Bonus Quote of the Day

"Those who are impotent and limp and gutless and they go on their anonymous, sources that are anonymous, and impotent, limp and gutless reporters take anonymous sources and cite them as being factual references. It just slays me because it's so absolutely clear what the state of yellow journalism is today that they would take these anonymous sources as fact."

-- Sarah Palin responding exactly the way you knew she would to a new Vanity Fair article that portrays her as a pathological liar who's more than a little unhinged

I've read this over several times and aside from the juvenile insult aimed what Palin probably truly believes is the author of the article's flaccid penis, I can't for the fucking life of me figure out what the hell she's talking about.

By the way, this received "Quote of the Day" status only because I couldn't think of a way to transcribe Jan Brewer going, "Uh.. uh... and... um... uh...budget," for a full minute.

Folks, I give you the she-wolves of the modern Republican party. Move over Mensa.

Brewer, Idiot

This is so damn uncomfortable, it's like watching Travis Bickle on the pay phone trying to apologize to Betsy for taking her to a porn movie.

Quote of the Day

"Glenn Beck's rally was large, vague, moist and undirected -- the Waterworld of white self-pity"

-- Christopher Hitchens in Slate

My God, how I'm going to miss this guy if he doesn't survive his current battle with cancer. It will be a smart people tragedy like nothing we've seen in years.

Hitchens goes on to make a terrific point about how Beck's seemingly unfathomable appropriation of MLK's legacy and the civil rights movement in general -- which so many people rightly mocked over the past few weeks -- is really nothing more than an attempt to provide confirmation to the doughy, Middle-American doofs who worship him that, as whites, they're the new minority.

Listening Post

For more than three-quarters of my life, this has been one of my absolute favorite songs. It features an instantly identifiable sax line and one of the coolest damn guitar solos ever recorded.

From 1978, here's Gerry Rafferty's Baker Street.

Karmageddon

And here I thought it was just a joke to say that Michael Bay would have to rescue a bucket full of puppies from drowning in a river for me to like him.

WWTDD: Michael Bay Offers $50,000 Reward for Woman Filmed Throwing Puppies Into River/9.1.10

Well, this is a start.

Now all he has to do is build a time machine, go back to 1942 and create a list of Jews he saves from the Nazi gas chambers and then maybe it'll make up for the last Transformers movie. The guy who shot the squealing puppy death video didn't inflict the kind of trauma on my brain that Bay did with that thing.

Quote of the Day

"He just gave them the best political gift they never deserved."

-- Rachel Maddow on President Obama's not simply conciliatory but almost congratulatory tone toward the previous administration on the subject of the war in Iraq during last night's address to the nation

Well, it's official: They got away with it.

I'm generally reluctant to hammer Obama too hard because he's already getting it from all sides these days, but as of last night the entirely pointless folly in Iraq that killed thousands of Americans, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis, led to the rise of an unopposed Iran, fomented hatred of the U.S abroad, and helped to sink our economy to the tune of billions of wasted taxpayer dollars has been relegated to nothing more than a controversial decision that the patriots in the White House were perfectly entitled to make -- rather than the crime of the century, which is what it really was.

That's the beauty of the Bush era: It fucked things up so monumentally that we have no choice but to concentrate on fixing the damage rather than tying ourselves up going after the assholes who handed it to us on a silver, shit-piled platter.

Listening Post

They're one of the coolest yet most underappreciated British rock bands of the 80s, and they continue to make damn good music to this day (particularly frontman Nick Marsh, whose solo album from a few years back was spectacular).

Here's two from Flesh for Lulu.

Decline and Fall and Idol.

Capitol Grill

At this point, Chase Whiteside is a national treasure.

(Via Cesca)

Quote of the Day

"There’s nothing in the world more tired than a progressive blogger like me flipping out over the latest idiocies emanating from the Fox News crowd. But this summer’s media hate-fest is different than anything we’ve seen before. What we’re watching is a calculated campaign to demonize blacks, Mexicans, and gays and convince a plurality of economically-depressed white voters that they are under imminent legal and perhaps even physical attack by a conspiracy of leftist nonwhites. They’re telling these people that their government is illegitimate and criminal and unironically urging secession and revolution."

-- Matt Taibbi

Despite the risk of violating Godwin's Law, Taibbi goes on to say that at least Hitler actually hated the Jews -- as opposed to the Republican lawmakers, Fox News Channels and right-wing talk radio blowhards of the world who are simply exploiting a brewing animosity toward minorities to further their own careers. That said, there has to be an anger there for them to foment and exploit in the first place -- and that hatred is, unfortunately, very, very real right now. We're in no danger of becoming Nazi Germany if for no other reason than the fact that America is so large and fragmented that it's damn-near impossible to get everyone to rally around one cultural touchstone, even if that touchstone is fear of anti-American infestation.

But make no mistake: When things are as bad as they are right now economically -- when there's unemployment and depression and there doesn't seem to be anything anyone can do about it -- people tend to look for someone to blame besides themselves and their own idealistic vision of what their country should be. And if there isn't an obvious scapegoat handy, they'll listen to and rally around anyone who points them in the right direction.

When Complaints Go Marching In

This probably won't win me many friends on the cocktail party circuit, but Harry Shearer needs to kind of shut the hell up. The voice of Mr. Burns, Ned Flanders and a host of other characters on The Simpsons -- as well as a regular member of Christopher Guest's merry band of mockumentary lunatics -- is one of the funniest and cleverest guys around. Or at least he was until he found a cause.

