Thursday, August 30, 2012

Hit Girl*

Kick Ass, 2009 (Joan Jett's Bad Reputation)

The politics of the RNC convention are awful, horrible and without question...terrrrible.

There is no amount of fact checking from our weakened press corps to prevent these guys from stealing the election with a dust storm of clever lies and half-truths—it is the most cynical thing I've ever seen.

*The most deeply wrongheaded, (and brilliant) bit of filmaking I've seen in a long time.

Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Rainy Tuesday Soundtrack

                Jazz In Paris, Chet Baker Quartet Plays Standards

Monday, August 27, 2012

Monday Night Soundtrack

                            Slave, Slide

I Hate Morning Joe...

But Chris Matthews' pointed challenge of Reince Priebus is a thing of beauty, and the discomfort of the other "villagers" on the stage is delicious.














Good for Chris Matthews.

She Does It

                           SCTV

The best comedy show on TV. 

Harvard Educated Asshole Has Serious Opinions About The Bewildering (And Scary) Vajayjay

Entirely lifted from the great TBogg.
















Shorter Ross Douthat:
"I will grudgingly agree to allow rape victims to terminate their pregnancies if you will allow me to incrementally restrict the reproductive rights of all of the other women, most of whom are willingly giving it away because they’re sluts. C’mon. I’m meeting you half way…"

Previous Douthat Vagina Monologues here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
And this because it explains so much


               .                              .                              .


I hate these fucking people—and especially the access they have to pump pure shit into the body politic.

Saturday, August 25, 2012

Intellectual Capital: Who Needs It?

If science interferes with political goals, it must be undermined.

Friday, August 24, 2012

A Beggar Competing With Princes

Ulysses, 1954

Heavy on the Lust For Life Kirk Douglas, but Ulysses has always been a favorite of mine.

Friday Soundtrack

                           James Brown and the Famous Flames, Bewildered

Thursday, August 23, 2012

Thursday Soundtrack

                             Otis Redding, That's How Strong My Love Is

Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Tuesday Soundtrack

                        Jane's Addiction, Been Caught Stealing

Sunday, August 19, 2012

The Poors

















Make everybody poor and then shame them all (by getting other poors to be self-righteously poorer).

This election will be super painful.

h/t Down With Tyranny

Saturday, August 18, 2012

Leave Us...

Neil Young. Helpless
Live At Massey Hall, 1971

Diane Arbus

                             Masters of Photography, Diane Arbus (doucumentary, 1972)                                           
Once past Doon Arbus' introduction, there is a good voice over of of Diane's words speaking directly about her photography and her subjects.

"Most people go through life dreading they'll have a traumatic experience.
Freaks were born with their trauma. They've already passed their test in life—they're aristocrats."
 "If you've ever spoken with someone with two heads, you know they know something you don't."

Saturday Soundtrack

                           Patti Smith, Pissing In A River

Should I pursue a path so twisted ?
Should I crawl defeated and gifted ?

h/t JL

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Thursday Soundtrack

            The Beatles, White Album 1968 (full)

A masterpiece.

also...the Walrus is Paul.

Wednesday, August 15, 2012

Tuesday, August 14, 2012

Tuesday Soundtrack

                           Buddy Rich on the Lenny Bruce Show, 1959

Sunday, August 12, 2012

"Take Douches And Make Them Douchier"


"But the reason I got involved in public service, by and large, if I had to credit one thinker, one person, it would be Ayn Rand."
Paul Ryan (R), Wisconsin

Saturday, August 11, 2012

Saturday Soundtrack

                            Miles Davis, Bitches Brew (full)

Mitt Romney Picks The Granny-Starver for VP

WMxDesign




















This election will now have to be about class, however coded—this guy wants to dismantle ALL entitlement programs (Medicare, Social Security, Medicaid, etc.).

By virtue of enormous tax cuts for the wealthy and corporations, Paul Ryan's budget will entirely break the non-military sector of the federal government—it's a feature not a bug.

also:

12 cogent reasons to not elect the crazy Ryan-Romney team.

also, a must read:
Paul Ryan is an authentically dangerous zealot. He does not want to reform entitlements. He wants to eliminate them. He wants to eliminate them because he doesn't believe they are a legitimate function of government. He is a smiling, aw-shucks murderer of opportunity, a creator of dystopias in which he never will have to live. This now is an argument not over what kind of political commonwealth we will have, but rather whether or not we will have one at all, because Paul Ryan does not believe in the most primary institution of that commonwealth: our government. The first three words of the Preamble to the Constitution make a lie out of every speech he's ever given. He looks at the country and sees its government as something alien that is holding down the individual entrepreneurial genius of 200 million people, and not as their creation, and the vehicle through which that genius can be channelled for the general welfare.
from Charles Pierce

