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Go away!  Get off my lawn!

You should be reading this, and this, and this.

And make sure you run all the daily news you get through a solid, sensible bullshit filter.

Why can’t Sheldon Whitehouse be in the White House?

He shined a bright light on the Department Of Justice today.

Glenn Greenwald:

At its core, the history of the Iraq War has been authored by an indescribably deceitful and very intellectually limited political and media elite, perfectly symbolized by Kit Bond. These are people who spent four years hailing the Great Progress the Leader was making in Iraq, claiming we were “clearing and holding” neighborhoods of all the Terrorists, that Freedom was on the March, that anyone who questioned any of this was either brainwashed by the war-hating media or a Friend of The Terrorists.

And now, four years later, with the War plainly having been a failure, and their assurances all exposed as false, what are they doing? Hailing the Great Progress the Leader is making in Iraq, claiming we are “clearing and holding” neighborhoods of all the Terrorists, that Freedom is on the March, that anyone who questions any of this is either brainwashed by the war-hating media or a Friend of The Terrorists. Nothing ever changes. It just plods along with the same idiot slogans and the same people spouting them. And they do it with no shame, no acknowledgment of their own past behavior, and no loss of credibility.

Commenter El Cid explains how it all works:

You see, the earlier plan was the wrong plan even though it was successful and working, just not successfully and workingly enough.

The new plan, which just seems like the old plan with some more people, is the right plan and is working and is successful, but we don’t yet know if it will be sucessful and working enough.

So the new plan which is the right plan and which is successful and working may soon itself too become the wrong plan, which although correct and successful and working needs to be replaced by the right plan, which will be successful and working even more.

Exactly.  Now shut up and let the Leaders take care of everything.

I’m watching a little bit of this all-night Senate debate on the Levin-Reed amendment and listening to some of these Republican asshats (I’m lookin’ at you, Bunning from Kentucky) trotting out the same boring talking points and reading them painfully slowly from their double-spaced print-out in such a stultifying monotone it just crystallizes how fucked up this quagmire is.

Impeach.

Withdraw.

Rebuild.

Oh, and Lieberman?

Fuck you.

THAT MEANS YOU!

Ever take the 22 Fillmore?

No ???

You know those days when you take public trans and you don’t know whether to punch people in the face or bear hug them? You know what I mean .. ya wanna just fucking reel back and clock ‘em one or .. or .. aww shucks, maybe plant a big ol’ surprise smooch on their cheek in a fleeting, graceful gesture. Beautiful, sunny day and ya take the high wit’ da low.

I realize this has very little to do with the song. I suspect he’s more on about a SF Muni booty call. Shit, you and I will be lucky if we can ever measure up to an iota of Chuck’s coolness. The dude gets it. All we can do is abide.

Go on .. take a picture ..

but not until you’ve sucked in your gut and and reviewed some feature on your face you can’t stand or surveyed the area of your thigh fat and on and on and on.

I’m all for individuals taking care of themselves. Understand your own body and how it works. Learn how to eat healthy and find exercise that you enjoy and can do regularly. But please don’t beat yourself up over this impossible manufactured image or that unrealistic, sadistic ideal.

Love your body.  Love your self.  Fuck the advertising and societal pressure that tries to bend and break you.

I’m riffing on this post by Melissa McEwan. The before and after is pretty ridiculous.

I’m digging lots of posts over at Shakesville lately. A good hang.

If you’re a U.S. citizen then you have obligations.

You need to keep yourself well-informed. You need to know what your government is doing in your name, with your tax dollars.

You need to review the civics courses you took in school. You need to review the Constitution.

You need to make time for well-produced public affairs programs like this past Friday’s episode of Bill Moyers Journal.

Watch it here.

Following a little Saturday night hedonism and rock ‘n roll.

Great post and comments Friday at Shakesville to get you thinking of your own Saturday night/Sunday morning dynamic.

Growing up I often spent Sunday morning in a Lutheran church. The closest I get there anymore is sharing the stage with my Lutheran Pastor bass player. Amazing human being, he is.

These days I’m much more comfortable embracing my inner atheist. I’m certainly open to evidence, should it be presented to me convincingly. Open ears should new shit come to light. More accurately, it’s just the openness of agnosticism I’ve felt for most of my life. Fairness and justice and logic and reason and sunshine and truth flow easier through that lens. It actually gives me more of a sense of awe and wonder and respect for the world we live in.

When it’s over .. who knows? Maybe you become a cardinal, dropping by occasionally to keep an eye on your loved ones.

Time for a musical interlude? Here ya go ..

No fried chicken for me but I am off to see some friends and eat some tacos.