For the past couple of years, Shearer's chosen to trade in his sense of humor in the name of becoming professionally sullen and pissy about the injustices he sees all around him. (The proper name for this is to Garofalo.) What he sees around him, being that New Orleans is his adopted home, is unmitigated failure in the time leading up to and in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. I'm obviously not going to diminish or make light of the human catastrophe that was Katrina; from almost every possible perspective -- personal, political, cultural -- what happened to the Gulf Coast in 2005, and what was in some ways compounded by the recent BP oil spill, was a criminal disaster of biblical scope. I also have no problem with New Orleans being Harry Shearer's pet project; it only makes sense given that he spends most of his time there and has a real love for the place. While I admit that it outraged me to watch the city essentially drown on national television while our government sat with its thumbs up its feckless ass, I didn't have the kind of personal connection to what I was witnessing that someone who called New Orleans home would have.

No, what I take issue with is Shearer -- by any standard a whip-smart guy -- jumping on the already crowded "You've Failed Us!" bandwagon currently dragging Barack Obama's corpse around the left-wing blogosphere like Hector being dragged around Troy. His new post over at HuffPo, entitled President Obama Speaks To New Orleans from Planet Zarg, is the latest in a series of jabs he's taken at the president -- but this one is particularly egregious because Shearer's argument seems to be that Obama didn't spend the predetermined but entirely arbitrary amount of time in New Orleans over the weekend necessary to properly mark the fifth anniversary of Katrina and that he didn't say the right thing while he was there. It's one thing to shout that you're disappointed in Barack Obama because, say, unemployment remains sky-high or we're still M4 muzzle-deep in Afghanistan; but to claim that he's out-of-touch because he gives a commemorative speech full of the kind of bromides you'd expect to hear in a commemorative speech, then rushes off to go try to take care of every other goddamn problem we're facing right now -- that's just asinine.

I've voiced my irritation about this kind of thing before so it's not really worth repeating at length, but suffice it to say these days I actually read far fewer left-slanted political op-ed pieces than I do those from the right. That's because it boils my blood a hell of a lot less to hear Obama's occasionally psychotic sworn enemies rake him over the coals than it does those who claim to share his general ideals -- the whining brats who can't tell the difference between demanding "smart accountability" and constantly complaining that because they didn't walk outside their front doors the morning after his inauguration to find that marijuana and gay marriage were mandatory, we'd abolished the military and built a giant Whole Foods at Ground Zero, Obama had somehow let them down.

I'm glad Harry Shearer is passionate about what's happened and continues to happen to New Orleans -- and he has every right in the world to voice his opinion and make oodles of what I'm sure are damn fine and entirely infuriating documentaries on the subject.

I just wish he'd be a little more realistic about what the President of the United States is dealing with right now. Katrina was an epochal tragedy -- but it's not the only tragedy on Obama's plate these days.

(Sketch by the incredibly talented Chris Wahl)

Listening Post

From the live webstreamed show at Madison Square Garden -- an event which may have provided the best possible answer to the question, "Why do we love the internet?" -- this is the Arcade Fire doing Ready To Start.

Listening Post

It's like having a bucket of cold water -- or maybe hydrochloric acid -- thrown on you first thing Monday morning.

Here's PIL -- Public Image.

Mammary Lame

Picture of the Week (Sure It's Early, but I Don't Think Anything's Gonna Top This)

From yesterday's big Triumph of the Shill rally in D.C.

Well, I guess that settles it then.

(Via Simon Owens)

Bonus Quote of the Day

"The Obama Administration has been a two year long Shark Week for Fox."

-- Cracked.com

Quote of the Day

"The entire song is obscene."

-- Noted music connoissieur Brent Bozell on Cee-Lo's new single, Fuck You

The proper way to respond to Bozell -- who's an uptight, self-righteous pencil-dick on a good day -- is just way too obvious in this case, so I won't even bother.

Sunday Sacrilege

We've seen the Birthers, the Death Panelers, the Marxers, Glenn Beck and so on -- now meet the next meme-tastic fringe element of the psychotic, pants-wetting right to go mainstream: Baptismers.

RWW: Will Demanding Proof of Obama's Baptism Become the Next Right Wing Crusade?/8.24.10

And They Say That a Zero Can Save Us

I've decided that since, unfortunately, I can't make it to Glenn Beck's big "I Have a Scheme"/Triumph of the Wingnut rally in D.C. (with all due credit to Jon Stewart and Digby, respectively), I'm just going to watch this over and over again throughout the day.

It'll be just like being there -- only with less drooling.

Surrender, Sanity

I admit that I've been out of the loop lately. Part of the reason is that I've just been so damn busy, both with work and Inara, that there hasn't really been time available to dedicate to my little experiment. I do promise that this will change soon. There's certainly an ebb and flow to the way things work around here these days.

That said, the other reason I've neglected my duties to you nice folks and haven't provided the kind of acerbic commentary you've come to expect is this: I'm just fucking exhausted by what I'm seeing out there right now.

Really.

Case in point: I watch this kind of surreal insanity, this unbridled ridiculousness, this absolutely mind-numbing absurdity, and I think to myself that there's no way that one voice -- my voice, anyone's voice -- could possibly put so much as a fucking dent in it.



It wears me down and makes me feel like I need to grab my kid, run inside, lock the doors and enjoy a life lived safely behind the walls of a self-made bunker of Nick Jr. and Sandra Boynton books.

A bukkake of stupid this overpowering just makes me want to throw in the towel. It's too daunting to imagine doing anything else.

Listening Post

Before Tom Delonge inexplicably decided that somebody needed to inspire the world and, goshdarnit, he was just the guy to do it -- thus creating the painfully dull Angels and Airwaves -- he did a pretty good one-off project with Travis Barker. And that band was responsible for the best song Blink 182 never recorded.

Here's Box Car Racer's I Feel So.

Happy Friday, all.