New flava in ya ear!
Janelle Monae feat. Big Boi.
Tight Rope.
Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
Monday, March 29, 2010
Sunday, March 28, 2010
Friday, March 26, 2010
Smooth Operator.
R.Kelly.
Be My #2.
P.S. Did they just STOP giving R.Kelly video money? This ain't a video. This is party footage...Shot on an iPhone.
Be My #2.
P.S. Did they just STOP giving R.Kelly video money? This ain't a video. This is party footage...Shot on an iPhone.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Playing with Fire.
A Moment of Clarity.
Words.
"Unfairly or not, the defining images of opposition to health care reform may end up being those rage-filled partisans with spittle on their lips. Whether the outbursts came from inside Congress — the “baby killer” shout of Rep. Randy Neugebauer, and his colleagues who cheered on hecklers — or outside, where protesters hurled vile names against elected representatives, they are powerful and lasting scenes of a democracy gasping for dignity.
Now, ask yourself a question: can you imagine Ronald Reagan anywhere in those pictures? Or anywhere in those politics? Reagan was all about sunny optimism, and at times bipartisan bonhomie. In him, the American people saw their better half.
...the Republican Party now has taken some of the worst elements of Tea Party anger and incorporated them into its own identity. They are ticked off, red-faced, frothing — and these are the men in suits.
...as the party of the hissy fit, Republicans are playing with fire.
...Of course, public sentiment is a fickle thing. And no one can predict whether health care overhaul will work for most Americans, or add to the distrust people already have for the ruling and business classes.
But it’s always better to be building something than destroying it.
...consider the policy positions. Do Republicans really want to campaign in favor of insurance companies’ right to drop people when they get sick? Do they really want to knock the 25-year-old graduate student, living on Top Ramen and hope, off his parents’ health care? Are they going to deny tax credits for small businesses?
It was the ancient Greeks who gave us a sense of what Republicans will be living with under this pact with rage. Many people are afraid of the dark, the saying goes. But the real tragedy is those who are afraid of the light."
THE NEW YORK TIMES: House of Anger
Words.
"Unfairly or not, the defining images of opposition to health care reform may end up being those rage-filled partisans with spittle on their lips. Whether the outbursts came from inside Congress — the “baby killer” shout of Rep. Randy Neugebauer, and his colleagues who cheered on hecklers — or outside, where protesters hurled vile names against elected representatives, they are powerful and lasting scenes of a democracy gasping for dignity.
Now, ask yourself a question: can you imagine Ronald Reagan anywhere in those pictures? Or anywhere in those politics? Reagan was all about sunny optimism, and at times bipartisan bonhomie. In him, the American people saw their better half.
...the Republican Party now has taken some of the worst elements of Tea Party anger and incorporated them into its own identity. They are ticked off, red-faced, frothing — and these are the men in suits.
...as the party of the hissy fit, Republicans are playing with fire.
...Of course, public sentiment is a fickle thing. And no one can predict whether health care overhaul will work for most Americans, or add to the distrust people already have for the ruling and business classes.
But it’s always better to be building something than destroying it.
...consider the policy positions. Do Republicans really want to campaign in favor of insurance companies’ right to drop people when they get sick? Do they really want to knock the 25-year-old graduate student, living on Top Ramen and hope, off his parents’ health care? Are they going to deny tax credits for small businesses?
It was the ancient Greeks who gave us a sense of what Republicans will be living with under this pact with rage. Many people are afraid of the dark, the saying goes. But the real tragedy is those who are afraid of the light."
Life after (America's) DEATH!
Words. For the Grand Old Party's consideration...
"It's time to demand that GOP leaders, candidates and other would-be Obamacare repealers take a pledge. It should be simple. Something like: "Because I believe so strongly that Democratic health-care reform is a calamity for the country, I hereby vow that neither I nor anyone in my family will take advantage of the protections offered by this law." Those pledging would of course voluntarily surrender their current group health coverage and be thrown into the unregulated market for individual health insurance, so as to swim in the same sea of insecurity as their constituents. A quickie law would be passed allowing insurers to treat pledge-taking Republicans and their families under prior rules, exempting them from the reforms just signed into law by the president.