Heavenly.

Big record release show for our pals Frisbie this Saturday night at Double Door. Get your bad self in for free with a Pitchfork fest ticket stub.

Their new record is terrific. If you’re like me and grew up on Cheap Trick, Shoes, Off Broadway and all things midwest and powerpoppy, they bring the goods.

Dolly Varden opens and then I just may sneak up and join the headliners for a tune.

Join us, won’t you?

Another must-read post:

The cure is quite simple. Make sure this radical right wing experiment is thoroughly and finally discredited in the public’s mind and replaced with something very simple — a normal western democracy that has a decent safety net for all its citizens, a commitment to making the middle class accessible to those on the bottom and a sense of responsibility among those who have thrived and become wealthy. It’s not that complicated and it doesn’t require a wholesale reworking of our society. It simply requires a return to the …ahem … traditional American values that undergirded the New Deal, and a healthy respect for that old truism, “there but for the grace of God go I.”

The other side will shriek and hold their breath until they turn blue, but this is the weakest they’ve been in a quarter century. The time is now to make the argument. (Here’s another good place to start: Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class)

The evidence just keeps piling up. The conservative movement is a grotesque new form of aristocracy cloaked in the mantle of radical free market religion. They are playing all of us for suckers and getting away with it.

This follows a clear-eyed account of insidious Catch-22 corporate conformity. I look back with mildly disgusted amusement at my post-college years temping in downtown Chicago through a revolving door of big business blandness. I’ve been fortunate to avoid that environment for a decade-plus and am even more determined to keep it that way, and it means making do with less and making the most of what I have.

Which is getting easier every day as I reassess my needs and footprint without getting all ascetic and monk-like. Little changes, everyday. Just wondering about the carrying capacity of this planet and realizing how little billions of people live without everyday is enough to make me slow down my consumption and marvel at the gifts in front of me.

I’m not convinced the cure is going to be simple, as Digby states, but I agree with the summary and that this can be a start towards corrective action in the national political arena and compelling wealthy corporations and elites to change. Prepare for a hellacious resistance, though.

Meanwhile, there’s much to fix in our own backyards.

It’s time to roll our sleeves up, folks.

I’ve gotten a bit blase about the big cause concerts over the years but the Live Earth streams today have been fun to watch.

Enjoyed Razorlight, Snow Patrol and I got a big ol’ thrill watching Foo Fighters slam through “My Hero” with Wembley Stadium singing along in full force. Nice little shout-out to Al Gore, as well.

Call me a heretic but I never ‘got’ Nirvana. Never bought Nevermind. Never bought a Foo Fighters record either but I dig every catchy song of theirs I’ve heard over the years.

And ya gotta love Spinal Tap gettin’ lowdown with a mess-o-bass players.

Adding:  Leave it to NBC to package up the broadcast, throw a couple hack emcee anchors, add the usual ‘exclusive backstage interviews’, you know the drill.

Give Trudie Styler a minute to highlight Chevron polluting Ecuador but then the NBC ‘journalist’ quickly slips in a Chevron talking point rebuttal to balance things out, I suppose.

Same as it ever was.

Today’s post by Glenn Greenwald, further clarifying his analysis from the previous day, is well worth reading. As are all his posts. As are the rigorous, (mostly) thoughtful comment threads that follow each one.

I’ve thought a lot about notions of ‘American exceptionalism’ in recent years. Glenn sums things up well in these paragraphs:

So much of the intensity and anger driving the criticisms of the Bush presidency — certainly my own, and much of what I read (as exemplified above) — is grounded in a fervent belief in American political values, its political principles and its constitutional framework. The anger comes not from a belief that the U.S. is an evil and corrupt entity, but from the opposite view. It comes from witnessing the all-out assault on these vaunted political principles and values and the complete corruption, close to the destruction, of our country’s national character that has made the U.S. such an important and admired presence in the world for so long.

To believe in America’s political values and to observe the importance of its role in the world is not “American exceptionalism.” Like all countries, America has erred many times and has been capable of evil. Other countries have critically important virtues that America lacks. As I detail in my book, America has been far too quick to use war as a foreign policy option and has become increasingly imperialistic in precisely the way the Founders so stridently warned against.

It’s sadness and anger I feel for how this country has squandered its ideals and principles. Not fatalism or defeatism or surrender or other mistaken notions that chest-beating ‘patriots’ attempt to hang on those who point out our failings and short-sighted, misguided policies. We may disagree on solutions, but we all need to get back to some ground rules on what we all have in common and what’s at stake.

A scruffy little recording from 2005-04-20 covering Tom Petty.

Happy Interdependence Day.