Some People Have A Lot of Free Time

Funny video that mixes clips of Bender from Futurama with the song “Mr. Roboto” by Styx.

John McCain Sell-Out Update

A couple of weeks ago I promised that I would try and cover every time the “maverick” John McCain sells-out to the Republican establishment. He has already flip-flopped on Roe V. Wade and on the intolerance of the religious right. Now he has hired Terry Nelson to be campaign manager for his upcoming presidential bid. Nelson is the genius behind the racist ad successfully used against Harold Ford Jr. in Tennessee — the infamous “call me” ad. After that ad was pulled and condemned by virtually everyone not running for office as a Republican, Nelson was forced to resign from his post with WalMart who wanted to distance itself from the racism in the advertisement.

Good move, McCain! I guess it is now “maverick” to use racism to win elections. You’re not embarrassing your legacy one bit, buddy.

Tag: John McCain

Have You Noticed Conservatives Have Been Whining A Lot Lately?

Today is the 65th anniversary of the attacks on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii by the Japanese. For some bizarre reason, the president at that time, Franklin D. Roosevelt, actually declared war on Japan. I mean, wasn’t there some other country that had nothing to do with the attack that we could have invaded instead? That’s such pre-9/11 thinking!

The Bush Administration’s criminal activity may not come to a complete end in January when the Democrats take over Congress, but many administration officials are getting out rather than be investigated and indicted. Administration appointees to the EPA are said to be leaving first. For those that stick it out, they will be able to hire the new “crisis management” firm created by two former Bush Administration officials from the Justice Department. Former department spokespersons Mark Corallo and Barbara Comstock are forming a law/PR firm — Corallo Comstock – to defend members of the administration under investigation. You can never accuse a Republican of not exploiting a good business opportunity, and defending Republicans accused of wrongdoing will be big business in 2007!

A member of the Parliament of Indoniesa is under investigation over a sex tape that has appeared on the internet. The legislator is seen in a one-minute video engaging in some type of sexual activity with a popular singer. The lawmaker is currently MIA, but the singer has admitted she made the tape with her cell phone.

Unhinged right-winger alert!! A Gainesville, Florida man was arrested for releasing hazardous material into an adult video store. The police describe it as a “weapon of mass destruction.” The man, Thomas Magyari, “set two gallon-sized jugs of what appeared to be a corrosive material on the business’ air conditioner. A water hose was set up to push water into the jugs, and another hose fed the substance into the building.” Magyari wanted to delay the opening of the adult store in his city. So, that’s where the WMDs went!

Lead singer of The Cure, Robert Smith, is suffering writer’s block. He has not been able to come up with any lyrics for the 30+ new songs the band has recorded for their next album. “I want them (the words) to mean something, it’s not enough that they rhyme,” Smith told Reuters in a recent interview. “I find myself stopping short and thinking I’ve done this before, and better.” Yes, Bobby, you have. Maybe it’s time to retire.

Right-wingers in this country have been whining for the last two years that the media only covers the violence in Iraq, and not all of the “good things” going on inside the war ravaged country. God forbid, someone should associate a war with violence! Anyway, one of the overlooked sections in the report from the Iraq Study Group says that the Bush Administration has engaged in “significant under-reporting of the violence in Iraq.” Another right-wing myth bites the dust.

Another popular myth of the right is that the troops are hurt by debate over the war, and that all of the soldiers serving in Iraq are die-hard Bush supporters who believe in the “stay the course” strategy. Not true. “In Iraq, we try to win the hearts and minds of population. They want Americans out of here. They blame us for all their problems. They look at us as the terrorists and then they turn around and help the terrorists who are trying to kill us,” said 1st Lt. Gerald Dow, 32, of Chicago, Illinois. Is Dow now unpatriotic or hurting the troops for stating the obvious? Dow is hardly the only soldier with serious doubts about Bush’s policy.

The Conservative Jewish Movement (the middle ground between the Orthodox and the liberal, Reform movements) has voted to allow gay rabbis and same-sex marriages. The decision was not unanimous, and was worded to allow individual congregations to decide for themselves if they were going to accept gay rabbis and gay marriages.

The Republican-led Congress had reduced the work week down to a mere three days during the last session. The Democrats have announced that they plan to return to a five-day work week (just like actual Americans have, I might add). Republicans, typically, whined about this new development, “Keeping us up here eats away at families,” said Rep. Jack Kingston (R-Ga.). “Marriages suffer. The Democrats could care less about families — that’s what this says.” Huh. So working five days a week causes families to suffer? Is that the new message of the GOP? I guess they are scrapping the “gay marriage destroys families” argument, and adopting the talking point that a 40-hour work week destroys families. Good call, guys. Do you think I could pull this at my job? Should I tell my boss that working more than three days in a week is hurting my family? How long do you think I’d still have that job?

