Listen as Bill Maher says the truest shit you’ve ever heard about Obama…
“There is a good 40% of this country who wouldn’t vote for you if you personally saved them from drowning. So get rid of that baggage of caring about the people who will not vote for you anyway and be a strong liberal Democratic president. You owe it to us.”
The whole thing is worth watching, but he starts to really get cooking at about 3:20 in.
Before anyone gets carried away getting all biblical on the asses of the UK looters, it’s best to remember that the people in positions of power have been getting away with much worse crimes for years now. This brilliant open letter to the parents of the UK’s Prime Minister by the writer Nathaniel Tappley makes that abundantly clear with facts, figures and more than a pinch of humor. And yes, before anyone mentions, he does know that Mr Cameron’s father died last year, his point being that he is reflecting assumptions about parenting that Cameron regularly makes.
“Are they really surprised that this country’s culture is swamped in greed, in the acquisition of material things, in a lust for consumer goods of the most base kind? Really?
...
Our politicians are for sale and they do not care who knows it.
Oh yes, and then there’s the expenses thing. Widescale abuse of the very systems they designed, almost all of them grasping what they could while they remained MPs, to build their nest egg for the future at the public’s expense. They even now whine on Twitter about having their expenses claims for getting back to Parliament while much of the country is on fire subject to any examination. True public servants.
The last few days have revealed some truths, and some heartening truths. The fact that the #riotcleanup crews had organised themselves before David Cameron even made time for a public statement is heartening. The fact that local communities came together to keep their neighbourhoods safe when the police failed is heartening. The fact that there were peace vigils being organised (even as the police tried to dissuade people) is heartening.
There is hope for this country. But we must stop looking upwards for it. The politicians are the ones leading the charge into the gutter.”
I’m fascinated by the films of British documentarian Nick Broomfield. One of the pioneers of the “You get a documentary plus ME!” school in films like Heidi Fleiss: Hollywood Madam, Kurt and Courtney and Biggie & Tupac, the button-pushing Broomfield’s almost libelous directing techniques are both hilarious and riveting. I would never miss one of his films, which can be good sleazy fun (there is of course, another side of Broomfield’s work in socially-conscious films like Ghosts, Behind the Rent Strike and Battle for Haditha which I’m not addressing here).
One of Broomfield’s oft-used narrative tropes that I enjoy the most is when he knocks on the door of a subject’s home and when they aren’t there or refuse to talk to him, this is seen as evidence that they are hiding something. But he never comes right out and says that (libel laws being what they are) he usually just asks some form of this question pointedly right after we’ve seen a door slammed in his face or a security guard leading him away, “But what is ____ trying to hide?”
Nick Broomfield can be a gleefully immoral documentarian, which is why I was so tremendously pleased to find that the latest target of Broomfield’s patented style of hit and run filmmaking is none other than that snowbilly grifter herself, Sarah Palin! Broomfield’s Sarah Palin—You Betcha! is set to join Werner Herzog, Jessica Yu and Morgan Spurlock’s new films at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.
The film is supposed to examine Palin’s hometown of Wasilla, AK in detail and promises interviews with Palin’s parents, political associates and former brother-in-law. Broomfield told the Daily Mail:
“People are frightened to talk. Wasilla makes Twin Peaks look like a walk in the park. It’s a devout evangelical community – 76 churches with a population of only six thousand.”
And how many meth labs?
I’m just sorry that Broomfield wasn’t able to get El Duce on camera talking about Sarah Palin. (On a side note, about 20 years ago at a party for the Beastie Boys in Los Angeles, El Duce cheerfully told me that he had raped a friend of mine’s dog).
Below, in a clip released on YouTube, Nick Broomfield confronts Sarah Palin in public, in his signature Nick Broomfield style:
Boing Boing’s Xeni Jardin, currently traveling in Japan, met up with Yoko Ono and conducted a great interview with the artist/humanitarian, who had just been awarded the 8th Hiroshima Art Prize. The Hiroshima Museum of Contemporary Art is displaying “The Road of Hope: Yoko Ono 2011,” until October 16, 2011.
Xeni Jardin: A few days ago, you were in Hiroshima accepting an award for your your legacy of art in the service of peace. You were a young girl here in Japan when the event happened. What was that day like?
Yoko Ono: Yes, I think I was 12. It was a shock of course, but at the time, initially we didn’t know what happened. I heard about it from somebody in the village. It’s a very, very different kind of bomb, they said, we have to immediately stop the war. It didn’t make sense to me at all, in any way. We didn’t understand.
Xeni Jardin: At what point did the magnitude or the nature of what had happened become more clear to you?
Yoko Ono: Well, every day, from then on. They were reporting in newspapers and magazines what happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki and it was just—it was something that you just could not understand. It was just so bad.
Xeni Jardin: Trying to grasp the full scope of what had happened must have been something that unfolded over many years for you, your family, and for all of your fellow countrymen and women.
