Work Music.

Thinking of a way to celebrate the mediocre passage of our half-assed health care bill, one of the things I've decided on is listening to the 2008 Election day live set that Killdozer did on WFMU. And thanks to the internet, you can too. Home grown left-wing radicalism and proto-grunge to express our collectively ambivalent feelings.

"Huh, Collateral Damage"

George Clooney has made a defecation out of one of my all-time-favorite nonfiction books. (Thanks, jerk. Really: Thanks. Thanks especially for the ham-fisted, Big Lebowski stunt casting.)

Beep Boop* seems enthusiastic about this turkey; though Videogum is more in my camp—but: Why trust us? Why not view the trailer and a clip or two from the actual Jon Ronson documentary and decide for yourself?

[Note: This last clip is of Jim Channon, the man Jeff Bridges is playing in the Clooney adaptation. Do you not notice how much more amazing and wildly implausible and frankly more compelling the real guy is?! Ahhhhhhhhrrrrrrrggggggghhhhh!!!1!!]

*My 2003-era blog idols are in their twilight.

Someone Had To Say It.

But because this is a Washington Post editorial by a "reasonable" Republican no criticism of the conservative movement may be proffered without a "pox on both houses" attack on Democrats for doing the exact same thing, all the time, but worse.

Because Nancy Pelosi (D-Boogeyman) accused town hall disrupters of "carrying swastikas" (they were). And because unnamed "liberal antiwar protests" were chock-full of Hitler mustaches. Because Michael Moore said something dumb about the Patriot Act. And because Representative Brian Baird decried "Brownshirt tactics."

Here's the thing about that last one: the people intentionally disrupting town hall events and trying to turn them into anarchic carnivals of rage and possible violence are literally, actually guilty of "Brownshirt tactics."

Both the Nazis and Mussolini had Brownshirts and Blackshirts, their violent followers (many of whom were angry, disenfranchised-feeling war vets resentful of elites), attack socialists and union leaders, often on behalf of capitalists unhappy with leftist governments. Brownshirts marched through socialist strongholds in order to provoke attacks, and then they ginned up more support by holding up those who were attacked as martyrs. Does that sound familiar?

Thanks for this, Pareene. [via Gawker]

Haim Saban: Ay Yi-Yi-Yi Yi !!!

I have been waiting over three years for a scandal involving the Israeli-American neoconservative billionaire Haim Saban, the man who made a fortune single-handedly bringing Japan's Super Sentai craze to the U.S. (re-dubbed Power Rangers). I am also thankful this scandal is funny.

Out For Blood (or at least anwsers)

A new Gallup Poll claims that the majority of American want—at the very least—some kind of investigation into potential criminal activities by the Bush Administration.

While I agree with them, I also understand that navigating this current economic crisis means all hands on deck and that alienating the whiny babies in the GOP is a luxury we can't afford yet. [via TPM DC]

Uh Oh! Secret Muslim!

[Via WSJ]

The Republican Party cited a large amount of money coming to the Democratic presidential candidate from overseas, and a small amount of money that he has returned from foreigners, in explaining their complaint.

The party's lawyers also pointed to news reports of foreigners giving money to Sen. Obama, although the Obama campaign says it has either rejected or returned the money.

"We see this as a wide-scale problem for the Obama campaign," said Sean Cairncross, chief counsel for the Republican National Committee. "This is more money than has ever flowed into a presidential campaign."

Ignoring for a second that this audit may have some degree of validity, I think that given the McCain campaign's recent level of restraint we're in for some particularly ugly attack ads.

"Seckrit Musalim Terrorizer!"

Clooney To Play NYT's Columnist Paul Krugman In Biopic

LOLzzzz, myself. This image is actually from Burn After Reading—which everyone needs to see this weekend. [Red Band Trailer Here]

What Do U.S. Prisoners Make For Below Minimum Wage?

Guess What? It's hard to decriminalize drug possession and our country's scandalously high incarceration rate when it's supplying a cheap labor force for corporations operating in the U.S. — especially when those corporations fund lobbyists, think tanks and university grants. What ever happened to those Halcyon days when all prisoners had to make were shivs and Pruno, clocks out of popsicle sticks and spit-Papier-mâché chessboards?

Forget about illegal immigrations, blue-collar America. This is where you( and you)r jobs are going:

Tens of thousands of US inmates are paid from pennies to minimum wage—minus fines and victim compensation—for everything from grunt work to firefighting to specialized labor. Here's a sampling of what they make, and for whom.

