Sunday Stuff

Happy Father’s Day – here is a good tune, though an unhappy one...



...but this is a bit more tongue-in-cheek (featuring a neat solo by Sonny Landreth).



And with that, I take my leave of you all for about a week (excuse: vacation).

Courage.

Update 6/17/12: This is simply too awesome to ignore - genius indeed.



Update 6/18/12: Almost out of here, but even though it's completely off-topic, allow me to extend happy 70th birthday wishes to Roger Ebert (currently reading "Life Itself," and my thumb, as it were, is half way on it...parts of it are terrific, but I think other parts needed work - not done yet, though).

Saturday Stuff

Once more, I give you The Eternal George Carlin, bad words and all (including my latest credo)...

...and among other things, this clip of Jon Stewart commenting on Jamie Dimon (with, yet again, Stewart showing more guts than our media sycophants plying their dark art at “news” organizations with initials for names) demonstrates what a clueless moron Jim DeMint truly is (but yet again, as I always say, there are life forms out there who actually vote for this boob)...

...and if you want to do something about Bob Corker, the other numbskull appropriately lampooned by Stewart, click here...

...and after yesterday, the young one can sing this song for real - maybe a little tongue in cheek considering the Carlin clip (can't totally forgive Alice for swinging with Dubya in '04, but it's still a free country I know).

More Thursday Stuff

(I also posted here.)

By the way (and once again), Happy Flag Day...

Flag Day: A History in Flags with Fred Willard from Fred Willard      

..and to me, what Peter Cappelli has to say here isn’t so shocking (h/t Crooks and Liars), since it pretty much reinforces what I and many others knew all along. What is shocking is that it’s coming from a Wharton professor (better make sure he doesn’t get sent back to the Glenn “Give It Your Best Shot” Hubbard factory of conservative economic thought, where the peons get the pizza scraps and our Galtian overlords get to recline in their barcaloungers while enjoying brandy and cigars)...



...and I don’t consider this to be shocking either – kudos to Michigan State Rep Lisa Brown (more here)...

...and kudos also to The Real Joe Walsh for this – seems like a tune is in order.

Thursday Stuff

Yep, “Romney Economics” sure stink, all right...

...and I think this is a neat little number in honor of what we observe today (and yes, I forgot for awhile too – recorded in 2004 at the Philadelphia Folk Festival by, as far as I’m concerned, the most musical ex-mailman of all time...yep, it still works, John).

Wednesday Stuff

I haven’t read a column like this one today by Arianna Huffington that is this depressing in a long, long time. And we all owe her a debt for writing it.

See, it has to do with how our “friend” Nouri al-Maliki (remember him?) in Iraq (remember there?) is all buddies now with Iran. And how it turns out that, if these eternally-wrong-in-their-cowardly-warmongering conservatives had their way, we would end up fighting both of them if we preemptively went after Iran (with “pre-emptive war” having worked so beautifully in the prior decade).

So, for Liz Cheney and the rest of her foul breed, I thought it apropos to recall this clip from Keith Olbermann (and featuring Rachel Maddow before her own show); even though he may never be on TV again, K.O.'s outsized body of work continues to live on in the blogosphere (and I still dislike that word, but I can’t think of a better one)...

Update 6/14/12: "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose."

...and I’ve never been completely sold on these guys musically (though their politics rock!), and I don’t usually go in for kids in these tunes because I think it can be exploitative, but I thought this was a catchy number (sorry, no video).

Tuesday Stuff

The truth hurts, doesn’t it, Willard Mitt (here)...

...and happy 35th birthday to Kenny Wayne Shepherd (trying to branch out musically a bit).

Monday Stuff

Looks like Glenn “Give It Your Best Shot” Hubbard (and econ adviser to Willard Mitt Romney, of course) is in the news again, as noted here (and as usual, not for a good reason; so much for stopping at the water's proverbial edge)...

...and I tried to find a good song about L.A. in honor of hockey’s new royalty – hope this will do.

Sunday Stuff

Kudos to Martin Bashir for calling out Little Timmeh for being a Beltway sycophant (here - and by the way, the private sector REALLY IS DOING FINE)…

…and by the way, speaking of the insufferable status quo, I happened to come across this item featuring another hand-wringing liberal, albeit one who put his money where his proverbial mouth is (h/t Atrios), and I have a few reactions.

The author apologizes for engaging the wingnutosphere on their stupidity and thus indirectly validating their talking points. Sorry, but I don’t automatically consider that to be validation. The miscreants on the right do their very best to poison our political dialogue, and we’re supposed to just let their crap go unanswered?

The problem with that thinking is that it utterly ignores the so-called “independent voters” who, basically, decide our elections any more and are prone to believe this stuff as gospel because they make up their minds about ten seconds before they enter the voting booth (not in all cases, though, I'll admit). And another problem isn’t that we engaged the right-wing crap poisoning our dialogue – the real problem is that it went unanswered for so long that it became enshrined as “conventional wisdom” (The Sainted Ronnie R and his “welfare queens,” Bob Casey Sr. being denied the opportunity to speak at the Democratic National Convention in 1992 supposedly because he was pro-life, Al Gore claiming he invented the Internet…all of that garbage).

Yes, the Democratic Party needs to do a better job of explaining why A CARBON TAX IS A GOOD THING, and THE DREAM ACT IS A GOOD THING, and THE STIMULUS WAS A GOOD THING, and THE AFFORDABLE CARE ACT IS A GOOD THING, and on and on and on. But that’s because what passes for the Democratic Party “leadership” these days doesn’t have the spine that it should have inherited from its predecessors such as FDR, Harry Truman, JFK, LBJ, Jimmy Carter, etc., not because some impertinent left-wing bloggers such as yours truly take it upon themselves to speak truth to bullshit.

…and this song comes to me when I think of this wretched 112^th Congress (typo at the end, by the way).