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Finding God in a Dog
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| It would appear that the Bush administration's surveillance programs went way beyond illegal warrantless wiretaps.
Is anyone here surprised that the Bush administration's overreaching? Seriously? Frankly, what surprises me is that we're hearing about it at all. I would hav e expected this to stay swept under the rug.
Maybe now Obama will conduct that criminal investigation that his former supporters on the left have hoped to see. I'm not holding my breath. | comments: 3 people have weighed in or Weigh in!   |
| Remember how I said yesterday that it was going to be race between Giannoulias and Kirk?
Well, maybe not. Kirk dropped out after his fellow Republicans refused to back him in his primary race because he voted for the cap-and-trade bill.
There's an effort underway to bring him back in, but at this point, it looks like it's going to go to ILGOP chairman Andy McKenna. And if that's how this race shapes up, then all that stands between Giannoulias and the US Senate is a dark horse primary challenger. And, of course, possible flack over Broadway Bank. | | comments: 1 person has weighed in or Weigh in! |
| Another day, another dire prediction from UpstateDem. It's gotten to the point where the Kos kids don't want to deal with his crap anymore.
There's a grain of truth to what he's saying. Obama is down in the approval polls in every state, and I think I know why. That much ballyhooed Rasmussen result -- that Obama's strong positives are five points below his strong negatives -- tells us that the GOP faithful and the right hate Obama with much more intensity than the Democratic faithful and the left love Obama. (This is not a measure of approval; this is a measure of intensity of approval or disapproval.)
We don't have to wonder why the GOP faithful hate Obama; they have their reasons, and they range from legitimate (he's pro-choice, he's not really a free market type, they miss the old Cowboy foreign policies of Bush II) to batshit crazy (they think he's a Muslim, they think he wasn't born in America). Frankly, nothing Obama does is going to make this crowd happy.
We also don't have to wonder why the Democratic faithful are lukewarm on Obama. We still have troops in Iraq, the White House is making lame excuses on DADT and DOMA, the stimulus money isn't going out fast enough, the White House keeps floating trial balloons on weakening universal health care, and bankers are basically raping the treasury without giving us much in return. The difference here is that these are all things that the White House can fix. In particular, if we stick with the current plan to get our troops out of Iraq, repeal DADT and DOMA, and pass some form of actual no-kidding universal health care, that alone will bring Democrats back to the fold and make 2010 and 2012 much easier for Obama.
As for fixing the economy...well, his plan to do that was to get $800B in spending started, fast. So far, only about a tenth of that has been spent. The quick jolt to the economy has turned into a slow, gentle push, and while it's kept the wheels from falling off in a lot of places, it hasn't stopped the job losses from mounting up. If Bonddad is right, then things might turn around enough to help the Democrats 2010 chances. If he's wrong, then it's going to be an interesting fight as the two parties try to out-spin one another on this. Neither of them would have the high ground on this economy. | | comments: 2 people have weighed in or Weigh in! |
| * Yes, it's now 12:34:56 7/8/9
* There are very early signs that Harry Reid has woken up to the fact that he now controls 60 Senate votes.
Majority Whip Dick Durbin (Ill.) said Tuesday that he and Senate Leader Harry Reid (Nev.) will be asking the 60-member Democratic caucus to “stick together” on procedural votes that would allow the chamber to begin or end debate on legislation. Sixty votes are needed to close debate, or invoke cloture, on a measure and avoid a filibuster.
The message to Democrats, Durbin said, is: “Don’t let the Republicans filibuster us into failure. We want to succeed, and to succeed we need to stick together.” ...
With 60 caucus members, Senate Democratic leaders are now under increased pressure to deliver big legislative wins on health care and climate change, largely because Republicans theoretically can no longer use the filibuster rules to prevent Democrats from passing major pieces of the agenda. -- Roll Call
* The above-mentioned fact seems to have encouraged Reid to locate his gonads. For example, let's look at what he's doing on health care:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) on Tuesday ordered Finance Chairman Max Baucus (D-Mont.) to drop a proposal to tax health benefits and stop chasing Republican votes on a massive health care reform bill.
According to Democratic sources, Reid told Baucus that taxing health benefits and failing to include a strong government-run insurance option of some sort in his bill would cost 10 to 15 Democratic votes; Reid told Baucus it wasn’t worth securing the support of Grassley and at best a few additional Republicans. -- Roll Call | | comments: Weigh in! |
| ÷ Congratulations to Senator Al Franken on his swearing in....
