U.S. Senate candidate Jean Hay Bright, a Democrat, has teamed with a Massachusetts musician to promote two protest songs against the war in Iraq.

“Where is the Rage?” and “I Have a Feeling I’ve Been Here Before” are both available on Hay Bright’s Web site, jeanhaybright.us.

The songs were produced by Patrick Scanlon, a Vietnam veteran and environmental and peace activist. Scanlon, who lives in Andover, says he’s still haunted by the war.

For his part, Scanlon is collecting no royalties on the songs and is making them available to anyone who wants to end the war in Iraq.

The songs aren’t bad. Folksy, definitely.

On “I Have a Feeling I’ve Been Here Before,” the singer draws a tight line between the Vietnam War and the fighting in Iraq. There’s an acoustic guitar, a little fiddle, a nice tenor voice with a female backup singer hitting the harmony.

“Where is the Rage” creates a weird discord. It talks about the horrors of war, the loss of the country’s “brightest and bravest just coming of age” and asks, where is the anger and where is the rage. But the strummed melody and pace of the song don’t capture that anger or rage – it’s hard to get worked up to a flute. Instead, it’s terribly sad, just like the war it’s about.

When it comes to protest songs, there’s plenty to choose from right now.

There’s the Dixie Chicks’ “Not Ready to Make Nice,” Pearl Jams’ “World Wide Suicide” and an entire anti-war album, “Living with War,” which was released in May, by Neil Young.

But the artist that might come closest to capturing the anger and rage that Scanlon is singing about might be Detroit rapper Eminem. “Mosh,” which was released during the 2004 election season, has the hard base line and the aggressive story that feeds on primal emotions like anger and rage. And there’s no acoustic guitar, banjo or flute.

“Let the president answer a higher anarchy; Strap him with an AK-47, let him go, fight his own war; Let him impress daddy that way; No more blood for oil, we got our own battles to fight on our own soil; No more psychological warfare, to trick us to thinking that we ain’t loyal; If we don’t serve our own country, we’re patronizing a hero; Look in his eyes its all lies; The stars and stripes, they’ve been swiped, washed out and wiped; And replaced with his own face, Mosh now or die; If I get sniped tonight you’ll know why, Cause I told you to fight.”

That’s anger. That’s rage.

Race over; not the chase

The campaign for the Republican nomination for governor is over, but the need for cash isn’t.

Former U.S. Rep. Dave Emery is appealing to his supporters to help pay off debt incurred by his campaign during the primary race. Of the three candidates, Emery was the only one who relied on private money to fund his efforts.

Nominee Chandler Woodcock and state Sen. Peter Mills both qualified as Maine Clean Election candidates, which entitled them to $200,000 in public financing for the primary.

Emery, who made the fact that the other two used taxpayer money part of his campaign message, instead decided to rely on fundraising.

With the race over, he still needs to run for money.

In a financial disclosure form filed six days before the June 13 Republican primary, Emery reported unpaid debts and obligations of more than $56,000 and a loan of $15,000 made by the candidate himself to his campaign.

Creativity vs. creativity

Gov. John Baldacci was in Lewiston last week to unveil the latest piece of his efforts to grow Maine’s creative economy – a handbook, titled, strangely enough, “Maine’s Creative Economy Community Handbook: Maine State Government Resources for Communities.”

Doesn’t creativity start at home? Maybe with a better book title?

Lewiston and the Bates Mill were ground zero for the launch of Baldacci’s creative economy push two years ago, when about 700 people attended a conference there to learn about the economic potential from business based on the arts and technology.

According to the governor’s office, the creative economy makes up 8.3 percent of the state’s workforce, or about 67,446 who earn, on average $48,557.

Republican gubernatorial candidate Chandler Woodcock responded with a not-so-creative jab of his own at the Democratic governor’s plans.

“Centering an economic agenda on the art industry demonstrates how out of touch the incumbent administration is,” Woodcock said in a news release. “Maine was one of only two states that did not experience economic growth last year, and hurricane-ravaged Louisiana was the other. Our high taxes and poor business climate are the reasons why. A ‘creative’ economy does not solve our problems.”