Yoko Ono: Well you see, it was because of Pearl Harbor, and so the rest of the world was very, very cold to us when the bombs dropped. Like, “Oh, they deserved it.” That kind of thinking.
And of course in those days, the idea of what an enemy is, and what is fair to do to enemies were very different. For America to have bombed civilians was something that most people accepted. But women and children, old and young, they all suffered. If it had happened not to Japan but in a Western country, maybe the West would have felt differently about it. But that’s how it was. And the Japanese people, especially the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, they had to endure the whole thing without any kindness or compassion from the world. Despite the meanness directed at them, even after the bombing, they stood up and survived, and they created a normal situation out of the ashes of that horror, which I believe is amazing.
The whole of Japan helped them. I learned when I was in Hiroshima, for instance, that many trees were sent from other towns throughout Japan, to be planted there to renew the bare ground. People throughout the country tried to help, but Hiroshima and Nagasaki had to stand up on their own, as well, of course.
And in a very strange way, even though they were victims and martyrs of a terrible thing, now they are not victims. They are the people who created a strong, strong recovery. They show to the world that this is what we can do, instead of all the myths that were created about those places — the myth that you could never enter those places after what happened, and that you couldn’t return into those cities. Just walking in there is dangerous.
But now, they’re two beautiful cities again. And the world sees that.
Read more of Xeni Jardin’s interview with Yoko Ono at Boing Boing.
Below, a fucking fierce Beatles/Yoko jam session in an outtake from Let It Be:
Judging from this, rather, er, vocal reception at the Wisconsin State Fair, when hapless Republican Scott Walker gets recalled out of office next year, he’ll probably have to go into some sort of witness protection program…
Texas governor Rick Perry seems to really go out of his way to associate himself with complete fruitcakes. There’s a curious item at Right Wing Watch today about zany churchlady Alice Patterson, one of Perry’s “church mobilizers” for his “The Response” prayer rally. Patterson works on getting African-Americans interested in the Republican party (good luck!) and is the author of a book about her career titled Bridging the Racial and Political Divide: How Godly Politics Can Transform a Nation.
Kyle Mantyla, the author of the post, is reading Patterson’s book and found this astonishing tidbit about how she came to believe that the Democratic Party is “an invisible network of evil comprising an unholy structure,”(i.e. controlled by demons) when she was listening to a sermon by Charles D. Pierce. (Pierce author of Prayers That Outwit the Enemy and the recent book, Time to Defeat the Devil).
As Chuck described ‘Saul Structures,’ my thoughts raced to politics. “Oh my God, Chuck is describing the Democratic Party!” This was the first time I’d ever considered that an evil structure could be connected to and empowered by a political party ... One strong fallen angel cannot wreak havoc on an entire nation by himself. He needs a network of wicked forces to restrain the Church and to deceive the masses. Unlike the Holy Spirit, who is everywhere at once and can speak to millions of people simultaneously, the devil can only be in one place at a time. By himself Satan would be totally ineffective, but in cooperation with other powers of darkness he erects structures to deceive and manipulate entire nations ... At the time I was listening to Chuck Pierce in Louisiana, I hadn’t given any thought at all to strongholds in political parties. If I had ever thought about it, of course, it would have made sense, but it was new information. As Chuck’s words began to sink in, I asked the “Lord, Father, what is the demonic structure behind the Democratic Party?”
Incidentally, it doesn’t look like Perry’s day of prayer and “atonement” for America is getting much traction: According to Wonkette:
“[O]nly 8,000 tragic souls have signed up for Perry’s “The Response” rally on Saturday, which is mathematically many less than the 71,000 or so people that fit in the gigantic football stadium where he’s holding it. Has America suddenly lost its appetite for asking God to solve its problems? Did an entire day of Rick Perry weeping and speaking in tongues while a cabal of hate-mongering evangelical pastors grown in jars under Pat Buchanan’s bed fling spittle full of damnation and hellfire at everyone just sound like a little too much fun?”
The recall election in Wisconsin is one of the most important American political events of our time. What happens in Wisconsin is not a “local” event, it will have repercussions that will continue to reverberate nationally—one way of the other—for a long time in this country. If progressives can’t win a victory in a state like Wisconsin, god help America, because the Reichwing fangs will be bared with a slobbering viciousness like they never have been before.
But if the little guys win, Republicans will think twice about pulling this kind of shit again. It’s that simple.
The positively heroic level of commitment from the state’s working people to the recall cause and rolling back the corrosive influence of the billionaire Koch Brothers on Wisconsin politics, has truly been a fantastic thing to watch. It’s one of the best things I’ve seen in America in my lifetime… but it’s not over yet.
Before next Tuesday’s Wisconsin recall election, this new ad—featuring a former Republican voter who’s had enough with the Republican Party—will run on television in the district of Republican State Sen. Alberta Darling, now fighting a recall challenge from Democrat Rep. Sandy Pasch.
The recall election in Wisconsin is only a few days away. If you can donate even $3, please go to ActBlue and help them buy airtime for this low-key, but quite effective ad.
