Author: Seth Anderson

Just another Gen-Xer still posting on a blog

The Clash’s Shea Stadium Gig Heading To CD

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“Clash on Broadway” (The Clash)

Excellent news. I’ve heard crappy versions of some of these songs, but an official release is exciting. The Clash are still one of my all time favorite bands.

Long bootlegged and sought after by collectors, the Clash’s Oct. 13, 1982, performance at New York’s Shea Stadium will finally see official release Oct. 7 via Legacy.

The gig found the Clash opening for the Who on the latter band’s “farewell” tour, and features a wealth of favorites, from “London Calling” and “Police on My Back” to “The Magnificent Seven” and “Clampdown.”

The band, which at the time was touring in support of its recent album “Combat Rock,” also offered up the singles from that effort, “Should I Stay or Should I Go” and “Rock the Casbah.” According to Legacy, late guitarist Joe Strummer found the Shea tapes while preparing to move into a new house.

[From The Clash’s Shea Stadium Gig Heading To CD]

In case you were curious, this is the track listing:

Kosmo Vinyl Introduction

“London Calling”

“Police on My Back”

“Guns Of Brixton”

“Tommy Gun”

“The Magnificent Seven”

“Armagideon Time”

“The Magnificent Seven” (return)

“Rock the Casbah”

“Train in Vain”

“Career Opportunities”

“Spanish Bombs”

“Clampdown”

“English Civil War”

“Should I Stay or Should I Go”

“I Fought the Law”

Chertoff Misleads on Laptop Searches

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Surprising nobody, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Mike Chertoff mouthed statements that could be considered misleading in polite company, or out and out lies here in the Big Potato. Senator Russ Feingold calls Chertoff on Chertoff’s bs.

Pip and his MBA

[Pip investigates a laptop]

Secretary Chertoff’s description of the newly published DHS policy on laptop searches was not just misleading – it was flat-out wrong. In an interview with Wired.com, the Secretary stated that “[w]e only do [laptop searches] when we put you into secondary [screening] and we only put you into secondary [screening] … when there is a reason to suspect something.”

But the actual policy that DHS published says the exact opposite. It does not even mention secondary screening, let alone limit laptop searches to those cases, and it expressly states that Americans’ laptops may be searched “absent individualized suspicion.”

Secretary Chertoff’s blatant mischaracterization of the DHS policy contradicts his claim to be engaging in greater “openness and transparency” on this important issue. His statements make it clearer than ever that as we work to protect our national security, Congress must also act to protect law-abiding Americans against highly intrusive searches.

[From Chertoff Misleads on Laptop Searches, Feingold Charges | Threat Level from Wired.com]

I’m glad Senator Feingold didn’t run for President – he wouldn’t have won, and instead he can concentrate on doing good in the Senate.

bonus, and totally unrelated, except in a vague sort of totalitarian way:

How to properly pronounce the Chinese capital, Beijing.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GE4dkpOdPw

Drug Legalization 1970

Seth Anderson8 Comments

Was reading a Gore Vidal polemic (Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace), and ran across a mention of a published New York Times op-ed piece from September 26, 1970. With some trepidation, but a belly full of wine and thus courage in the realm of copyright matters, I reproduce the article in full. 1970 was thirty-eight years ago after all. Please forgive any typos: the New York Times digital archive only goes back as far as the 1980s, previous articles are available only as image scans, and the OCR contained in my copy of Adobe Acrobat is somewhat anemic. Better than typing it myself, but not perfect.

It is possible to stop most drug addiction in the United States within a very short time. Simply make all drugs available and sell them at cost. Label each drug with a precise description of what effect-good and bad-the drug will have on whoever takes it. This will require heroic honesty. Don’t say that marijuana is addictive or dangerous when it is neither, as millions of people know-unlike “speed,” which kills most unpleasantly, or heroin, which is addictive and difficult to kick.

