Rep. Donna F. Edwards of Maryland dropped some deep-cut White Stripes lyrics today on the House floor. Nicely done.
 

 
I’ve never been a huge fan of TWS but the original is pretty nifty sounding.
 

 
Thanks Ned Raggett !

 
Media Matters did the dirty deed. This must’ve been absolutely nauseating to compile!

Divided up into the categories: Violent Rhetoric, Breaches Of Common Decency, Paranoid Conspiracy Theories, Apocalyptic Predictions and Attacks On Obama And Other Progressives

I’m sure you’ll all recall this gem, where Beck described his fantasies of poisoning Nancy Pelosi:
 

 
The Daily Telegraph reports on massive floating islands of garbage, some almost 70 miles in length, caused by last month’s tsunami in Japan, which are causing chaos in shipping lanes in the Pacific Ocean, as they slowly head for the west coast of the America.

Cars, tractors, boats and the occasional entire house have been spotted floating on the surface of the Pacific Ocean in the aftermath of the March 11 Japanese tsunami triggered by a 9.0 magnitude earthquake.

The largest “island” of debris stretches 60 nautical miles (69 miles) in length and covers an expanse of more than 2.2 million square feet, according to the US Navy’s 7th Fleet, which is closely monitoring the floating rubbish.

“It is very large and it’s a maritime hazard,” Lieutenant Anthony Falvo, deputy public affairs officer for the US Navy’s 7th Fleet, told the Daily Telegraph.

“The damage it can cause is anything from piercing the hull of a ship to leaving dents or getting wrapped up in propulsion systems.”

Experts have reportedly estimated that it could take up to two years for the floating tsunami debris to hit Hawaii and three years for the West Coast.

The US navy is currently working with civilian construction companies from Japan on attempts to start removing the floating debris from the ocean.

More photographs and information here.
 

 
More photos of giant isles of debris after the jump…
 

 
Glorious images of Egypt in the early 20th century.

 

 
View more after the jump…

 
Apparently you can judge a book by its cover thanks to Better Book Titles. The new and improved titles are submitted by readers, picked by staff and then posted on the blog every weekday.

This blog is for people who do not have thousands of hours to read book reviews or blurbs or first sentences. I will cut through all the cryptic crap, and give you the meat of the story in one condensed image. Now you can read the greatest literary works of all time in mere seconds!

See more at Better Book Titles.

 
While Steven Tyler’s heart palpitates like a little bird in his chest and Jennifer Lopez does her best to keep her lunch down, Iggy Pop is the definition of self-parody as he lip syncs and flexes his stretch marks on American Idol.

Punk may not be dead but its varicose veins are showing.

Iggy, I still love you but I’m done defending you.
 

 
Thanks, I think, to Jack Sonni.

 
Black Joy features live footage of Psychic TV performing in Manchester in 1988 and the Subterrania Club in London in 1991.

A collaboration between the band and film maker Karen Bentham, Black Joy was previously only available as two separate VHS tapes. You can purchase it on DVD at See Of Sound’s website or, thanks to the always generous folks at SOS, you can watch it here. The DVD does come with a bunch of extra bells and whistles.
 

Whoops, wrong stolen election!

If you are looking for a way to get your head around what happened today in the hotly-contested Wisconsin election shocker, this clip from Daily Kos explains it in a rather succinct nutshell.

In WI, an automatic recount at state-expense is triggered if an election is within .5%, and we have a fully verifiable paper trail to audit election results. That means in this election with approximately 740k for Kloppenburg and 739k for Prosser, the vote gets recounted at state-expense if the election is within ~7400 votes.

So the last 2 days the WI-GOP has been scrambling trying to figure out how they can still get Prosser into office. What was the result of their brain-storming? Add a few extra votes in a friendly area (Waukesha), and call it a clerical error. But in order to steal the election, they NEED to be able to keep a recount from occurring, because a recount would expose their attempted fraud to the light of day.

So they couldn’t just give Prosser a couple hundred to put him barely in the lead by 40. They had to give him more than 7500 in order to get above the threshold for automatic recount, so that the only way for a recount to happen would be if Kloppenburg ponies up the money for a state-wide recount, which could be expensive. Granted, all of us in WI would be happy to donate to a potential recount effort if it gets to that point, but the resolve of the Kloppenburg camp remains to be seen.

When the Republicans have declared victory starting tomorrow, they will use the full power of their media empire to pressure KloJo to concede instead of paying for a recount. They’ll say she’s a sore loser if she pushes for a recount outside of the .5% margin. They’ll say the gap is so wide that a recount couldn’t possibly swing enough votes her way, so she shouldn’t waste the time of election workers. They’ll say she’s just further trying to divide the people of WI. They will do EVERYTHING they can to make sure NO ONE checks the paper trail. Because the paper trail will be the nail in their coffin.

We must not let them succeed in this attempted fraud.

It is NOT a coincidence that Prosser didn’t get +300 votes or +1000, it had to be +7500 or more in order for the fraud to work. +7400 just wouldn’t have been enough.

RECOUNT WISCONSIN!

Now read this, from OneWisconsinNow. Does Kathy Nickolaus in any way seem kinda shady, do you think? Do ya?

Election Returns: What Went On in Waukesha?
After Hours of Silence, Embattled Clerk Reports Wildly-High Turnout in Prosser’s Top County

Madison—As counties statewide move to certify Tuesday’s shocking upset victory by JoAnne Kloppenburg over heavily-favored David Prosser, unanswered questions remain about returns from Tuesday night in Waukesha County—the top-performing county in the state for Scott Walker’s self-proclaimed “complement” on the Supreme Court.