Perhaps you're thinking this would be cruel. Should we really punish Mrs. Debbie Boehner if she has a preexisting condition? If one of Mitch McConnell's daughters develops a disease that puts her over the lifetime cap in one of the plans the minority leader favors -- the kind that would give his daughter more "skin in the game" -- wouldn't that be too harsh? What if the McCain brood came down with uncoverable blights? Come to think of it, where is Sarah Palin's family getting coverage today? Thank goodness being on the ticket was her ticket to riches -- as a former state employee whose COBRA coverage is running out, she'd soon be out of luck. (Maybe a small-government GOP fix would be to name every uninsurable American a vice presidential candidate, so they could cash in and afford . . . well, maybe not.)
Still, one man's "harsh" is another's "accountability." And no one argues more sternly than Republicans that behavior should have consequences. So I have no doubt these principled warriors of the right would do their duty. Rather than submit their loved ones to the character-corroding clutches of Obamacare, they would urge their kin to buck up and go to the poorhouse stoically -- and, if need be, to meet their maker with their love for freedom intact..."
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
KISS KISS BANG BANG!
A Conservative Moment of Clarity.
Words.
"Every nation needs an intelligent and constructive form of conservatism. The debate over the health care bill, which mercifully came to a close on Sunday night, was not American conservatism's finest hour.
In its current incarnation, conservatism has taken on an angry crankiness. It is caught up in a pseudo-populism that true conservatism should mistrust -- what on Earth would Bill Buckley have made of "death panels"? The creed is caught up in a suspicion of all reform that conservatives of the Edmund Burke stripe have always warned against.
Authentic conservatism is better than this..."
THE WASHINGTON POST: Three points for conservatives
Words.
"Every nation needs an intelligent and constructive form of conservatism. The debate over the health care bill, which mercifully came to a close on Sunday night, was not American conservatism's finest hour.
In its current incarnation, conservatism has taken on an angry crankiness. It is caught up in a pseudo-populism that true conservatism should mistrust -- what on Earth would Bill Buckley have made of "death panels"? The creed is caught up in a suspicion of all reform that conservatives of the Edmund Burke stripe have always warned against.
Authentic conservatism is better than this..."
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
Sowing the Seeds.
Words.
"Mitch McConnell is right. The Republican Senate leader, a man whose vision is to deny others theirs, told the New York Times that President Obama's health-care proposal was part of an attempt to "turn us into a Western European country," which, the good Lord willing, is what will now happen. I, for one, could use a dash of Germany, where there are something like 200 private health insurance plans and where everyone is covered and no one goes broke on account of bad health. It's great to be healthy in America, but for too many Americans, it's better to be sick somewhere else.
I would also take France or Switzerland, but mostly I'd like Japan, which I move to Western Europe for the sake of argument, and where medical care is as good (or better) than it is here and much less expensive. What all these countries have in common is the recognition that health care is, like food or education, a universal right. The United States, to McConnell's evident chagrin, is now moving this way.
Do not underestimate the importance of Sunday's House vote. It was momentous, and it will not be repealed by the results of the November elections. Against the hopes and insistence of the GOP, America did not reverse Social Security (as late as the Eisenhower administration, that was the fervent wish of the party's right wing) or Medicaid. The worth of these programs became evident, and thus they became politically sacrosanct..."
Monday, March 22, 2010
The Nation.
"This [Healthcare Reform] is, of course, a political victory for President Obama, and a triumph for Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker. But it is also a victory for America’s soul. In the end, a vicious, unprincipled fear offensive failed to block reform. This time, fear struck out."-Paul Krugman
First Aid.
"WHOSE HOUSE?!"
Words.
"Yes, we did.
...This new law will not end all our health-care problems (no law could), but it does a great deal for access, and it makes solving other problems a little easier. Above all, it puts us on a new path.
