My 9/11 Anthem...

Stevie Wonder doing "Blowin' in the Wind" at the age of 16.



I love this, despite this version's omission of the third verse lines, my favorites: "how many deaths will it take 'til God knows / that too many people have died?"

Pray for peace, everyone. One love.

Wisconsin

"The modern conservative is engaged in one of the oldest exercises in moral philosophy, that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness. It is an exercise that always involves a certain number of internal contradictions and even a few absurdities. The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character-building value of privation for the poor."
- John Kenneth Galbraith

July 4th, 2007

Since it's Allen Ginsberg's birthday and all, I thought it'd be appropriate to share a few pictures from an adventure a few friends and I took back on the 4th of July in 2007...well, it really started on the night of the 3rd, but our adventure definitely bled into the wee hours of the 4th. Our intention was to force people into considering the words of Ginsberg's subversive screed/poem "America" while engaged in their American Tradition staples of cooking out, block parties, fireworks and beer. For the record, we used chalk...because we were either pussies or polite--you decide.

Brit Hume is an Asshole

It's on Fox News, so I'm not all that shocked...but Brit Hume actually had the gall to ask, during a "discussion" of the worst environmental tragedy in generations, Where's the oil?



IT'S RIGHT THE FUCK HERE, HUME, YOU FUCKING SLIMY CORPORATE SHILL!

Erykah Badu :: Twinkle

Because her new album's coming out this week, I thought I'd transcribe my favorite part of her last one: the rant which begins around 5:22 of "Twinkle"

I don't have to tell you things aren't good; everybody knows things aren't good! We know the air's unfit to breathe, and our food is unfit to eat! Young punks are running the streets, no one knows just what to do, and there's no end to it! The dollar buys a penny's worth, banks are going under, and congress keeps a gun under the counter! But we sit watching our idiot boxes while some local anchorman tells us that today we've had 18 murders and 80 violent crimes as if that's the way things were supposed to be! We know times are bad--worse than bad! People are crazy! It's like everything everywhere is going utterly mad so we never leave our homes! We sit in our comfy abodes while the world gets smaller and we say, "Come on! At least leave us alone in our family rooms! Let me have my microwave and my flatscreen and my 20-inch wheels and I won't say anything! Just leave us alone!" Well I'm not going to leave you alone! I want you to get angry! I don't want you to riot, I don't want you to protest, and I don't want you to write your senator because I don't know what to tell you to tell him! I don't know what to do about the recession and the inflation and the crime in the street! All I know is that you've got to get mad! You've got to say, "I'm a human being, damnit! My life has value!"

Don't count your chickens before they hatch...

If the slim margins shown in Israeli exit polls are any indication, Tzipi Livni has overtaken B.B. Netanyahu in the race for prime minister. Hopefully, this holds true, as Livni is by far the candidate most open to a meaningful peace process in Gaza. Netanyahu's too much a hard-liner...hold on strong, Tzipi!

Political Pwnage

Republican Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma, who happens to chair the Senate Environmental & Public Works committee, got a little silly after Al Gore testified on global warming before the Senate Foreign Relations committee:

Inhofe called Gore's message "desperate," and noted the irony of it being delivered on such an icy day in D.C. "They almost had to cancel it because of freezing weather, and last year they did cancel it because of cold weather," Inhofe said. "I'd say he has a real serious problem. But he's already made his $100 million, so I don't think he needs to worry too much about it. But the science and logic are on our side, and we are winning."

Why silly, say I? One: the science isn't on his side. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, American Meteorological Society, the American Geophysical Union, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the 928 scientific abstracts published on the subject between 1988-2003 would appear to disagree. Completely.

...and two: the logic isn't on his side either. Senator Inhofe's observation of the irony of holding a meeting on global warming in the middle of a D.C. snowstorm is one of the simplest forms of logical fallacy: anecdotal evidence.

BYAH!

Whatever it is, I'm against it...

Regarding the fact that zero House Republicans voted yay on President Obama's economic stimulus package, Rush Limbaugh had this to say:

It is about the 2010 and 2012 elections. This is an opportunity for Republicans to redefine themselves after a few years of wandering aimlessly looking for a ‘brand’ and identity.