For the record, I have tried-once-most every drug and liked none, disproving the popular Fu Manchu theory that a single whiff of opium will enslave the mind. Nevertheless many drugs are bad for certain people to take and they should be told about them in a sensible way.

Along with exhortation and warning, it might be good for our citizens to recall (or learn for the first time) that the United States was the creation of men who believed that each man has the right to do what he wants with his own life as long as he does not interfere with his neighbor’s pursuit of happiness (that his neighbor’s idea of happiness is persecuting others does confuse matters a bit).

This is a startling notion to the current generation of Americans who reflect on our system of public education which has made the Bill of Rights, literally, unacceptable to a majority of high school graduates (see the annual Purdue reports) who now form the Unsilent majority”-a phrase which that underestimated wit Richard Nixon took from Homer, who used it to describe the dead.

Now one can hear the warning rumble begin: if everyone is allowed to take drugs everyone will and the GNP will decrease, the Commies will stop us from making everyone free, and we shall end up a race of Zombies, passively murmuring “groovie”1 to one another. Alarming thought. Yet it seems most unlikely that any reasonably sane person will become a drug addict if he knows in advance what addiction is going to be like.

Is everyone reasonably sane? No. Some people will always become drug addicts Just as some people will always become alcoholics, and it is just too bad. Every man, however, has the power (and should have the right) to kill himself if he chooses. But since most men don’t, they won’t be mainliners either. Nevertheless, forbidding people things they like or think they might enjoy only makes them want those things all the more. This psychological insight is, for some mysterious reason, perennially denied our governors.

It is a lucky thing for the American moralist that our country has always existed in a kind of time-vacuum: we have no public memory of anything that happened before last Tuesday. No one in Washington today recalls what happened during the years alcohol was forbidden to the people by a Congress that thought it had a divine mission to stamp out Demon Rum and so launched the greatest crime wave in the country’s history, caused thousands of deaths from bad alcohol, and created a general (and persisting) contempt for the laws of the United States.

The same thing is happening today. But the government has learned nothing from past attempts at prohibition, not to mention repression.

Last year when the supply of Mexican marijuana was slightly curtailed by the Feds, the pushers got the kids hooked on heroin and deaths increased dramatically, particularly in New York. Whose fault? Evil men like the Mafiosi? Permissive Dr. Spock? Wild eyed Dr. Leary? No.

The Government of the United States was responsible for those deaths. The bureaucratic machine has a vested interest in playing cops and robbers. Both the Bureau of Narcotics and the Mafia want strong laws against the sale and use of drugs because if drugs are sold at cost there would be no money in it for anyone. If there was no money in it for the Mafia, there would be no friendly playground pushers, and addicts would not commit crimes to pay for the next fix. Finally, if there was no money in it, the Bureau of Narcotics would wither away, something they’re not about to do without a struggle.

Will anything sensible be done? Of course not. The American people are as devoted to the idea of sin and its punishment as they are to making money-and fighting drugs is nearly as big a business as pushing them. Since the combination of sin and money is irresistible (particularly to the professional politician), the situation will only grow worse.

Gore Vidal, playwright and novelist, is the author of the newly published “Two Sisters.”


“Two Sisters” (Gore Vidal)

The more things change…

Actually, some things have changed, mostly the names of the drugs in question, and the repressiveness of the federal government. Hundreds of thousands of people are still in jail for the crime of using or selling a weed, and the word “groovie” is only used ironically2.

Footnotes:
  1. sic – I’ve never seen the word spelled this way, but hey, it was published in the New York Times, so maybe a variant spelling? [↩]
  2. even when spelled groovy, it still is only used ironically [↩]

Trolls For McCain

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Quite amusing, really.

You knew somehow it would come to this. John McCain’s campaign is offering their supporters redeemable points to troll websites and write pro-McCain comments. It’s the professionalization of astroturfing. Because it’s a conservative effort, they give them the exact words and invite them to cut and paste them onto the sites.

[From Hullabaloo -Trolling For Fun And Profit]

Apparently, the McCain campaign was finding it difficult to generate much enthusiasm without paying for it.