“Wisconsin deserves elections that are fair, clean and transparent,” said Scot Ross, One Wisconsin Now Executive Director. “There is a history of secrecy and partisanship surrounding the Waukesha County Clerk and there remain unanswered questions.”

Waukesha County Clerk Kathy Nickolaus, a former staffer for the Assembly Republican Caucus, has been sharply criticized in recent months for her handling of recent elections. Even the archly-conservative Waukesha County Board has sharply condemned Nickolaus after past elections, demanding an immediate audit of her practices following ominous red-flags that emerged regarding her lack of oversight, failure to create backup files and her stubborn insistence to “keep everything secret.” [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 8/18/10; 1/17/11]

The County auditors said it was eminently possible—including historical precedent—for Nickolaus or a rogue employee to tamper with data. Why? Nickolaus insists on controlling password access and has unilaterally decided to move sensitive files, like election results, onto her personal computer.

Nickolaus has actually scoffed at complying with impartial audits, thumbing her nose at critics. A move that drew a sharp reaction at the time from the County Board Chair:

“There really is nothing funny about this, Kathy,” said Waukesha County Board Chairman Jim Dwyer when Nickolaus willfully ignored complying with the earlier impartial audit. “Don’t sit there and grin when I’m explaining what this is about.” [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 8/18/10; 1/17/11]

On Tuesday, shockingly-large turnout suddenly emerged from Waukesha County, which did not comport with either the results of previous spring elections, or even internal estimates from city officials mid-day. In fact, a Waukesha City Deputy Clerk said at 1:18pm that turnout was very typical, predicting somewhere between 20 to 25 percent. As Tuesday night wore on, reporting in Waukesha County stopped altogether for hours, leaving observers to wonder what was going on. Then suddenly, results suggesting massive turnout started to pour in rapidly with Prosser adding dramatically to his total by a 73-27 percent margin.

One Wisconsin Now estimates put overall turnout near 38 percent, a wild outlier to historical data and the earlier mid-day estimation of Waukesha’s own officials. In April 2009, turnout was 20 percent; April 2008, turnout was 22 percent and in April 2007, turnout was 24

Fishy or not? You decide!

 
Pete Townshend recorded this radio commercial for the United States Air Force while the Vietnam War was raging. U.S. troop levels had reached 463,000 with 16,000 combat deaths to date. Hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese civilians had been killed by this point. Were any of them happy, Jack?

The upbeat tone of the music and Townshend’s inane and utterly clueless inducement to “fly the skies, touch the moon and reach for the stars” reduces the Vietnam nightmare to a fairytale vision out of The Little Prince. “It’s a great place to be”...unless you’re on the ground deep-fried in napalm.

I always knew Pete Townshend had his head up his ass I just didn’t realize how far.
 

 
The film was credited to ‘Anonymous’, which led some to think it was by Andy Warhol. Or perhaps Kenneth Anger. The mix of kitsch and beautiful imagery pointed to both. However, they were wrong. For years no one knew who had made Pink Narcissus. This was until the writer Bruce Benderson became obsessed with this subversively erotic film and decided to track down its director - James Bidgood.

Shot on Super-8, Pink Narcissus is a sumptuous film depicting the erotic fantasies of a gay male prostitute (Bobby Kendall), who visualizes himself in various homage to “gay whack-off fantasies”.

Bidgood arrived in New York in 1951. He worked as a female impersonator, hairdresser, set designer and then photographer. Bidgood started taking pix for Adonis and Muscleboy. At first he was disappointed with the results. He told the New York Times:

“There was no art,” Bidgood laments. “They were badly lit and uninteresting. Playboy had girls in furs, feathers and lights. They had faces like beautiful angels. I didn’t understand why boy pictures weren’t like that.”

Bidgood made his own erotic tableaux, which mixed beauty and kitsch. His first Watercolors presented a young man swimming through a fabulous, shimmering grotto—which he built and photographed in his cramped apartment. He told Butt magazine:

“Models were not that easy to find especially for the kind of work I was doing which called for more of the subject’s time than a pose or two wearing less than two square inches of jersey and some elastic and leaning against some fagelas elaborate mantelpiece. In the time I needed to do one shot they could turn ten tricks. And there weren’t all that many great beauties around willing to be photographed nude or semi nude in homoerotic situations. Remember this was before being gay and/or being a ‘male escort’ or pornography, quasi or otherwise, were as acceptable or mainstream as they are now.”

Bidgood created his own distinct style, which later inspired the careers of Pierre et Giles, and David La Chappelle.

Between 1963 and 1971, Bidgood worked on Pink Narcissus. It was shot in his Hell’s Kitchen apartment. Bidgood designed and made the sets, provided the make-up and costume, and used the neighborhood hustlers as his cast. It was an incredible undertaking, and one that eventually led his frustrated backers to take the film from Bidgood and finish it themselves. This was why Bidgood took his name off the finished film.  

“See, why I took my name off of it was that I was protesting, which I’d heard at the time that’s what you did…. I’d take my name off and then they’d go “Mr. Bidgood took his name off because…” But it turns out they kept me in the closet, and all you had to do was ask anybody who’s been in it and they’d say, you know, “Jim did this.” It wasn’t like a big mystery, but you would have thought, and then years later I was ‘outed’.”

 
Previously on DM

Early Gay Cinema: Jean Genet’s ‘Un Chant d’Amour’