Art Break

Ligon discusses Notes on the Margin of the Black Book and his African American coloring book series.

Also...
               images

Drives Them Crazy

Republicans hate Obama because he's decent, funny, and oh yeah, kind of cool.

They'll claim appearances like this are beneath the office of the president—think George W. Bush.

It drives them crazy because it's effective and they can't possibly invent a "cool" that's also conservative—think Ted Nugent.

It's just not fair.

A Man Who Fell To Earth*

This is both hilarious and impossible to watch. 

 56 Star Trek episodes played simultaneously

You're welcome.

 h/t twilight1138

*film

Opportunistic L I A R S

Turns out that, in their new crystal ball, the trustees note that wages have stalled and that unemployment is something of a problem and that, therefore, the number of people paying into the fund, and the amount that those people can contribute, is likely, maybe, perhaps, who-the-hell-knows-but-panic-anyway, to fall off over the next 20 years or so...unless, of course, we, as a country, actually decide, y'know, to do something about stagnant wages, income inequality, and chronic unemployment.

from Charles Pierce

The DEFICIT has nothing to do with Social Security and Medicare, but all three are negatively impacted by low taxes, unemployment, and stagnant wages.

 If anyone states that reducing the DEFICIT will improve the future of Social Security and Medicare...wait for it...they are L Y I N G.

Mesmer

Andy Warhol, Edie Sedgwick, 1965

These things are powerful.

Poor Edie.

Sunday Morning Soundtrack

Jimmy Cliff - The Harder They Come from AEG Live UK on Vimeo.

Baldwin vs Buckley, 1965

Another time capsule.

Ta-Nehisi Coates posts a great video of James Baldwin and William F. Buckley debating at Cambridge.

Coates' post thoughtfully illustrates how conservatives like WFB, see racism primarily through the prism of maintaining a rhetorical advantage—not that real people's lives are diminished or destroyed by discrimination and hatred.

When I was a kid, I often watched Buckley's show to see how he turned conceptual defeats into rhetorical victories—the head cocked back, the eyebrows arched with malice—he was a great villain to watch, but a villain nevertheless.

Also...
Baldwin is brilliant.

Prevail

Mitchum is speaking with a WWII frame (probably bourbon as well).

Which doesn't help explain why we heard the same thing from Americans during most of the last decade...name the conflict.

                .                              .                              .


For a diversion, I've been typing a year, 1966 for example, into YouTube to check out what's available—news, culture, politics—and I don't get that the American core has changed that much in 40+ years.

The subject for our fear or hatred shifts, but the insecurity prevails.

Although it's interesting to consider that the media footprint of that time—and its ability to create homogenous narratives—was relatively small.

L I A R S

All...

Sooner or later, the elite political media was going to commit itself whole-hog to the humanization and rehabilitation of the Romneybot 2.0. This is because the elite political media would arrange for its own immolation rather than have anyone call it "liberal," and because the elite political media needs a horserace so that it can appear balanced in that regard.

Charles Pierce

Sunday Night Soundtrack

Neil Young, After The Gold Rush,1970

Occupied By a Growing Population of Hippies

CBS documentary, 1967

An early example of how the Columbia Broadcasting System instilled fear, manufactured stereotypes, and cast collective judgement on the "hippies."

Subtle, but as rear-guard as it gets—Richard Nixon would benefit greatly in the following year.

"Liberal media" my ass.

"Get the hell out of my race and give me those numbers."

To this day, Massachusetts (and Boston) is a mixed bag of right and left—often barely the blue state the right wingers love to sneer and moan about.

h/t Digby

Somewhat related—it will be a scorcher for tomorrow's Monday's marathon.

It Could Be Worse...

New scientific research raises the possibility that advanced versions of T. rex and other dinosaurs — monstrous creatures with the intelligence and cunning of humans — may be the life forms that evolved on other planets in the universe.

"...Such life forms could well be advanced versions of dinosaurs, if mammals did not have the good fortune to have the dinosaurs wiped out by an asteroidal collision, as on Earth. We would be better off not meeting them.”

from here


I love the possibility.

Had things worked out differently, maybe the illustration below would have T-rex cradling the baby Jesus in its (tiny) arms.

h/t Charles Pierce

Friday Soundtrack

Jimi Hendrix, Hey Joe

Great footage.

Also...

RIP

Mauricio Lasansky

Time in Space, undated etching

Nazi Drawing, 1966

A dark image maker.

The Tea Party's David

I don't really understand why this guy is getting so much post-croak attention. Is this how media giants (NYTimes) polish their anti-elite silver?

If so, there can be no greater example of how a race to the bottom functions.

Thomas Kincade. The Daytona 500

Jacques-Louis David, Death of Marat

Saturday Soundtrack

Miles Davis, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, Ron Carter, Tony Williams
Stockholm 1963

Earlier...

Miles Davis, Milestones

A Mantra For The 21st Century...

...Embrace the Radicalism of Obedience!

Hopefully another example of the "death rattle" phenomenon—a centuries old belief system with a vast ideological/bureaucratic infrastructure rapidly losing its relevance.

Move along please.

Oh, and Happy Easter!

Pierced

The New York Times' Bill Keller inexplicably whines about hate crime laws—Charles Pierce noticed.

...But this...

In most cases, hate crime laws take offenses that would carry more modest sentences — assault, vandalism — and ratchet up the penalty two or three times because we know, or think we know, what evil disposition lurked in the offender's mind. Then we pat ourselves on the back. As if none of us, pure and righteous citizens, ever entertained a racist thought or laughed at a homophobic slur.
Bill Keller, NYT

...is just a glib horror. How many of "us," no matter what we may think in the privacy of our own minds, have tied a black man to the bumper of a car and dragged him down a dirt road until his fking head popped off? If someone kills with unique savagery, and that savagery is based not in some dim psychological twisting but in coolly intellectualized race hatred, does the latter really have a constitutional protection because man is inherently a savage anyway?
Charles Pierce, Esquire

Bill Keller harrumphs.