For Obama, this struggle was transformative. He began his administration full of hope that his campaign pledge to achieve concord across party lines was a realistic possibility. But when faced with implacable Republican opposition, he jettisoned the happy talk and came out fighting.
If bipartisanship is more fashionable than partisanship, partisanship with a purpose is infinitely preferable to paralysis. Obama has made clear that he will reach out when he can, and do battle when he must.
By temperament, the president is more a consensus builder than a warrior. But he is also a practical man who wants to accomplish big things. On Sunday, he did just that on health care, and he earned a place in history."
Rock With You.
New flava in ya ear!
Arctic Monkeys.
My Propeller.
EARLIER:
LOVE & HAPPINESS: The Albums: 2009: 13/Artic Monkeys/Humbug
Arctic Monkeys.
My Propeller.
EARLIER:
Friday, March 19, 2010
The Nation.
Part 1.
Part 2.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Intro - Progressivism Is Cancer | ||||
| ||||
Part 2.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c | |||
| Conservative Libertarian | ||||
| ||||
Thursday, March 18, 2010
Sexual Healing.
Do yourself a favor and disregard President Obama's words and instead listen to the Soundtrack underneath him. Jokes for days...
Health. Care. First. AID.
An Ongoing Discussion.
Words.
"...American life expectancy appears to have been longer in 1942, 1943, 1944 and 1945 — even as hundreds of thousands of young Americans were being killed in World War II — than it had been when America was at peace in 1940.
A prime reason is that with the war mobilization, Americans got much better access to medical care. Farmers and workers who had rarely seen doctors now found themselves with medical coverage through the military, jobs in industry or New Deal programs.
In short, great health care is often less about breakthrough technologies than it is about access. And for all the disagreements about President Obama’s health care proposal, let’s focus on this: it unquestionably would increase access, while its defeat would diminish access.
...Partly because of lack of access, American health statistics are notorious: Our children are two-and-a-half times as likely to die before the age of 5 as children in Sweden. American women are 11 times as likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth as Irish women. The average person in Honduras or Vietnam is expected to live longer than the average African-American in New Orleans.
...The tide of history has taken us and other Western countries toward steadily greater access to medical coverage — until recent reversals in the United States. Put aside quarrels over the mechanisms used to pass the bill, and focus on the central question of Americans’ access to decent medical care. On that issue, those trying to kill this health care reform proposal are simply on the wrong side of history."
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Access, Access, Access
Words.
"...American life expectancy appears to have been longer in 1942, 1943, 1944 and 1945 — even as hundreds of thousands of young Americans were being killed in World War II — than it had been when America was at peace in 1940.
A prime reason is that with the war mobilization, Americans got much better access to medical care. Farmers and workers who had rarely seen doctors now found themselves with medical coverage through the military, jobs in industry or New Deal programs.
In short, great health care is often less about breakthrough technologies than it is about access. And for all the disagreements about President Obama’s health care proposal, let’s focus on this: it unquestionably would increase access, while its defeat would diminish access.
...Partly because of lack of access, American health statistics are notorious: Our children are two-and-a-half times as likely to die before the age of 5 as children in Sweden. American women are 11 times as likely to die in pregnancy or childbirth as Irish women. The average person in Honduras or Vietnam is expected to live longer than the average African-American in New Orleans.
...The tide of history has taken us and other Western countries toward steadily greater access to medical coverage — until recent reversals in the United States. Put aside quarrels over the mechanisms used to pass the bill, and focus on the central question of Americans’ access to decent medical care. On that issue, those trying to kill this health care reform proposal are simply on the wrong side of history."
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
"IT'S TEARIN' UP MY HEART WHEN I'M WITH YOU!"
Feelin'the pain, with or without you,
Hot Chip.
I Feel Better.
Hot Chip.
I Feel Better.
'WHAT KIND OF FUCKERY ARE WE?"
Wanna get away...
Behind The Scenes:
Waka Flocka,
O Let's Do It (Remix).
Behind The Scenes:
Waka Flocka,
O Let's Do It (Remix).
