It never rains where you need it to

Mid-week updates

. . . . . So, the new Wilco album came available on Tuesday. If you ordered it from their website, it was most likely delivered yesterday too, and you can download the entire album as an MP3 too, for free, for placing the order. The demand was so high yesterday, that it crashed their server for 12 hours. When I get back into a position to, I'll put a couple of the tracks in the playlist.

. . . . .You have to be from the Midwest and from the era of the '70's to remember the Michael Stanley Band. Well, Michael is still at it, and there's still a lot of members of the old MSB, in his new backing band. Michael was just as good as Bob Seger, or John Mellencamp, and still is, he just never got the breaks they did, and we all know how much I love those two. They worked their ass off night after night on the road, and in the studio and did it their own way. Michael worked just as hard, it just didn't lay out that way for him. After all, how many people out there can say that their first backing band on their first studio album was a then unknown Joe Walsh and the James Gang? Anyhow, at Michael's website, you can order his new album, along with one from Bob Pelander, his keyboard player, and Jonah Koslin, his guitar player. I'll put a couple of those up too.

. . . .'S matter of fact, I've taken it far too easily on all of your ears. It's time for music that you've not heard, from people that may or may not have heard from, with track that you're guaranteed not to have heard. Look out, next week is the mid-summer tracks you've never heard festival!

. . . .Jeez, I love it when the ever-so-studious, intelligentsia on the Right forms it's normal circular firing squad. The squabble now is over the article in Vanity Fair on Sarah Palin. The epitome of being a Republican apologist and hack, Bill Kristol, accuses Steve Schmidt, the McCain campaign manager of being one of the top McCain aides who questioned Palin's mental stability during the campaign. Schmidt, firing back immediately; "I'm sure that John McCain would be President today if only Kristol had been in charge. After all, his management of Dan Quayle's public image as his former chief of staff still takes your breath away."

. . . .OK, OK, get over it, Al Franken got seated today. It was a constitutional process, and it's over now. What's also over is every one of Harry Reid's excuses with a full 60 seats now. Every damn excuse is gone, it's time for them to get busy. It's not the President's job to vote, pass legislation, craft it. That's their job, now get it done Harry, it's the Dems turn now, let's see what you can do.

. . . .It really doesn't matter in the end. It was a Republican majority House and Senate during the Bush administration that ran up the largest deficit in history that we're now dealing with.

. . . In the end, that doesn't matter anymore either, here in the land of short attention span theater and complete lack of knowledge of even history from 5 years that people stunningly present every day.

. . . .The most fun about it? Fox News and it's cast of entertainers has become absolutely insane over it. Talk about writhing in agony, these guys are doing a better job of acting than a 4th grader that really doesn't want to go to school today. You lost, it runs in cycles, the Repubs will have their chance to continue screwing all of us, and they were doing such a good job of it, again.

. . . .Even more fun than that is when the cast of drooling morons actually puts themselves on tape proving what kind of fascists they are. Check this one here, where Rupert Murdoch's CEO for News Limited, the holding corp for Fox News, Roger Hartigan, labels writers, columnists and bloggers like me "political extremists" and laments the fact that we aren't rounded up and thrown in prison like in China and Burma. Too bad bitch, this is America, not your Fourth Reich.

. . . .I will freely admit to being a drooling fanatic for Rescue Me on FX networks with Denis Leary as Tommy Gavin. Last night's episode, from the moment that Tommy was sitting alone, drinking, and talking to his dead son, his dead brother, his dead cousin and his dead Dad was from that point on, one of the finest stretches of acting and television that I'd seen in a long, long time. It was absolutely brilliant, and impossible to explain. If you've never watched it, check out the rerun of this week's episode on Friday night at 11 PM.

. . . .Dept. of truly weird shit: Check this video of a weird alien blob out here from a cam that was mounted on a sewer snake down in North Carolina. Yes, it's real, and it's not faked. The alien freaks came out of the woodwork on this one, since it so much resembles the blob from the movie "The Blob", and the Utilities Department down there has their own explanation. I'll let you watch it first, and I'll tell you what their explanation was further down.

