Public Enemy and Anthrax

My main man Dan, the sexiest of all L.A. Record contributors, got to interview Chuck D last week!  And the interview is in the print version of the magazine.

But one of his questions that didn’t make the cut was about Public Enemy and Anthrax collaborating on a version of “Bring the Noise!”  I know that for a lot of head-banging punkers, it was this tune that finally helped them cross over into fandom for their beat-driven brethren.  Run DMC and Aerosmith made the first incision, but this song pulled the gash wide open, and a bunch of bloody things like the Judgment Night soundtrack and Body Count spilled out of the wound.  Unfortunately, we then got awful, terrible sounding bands like Rage Against the Machine and Limp Bizkit combining hip-hop with rock in terrrible, terrible ways.  But when the rap-rock hybrid was first getting going, it was a match made in heaven:

if Vermont can legalize gay marriage, why can’t California?

Vermont legalized gay marriage today!  And they were the first state to do it in the legislature.  They even garnered enough votes to override any potential veto by their Rethuglican governor:

The House recorded a dramatic 100-49 vote, the minimum needed, to override Gov. Jim Douglas’ veto. Its vote followed a much easier override vote in the Senate, which rebuffed the Republican governor with a vote of 23-5.

On the one hand, this makes me mad at Californians, who went to the polls in droves to vote for Obama, yet turned to the next page in the election booklet and punched a hole for hate.  But on the other hand… I’m even MORE mad that California received the brunt of the anti-gay agenda’s money!  I’m no research journalist, but I imagine that the funds from such organizations as Focus on the Family were so drained by our losing battle in California, that they had no more funds to spend limiting gay rights in the heartland.  And the anti-gay marriage crowd seems to back that up:

Craig Bensen, a gay marriage opponent who had lobbied unsuccessfully for a nonbinding referendum on the question, said he was disappointed but believed gay marriage opponents were outspent by supporters by a 20-1 margin.

“The other side had a highly funded, extremely well-oiled machine with all the political leadership except the governor pushing to make this happen,” he said. 

Just days ago, Iowa legalized gay marriage, and now Vermont’s historic win proves that gay marriage is growing in popularity as Gen X and Gen Y rise up in the spirit of “eh, why not?”  We love our gay friends and don’t see what the big fuss from the religious right is all about.  Actually we DO see it, and we’re beginning to call it out for the stupidity it is.

Earl Scruggs is the best banjo player EVER!

Well, you could argue on Bill Monroe’s behalf.  But Bill never did this:

the eagle never hunts the fly

I just finished reading Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock-and-Roll’s Legendary Neighborhood.  While it was cool to read about Frank Zappa’s log cabin and Joni Mitchell living with Stephen Stills, I have to admit that in my heart, I still prefer balls-out rockers to any of these hippie fucks.  What the fuck can Stephen Stills tell me that the Music Machine can’t blow out of the water?  You can FEEL this music.  In your groin.

 

As for Laurel Canyon, it was a decent read, though there was a whole chapter and a half about the Troubadour that had very very very little to do with the book’s thesis statement.  For the record, I love a good chunk of the musicians who lived in Laurel Canyon back in the day.  The ones who live there now suck ass, though.

can the media bias against Dems get any worse?

I expect bias from the Fox News folks (more on Victoria Jackson later), but why are all the press rooms today full of malarkey stories about Obama’s “earmarks,” as though Republicans aren’t asking for some of the biggest earmarks, and as though a bill with 1.9% of its money going to earmarks is somehow full of pork?

I wouldn’t have bothered blogging about it–the media bias has become so common in the last decade and a half that I think it’s not worth parsing through–I usually leave that to The Daily Howler, one of my favorite blogs.  But then I logged into my yahoo account and saw this:

 

Yahoo, what the fuck?  Note that they fucking lead with “Obama defends pet projects.”  What about “Obama Passes Monumental Spending Bill?” or “Obama signs Omnibus Bill, but Cautiously,” or “Obama Signs Spending Bill, Cautions Against ‘Business as Usual,’” or one of the many fucking things that would be more succinct and to the point than this gobbledygook that obfuscates the real lead here, which is that a potential boon to the economy just passed, and that we should maybe make sure the money is enough and gets used wisely? 