Wrong Bus

[Wrong Bus McCain]

The Washington Post adds:

Spread John McCain’s official talking points around the Web — and you could win valuable prizes!

That, in essence, is the McCain campaign’s pitch to supporters to join its new online effort, one that combines the features of “AstroTurf” campaigning with the sort of customer-loyalty programs offered by airlines, hotel chains, restaurants and the occasional daily newspaper.

On McCain’s Web site, visitors are invited to “Spread the Word” about the presumptive Republican nominee by sending campaign-supplied comments to blogs and Web sites under the visitor’s screen name. The site offers sample comments (“John McCain has a comprehensive economic plan . . .”) and a list of dozens of suggested destinations, conveniently broken down into “conservative,” “liberal,” “moderate” and “other” categories. Just cut and paste.

Paucity of ideas, indeed.

Cylon-centric special feature

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“Battlestar Galactica – Season One” (Sci-Fi Channel, The)

News from the Battlestar Galactica front.

Months before its final 10 episodes begin airing in January, we now know for certain that “Battlestar Galactica” will live on — in the form of a two-hour special on the Sci Fi Channel to air in 2009 after the series concludes.

The unnamed feature will be directed by the show’s co-star, Edward James Olmos, and written by “Battlestar” writer and former “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” brain Jane Espenson.

The stand-alone will document the Cylons’ attempts — those of two agents in particular — to grapple with human survivors, both those aboard ships and those left alive on planets, shortly after the Cylons’ destruction of human home worlds.

So it’s a flashback, but not all the way back.

Three confirmed cast members are Michael Trucco (Sam Anders), Aaron Douglas (Galen Tyrol), and Dean Stockwell (Cavil, Cylon model No. 1) — all Cylons. Shooting will begin promptly in Vancouver, Canada, and Sci Fi promises women regulars are being cast as well, with more names coming soon.

[From ‘Battlestar Galactica’: Edward James Olmos will direct Cylon-centric special feature | Show Tracker | Los Angeles Times]

Deadwood Fan #1
[Deadwood Fan #1]

At least one television drama I enjoy watching is still on the air, for a moment longer.1

Footnotes:
  1. Deadwood, The Wire, Arrested Development all got the unkind ax. BSG is on its last season, but the creators are trying to stretch that season out a bit. [↩]

McCain and His Fake Energy Plan

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Never Fear
[Never Fear! Fuelman is Here!]

Buried in an article about Obama’s call for releasing oil from the Strategic Oil Reserves is a succinct summary of McCain’s nonsensical energy plan.

Obama emphasized on Monday that using reserves is a temporary fix and that drilling is not “a particularly meaningful short-term or long-term solution.” McCain has said that drilling would have a “psychological” benefit for consumers; his proposal to suspend the 18-cent-a-gallon federal gas tax was ignored by lawmakers on Capitol Hill and criticized by economists, who said it would not lead to a noticeable change in prices.

On the stump, McCain talks frequently about electric power, a subject that energy experts say will do little to affect gas prices. His plan to build 45 nuclear power plants, which he will highlight with a visit to a Michigan plant Tuesday, would take decades.

[From Obama Urges Opening Up Oil Reserves – washingtonpost.com]

Gas costs update

gas price breakdown

Psychological benefit? Really? I’m not sure consumers would worry less about high gasoline prices knowing that oil corporations have the ability to drill for oil sometime in the future. And nuclear plants to be completed long after Senator McCain is deceased will help lower gas prices how exactly? Any specifics about where these plants are going to be located? In a convenient location that nobody would complain about, I’m sure. Show me these 45 new locations on a map, please.

(H/T a letter in Altercation by Ben Miller)
Gas At Last
[Gas At Last – Alaskan Service Station]

Demographic Inversion

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Jason Kottke pointed out an intriguing analysis about the changing demographics of Chicago and similar cities, discovered in a periodical I usually avoid, The New Republic1.