Eating in: Each month, California inmates process more than 680,000 pounds of beef, 400,000 pounds of chicken products, 450,000 gallons of milk, 280,000 loaves of bread, and 2.9 million eggs (from 160,000 inmate-raised hens). Starbucks subcontractor Signature Packaging Solutions has hired Washington prisoners to package holiday coffees (as well as Nintendo Game Boys). Confronted by a reporter in 2001, a Starbucks rep called the setup "entirely consistent with our mission statement."

Around the Big House: Texas inmates produce brooms and brushes, bedding and mattresses, toilets, sinks, showers, and bullwhips. Bullwhips?

Windows dressing: In the mid-1990s, Washington prisoners shrink-wrapped software and up to 20,000 Microsoft mouses for subcontractor Exmark (other reported clients: Costco and JanSport). "We don't see this as a negative," a Microsoft spokesman said at the time. Dell used federal prisoners for PC recycling in 2003, but stopped after a watchdog group warned that it might expose inmates to toxins.

[via Mother Jones]

A Walking Tour Of The Homes Of Washington DC's Plutocratic Overlords

[Thanks, Emily Z.!]

Mutually Consensual Murder In 18th Century New England

From contributing editor for Rolling Stone and Harper's, Jeff Sharlet:

There aren't a lot of readers out there who'll be intrigued by the news that Library Journal's Nancy E. Adams considers my "evocation of the mood of theologian Jonathan Edwards’s work" in my recent book The Family "one of the most compelling this reviewer has ever read," but for a literary sinner in the hands of an angry God like me, it's high praise. The media response to the book has focused almost entirely on the contemporary politics of The Family and the group's role in the Cold War, but for my money, the scariest pages in the book are those about Jonathan Edwards, the most brilliant thinker -- and possibly the creepiest -- in 18th century New England. I wrote part of my chapter about Edwards in a cabin in the woods at the MacDowell Colony. I'd stay up late into the night, reading and re-reading a crumbling, early 19th century edition of Edwards' A Faithful Narrative of the Surprising Work of God in the Conversion of Many Hundred Souls in Northampton, a bestseller in its day. I was stuck on -- maybe trapped in -- the story of a young woman named Abigail Hutchinson, a subject of great fascination to the theologian. But I didn't know why until one night, around three in the morning, the fog of arcane language cleared. I realized that I was reading an account of a mutually consensual murder; perverse ascetism; the slow starvation to death of Hutchinson under Edwards' approving gaze.

I ran through the woods in the dark up to the main hall of the writer's colony, where there's a stack of VHS tapes next to an old TV. Somebody had left P.T. Anderson's Boogie Nights, behind. I'd seen it before, but I watched it again, an escape, both fabulous and bleak, from the Edwardsian mood that in the woods seemed to surround me.

[via the Revealer, which I always knew I had in my Google reader for a reason.]

The Truculent Hilarity of 4CHAN Conservatives

The above animated GIF reminded me recently of this actual RNC ad that was running after Barry O.'s speech in Berlin:



I'm slightly weirded out by the crass, low-budget sophistication in both cases; how they appeal on the visceral, gut-level of an internet meme without discussing anything directly — in the first instance Obama-as-Zoolander-scale-pretty-boy-doofus (with iced lattes! Talking Point Bonus!) and in the second instance Obama-as-cocky-pretty-boy-doofus-Leonardo-Decaprio (with internationalist "King of the World" delusions! Another TPB!).

The second also seems to focus on painting Obama's supporters as Far Left, Eurotrash morans — in a way that is intentionally unfair, hilarious and basically what the Daily Show and Sascha Baron Cohen have been doing for over a decade now. This leaves me with the sinking feeling that after several botched attempts, we are coming closer to a world with a successful conservative Daily Show.

A la Greg Sargent's recent analysis — there is also the possibility that this ad was meant to work in some amazing way I never could have imagined.

Banksy Comes To New Orleans

Weirdly touching graffiti bullshit from a gentleman I frequently debate the earnestness and relevance of. Ever since his secret (nerdy) identity has been allegedly discovered, everything about him feels just slightly more endearing and slightly less Nathan Barley.

Batmobile To The Dark Side

It looks like political jerks have figured out my main qualms with The Dark Knight and are touting them all as a good thing. For example, the WSJ's Andrew Klavan:

There seems to me no question that the Batman film "The Dark Knight," currently breaking every box office record in history, is at some level a paean of praise to the fortitude and moral courage that has been shown by George W. Bush in this time of terror and war. Like W, Batman is vilified and despised for confronting terrorists in the only terms they understand. Like W, Batman sometimes has to push the boundaries of civil rights to deal with an emergency, certain that he will re-establish those boundaries when the emergency is past.

Thanks, doofus. Remember that time Bush personally put himself in harm's way? Oh, wait he didn't ever.