. . . .Dept. of even truly weirder shit: Scientists have discovered a mega-colony of ants, a species called Argentinian ants. When I say mega-colony, I'm talked about an inter-related colony that extends to every continent on Earth; like the a 3,700 mile long colony in Europe along the Mediterranean; one that extends 560 miles up the California coast; one that runs the entire coast of Japan. And, genetically, they're all interrelated. What that means is that they're not aggressive towards one another, and won't kill another colony, they're all basically one colony. They're growing. Catch the whole story here at the BBC.

. . . .The world's 8th largest economy shut down this morning and is bankrupt. I'm talking about the state, that by itself, was the world's 8th biggest economy, larger than most countries on Earth. California is bankrupt, and out of business. Guess what? Poof! It's gone.

. . . . .Geez! Enough already. I mean, it's pretty obvious that South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford got the fuck of his lifetime from this Argentinian woman, he's waxed poetic about it enough. Can we move on? Please. Either divorce your wife and go back to getting great blowjobs, or not, but get back to governing. What does getting laid have to do with being a Governor? Hunh? After all, the Republican Party is full of Mark Sanfords, and has a long history of them:
Newt Gingrich -two affairs, two divorces
John McCain - affair on disabled first wife, followed by a divorce, then marrying Miss Moneybags
Rudy Guiliani - divorced from his first wife, married, an affair, then a truly nasty divorce
Fred Thompson - affair, divorce
Rush Limbaugh - too many marriages to mention, (4 total), but there weren't affairs, he's the exception to the rule. No one wants to bang the sweaty windbag, methinks there's a lot of dollar signs in women's eyes when they meet him.
And let us not forget, the most famous South Carolinian of them all, Strom Thurmond, who was absolutely the kinkiest of the lot - The "affair" with his black maid, which resulted in a daughter for one of the most famous foes of integration and a true Son of the South. Oh, by the way, the word "affair" is in quotes since the maid was 15 at the time. Or there was his mistress, who was on Death Row, in a South Carolina peniteniary.

Now, between those gems and Sanford, 2006 to 2009 gets really confusing, what with Vitter, Larry Craig, Ensign, et al. One of TPM's readers sent in this helpful flow chart.

. . . The point here is simple. It's pretty damn hypocritical of the Republican Party to call for him to step down.

. . . .And no, I haven't forgotten Bill Clinton's sexual hijinks in the White House with Monica Lewinsky, the First BBW, but we are talking about a man that Paula Jones wouldn't screw. Nor can I leave the other Democrat, John Edwards, out. His shit stinks on that one big, but, these two compared to the above list? It makes the lot of them calling for Clinton's impeachment look, like what it was, sheer hypocrisy.

. . . The rest of the world's attention and the media's focus may be on Michael Jackson, but mine isn't. Mir Hossein Mousavi has asked Iran's protestors to keep going, and called Ahmadenijad's and Khameini's government "illegitimate", to continue to defy an "unlawful Iranian regime" in defiance of the High Cleric, who stated that no more opposition to the election results, or questioning of them, will be allowed. Coverage here.

. . . .Farewell Karl Malden, see you on the other side. If all you remember of Karl is him and Michael Douglas in The Streets of San Francisco you're missing it. Try renting On The Waterfront and watch he and Marlon Brando together.

. . . .In the Congressional investigation that is ramping up to probe the Bank of America-Merrill Lynch deal that Paulson pushed through last September, a very suprising internal GOP memo is being circulated that directly takes on George W Bush and attacks his handling of the economy. The folks at WhoRunsGov have obtained copies of the memo, and you can read the whole piece at the jump here.

An internal GOP memo prepared to brief some House Republicans as part of an ongoing probe into the Bank of America-Merrill Lynch deal takes direct aim at an unlikely target: Former President George W. Bush.