I have no problem with criticizing Obama.  Hell, he sucks Clean Coal’s dick, he’s a shitty negotiator with the Republicans, and he lets bigots such as Rick Warren give his invocation.  But to lead with “Obama defends pet projects?”  That’s like a headline saying “FDR Owns Gramophone Recordings of The Mikado, but Declares War on Japan.”  Less than fucking 2% of this bill was used for earmarks, and half that money roughly was earmarked by Republicans anyway, and a lot of that money will still indirectly stimulate the economy by providing jobs.  As I learned today from a shockingly well-written and informative Republican blog, six of the ten highest earmarkers on this bill were Republicans.  And of what’s left for the Dems, maybe two things are “pet projects” of Obama.  So why lead with a sentence that refers to maybe 0.03% of a spending bill that, as John Stewart pointed out tonight, has less potential defects than a can of apricots?  Why put the pork guilt on Obama?

But what reaaaaallly makes me mad is that jab at the Kennedys, which in the context of this Yahoo splash page is basically another jab at the Dems.  Kennedy = liberal elitist from New England, and money for Kennedys = waste, right?

But  I did the math.  According to the pandering asshole loser, I mean, AP reporter Steve LeBlanc, a bunch of earmark money is going to the Rose Kennedy Greenway in Boston, plus like $22 million is going to the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, and a smaller chunk is going to the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the Senate.  That’s 32.8 million total.

Don’t get me wrong: to me, 32.8 million dollars is a lot of money, and I would gladly drink Drano for that amount.  But let’s look at the data from Taxpayers for Common Sense, not a liberal organ by any means.  According to their documentation, $51,075,000  in earmarks is set aside for the Eisenhower Executive Office Building Phase III, accompanied by $14,700,000 for the Eisenhower Executive Office Building CBR, whatever that is.  That’s over $65 million for one building named after a Republican president.  When you tack on the $333,000 for the Eisenhower Foundation, Washington, DC (”to replicate and evaluate job-training and supportive services programs for disadvantaged workers in Des Moines, Iowa”), you wind up seeing that $66,108,000 was spent on Dwight Eisenhower alone, more than twice the amount spent on three different Kennedys added together.

So, why did Steve LeBlanc craft an article together about Kennedy-funding earmarks, instead of “Dwight Eisenhower Takes Earmarks from the Grave,” or just simply “Millions in Earmarks Spent on Dead Presidents?”  Maybe it’s for the same reason that Yahoo put two anti-Dem articles in their email landing page today, or the reason that we see no articles about the Republicans such as Sen. Arlen Specter who decry earmarks while at the same time making them, or the reason that we NEVER saw articles during the primo Bush years that watered down his decision-making with scrutiny (they did start aiming criticism at him, eventually, but not until about 2005, after he’d already lied, tortured, spied, and Patriot-ed till the cows came home, literally).  It’s that the media has a hard-on about shooting down Dems.

Once again, there is plenty about Obama and the Dems in general to get riled up against, in particular their wormy weakness and their poll-driven poker faces.  They have two branches of government that they are just squandering, and it makes me want to puke.  But this spending bill was remarkably lean, and the fat was purely bipartisan.  The media wants you to believe that Ted Kennedy and Barack Obama crammed this bill into their own home-made pork barrel behind the Bobby Kennedy Special Interest Pig Barn, and that just ain’t the fucking case.

Stricken Pot Pie

Haven’t posted on this thing in a while… I’ve been too busy at my day-job, where I clean and gut chickens for a living. Just kidding! It’s not much of a living.

Anyway, I found this website today from a link on Crooks and Liars. All I can say is, wow. Great idea, beautifully implemented. And funny to boot.

