes in excess of $250,000.

War in Iraq siphons money from hurricane and flood control measures

More from the "better ways to spend our tax dollars" dept.

www.editorandpublisher.com/eand...y.jsp

New Orleans had long known it was highly vulnerable to flooding and a direct hit from a hurricane. In fact, the federal government has been working with state and local officials in the region since the late 1960s on major hurricane and flood relief efforts. When flooding from a massive rainstorm in May 1995 killed six people, Congress authorized the Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project, or SELA.

Over the next 10 years, the Army Corps of Engineers, tasked with carrying out SELA, spent $430 million on shoring up levees and building pumping stations, with $50 million in local aid. But at least $250 million in crucial projects remained, even as hurricane activity in the Atlantic Basin increased dramatically and the levees surrounding New Orleans continued to subside.

Yet after 2003, the flow of federal dollars toward SELA dropped to a trickle. The Corps never tried to hide the fact that the spending pressures of the war in Iraq, as well as homeland security -- coming at the same time as federal tax cuts -- was the reason for the strain.

1 in 5 Americans still think the sun goes around the earth

From an interview with Prof. Jon D. Miller at Northwestern:

www.nytimes.com/2005/08/30...rofile.html

While scientific literacy has doubled over the past two decades, only 20 to 25 percent of Americans are "scientifically savvy and alert," he said in an interview. Most of the rest "don't have a clue." At a time when science permeates debates on everything from global warming to stem cell research, he said, people's inability to understand basic scientific concepts undermines their ability to take part in the democratic process. . . .

Dr. Miller's data reveal some yawning gaps in basic knowledge. American adults in general do not understand what molecules are (other than that they are really small). Fewer than a third can identify DNA as a key to heredity. Only about 10 percent know what radiation is. One adult American in five thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, an idea science had abandoned by the 17th century.

Excuse me while I go hit my head against the wall...