Vulcan
[Vulcan, a steel-worker working on a building being constructed in The Loop]

In the past three decades, Chicago has undergone changes that are routinely described as gentrification, but are in fact more complicated and more profound than the process that term suggests. A better description would be “demographic inversion.” Chicago is gradually coming to resemble a traditional European city–Vienna or Paris in the nineteenth century, or, for that matter, Paris today. The poor and the newcomers are living on the outskirts. The people who live near the center–some of them black or Hispanic but most of them white–are those who can afford to do so.

Developments like this rarely occur in one city at a time, and indeed demographic inversion is taking place, albeit more slowly than in Chicago, in metropolitan areas throughout the country. The national press has paid very little attention to it. While we have been focusing on Baghdad and Kabul, our own cities have been changing right in front of us.

[From Trading Places]

We can see that in our own neighborhood (So-Fu). In the eight years (and counting) I’ve lived in the West Loop, there have been at least 12 new high-rise condominium developments just within visual range, dozens more nearby, and even more in the South Loop. Literally tens of thousands of new family units have moved downtown, and there’s space for many, many more. Not to mention places like Logan’s Square (mentioned in the above referenced article), Pilsen, Wicker Park, Uptown, yadda yadda. The prices are not astronomical compared to Manhattan prices, but certainly not cheap.

Construction Season Rag
[Construction Season Rag, West Loop]

If you feel that way, you might want to ride an elevated train going northwest, to the lesser-known Logan Square, a few miles beyond the Loop. Whatever Logan Square might be, it is not downtown chic. It is a moderately close-in nineteenth-century neighborhood with a history fairly typical for a city that A.J. Liebling once called “an endless succession of factory-town main streets.” Logan Square was developed primarily by Scandinavian manufacturers, who lived on the tree-lined boulevards while their workers, many of them Polish, rented the cottages on the side streets. By the 1970s, nearly all the Poles had decamped for suburbia, and they were replaced by an influx of Puerto Ricans. The area became a haven for gangs and gang violence, and most of the retail shopping that held the community together disappeared.

Logan Square is still not the safest neighborhood in Chicago. There are armed robberies and some killings on its western fringe, and, even on the quiet residential streets, mothers tell their children to be home before dark. But that hasn’t prevented Logan Square from changing dramatically again–not over the past generation, or the past decade, but in the past five years. The big stone houses built by the factory owners on Logan Boulevard are selling for nearly $1 million, despite the housing recession. The restaurant that sits on the square itself sells goat cheese quesadillas and fettuccine with octopus, and attracts long lines of customers who drive in from the suburbs on weekend evenings. To describe what has happened virtually overnight in Logan Square as gentrification is to miss the point. Chicago, like much of America, is rearranging itself, and the result is an entire metropolitan area that looks considerably different from what it looked like when this decade started.

Of course, demographic inversion cannot be a one-way street. If some people are coming inside, some people have to be going out. And so they are–in Chicago as in much of the rest of the country. During the past ten years, with relatively little fanfare and surprisingly little press attention, the great high-rise public housing projects that defined squalor in urban America for half a century have essentially disappeared. In Chicago, the infamous Robert Taylor Homes are gone, and the equally infamous Cabrini-Green is all but gone. This has meant the removal of tens of thousands of people, who have taken their Section 8 federal housing subsidies and moved to struggling African American neighborhoods elsewhere in the city. Some have moved to the city’s southern suburbs–small suburbs such as Dixmoor, Robbins, and Harvey, which have been among the poorest communities in metropolitan Chicago. At the same time, tens of thousands of immigrants are coming to Chicago every year, mostly from various parts of Latin America. Where are they settling? Not in University Village. Some in Logan Square, but fewer every year. They are living in suburban or exurban territory that, until a decade ago, was almost exclusively English-speaking, middle-class, and white.

What More Can I Say
[What More Can I Say – condo building, South Loop]

Footnotes:
  1. what a crappy sentence, and yet, here it remains because I’m too pressed for time to write a better, clearer sentence. Well, and I’m lazy [↩]

Iraq and al-Qaida

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“The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism” (Ron Suskind)

Despite what Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi might think1 misleading Congress is an impeachable offense.