I guess by "brand and identity," Rush meant something along these lines:

President Obama...

It still feels exciting to write it: President Obama.

I've hardly slept at all since the results became clear last night, but still I've had to pinch myself a few times just to make sure I'm not in some kind of dream world. I'm truly happy, hopeful, and humbled to have been a small part of the movement that put the first African-American President into the oval office. It is exactly because that movement even existed in the first place that I am also proud today to be an American; as President Obama said during his DNC speech, his life's story would not even be possible in any other country on this planet.

This video is of Mahalia Jackson's performance of "The Lord's Prayer" at the Newport Jazz festival, 50 years ago. Somehow, today, it seemed appropriate to share:




To my conservative friends: if there's anyone in the world who could understand your feelings of disappointment and resentment at this moment, it's a guy--like me!--who picked Kerry and Gore the last two times around. It gets easier, I promise...but please, take heart: given the slate of crises facing the U.S. right now, more than ever, our country needs everyone to come together around a common sense of pragmatism, not pep-rally style "us vs. them" politics.

To my liberal friends: yes, the victory was sweet, but we're all still on the same team. I'm sure you remember how bad it felt 4 years ago when Bush was re-elected... That being said, let's try to cut the "nanny nanny boo boo"/"told ya so" stuff this time around. Doesn't help anybody.

This country has a lot of work to do. Let's all--conservative, liberal, whatever--just pray we've chosen a man who is up to the task of digging us out of this whole we're still in.

Why Am I Voting For Obama?

So I was asked a couple days ago: why Obama?

McCain wants to make sure this guy's taxes stay low--so he might be able to take an extra trip to Aruba this Spring...



and Obama wants to make this guy's taxes lower--so he might be able to heat his house this winter while eating something other than ramen.



(Oh yea, and the pre-Bush levels to which the cigar smoker's taxes would rise? The same as they were under that socialist swine of a President, Ronald Reagan.)

Ugh, Sarah Palin...

Thanks to a stop over at my internet friend Tania Rochelle's excellent--check it out if you haven't!--blog The Stone's Colossal Dream, I now know that the single highest-paid staffer on John McCain's payroll during the first half of October is...Sarah Palin's makeup artist. Who earned $22,800 during said fortnight. Seriously: how is it that, with straight faces, this woman's handlers are able to buy $150,000 wardrobes for her and pay her makeup artist the amount of money for 2 weeks' work that most "real" Americans take closer to 52 to earn...and still have the gall to claim that she "understands the problems of day to day life in America"?

As my friend Mugatu once said, "I FEEL LIKE I'M TAKING CRAZY PILLS!"

OMG, Vote?! Srsly?!?!

Right now I feel like I'm the opposite of Bruce Banner: you would like me when I'm angry. At least I hope you would...

Some douche decided it was necessary to create a facebook event for the upcoming Presidential election on November 4th. This, naturally, brought a whole plethora of questions to my mind, followed by their logical conclusion--my pissy retort. Quoth...myself:



(as always, click on the pic above if it's too hard to read the tiny, screen-grabbed text)

Note that, at press time, the group has 5,673 members. That's a whole lotta douche.

Easy Does It

I bumped into last call and didn't get to play but half of my intended setlist at Firehouse Grill tonight. If I'd had the chance, I'd have done this song, "Easy Does It" by the ever fantastic Bonnie 'Prince' Billy, off of his very highly rated 2008 release, Lie Down in the Light. FSE for cereal.



In other entirely true news, I haven't actually said this since 9-12, but: I'm proud to be an American today.

Obama-Biden '08.

Vice President Biden...