Tuesday, March 16, 2010
"You Think You Know, But You Have No Idea..."
"This is the Diary of the Tea Party Movement."
Words. For Your Consideration...
"If you read the Op-Ed pages these days, you'd be forgiven for thinking that the GOP and the conservative movement have been taken over by know-nothing mobs, anti-intellectual demagogues and pitchfork-wielding bigots. There's no omnibus label for this argument, but it's a giveaway that a person subscribes to it if he or she describes the "tea party" movement as "tea baggers," an awfully telling bit of condescension from the camp that affects the pose of being more high-minded.
The case against the tea party movement is constantly evolving. Initially, they were written off as "astroturfers," faux populists paid by K Street lobbyists to provide damaging footage for Fox News' Obama coverage. Then, they were deemed racists who couldn't handle having a black president.
But now that the movement or, more broadly, the Obama backlash is so widespread, it's chalked up to populist anti-elitism. New York Times columnist David Brooks and others argue that the tea party movement is kith and kin of the 1960s New Left, because they share a "radically anti-conservative" hatred of "the system" and a desire to start over.
...It's all so much nonsense. The Boston Tea Party would make a strange lodestar for an anti-American movement. The tea partyers certainly aren't "dropping out" of the system; if they were, we wouldn't be talking about them. And they aren't reading Marxist tracts in a desire to "tear down the system" either. They're reading Thomas Paine, the founders and Friedrich Hayek in the perhaps naive hope that they'll be able to restore the principles that are supposed to be guiding the system (to the extent they're reading radicals such as Saul Alinsky, it's because they've been told that's the best way to understand his disciple in the White House).
Restoration and destruction are hardly synonymous terms or desires. And maybe that's a better label: a political restoration movement, one that reflects our Constitution and the precepts of limited government..."
Monday, March 15, 2010
Friday, March 12, 2010
For Your Consideration.
New flava in ya ear!
Dominique Young Unique.
Show My Ass.
STEREOGUM: Dominique Young Unique – “Show My Ass” Video
Dominique Young Unique.
Show My Ass.
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Tuesday, March 09, 2010
Friday, March 05, 2010
QUESTION!
Why is this performance funny as hell to me?...
Rihanna.
Rude Boy.
Live at the ECHO Awards in Berlin.
Seriously, are her back-up dancers twin versions of that Robot from Fox NFL Sunday?
RAP RADAR: Rihanna “Rude Boy” (ECHO Awards)
Rihanna.
Rude Boy.
Live at the ECHO Awards in Berlin.
Seriously, are her back-up dancers twin versions of that Robot from Fox NFL Sunday?
Thursday, March 04, 2010
A Moment of Clarity.
Brought to you once again by the Letter R!
Words.
"Obama's critics have regularly accused him of not being as tough or wily or forceful as LBJ was in pushing through civil rights and the social programs of his Great Society. Obama seemed willing to let Congress go its own way and was so anxious to look bipartisan that he wouldn't even take his own side in arguments with Republicans.
Those days are over. On Wednesday, the president made clear what he wants in a health-care bill, and he urged Congress to pass it by the most expeditious means available.
He was also clear on what bipartisanship should mean -- and what it can't mean. Democrats, who happen to be in the majority, have already added Republican ideas to their proposals. Obama said he was open to four more that came up during the health-care summit. What he's (rightly) unwilling to do is give the minority veto power over a bill that has deliberately and painfully worked its way through the regular legislative process.
Republicans, however, don't want to talk much about the substance of health care. They want to discuss process, turn "reconciliation" into a four-letter word and maintain that Democrats are "ramming through" a health bill.
It is all, I am sorry to say, one big lie -- or, if you're sensitive, an astonishing exercise in hypocrisy..."
"WHOSE HOUSE?"
Washington.
Words.
"In the space of 10 days, thanks in no small part to my own newspaper, the president of the United States has been portrayed as a weakling and a chronic screw-up who is wrecking his administration despite everything that his chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel, can do to make things right.