Ron Suskind is really good at burying a lede.

Diligent, linear-minded readers will have to ford through 370 pages of his alternately incisive and gauzy book, “The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism,” to reach the accusation that has set the nation’s blogs abuzz. In September 2003, according to Suskind, CIA officials — at the direct command of then-CIA director George Tenet and at the behest of the White House — deliberately forged a backdated letter from Iraqi security chief Tahir Jalil Habbush to Saddam Hussein. The phony letter claimed that 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta had trained for his mission in Iraq and that al-Qaida had facilitated mysterious shipments from Niger to Iraq. The letter was the “slam dunk” the Bush administration had been seeking so desperately: evidence of a direct operational link between al-Qaida and Saddam’s regime.

Leaked to conservative British journalist Con Coughlin, the letter was made public just as Saddam was captured in his spider hole near Tikrit. In the course of a single news cycle, the war against Saddam had been “vindicated,” Saddam himself had been flushed from hiding, and the Bush administration’s war had seemingly reached its triumphal and foregone conclusion. Or had it?

To further refine the question: Did nobody think it remarkable that an intelligence chief would commit such damning information to paper and then sign it in his own hand?

[snip]

Since then, that narrative has unraveled thread by thread — as has the Habbush letter. That it was a forgery can no longer be doubted; that it originated with the White House may be harder to prove. Two former CIA officials — Rob Richer and John Maguire — have gone on record as saying they were personally charged with carrying out the forgery, but their marching orders, if they existed, came directly from Tenet (who has fiercely denied the story). The closest thing Suskind has to a smoking gun is Richer’s memory, five years later, of “looking down at the creamy White House stationery on which the assignment was written.” But here, too, a skeptic’s antennae begin to quiver: Why would an operation so patently illegal be printed on official stationery? It’s worth placing Richer’s and Maguire’s charges, too, in the context of the often-rancorous relations between White House officials and CIA veterans, who have seen their sphere of influence severely curtailed in post-9/11

[From Louis Bayard reviews “The Way of the World” by Ron Suskind | Salon Books]

Impeach the bastards, haul them in criminal court for the murder of thousands of Americans, and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis!

Footnotes:
  1. she famously stated “Impeachment is off the table”, and allows no real discussion of the topic [↩]

Corruption, a Chevy and McCain

Seth Anderson1 Comment

Yes, a champion of campaign finance reform, indeed.

Alice Rocchio is an office manager at the New York headquarters of the Hess Corp., drives a 1993 Chevy Cavalier and lives in an apartment in Queens, N.Y., with her husband, Pasquale, an Amtrak foreman.

Despite what appears to be a middle-class lifestyle, the couple has written $61,600 in checks to John McCain’s presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee, most of it within days of McCain’s decision to endorse offshore oil drilling.

At a June fundraiser, the Rocchios joined top executives at Hess Corp. — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Hess, his wife, Susan, his mother, Norma Hess, and six other officials in giving a total of $313,500 to a joint McCain-RNC fundraising committee, Federal Election Commission records show.

The donations, first traced by Campaign Money Watch last week, were part of $1.2 million in oil industry contributions to McCain’s Victory ’08 Committee, 73 percent coming after McCain reversed his long-held opposition to offshore oil drilling.

[From McClatchy Washington Bureau | 08/06/2008 | Did New York couple give $61,600 to McCain, GOP?]

Even though this couple just bought (in Feb, 2008) a 1993 Chevy (estimated to be around $3,000, if in good shape), they could afford to donate $61,600 to McCain and the RNC. Hmmmm, smells a little fishy to me.