Another Cheney Is On the Way (and why that is bad news to right-wingers)

Vice President Cheney’s daughter, Mary Cheney, has announced that she is pregnant. Congratulations to her. This will be the first child for Cheney and her partner. Too bad the right is unable to contain their hatred of homosexuals. On popular right-wing website TownHall, this is how the future grandchild of their hero is being attacked: “Knowing from scientific data that children excel best when given the full and natural parental structure of one mother and one father, is it moral to bring a child into such a scenario – purposefully, simply to stroke one’s own desire to have a child – sort of like a new handbag, or pair of shoes?” (emphasis added) Wow. Comparing the desire to have children to buying shoes?! Just when you think the right couldn’t any lower, they find previously unheard of depths of bigotry. Shameful.

Before he has even been voted on by the Senate, the nominee for Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, already has his photo up inside the Pentagon and on its website. Good thing no one is saying the fix already in for Gates, right?

Record producer Nigel Godrich (Radiohead, Pavement) is starting a new online show called From the Basement. The show will available for download through iTunes and from their website. For the premiere episode on December 18, Godrich will feature Radiohead’s Thom Yorke playing two brand new Radiohead songs on piano. The show will also feature a three-song set from The White Stripes.

Blogger Jesse Jarnow has assembled an album’s worth of new Wilco and/or Jeff Tweedy mp3s for download. Wilco has an open taping policy at its live shows as long as the tracks are not used for commercial purposes. I gave the songs a quick listen, and they sounded pretty good. I saw Tweedy about six months ago or so, and he was amazing. The new Wilco album is scheduled for a May release.

This is great. Talking Points Memo’s Josh Marshall says this on the Dennis Prager non-Christains should not be allowed to serve in Congress thing, “Maybe he so hates and is so frightened of Muslims that he’s willing to sell out his religion and Jewishness, to slap on a yellow badge of second class status, in the hopes that the Christians will protect him. The guy gives Uncle Toms a bad name.” Nice. Yesterday, the ADL condemned Prager, and today the Holocaust Memorial Museum said Prager’s statements “do not reflect the position of the US Holocaust Memorial Museum” and that he speaks “soley for himself.” Prager cannot be removed from the board at the Museum because he was appointed to it by…drum roll please…President Bush!

There is now video of Jessica Simpson’s “9 to 5 incident” from the Kennedy Center. I don’t think it was a big deal at all. She was clearly struggling to keep her dress from falling down (a struggle I was hoping she’d lose). The performance could hardly be called a meltdown; nor should it be compared to Ashlee Simpson getting busted lip-syncing on Saturday Night Live. See for yourself:

Andy Partridge of the legendary band XTC did a lengthy interview with Amazon.com about his new 9 CD boxed set Fuzzy Warbles Collector’s Album (buy here). The set features demos by Partridge that he has recorded over the last 30 years. There are 161 songs total. There is also a link to the interview in podcast form in case you can’t read.

O’Sexxxy Factor: December 6 , 2006

Happy Wednesday. For today’s Factor, we have strawberry blonde model Hannah Hilton (no relation to Paris thankfully). To see the rest of Ms. Hilton, click here. (NSFW)

Tag: sex

Truer Words Have Never Been Written

A Few Nuggets For You To Chew On Today

Minnesota’s excellent band Low have revealed a few details about their forthcoming CD. It will be called Drunks and Guns, and will be released March 20 on Sub Pop Records. The album will be the first to feature new bassist Matt Livingston, and will be produced by Dave Fridmann (Flaming Lips, Sleater-Kinney, Phantom Planet). Low’s last album, The Great Destroyer, was easily their best, and was one of the top albums of 2005. Low broke-up briefly during the Destroyer tour, but I am glad that didn’t stick.

President Bush’s environmental roll-backs done “in the dead of the night” will not be happening once the Democrats gain control of the Senate. This is according to California Senator Barbara Boxer, who will chair the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. “We’re going to for once, finally, make this committee an environment committee, not an anti-environment committee. … This is a sea change that is coming to this committee.”

Al Gore was recently asked if President Bush had seen his environmental movie, An Inconvenient Truth. He had this comical response, “Well, he claimed that would not see it. That’s why I wrote the book. He’s a reader.”

