When you’re watching the TV news in horror (say, like, when a bunch of rightwing lunatics and Facebook friends of Sarah Palin are being freely elected to statewide and national offices by other people you gotta share the same land mass with) it can become almost apocalyptic when you’re suffering from food poisoning (as I was last night).
Or was it food poisoning? Maybe it was just seeing the leathery face of (presumed) new House GOP leader, John Boehner crying his crocodile tears, that turned my stomach so. Maybe it was seeing an asshat like Rand Paul getting the nod or the fact that hooker-hiring diaper-wearing shitfun meister, David Vitter got reelected (or the tragic loss of progressive hero Russ Feingold). Whatever the reasons, I puked my fucking guts out last night. I felt damned sorry for myself and even sorrier for my country.
On the bright side: No Sharron Angle, no Christine O’Donnell, no Carl Paladino (as if!) and no fucking Meg Whitman in my home state. (Full disclosure, I worked for Jerry Brown’s presidential campaign in 1991 in New York. I didn’t work for his gubernatorial campaign, but I did enthusiastically a vote for him yesterday).
This morning, I read that 47% of senior citizens voted for Tea party Republicans. Anyone looking at that figure can easily surmise that there was a very big enthusiasm gap at play this year. Old people and evangelicals ALWAYS vote for the GOP (they don’t seem to really know why, but they do). Had the Democrats been able to fire up younger voters—which they obviously were not—this wouldn’t have happened (certainly not in the same measure). But what reasons did young people have to go to the polls yesterday aside from voting against the GOP/Teabaggers? Certainly not to vote for Democrats. What have the Democrats done for us lately, besides behave timidly like moderates Republicans? Don’t get me wrong, I voted a straight Democratic ticket, but aside from Jerry Brown and Barbara Boxer, it was hardly if I was voting FOR anyone.
Memo to Obama and the Democrats: It wasn’t because you were too progressive that you lost. It was that you aren’t progressive enough (although I expect that message fell on deaf ears).
Later this month, when the House refuses to extend UI benefits for the folks that have already used up their 99 weeks, and the freshman class of Republicans ARE going to refuse to extend them, that much seems obvious, the class war implications of what happened yesterday are going to be startlingly obvious. The next two (or ten) years are going to be pretty interesting, as in the Chinese curse “May you live in interesting times.”
But if you didn’t vote yesterday, you have no right to complain.
Photo via Gawker. Talk about a picture being worth a thousand words, eh?
The brazen contempt this guy has for his “flock” is nothing short of breathtaking as he cajoles them to give him their bank account and routing numbers for automatic tithing. How anyone could fall for this is mind-boggling, but they do…
Please act now or Ed Young, Jr. will be forced to sell the private jet, forced to sell his mansion, his condo in Miami, the fishing boat, the $15,000 espresso maker and will have no choice but to move to a bland and boring middle-class suburb and worst of all fly coach to all the conferences that he speaks at. Don’t let this ministry travesty happen to Ed Young, Jr. He can’t be effective for God’s Kingdom unless he is rewarded with the very best and most expensive toys that this life has to offer.
“How can you guys show up and expect a blessing without this? You’re wasting your time and you’re wasting God’s time…”
Caught this lil’ masterpiece of understatement on the Drudge Report this morning:
Armed security guards will be on hand at 36 unemployment offices around Indiana in what state officials said is a step to improve safety and make branch security more consistent.
No specific incidents prompted the action, Department of Workforce Development spokesman Marc Lotter told 6News’ Norman Cox. Lotter said the agency is merely being cautious with the approach of an early-December deadline when thousands of Indiana residents could see their unemployment benefits end after exhausting the maximum 99 weeks provided through multiple federal extension periods.
“Given the upcoming expiration of the federal extensions and the increased stress on some of the unemployed, we thought added security would provide an extra level of protection for our employees and clients,” he said. [Emphasis added]
Increased stress? Is this asshole kidding?
I guess they’re expecting there will be some people who won’t react too kindly to being told they and their children are being left to starve come December.