So according to the text my phone received at 3:15 a.m., Senator Joe Biden is the nominee to be Barack Obama's Vice President. While I think the good senator from Illinois might have done better in countering the inevitable "inexperience" argument with a nominee who had some actual executive experience--such as a current/former Governor like Mark Warner, Tim Kaine, Bill Richardson, or Kathleen Sebelius--I think Biden's national security bona fides, as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations committee, give the Obama campaign a real feeling of gravitas on what will be, besides the economy of course, the most important issue of the whole campaign. Now Obama-Biden can go toe-to-toe with McCain on every issue; and for once, now, the Democrats don't have to just bend over and take it from the Republicans on foreign policy/national security--for that reason alone, this is a very solid pick. Good choice, Senator Obama.

At least you didn't pick your hillbilly half-brother Cooter...which technically means I still have a shot at Secretary of Moonshine.

My Two Cents...

So I just read this article on one of my "politics" messageboards about PUMA, (a.k.a. "Party Unity My Ass") which is either a radically pro-Clinton faction, or a radically anti-Obama faction--depending on how you look at it--of jilted Clinton supporters which formed days after Obama mathematically won the Democratic nomination over their candidate by delegate count. PUMA is planning a parade in Denver on the second day of the DNC, August 26th, in order to both voice their displeasure over Hillary's primary loss, and also try to shoehorn her onto the party ticket as V.P. I was inspired on said messageboard to write this response to said article, and wanted to share it here:

Of course, the great irony about PUMA and similar factions within the Democratic party is that they fall victim to the very same chief argument they use, and have used, to deride Obama's relevance as a candidate: that his is a politics of mere personality cultism, nothing more. If the members of these groups would simply realize that they are, by embracing their similarly cultish devotion to Hillary, giving strength to the Republican party--their real (read: ideological) opponent!--vis a vis McCain, maybe they'd get real and throw their support behind the candidate (Obama, not McCain, duh) who best represents their expressed values? Unless, that is, their highest political value is simply electing a President with a vagina...

Hell, it's only a decade or two of a conservative-dominated Supreme Court if so...

Your thoughts?

[Insert witty post title here. Too easy...]

New York Senate Majority Leader Joe Bruno--wow! 7 consecutive, properly capitalized words to begin a sentance?! Is that a record?--clearly must not have read the decal on the door of this truck before his photo-op during a recent fuel price protest in the Empire State...



(from an AP photo used originally on this politico.com slideshow.)

I can haz McCain?

Mega lulz via Too Much Nick:

As promised, time to whine about Hillary('s supporters)

Let me first preface the following rant: I am actually fond of Hillary Clinton; it's her supporters who scare me.

This quote, from a CNN.com article, sums up why:

"I love her and will vote for her in 2012, but it's McCain all the way now," wrote one [of Clinton's supporters] within moments of the New York senator's [farewell] address.

Polls are showing, in Ohio, for example, that over 25% of Clinton's supporters plan on voting for McCain instead of Obama; in Florida, that figure is more than 33%.

Which completely baffles me because... Hillary. agrees. with. Barack. on. (almost) every. single. issue.

Health care, ending the Iraq war, gay rights, women's reproductive rights, repealing Bush's tax cuts, etc: the differences between the two Democratic campaigns' respective platforms are negligible at worst. The differences between the Democratic platforms and Senator McCain's platform are MONUMENTAL. As Senator Clinton expressed in her brilliant final campaign speech:

"Life is too short, time is too precious, and the stakes are too high to dwell on what might have been. We have to work together for what still can be. And that is why I will work my heart out to make sure that Senator Obama is our next president, and I hope and pray that all of you will join me in that effort."

Alas, huge groups of Hillary's supporters would seemingly rather help elect John McCain to the White House--likely handing an unbreakable 20+ year Supreme Court majority to the conservatives, possibly overturning Roe v. Wade, unnecessarily prolonging the senseless death and destruction in Iraq, greatly increasing the likelihood of an attack on Iran, and essentially preserving (not erasing) the worst of Bush's legacies--than ensure we install a similar progressive candidate to their own, whose only fault in their eyes is that he lacks a vagina. (Or is black?)

Get real people, this shit is serious.

What a Speech!

Also: Speaking of Rush Limbaugh...

Why is he so frequently pictured with a cigar in hand/mouth?

He'd look less latently gay if he would just replace the phallic object with, y'know...an actual phallus.