Michael Steele writes his own Onion article

I have a fever today, but this looks more like a fever dream to me than any of the dreams I’ve been having about seals and Ricky Schroder:

Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Steele says his party is going to launch an “off the hook” public relations campaign that will update the GOP’s image by translating it to “urban-suburban hip-hop settings.”

Okay, that is just nuts.  But then he goes on to joke about “one-armed midgets,” and even inadvertently compares himself to Hitler with a little machismo bragging:

Steele dismissed the assessments of some Republicans that he needs a deputy to handle areas like logistics, fundraising and candidate recruitment. “I can run this organization just fine,” he said. “There will be no deputy chairman, period. …People who said I can’t make the trains run on time never gave a reason. I say to them, ‘Stuff it.’

This joker will never win because his party will fall apart as more and more fundamentalists realize they want their worldly rewards now in the form of jobs, health care, and financial security.  One thing he did say that struck me, though, was something the Dems should listen to:

“We missed the mark in the past, which is why we are in the crapper now,” he said. “We had the White House, the Senate and the House and were not building a farm team over the last years. We could have been ahead of Democrats and their 50-state strategy.”

I agree, the Dems victory and Obama’s in particular stemmed largely from an impressive, and long-term, plan of attacking all fifty states with their message.  There is absolutely no reason why, say, Montana should feel their needs are not served by Democrats.  And in the long term, we should want to get out to those people even if we can’t win an election this year, becauase we don’t want to lose elections in the next fifty years there because there was no short-term benefit on any given year.

a little comedy from Fox News

This is so funny.  What’s the point in replying when the posts answer themselves?

You arragont democrat.. I have been supporting my family and working and paying taxes for you stubid people way to long… and i have lost my job a few times.. every time your stubid democrats get in charge and mess the economy…
I will comprimise.. tell you what to not take any more of my money and let me decide where i want to spend it.. how is that..
You are clueless… obvious. I worked mydelf through college, raised a family and managed to not aske the governemnt for any help.. so do not pratronize us real performers in america.. you takers are dependent on us .. so suck it up..

There’s so much to love about this quote.  I won’t get into the amazing misspellings, but really, you went to college and think you never got any government help?  You didn’t learn that grammar at a private school.  And if you did, you should ask for your money back.

I can’t help but miss Dana Perino!

 Just for the record, I hate George W. Bush.  And virtually everybody involved in his cabinet deserves to die painfully, or at least to be tried as a war criminal.  And in particular, I am ashamed that anyone would even attempt to defend Bush’s atrocities.  During his tedious and evil reign, every moment his spin-masters protected Bush from the media and therefore from public scrutiny, I  felt we lost precious time for peace, and I often expressed rage at those who provided that spin and gave Bush that time.  In fact, I publicly rejoiced at the death of Tony Snow, an opinion for which I incurred serious anger from a few folks who previously kind of liked me.

But Jeezuz and Gomorrah, how could I feel ill will towards the lovely Dana Perino, Snow’s replacement as Bush Press Secretary, and the angel of many a Republican’s wet dreams? 

Okay, okay, I know that part of this comes from some ugly, sexist component of my brain, and I’m as disturbed by it as you are.  Not only am I sexualizing a successful public figure simply because she’s a woman, but I’m also sending the clear message that if you’re cute and kind of dumb and a woman, you get a free pass when you fuck up, because hey, you’re just a gal!  Our expectations are lowered by your gender (perhaps coupled with your news-anchor hotness).  We didn’t expect hard reality from a blonde cutie anyway.  When we heard Perino spin Bush’s ridiculosity for us, we just laughed it off as we would any woman’s estrogenic ramblings.

I know it sounds like that, but hear me out, and not just to assuage my own sexist guilt. Though I acknowledge having a really twisted crunch on Dana Perino somewhat similar to Drew Grant’s admitted hotness for John McCain, you know that there was something different about Perino’s approach to Press Secretary than her predecessors’.  And it’s not just her womanhood.

