Thanks for stopping by!

I'm figuring Spring is 6 to 8 weeks away. What d'you think?

It's gonna be interesting to sing in Central Park on Saturday afternoons instead of Sunday this year. I wonder if the crowd is gonna be very different. I wonder if a whole new bunch of people will start calling themselves the "People on the Hill". We'll see. I have a feeling it's gonna be a very special summer in Central Park this year.

For one thing, I want to get a just a little further away from playing some of the same cover tunes I've been playing for years, now. Oh, we'll still do a few of the favorites. But, I've written so many new songs that I wanna play, and there are so many wonderful songs written by other artists that I wanna share, old and new, that I think it's time for me to make a significant shift.

We'll see.

If you're reading this in another part of the country or another part of the world... if you can get to New York City this summer, stop by and say "Hey".

HEY! If you haven't done it yet, James (webmaster) has made it easy for you to listen to, or download, the new song "JesusLand" right here at the website for free for a while. (It'll be going to iTunes soon.)

MP3 of Jesusland! Click to download or play.

And listen, if this song pisses you off, or you don't get it, or you have any feelings about it one way or the other... you can always jump into the "Forum" over there and let it rip. That's what it's there for. (That means YOU, O'Reilly and Bush fans.) Sorry I just wasn't able to squeeze in a verse about Hannity.

Here's something very cool!

I'm receiving emails from all over the country from people who've heard it on Air America already. I'm getting emails from people who wanna help pass it all over the place. So... YOU! Send the link to all your friends for free, okay? Do it today.

James also made it super easy to make a reservation for the next concert that's coming up in two and a half weeks. FRIDAY NIGHT, MARCH 4th... I'm gonna be appearing at CAMI Hall on West 57th Street. Just click on that thing over there on the right and reserve a seat for you and your friends today. But, I gotta tell you... there are only 170 seats in CAMI Hall. So, it's a lot more intimate than Merkin Concert Hall where I played last December. (450 seats) So, try to reserve 'em this week, okay?.

So...

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Well, since the United States did half a job in Afghanistan, and never caught the man actually responsible for killing our friends downtown that Spetember morning over 3 years ago, yesterday the head of the CIA has now taken the position that we've created a new training ground for terrorist groups.

"Islamic extremists are exploiting the (guess!)-conflict to recruit new anti-U.S. jihadists," CIA Director Porter Goss told the Select Senate Committee on Intelligence in his first Capitol Hill appearance as the agency's chief. They will "leave (guess!) experienced in and focused on acts of urban terrorism. They represent a pool of contacts to build transnational terrorist cells, groups and networks."

Guess?

No?

Well, maybe this will help. This war "while not a cause of extremism, has become a cause for extremists," Goss said. Goss said that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, who has joined al-Qaida since this war began, "hopes to establish a safe haven in (guess!)" from which he could operate against Western nations and moderate Muslim governments.

Goss ain't alone. "Our policies in the Middle East fuel Islamic resentment," Vice Adm. Lowell E. Jacoby, director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, told the Senate panel. "Overwhelming majorities in Morocco, Jordan and Saudi Arabia believe the U.S. has a negative policy toward the Arab world."

Jacoby said that the (guess!) insurgency has GROWN "in size and complexity over the past year," and is now mounting an average of 60 attacks a day, up from 25 last year. Attacks on Iraq's election day last month reached approximately 300, he said, double the previous one-day high of 150, even though transportation was virtually locked down.

(Of course, Donald Rumsfeld told the House Armed Services Committee that he has trouble believing any of the estimates of the number of insurgents because it is so difficult to track them.)

Guess?

C'mon...

Okay a few hints.

It's not Afghanistan, it's another Middle Eastern country... one that was headed up by a secular dictator who was actually considered an enemy of Osama Bin Laden. (Hell, Rumsfeld actually shook hands with this evil asshole some years ago.)

No?

Okay... it's a country that had a no-fly zone, had sanctions imposed on it, and had UN weapons inspectors in it on a regular basis.

Okay one more hint.

It's a country that posed absolutely NO threat to the United States before it was invaded, a country in which hundreds of thousands of civilians have now been killed or horribly wounded, a place where 1,469 Americaans have gone to die...

Oh, okay.

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Iraq.

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And, people wonder why I write the songs I do.

Hey... I'm still writing about Life and Love. I'm still smiling more than I don't. I still laugh freely and on a daily basis. But, I hope I don't let my music ignore the "bad guys" anymore.

Hope I see you on March 4th at CAMI Hall.

Thanks again.