Criminally under-appreciated 90s alt-rock band Failure will be releasing their second post-break up CD any day now. The two-disc set will be called Essentials. The first disc will feature tracks from the band’s three studio albums, and the second disc will have the band’s early 7″ singles and demos for the album Magnified. It will only be available through online retailer CDBaby. For now, Failure has created a podcast where Ken Andrews and Gregg Edwards discuss the release on their MySpace page. Check there for an official release date, tracklisting, and a purchase link.

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a prominent civil rights organization dedicated to fighting anti-semitism, has issued a statement criticizing right-winger Dennis Prager for attacking Congressman-elect Keith Ellison. Ellison is the first-ever Muslim elected to Congress, and had stated that he planned to take his oath of office on the Koran. “Prager is flat-out wrong when he asserts that Representative Ellison’s use of a Koran would be damaging to the fabric of American civilization. To the contrary, the U.S. Constitution guarantees that, no religious test shall ever be required to hold public office in America. Members of Congress, like all Americans, should be free to observe their own religious practices without government interference or coercion.” The statement went on to point out what I had already pointed out on this blog, that members of Congress do not take their oath on any holy book whatsoever. This entire “controversy” is just another bigoted attack from the far-right.

What the hell was going on with Gwen Stefani’s hair at the Billboard Awards the other night?

Is there a Ratt reunion in the works for 2007? Maybe. The 80s hair metal legends have been a functioning band for the last few years, but only two of the four surviving members were in the band. The current singer, Jizzy Pearl, has just left, which paves the way for original singer Stephen Pearcy to rejoin the group. It looks like all four original Ratt members (Robbin Crosby died a few years ago) along with guitarist John Corabi (Motley Crue) will do the 2007 tour. Call your local bowling alley or state fair for more information.

Hey! Good news! The pay gap between men and women is disappearing. The bad news is that this is not because women are getting paid more, it’s that men’s wages are eroding. “We’re closing the wage gap in exactly the wrong way,” said Rebecca Blank, dean of the University of Michigan’s Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy. “The idea was that women’s wages were supposed to rise, not that men’s wages would fall to women’s level.” More of that Bush economy in full effect.

Bush’s economic policies are a scandal themselves, but did you realize exactly how many Bush Administration officials have either been accused of corruption or resigned in the face of a scandal? Talking Points Memo has assembled a list, and it is huge. Here are some highlights:

Scooter Libby – Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff – resigned after being indicted for Obstruction of Justice, Perjury, and Making False Statements in connection with the investigation stemming from the leak of a CIA operative’s identity

Lester Crawford – Commissioner, FDA – resigned after only two months on the job. Pled guilty to conflict of interest and making false statements

Claude Allen – Assistant to the President for Domestic Policy- resigned, pled guilty to shoplifting from Target stores

Frank Figueroa – senior DHS official, former head of anti-sex-crime Operation Predator – pled no contest to exposing himself to 16-year-old girl in Florida mall. Girl says he fondled himself for ten minutes

Carl Truscott – Director, Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives Bureau – resigned. A report by the Justice Department’s Inspector General found that Truscott wasted tens of thousands of dollars on luxuries, wasted millions on whimsical management decisions and violated ethics rules by ordering employees to help his nephew with a high school video project

Susan Ralston – assistant, White House – resigned amidst revelations that she had accepted thousands of dollars in gifts from Abramoff without compensating him, counter to White House ethics rules

Dusty Foggo – Executive Director, CIA – stepped down following accusations of corruption in connection to the Duke Cunningham scandal. Under investigation;

George Deutsch – press aide, NASA – resigned amid allegations he prevented the agency’s top climate scientist from speaking publicly about global warming.

There are so many more, check the whole list. No wonder George HW Bush keeps crying everytime he talks about his son. He is embarrassed.

You Ignored My Command To See The Lemonheads?

It seems that many of you out there ignored my command to see The Lemonheads last night. That’s too bad, for you. You missed a fantastic show. The small crowd of about 100-120 seemed to really enjoy it, but I was pretty surprised that was all of the people who showed up.

I missed the very first band, The Hymns. I got to Sokol just in time to catch the set from VietNam. They were a pretty decent band. They all looked like they could be in the Grateful Dead or something. Their sound reminded me of a cross between My Morning Jacket and a slow, stoner rock band. I liked them, but it was hard to tell sometimes when one song ended and the next one began.

That was not a problem for The Lemonheads. The band hit the stage at exactly 11 pm. Evan Dando, who must be pushing 40 years old, did not look a minute older than he did when I last saw him 13 years ago! The guy has found some type of fountain of youth apparently. I know I don’t look the same way I did back in 93.