By contrast, let’s take the late Tony Snow.  Though I don’t believe Tony Snow actually drank the White House Kool-Aid (ironically, because he was far too right-wing), he certainly played the indignant, smug role well.  He lied like it was breathing, he spoke arrogantly to reporters, he turned questions into excuses to insult people.  He basically took Fox News and put it in the White House.

Perino had an entirely different tone.  She was more human, less smug, and though I think she was definitely a dyed-in-the-wool Bushie, she was incapable of the glib lying her predecessor excelled at.  According to conservative pundit Ronald Kessler, “what you notice when she is interviewed on TV is her expressive delivery. You stop and listen for her interesting nuances of emphasis. She doesn’t project the total confidence of the polished newscaster, and as a result, she inspires more trust.”  

He was right, in a sense–she inspired more trust because we knew her lies were lies, or at least that she was reciting the lies with a knowing glance, like she was in on the hilarity of it all.  It was her job to protect Bush, not to beat up on reporters, and she had the air of someone who’s just doing her job.  Sometimes she would nearly level with the press, giving answers that amounted to saying “okay, I’m going to give the ‘official’ Bush White House account of what happened, and I know you won’t believe it, and neither do I, but I have to say the words written on this little paper anyway.” 

Anyways, maybe in all of my lust, I’m actually picking on her, and that’s not even fair–she went to the same college as me (sadly, graduating a year before I got there), but then went on to grad school, which I didn’t even do, and worked her way into the public eye largely based on her merits.

And after last week’s appearance on the Daily Show, I can’t decide, in the parlance of Vice Magazine’s “Do’s and Don’ts,” whether I want to fuck her or be her.  This is just too amazing.

Obama’s “Sunlight Before Signing”

What a nightmare we’ve been in!  It’s been such a joy today to realize that the Bush administration is finally over.

One of the best things I got to do today was peruse the new whitehouse.gov site!  Besides just generally looking awesome now that Whistle-ass’s face is off the damned thing, it’s really informative and interesting to read Obama’s agenda all in one official and officious place that has “.gov” at the end of it.

In particular, this section on Ethics is really encouraging:

Sunlight Before Signing: Too often bills are rushed through Congress and to the president before the public has the opportunity to review them. President Obama will not sign any non-emergency bill without giving the American public an opportunity to review and comment on the White House website for five days.

I mean, if Bush had honored that rule after 9/11, we might not have the Patriot Act!  And then we wouldn’t see things like this, a woman who went to jail for three months and lost custody of her kids because she spanked her kids and then sassed a flight attendant, in a New York Times story from today:

A flight attendant confronted Freeman, who responded by hurling a few profanities and throwing what remained of a can of tomato juice on the floor.

The incident aboard the Frontier flight ultimately led to Freeman’s arrest and conviction for a federal felony defined as an act of terrorism under the Patriot Act, the controversial federal law enacted after the 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.

“I had no idea I was breaking the law,” said Freeman, 40.

After three months in jail, Freeman agreed to plead guilty in exchange for being released on probation. A court-appointed attorney told her that a plea deal would be the fastest way to see her children, who had been taken back to Hawaii and put into foster care.

Her probation required her to stay in Oklahoma City, where she grew up, and prohibited her from flying. Meanwhile, legal proceedings in Hawaii have begun to allow the children’s foster parents to adopt them.

Freeman has been denied permission to attend custody hearings in Maui over the last six months, court records show.

“I have cried. I have cried for my children every day,” Freeman said. “I feel the system is failing me.”

Congress and Bush failed us when they passed the Patriot Act, and I’m glad Obama is addressing things like this from day one.  Clearly we’ve been going about it the wrong way for far too long.  God, I can’t wait to return to a time when laws kind of make sense, and transparency and rationality returns to legislation and executive power.  Obama better not break his fucking promises (except the one about not bringing Bush to justice–it’s okay by me if he wants to flip-flop on that).