Friday, August 10, 2012

Set The Bar Impossbly High—Insist That One's Cultural Identity Never Be Used To An Advantage (unless white)—Dare The Individual To Accurately Frame The Obstacles He or She Overcame To Succeed—Foster Resentment—Rinse and Repeat

Because he (Obama) is a black man, he has an obligation to be grateful to the white people who voted him into office. Because he is a black man, he has an obligation not to use the full powers of his office in such a way as to alienate any of the white people who so graciously voted him into office. Because he is a black man, he has an obligation not to use the full advantages of his office in his effort to get those white people to reelect him as their president for another four years. Because those white people voted him into office, his primary job as president is to make sure his entire presidency is a demonstration of how far we've come as a nation on race, and that means he is not allowed to do anything or say anything that the white people who elected him can perceive to be divisive, because his primary function is to make them feel good about themselves. In theory, at least, all presidents are servants of the people who elected them. In the case of Barack Obama, it has seemed from the start that the idea as applied to him was more than mere metaphor. He is the first president in my lifetime whom the country felt obligated to remind that he know his place.
                              .                    .                    .

He wasn't elected to be president, after all. He was elected as an avatar of American tolerance. His attempts to get himself reelected imply a certain, well, ingratitude.
from Charles Pierce

Great read and sadly true.

The right is terrified that Obama will be perceived as overcoming prejudice to become president..."What racial prejudice?"

Friday Soundtrack

                             Rolling Stones, Exile On Main Street

Fantastic and raw.

Once long, long ago, I spent an entire summer drinking, driving and wanting to fight somebody while under the influence of this fucking album.

In the end, nothing was damaged (beyond my ridiculous psyche).

Thursday, August 09, 2012

Thursday Soundtrack

                           Stanley Clarke, Lopsy Lu

Mars! (bitches)














It may just be a dead sphere far, far away, but I can't get enough of these images.

(A) Pussy Riot


On February 21, 2012, as a part of a protest movement against re-election of Vladimir Putin, three women from the group came to the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour of the Russian Orthodox Church in Moscow, crossed themselves and began to perform a song. After less than one minute, they were escorted outside the building by guards.[8] The film of the performance was later used to create a video clip for the song.
from here

Saturday, August 04, 2012

Saturday Soundtrack

              The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Axis: Bold as Love

I Hate These Fucking People/The Plutocracy Is Here/A wise person said: "We've Already Lost."



























This represents a top down effort (national office down to school council) to not only buy elections, but to also purchase and install a regressive political culture that will take generations to undo.

1,082 wealthy individuals are currently drinking our milkshakes.


from Mother Jones

Friday, August 03, 2012

I can't sleep 'cause my bed's on fire...

                                            Amazing live footage of the Talking Heads at CBGB's in 1975.

 h/t Dangerous Minds

Friday Soundtrack

                              The Kills, Blood Pressures (Full Album)

h/t magik spiral

The Road

                       Appropriate for this weekend—going to the city.

h/t Lawyers, Guns & Money

Thursday, August 02, 2012

More Soundtrack

Coz I've got nothin' to hate on today (emphasis is entirely mine).

Thursday Soundtrack

                            The Nipple Erectors (The Nips), Vengeance

For the H.E.

Wednesday, August 01, 2012

RIP, Gore Vidal (updated)

[From Aaron Burr's journal]: [Thomas] Jefferson was a ruthless man who wanted to create a new kind of world, dominated by independent farmers each living on his own rich land, supported by slaves. It is amazing how beguilingly he could present this contradictory visions. But then in all his words if not deeds Jefferson was so beautifully human, so eminently vague, so entirely dishonest but not in any meretricious way. Rather it was a passionate form of self-delusion that rendered Jefferson as president and as man (not to mention as writer of tangled sentences and lunatic metaphors) confusing even to his admirers.
I read Burr, A Novel, when it was first published in 1973. I was 15 years old and not terribly interested in Aaron Burr, but I knew Gore Vidal from watching his eloquent and taciturn debate with William F. Buckley during the 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago.

It was delightful to watch because both men literally wanted to make the other catch fire...by sheer force of hatred.

                              

Updated: Talk about wanting someone to catch fire.

Wednesday (Work-life) Soundtrack

                            The Replacements, Treatment Bound

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