The set was pulled from the new Lemonheads album, as well as all of their classic 90s records. “It’s a Shame About Ray” “Hosptial” “Big Gay Heart” “My Drug Buddy” “Bit Part” and “Down About It” were all featured, and all got a great response from the small, but enthusiastic crowd. They played my personal, favorite Lemonheads song, “Ride With Me,” which made the show as far as I was concerned.

After about 70 minutes or so, the band left the stage and Dando played an acoustic set. He played a few tunes (including at least one from his 2003 solo album) before abruptly ending “Into Your Arms” after only 30 seconds or so, and walking off the stage. I’m still not really sure what happened, but Dando must have been upset my something in the behavior of some of the meatheads in the front row. From my vantage point, it seemed like the group was just singing along (loudly and poorly, but that could not be helped I guess), but maybe they said something to Evan to make him mad. Regardless, the show was over without explanation.

All in all, I had a great time and enjoyed the show, despite the bizarre ending. The band, however, did not feature Bill Stevenson and Karl Alvarez from the Descendents. No idea who was in the band, I just know it wasn’t them. I guess it could be chalked up to it being Monday night, but I was really disappointed by the turnout. Sokol is packed for crap like Tilly and the Wall, but barely 100 people show up for The Lemonheads? It’s just not right.

Tag: Evan Dando

Why Are Mondays So Freakin’ Long?

John Bolton is out. No…he hasn’t come out. He’s not gay. But Bush’s disastrous choice for UN Ambassador has resigned. There was simply no way that he was going to get confirmed by the Senate, and his recess appointment is set to expire in a few weeks. I’m not optimistic that some sense of sanity will return to our post at the UN, as the right is floating some truly idiotic choices to replace Bolton. The National Review is pushing for Rick Santorum for the job. He might be the only person worse than Bolton for the post. Is there anyone on the right without his or her head up their ass? How could someone even suggest Rick Santorum for UN Ambassador? Hell, John Mark Karr would be a better choice. American conservatives are clearly deranged.

I obviously have a love/hate relationship with Jessica Simpson. To quote Borat, I’d love to “make sexy time” with her, but I’d hate to have to listen to her sing. I guess she had a pretty bad night last night at the Kennedy Center Honors show. She was part of the tribute to Dolly Parton, and came on stage to sing Dolly’s signature tune, “9 to 5.” She forgot the lyrics, said “so nervous,” and tearfully left the stage. There was no applause from the audience. Ouch! Poor baby. I feel badly for people when stuff like that happens. Jess, if you need a shoulder to cry on, I’m here.

If you missed Meet The Press yesterday, you missed a great one. Russert got his balls back and seriously tore Bush National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley a new one. Watch some of the video here (a full transcript of the interview can be found here). That, my friends, is how one is supposed to interview a member of the Bush Administration. It is exactly the type of journalism that has been completely absent for the last six years. Nice job, Tim!

For those keeping track…it has now been 1,904 days since George Bush declared he would get Osama Bin Laden “dead or alive.”

The new CD by …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, So Divided, features a great cover of Guided By Voices’ “Gold Heart Mountain Top Queen Directory.” What a strange choice, but what a great one. Buy the CD here.

Last week, I hoped the GOP would nominate Newt Gingrich to be their candidate for president in 2008. Now though, I am “praying” that the party instead nominates Kansas Senator Sam Brownback. He’s making noises about running. This is the guy responsible for the argument that microscopic cells frozen in a petri dish are just as much of a human being as your grandfather with Alzheimers. I hope he takes that argument all the way to a humiliating defeat in November 2008.

Looking for something fun to do this weekend? How does a heavy metal band playing Air Supply songs sound? If you live in New York, you could see the “greatest heavy metal tribute to Air Supply in the tri-state area,” Hair Supply. My question…is there more than one heavy metal tribute to Air Supply in the tri-state area? Is there another one anywhere? If anyone has seen this show, please report back. I think this may actually be the dumbest idea for a band ever. Yes…ever.

I had a really great show last night. In addition to being in a great mood while I was there, when I listened back to the show this morning, I didn’t say anything especially stupid!! I also got three seperate calls from people who said my show is the best radio in Omaha. Love getting calls like that. My playlist from last night can be found here.

The Lemonheads TONIGHT at Sokol Underground

If you live in the Omaha area, I am commanding you to go to Sokol Underground tonight to see The Lemonheads. They are playing tonight at 9 pm along with Vietnam. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased here or at the door.

As you no doubt know, this is the first Lemonheads tour in more than a decade. Besides head Lemonhead Evan Dando, the band features Bill Stevenson and Karl Alvarez from the legendary Descendents. The new album is amazing, and the show should be quite good.

Don’t be a pussy just because it’s Monday night. What else are you going to be doing? Go to this show!

Tag: The Lemonheads