This is how we live now. If you think it’ll get better by voting for Republicans—or not voting at all—tomorrow, you are sorely fucking mistaken.
Unemployment Offices To Add Armed Guards: 36 Offices Beefing Up Security Before Benefits Set To End (WRTV: The Indy Channel)
Steven John Bator (a.k.a. Stiv Bators) and his Dead Boys blammoed out of the post-steel paradise of Cleveland and landed in New York’s East Village to help jump-start the punk movement in the bowels of clubs like CBGBs. Soon after the Boys broke up in 1979, Bators formed the post –punk supergroup Lords of the New Church with the Damned’s Brian James and Sham 69’s Dave Tregunna.
That was the band Bators was riding in 1983 when L.A. artist Jeffrey Vallance—who’d scored a miraculous gig as a host of MTV’s underground music showcase (yeah, something like that actually once appeared on MTV!!) The Cutting Edge—grabbed him to “debate” the head of the Southland’s Last Chance Rescue Mission, whose name happened to be, yes, the Reverend Dr. Hands.
As you’ll see, Bators took the path of least resistance, but this segment stands as a fun, somewhat campy artifact of the other side of the Reagan ‘80s. Seven years later, Bators will have become a literal dead boy at 41 after getting hit by a taxi in Paris.
He would have turned 61 years old today.
Bonus clip after the jump: the Dead Boys give CBGB’s the “Sonic Reducer” in ‘77…
Ten for Two: The John Sinclair Freedom Rally, directed by Steve Gebhardt is a filmed document of the John Sinclair benefit concert held in 1971.
John Sinclair managed the MC5 and was the founder of The White Panther Party. His uncompromising radical political stance made him a target of the U.S. government. He was busted in a sting operation for selling two joints to undercover cops. He was sentenced to 10 years in jail. Musicians, politicians, artists and friends organized a rally to bring attention to Sinclair’s unjust sentence. It worked. Three days after the rally, Sinclair was released from prison when the Michigan Supreme Court ruled that the state’s marijuana statutes were unconstitutional.
Ten For Two was produced by John and Yoko, who also perform in it, and features Allen Ginsberg, Phil Ochs, Leni Sinclair, David Peel, Jerry Rubin, Ed Sanders, Bob Seger, Archie Shepp, Bobby Seale, The Steve Miller Band, Commander Cody, Stevie Wonder and more.
The rally was held in Ann Arbor, Michigan. John and Yoko came on at 3 a.m.
Why hasn’t this been released on DVD? Rumor has it that Yoko owns the rights to the film and won’t release it. In the meantime, this funky video is all I’ve been able to get access to.
Here’s an in-depth article on the concert here.
Part 1 kicks in at the 15 second point.
Part 2 after the jump…
Me and Guccione had the same dentist in Manhattan. I’d see him gliding thru the waiting room glittering with bling bling like King Tut. Bob’s testosterone fogged my Italian wraparounds. The cat had presence.
Bob Guccione, who founded Penthouse magazine in the 1960s and built a pornographic media empire that broke taboos, outraged the guardians of taste and made billions before drowning in a slough of bad investments and Internet competition, died Wednesday in Plano, Tex., The Associated Press reported. He was 79.
NY Times obit here.
Penthouse was to Playboy what The Rolling Stones were to The Beatles. I came down on the side of The Stones.
Guccione produced the big-budget soft-core epic Caligula. Here he is commenting on the censoring of the film:
Another “song” (and I use that term loosely here) from Sue and Michael Brownson, the couple behind the Tim and Eric-esque “I Am Here (A Love Letter from God)” thing posted here yesterday.
Check out their website, it’s as if Kenneth the page from 30 Rock got married and decided to become a Christian Teabagger version of… Kraftwerk.
I know that doesn’t make any sense, but I don’t think Sue and Michael Bownson do.
Bless.
Via Adam Whitley
Seriously, Kentucky, what the fuck? Even for a Republican, he’s an idiot!
If I was Jack Conway, I’d approve this ad, too!