This remarkable fiction began unfolding on Feb. 21 in the Sunday column of my friend Dana Milbank, who wrote that "Obama's first year fell apart in large part because he didn't follow his chief of staff's advice on crucial matters. Arguably, Emanuel is the only person keeping Obama from becoming Jimmy Carter," i.e., a one-term failure.
...None of this would rise above the level of petty Washington gossip except that some of Emanuel's friends are so eager to exonerate him that they are threatening to undermine the president. Milbank, presumably reflecting what he hears, calls Obama "airy and idealistic" and says he readily succumbs to "bullying" from Republicans and Democrats alike. I hope the mullahs in Iran don't believe this..."
Wednesday, March 03, 2010
Tuesday, March 02, 2010
Unchained Melody.
"If you scratch my back..."
Words. For Your Consideration...
"Rahm Emanuel is officially a Washington caricature. He's the town's resident leviathan, a bullying, bruising White House chief of staff who is a prime target for the failings of the Obama administration.
But a contrarian narrative is emerging: Emanuel is a force of political reason within the White House and could have helped the administration avoid its current bind if the president had heeded his advice on some of the most sensitive subjects of the year: health-care reform, jobs and trying alleged terrorists in civilian courts.
...By all accounts, Obama selected Emanuel for his experience in the Clinton White House, his long relationships with the media and Democratic donors, and his well-established -- and well-earned -- reputation as a political enforcer, all of which neatly counterbalanced Obama's detached, professorial manner. A president who would need the deft navigation of Congress to pass his ambitious legislation turned to the Illinois congressman and former chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee because he possessed a unique understanding of the legislative mind.
The pairing made sense, but things haven't worked out as expected. And in the search for what has gone wrong, influential Democrats are -- in unusually frank terms -- blaming Obama and his closest campaign aides for not listening to Emanuel. And this puts the 50-year-old chief of staff in a very uncomfortable position..."
Monday, March 01, 2010
YES! WE! CAN!
An Ongoing Discussion.
NO! Yes we CAN, right? RIGHT?!
Words. For Your Consideration...
"So here’s the situation. We’ve been through the second-worst financial crisis in the history of the world, and we’ve barely begun to recover: 29 million Americans either can’t find jobs or can’t find full-time work. Yet all momentum for serious banking reform has been lost. The question now seems to be whether we’ll get a watered-down bill or no bill at all. And I hate to say this, but the second option is starting to look preferable.
...I suspect that even Republicans, in their hearts, understand the need for real reform. But their strategy of opposing anything the Obama administration proposes, coupled with the lure of financial-industry dollars — back in December top Republican leaders huddled with bank lobbyists to coordinate their campaigns against reform — has trumped all other considerations.
That said, some Republicans might, just possibly, be persuaded to sign on to a much-weakened version of reform — in particular, one that eliminates a key plank of the Obama administration’s proposals, the creation of a strong, independent agency protecting consumers. Should Democrats accept such a watered-down reform?
I say no..."
THE NEW YORK TIMES: Financial Reform Endgame
NO! Yes we CAN, right? RIGHT?!
Words. For Your Consideration...
"So here’s the situation. We’ve been through the second-worst financial crisis in the history of the world, and we’ve barely begun to recover: 29 million Americans either can’t find jobs or can’t find full-time work. Yet all momentum for serious banking reform has been lost. The question now seems to be whether we’ll get a watered-down bill or no bill at all. And I hate to say this, but the second option is starting to look preferable.
...I suspect that even Republicans, in their hearts, understand the need for real reform. But their strategy of opposing anything the Obama administration proposes, coupled with the lure of financial-industry dollars — back in December top Republican leaders huddled with bank lobbyists to coordinate their campaigns against reform — has trumped all other considerations.
That said, some Republicans might, just possibly, be persuaded to sign on to a much-weakened version of reform — in particular, one that eliminates a key plank of the Obama administration’s proposals, the creation of a strong, independent agency protecting consumers. Should Democrats accept such a watered-down reform?
I say no..."
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