÷ ...and to Miss Chelsea Clinton, M. Phil, on her engagement.
÷ So yeah, Sarah Palin. For what it's worth, I believe she may try a run at the White House, and that it would take her nowhere. She may have throngs of enthusiastic followers, but she has no apparatus support. That's not necessarily a deal killer if she can run a smart guerilla campaign, but Palin is an intellectual, oratorical and policy featherweight. Ron Paul is light years ahead of her, and he doesn't stand a chance, either.
My very very very preliminary guess is that Mitt Romney will be the 2012 nominee, based only on his support within the party apparatus.
÷ I am really impressed with how Obama is handling Russia, especially considering how much damage there is to fix after the Bush/Putin years. Lost in all the MJ mania is the fun fact that the US and Russia have agreed to further nuclear arsenal reductions. More here.
÷ Looks like we have yet another ethnic clash in Western China, and this time it's not the Tibetians, but the Muslims, that are clashing with the Chinese. More here. This could get "interesting."
÷ Bonddad sees more evidence that the worst is over for the economy. More here. Note: this doesn't mean unemployment will go down soon..but it does mean it will start to go down in maybe six months. | | comments: 2 people have weighed in or Weigh in! |
| So let's say that you were asked to pick your top five albums for the decade from Y2k to the end of this year. What would be on your list?
I've already discussed why Tub Ring's Zoo Hypothesis would be one of my picks. For my second album, I decided to go through all the albums put out by bands that had "staged a comeback" in the last decade, and for the most part, those were underground metal bands from the 1980s and early 1990s that had fallen by the wayside after Clinton got elected. Somehow, music that reflected the selfishness and insanity of the world just didn't make sense when the world was pretty much at peace, people had confidence in the political system, unemployment was low, and there was lots of money to be made. (Rage Against The Machine notwithstanding.)
Once the new Iraq war started, however, the political insanity that informed underground rock music was back tenfold, an a lot of those bands that fell by the wayside came back with a vengeance. GWAR, which since 1996 had been an experiment in lame, came roaring back to life with War Party in 2004. Dave Mustaine of Megadeth recovered from his hand injury and put out two solid albums. Jello Biafra, still stinging from his lawsuit against the rest of the Dead Kennnedys, joined up with The Melvins to put out some of his best rock music ever. Eventually, even Metallica parted ways with Rick Rock, joined up with Rick Rubin, and started putting out listenable albums after almost two decades.
However, nobody had a better comeback than Ministry.
Remember, in 2002-2004, it was considered commercial suicide to take on the Bush administration. Remember also that Al Jourgensen has never been one to play along. He didn't just criticize the White House obliquely like Green Day did with American Idiot, he attacked them and everything else that he saw was wrong head on, with a chainsaw, laughing, daring the entire establishment to shut him down.
It started with "Houses of the Mole" in 2004 with the first track, titled "No W." You can guess what that was about. It ended in late 2007 with Ministry's final effort, "The Last Sucker," a bitter, grinding, "Slayer hard" album that ended with a long track including Eisenhower's final address to the public -- the one where he warned of the Military Industrial Complex.
Both of those albums, by the way, are incredible efforts. If you're a Ministry fan from their Mind/Psalm 69 days, get them, turn them up, and be prepared to be blown away. See kids, this Ministry of the last six years eats the old Bush I era Ministry of my youth for an appetizer.
However, the best album of the comeback era, IMO, is the middle effort, Rio Grande Blood. This album is unrelenting both musically and lyrically. "Rio Grande Blood" (the first track) is just an all-out attack on the former President, and it's followed up with "Senor Peligro," yet another and heavier attack on the former President in his role as the apparent perpetrator behind the attempted coup in Venezuela. It says pretty much everything about those tracks that Jourgensen then tones things down a bit with a joint effort between himself and a former drill sergeant. Jourgensen also takes on the official story on 9/11 and the Israel/Palestine mess, and includes a collaboration with Jello Biafra. The end result is ten tracks of rock harder and more biting than anything RATM ever attempted.