Of the $57,000 the Rocchios donated in June, $4,600 went to McCain’s general election “compliance committee,” to pay for campaign lawyers and auditors, and $52,400 went to the RNC, which devotes nearly all of its money to supporting McCain’s presidential bid

The Washington Post has more on the same topic:

The bundle of $2,300 and $4,600 checks that poured into Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign on March 12 came from an unlikely group of California donors: a mechanic from D&D Auto Repair in Whittier, the manager of Rite Aid Pharmacy No. 5727, the 30-something owners of the Twilight Hookah Lounge in Fullerton.

[From Bundler Collects From Unlikely Donors – washingtonpost.com]

The bundler in this territory is Harry Sargeant III, owner of an oil-trading corporation that recently procured a $1,000,000,000 Defense Department contract. Unrelated, I am sure.

Some of the most prolific givers in Sargeant’s network live in modest homes in Southern California’s Inland Empire. Most had never given a political contribution before being contacted by Sargeant or his associates. Most said they have never voiced much interest in politics. And in several instances, they had never registered to vote. And yet, records show, some families have ponied up as much as $18,400 for various candidates between December and March.

Both Sargeant and the donors were vague when asked to explain how Sargeant persuaded them to give away so much money.

“I have a lot of Arab business partners. I do a lot of business in the Middle East. I’ve got a lot of friends,” Sargeant said in a telephone interview yesterday. “I ask my friends to support candidates that I think are worthy of supporting. They usually come through for me.”

Sargeant’s business relationships, and the work they perform together, occur away from the public eye. His firm, International Oil Trading Co. (IOTC), holds several lucrative contracts with the Defense Department to carry fuel to the U.S. military in Iraq.

Not everyone is a fan:

The work has not been without controversy. Last month, Rep. Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) initiated a review of IOTC’s contract to determine whether it was overcharging the military for jet fuel, and to learn how the company, which did not submit the lowest bid, landed the contract to supply the fuel. The Pentagon has said that IOTC won the contract because it was the only company with a “letter of authorization” from the Jordanian government to move the fuel across its territory to Iraq.

and the folks who contributed seem a little removed from the political process. For instance:

Ibrahim Marabeh, who is listed in public records as a Rite Aid manager, at first denied that he wrote any political checks. He then said he was asked by “a local person. But I would like not to talk about it anymore.” Neither he nor his wife is registered to vote

or

At the Twilight Hookah Lounge, owned by Nadia and Shawn Abdalla, patrons smoke tobacco flavored with honey and fruit from a menu that includes the strawberry-flavored Sex on the Beach and the strong, orange-flavored Fuzzy Navel.

The Abdallas, who are not registered to vote, said in an interview that they recalled writing a check to an organization in Miami, because a person with that organization was a friend of their mother’s. They said they could not remember his name.

or a Taco Bell supervisor:

Nader, 39, and Sahar Alhawash, 28, of Colton, Calif, who at one point ran the Avon Village Liquor store, donated a total of $18,400 to Giuliani, Clinton and McCain between December and March. About 80 people in the country made such large contributions to all three, and most were wealthy business executives, such as Donald Trump. The Alhawashes declined to comment about the donations. Abdullah Abdullah, a supervisor at several Taco Bell restaurants in the Riverside area, and his wife have donated $9,200 to McCain.

Reached at work, Abdullah said he knows little about the campaign. “I have no idea. I’ll be honest with you,” he said. “I’m involved in the restaurant business. My brother Faisal recommended John McCain. Whenever he makes a recommendation, we do it.”

Faisal Abdullah, 49, said he helped organize all of the contributions from members of his family. When he was asked who solicited the contributions from him, he said: “Why does it matter who? I’m telling you we made the contribution. We funneled it through the channel in Florida because that’s the contact we had. I was responsible for collecting it.”

Right, these people have so much extra cash laying around that they can afford to contribute the maximum amount to political candidates whose name they barely can remember. I’d speculate there is some money laundering going on. How much does the contributor keep? Ten percent? Twenty percent?

Nuclear Power Costs

Seth Anderson0 comment

Still don’t think giving tax breaks to the Exelons1 of the world to build nuclear plants is the answer to our energy woes.