The memo directly blames Bush’s handling of the economic meltdown,. . . . .
“The financial crisis of 2008 had its roots primarily in ill-conceived government policies,” reads the memo. It was prepared by Republican staffers to advise GOP members of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform on how to handle a recent hearing on the government’s role in Bank of America’s purchase of Merrill Lynch.

. . . .Krugman the Nobel prize winning economist who,along with Noriel Roubini and Mark Zandi called all of this right as far back as 2006, and were derided and laughed at then, on economic recovery, on ABC News, and the same thing that he's reiterated all along, that the Obama Administration got it wrong, and needed to go for a much, much larger stimulus package the first time around to jumpstart the economy:

"The fact of the matter is that the unemployment rate is much worse than the administration contemplated or that most people expected," Krugman told ABC News. "So the economy is much weaker than we thought it'd be, meaning, in fact, it could use more stimulus."
"I'm trying to move the public debate in a better, more sensible direction," Krugman said. "There were not a whole lot of voices at least in the public eye saying what a lot of economists had concluded, which was that the Obama stimulus plan was, if anything, too small."
"The last two recessions were both followed by prolonged jobless recoveries when industrial production and GDP rose, but the unemployment rate continued to rise," he said, "We're almost certainly headed for another patch like that this time around which means that we need the economic support more than ever."

. . . . . How bad is it? The map below from the United States Dept. of Labor shows it.

. . . .For more in-depth investigation of the roots of the economic crisis, and the current political scene, you can't beat Matt Taibbi's work in Rolling Stone. Check out this week's print edition for a great piece on Goldman-Sachs and their contribution to the fiasco. It's not in the web edition yet.

. . . .Watch your credit card statements closely. In anticipation of the sweeping Credit Card Reform Bill that was passed, signed into law and will take effect next January, credit card issuers are screwing you, the holders. Interest rates are being raised, fees are being put on them that never existed and credit limits are being lowered. Chase, Citi and Bank of America being the worst offenders right now.

. . . . On my everlasting topic of upgrading the grid; the cheapest, fastest, best thing we could do right now to reduce our dependence on foreign oil, and put some money back in our pockets and get some jobs going now for people who need them. It's also what we need to do, and it's a fundamental need, before we ever think about other energy sources, of changing the grid around, of trying to integrate "green" or "new energy". It's that fragile, it's in that bad a shape, and it's the weak link in the whole plan, from Matthew Wald at the New York Times:

Adding electricity from the wind and the sun could increase the frequency of blackouts and reduce the reliability of the nation's electrical grid, an industry report says
The North American Electric Reliability Corporation says in a report scheduled for release Monday that unless appropriate measures are taken to improve transmission of electricity, rules reducing carbon dioxide emissions by utilities could impair the reliability of the power grid. The corporation is the industry body authorized by the federal government to enforce reliability rules for the interlocking system of electrical power generation and transmission.

. . . .And on the future of us, human beings, this one in from Wired. Up in Canada, they're starting to sell a "second generation" biofuel. An ethanol made from agricultural residue that would otherwise be discarded or trashed. There's still a lot of advances to be made in biofuel, and if we'd only smarten up and get our vehicles switched over to biodiesel, which would make for a great use for old french fry oil, or get ourselves switched over to natural gas powered vehicles. We lead the world in natural gas fields. Otherwise, we participate willingly and gladly every day in the greatest transfer of wealth in human history, gladly lining the pockets of countries who would gladly see us gone the day we can't buy their oil anymore.

. . . . Outta here

. . . .Got your back

. . . . Kiss your kids, tell the ones you love out loud that you do. This rodeo is a one-way ticket, and no one, no one gets out alive. We don't get to dictate the terms and circumstances of how the ticket gets punched, so it's not about yesterday, or tomorrow. It's not about regret and guilt, or hopes and dreams. This ain't no dress rehearsal, it's about right fucking here, right fucking now.
Change your world, change yourself, and change the world at large. This is the sight, the sound, the words and the record of me changing my life. What have you done for yourself lately?

The Desolation Angel