Keep in mind that it's not just the quality of this album that makes it one of my top five. It's also the fact that it captures the spirit of a very ugly period of history. The elections of 2000 and 2004, and the things that the Bush administration did during their tenure, left a lot of people incredibly pissed off. This album captures that feeling better than anything else I've heard from that period. The down side of that, of course, is that Rio Grande Blood will eventually seem dated and then irrelevant or even quaint, kinda like the anti-war songs of the Vietnam era. The music will still rock, but it will lose some of its punch. Whether that's because times get a lot better or a lot worse is yet to be seen.
Either way, Al Jourgensen has lost his muse in George W. Bush, and has decided to retire. Then again, if the same weasels and morons that ran this country during Reagan, Bush I and Bush II manage to lie, cheat and steal their way to power, he could make yet another comeback. | | comments: 5 people have weighed in or Weigh in! |
| Ah, now this is more like it!
Washington-- Democrats on a key Senate committee outlined a revised and far less costly healthcare plan Wednesday night that includes a government-run insurance option and an annual fee on employers who do not offer coverage to their workers.The plan carries a 10-year price tag of slightly more than $600 billion, Sens. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) said in a letter to other members of the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee. They said the plan would lead to 97% of all Americans having coverage, according to the Congressional Budget Office. The Associated Press obtained a copy of the letter.
Keep in mind that $600B over ten years is $60B a year. We'll save more than that by leaving Iraq. The big objection raised by opponents of the public option -- that it will cost too much -- pretty much goes away. Of course, the GOP will continue to oppose the public option as a massive, unconstitutional interference in the free market. Unfortunately for them, the power of that argument on the public discourse has been waning for some time now.
You might want to call your Senators at 202 224 3121 and tell them that you want a health care plan with a public option. | | comments: 7 people have weighed in or Weigh in! |
| MN Governor Tim Pawlenty signed the certificate of election for Al Franken this evening. Check it out here.
That's that! No more excuses, Harry! | | comments: 1 person has weighed in or Weigh in! |
| Between the wiretapping, the compromises I'm seeing on the health care debate, and the ongoing fiascoes in Afghanistan and Iraq, I often wonder what the hell we ended up with after we elected Obama.
Then he does stuff like this:
And while governments in the region may reject military ousters much more easily than, say, the civilian demonstrations that forced democratically elected leaders to resign earlier this decade in Argentina and Bolivia, the Obama administration has also shifted the way in which Washington reacts to such events.
By Sunday night, officials in Washington said they had spoken with Mr. Zelaya and were working for his return to power in Honduras, despite relations with Mr. Zelaya that had recently turned colder because of the inclusion of Honduras in the Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas, or ALBA, a leftist political alliance led by Venezuela.
The effort to engage Mr. Zelaya differed from Washington’s initial response to Venezuela’s brief coup in April 2002, when the Bush administration blamed Mr. Chávez for his own downfall and denied knowing about the planning of the coup, despite the revelation later that the Central Intelligence Agency knew developments about the plot in Caracas on the eve of its execution.
Apparently, when this President talks about upholding democracy ... he fucking means it. This is a very welcome change from the last 40 years or so. | | comments: 3 people have weighed in or Weigh in! |
| * Of course, Michael Jackson is dead. Insert joke here.
I was never enamored with the man or his music, even during his heyday in the 1980s (a time when most music was stupid, shallow, and about as inspired and soulful as a bare concrete wall). I don't consider death to be a necessarily bad thing, and in MJ's there were lots of signs that he was gravely ill, and in fact, far too ill to perform at these London shows. I do feel bad for his fans. I remember the vacuum I felt as when Kurt Cobain died. I can only imagine that they feel the same way.
Now that he's passed, I do think I'm going to get my hands on some of his work -- specifically, the stuff he did with the Jackson Five before his solo career. That stuff is damn good.
* Billy Mays is dead. I wonder if I can get him to be a pitch man for the Drop Dead Diet?
Actually, I feel for his kid. Losing a parent makes one sharply aware of one's mortality. | | comments: 1 person has weighed in or Weigh in! |
| US troops have mostly withdrawn from Iraq's cities, several days ahead of a June 30 deadline established by agreement between the Bush administration and the Iraqi government. In their place are Iraqi units trained to handle security.
Now, keep in mind that our troops are still immediately available, and are still in immanent danger. They're stationed just outside the cities, with some additional "non-combat" troops in Mosul for added good measure. Still, given the difficulty and logistical complexity of this task, I can't call it anything but a huge success.
The plan is to have US troops withdraw from Iraq by 2010. I'm definitely looking forward to that. | | comments: Weigh in! |
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Finding God in a Dog
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