Satanic Gift

Even if no new reactors are built, getting rid of the country’s nuclear waste will cost $96.2 billion and require a major expansion of the planned Nevada waste dump beyond limits imposed by Congress, the Energy Department said. The government now says the Yucca Mountain project, about 90 miles northwest of Las Vegas, will cost $38.7 billion more than was anticipated in 2001, when the department estimated the life cycle cost of the program at $57.5 billion.

[From High Cost Seen on Nuclear Dump ]

Oh, what’s a few billion between lobbyist friends. Or $38,700,000,000 in this case.

The estimates cover waste only from existing reactors and from the military.

And if we don’t figure out how to dispose of the waste safely, we’ll regret it eventually. Dumping the entire region’s toxic waste under a mountain isn’t really a solution, just a cover-up.

Footnotes:
  1. our local power company, and a large operator of nuclear plants [↩]

Financial Pity

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From Clive Crook of The Financial Times:

It is worth remembering where the blame for this neutering of fiscal policy lies: squarely with the Bush administration. At the start of this decade, the budget stood in surplus to the tune of 2.4 per cent of GDP. On unchanged policy, this was expected to grow to a surplus of 4.5 per cent of GDP by 2008. This year’s actual deficit of 3 per cent of GDP therefore represents a worsening of more than 7 per cent of GDP, or roughly $1,000bn. Almost all of this deterioration is due to policy: to tax cuts, spending increases, and their associated debt-service costs.

That projected surplus was a priceless gift to the White House. It offered the Bush administration ample scope for outlays on homeland security and other unforeseen priorities, and moderate tax cuts as well, all within a budget balanced over the course of the business cycle. Instead, the administration knowingly opted for outrageous fiscal excess – adding insult to injury with its phony tax-cut sunset provisions, designed for no other purpose than to disguise the long-term fiscal implications. Eight years on, this startling record of fiscal irresponsibility has all but taken fiscal policy off the table as an available response to the slowdown.

The US economy had better have luck on its side. Luck is about all it has left.

[From Media Matters – Follow that dream … ]

Depressing, indeed. And yet, somehow, the Republican Party still sells itself as the party of fiscal rectitude and financial propriety. George Bush even had the benefit of a compliant Congress for most of his disastrous term, and still managed to destroy the economy. Let us hope we can recover in our lifetime.

New Byrne Eno album

Seth Anderson0 comment

New David Byrne- Brian Eno collaboration called Everything That Happens Will Happen Today.

Brian Eno and I have finished our new record, Everything That Happens Will Happen Today. One of the songs, “Strange Overtones”, will be available free via everythingthathappens.com in exactly one week — you can log on and get a reminder if you like — and the whole record will be available August 18th. A company called Topspin Media helped to set up the website and our online business.

In a nutshell, Brian wrote most of the music, and I composed most of the vocal melodies and lyrics, and then sang them. Other musicians play on the album too. It’s not Bush of Ghosts II: this is a record of sung songs, and the result really surprises me. Despite a sinister inflection to both the lyrics and the music, many songs feel fairly uplifting and the overall tone is hopeful. From where does this quality derive?

[From 07.28.2008: Almost Everything]

Tour to follow, if you give the Byrne-borg your email (or one of your disposal email accounts), you’ll get more details. Supposedly, this email will not be shared with DHS, or the Total Information Awareness project.

Total Information Awareness Logo

Total Information Awareness Logo

In September I will begin a tour, on which I will be playing music from the new album as well as music from our previous collaborations – 3 Talking Heads albums, Bush of Ghosts, etc. If you’d like to be updated as this story unfolds, please add your email address via the box to the right (we will not contact you for any reason other than to tell you about this David Byrne and Brian Eno project and the tour and we promise not to give or sell your contact to anyone else or even to the government)

Prior collaborations between these two artists are among my most favorite of albums, so am greatly anticipating this one too. Oh, and kudos to Mr. Byrne for releasing the track as 320 kbps (though the autoplay video is annoying)

moved the video below the fold since it autoplays Continue reading “New Byrne Eno album”

Vote for Fear

Seth Anderson0 comment

Speaking of Terrorism Theatre1, PSoTD catches a bit of fear mongering soft-shoe, Republican style. Vote for Fear, vote Republican!

I think it was CNN was showing a bit of a McCain fundraising/publicity stop. McCain was taking questions from the audience, and some 18 year old woman grabbed and microphone, and one of the first things she said was something like this:

I hope you win this. Obama, whew, he terrifies me! Whew!
and she kind of paused, and then…

the crowd applauded.

And I thought, there it is, in a nutshell. Republicans. Cheering for fear. Are you afraid? Yes? Hooray!!!!! Vote for Republicans then.

[From PSoTD Wuss Nation]

Whenever I think of Fear, I think of beer. Or more beer.


“More Beer” (Fear)

Footnotes:
  1. with my Canadian schooling, I am never sure how theater is spelled [↩]

Packit Gourmet Launched

Seth Anderson0 comment

My cousin’s website has finally launched1, a boon to travelers and campers who are looking for quality food to take on trips.

Homecooking is the new Gourmet! Both at home and on the trail, we are committed to eating well; avoiding “fast-food” and artificial ingredients wherever possible. In bringing our own standard to the Packit Gourmet line of meals and grocery items, we personally select and carefully taste-test each and every item offered to make sure that the flavor, texture, appearance and nutrition are something that we would want to eat at home or on the trail. Having trekked a few miles ourselves, we know that size, weight, water and time conservation are also important so we hand pack and package with that in mind. If we wouldn’t use it or eat it – you won’t see it sold in our store.

You’ll find many homemade flavors featured in the meals we offer – and natural and organic ingredients included whenever possible. Both meal components and bulk products are handpicked to ensure that you are getting what we think is the best product possible; and your meal packs are hand-packaged in a commercially certified kitchen.

We love to travel almost as much as we love to eat! You’ll see a reflection of this in the flavor selections found in our meal packs. Heavy influences of the Deep South, Texas and Mexico are featured throughout our offerings; but you’ll also find traces of Canada, Europe, Southeast Asia, India and South America. All places where we have enjoyed great experiences and fabulous food.

[From Packit Gourmet]

Check it out before your next excursion.

Footnotes:
  1. full disclosure, I’ve had a small role as an unpaid consultant [↩]

O’Hare’s toll taker

Seth Anderson0 comment

Corruption? In Chicago? Surely1 you jest.

Within the past year, three businesses donated money to Alderman Patrick Levar’s campaign fund shortly before or after getting backing for potentially lucrative airport leases from the Chicago City Council committee he oversees. Mr. Levar, 57, is the longtime chairman of the Aviation Committee, a necessary stopover for many companies looking to cash in on the throngs of travelers at O’Hare and Midway airports. A range of concessionaires, from McDonald’s franchisees to Nuts On Clark, have sought the blessing of his panel recently.

The 45th Ward alderman’s campaign fundraising records show numerous donations from airport vendors, some with a keen interest in how his Aviation Committee votes. What’s more, Mr. Levar solicits some of these vendors for campaign fundraisers, although he insists he puts them on his mailing list only if they give him a business card and ask to be included.

[From Chicago Business News, Analysis & Articles | O’Hare’s toll taker | Crain’s ]

Alderman Levar, predictably, has no idea why these companies are singling out his campaign to donate money to, and furthermore claims that Daley is the real decision maker.

Mr. Levar says he doesn’t really hold much power, since the Daley administration chooses contractors before submitting them to his committee, which decides whether to forward things on to the full City Council for final approval.

“They go through a process — I don’t pick them,” Mr. Levar says.

Still, he plays a central role in determining whether businesses get to tap passenger pocketbooks at city-owned O’Hare and Midway.

Footnotes:
  1. and stop calling me Shirley. I’m obligated to type that or I’ll lose my Airport pun license [↩]