A video.
Starring Wavves.
Monday, February 28, 2011
Jamelia.
A video.
From Caribou.
EARLIER:
"SPEAKERS GOING HAMMER!": The Albums: 2010: 08/Caribou - Swim & Robyn - Body Talk Pt. 1
From Caribou.
EARLIER:
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Friday, February 25, 2011
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Wednesday, February 23, 2011
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
Pigs in a Blanket.
Words.
"Over drinks at a bar on a dreary, snowy night in Washington this past month, a former Senate investigator laughed as he polished off his beer.
"Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail," he said. "That's your whole story right there. Hell, you don't even have to write the rest of it. Just write that."
I put down my notebook. "Just that?"
"That's right," he said, signaling to the waitress for the check. "Everything's fucked up, and nobody goes to jail. You can end the piece right there."
Nobody goes to jail. This is the mantra of the financial-crisis era, one that saw virtually every major bank and financial company on Wall Street embroiled in obscene criminal scandals that impoverished millions and collectively destroyed hundreds of billions, in fact, trillions of dollars of the world's wealth — and nobody went to jail. Nobody, that is, except Bernie Madoff, a flamboyant and pathological celebrity con artist, whose victims happened to be other rich and famous people.
The rest of them, all of them, got off. Not a single executive who ran the companies that cooked up and cashed in on the phony financial boom — an industrywide scam that involved the mass sale of mismarked, fraudulent mortgage-backed securities — has ever been convicted.
...the entire system set up to monitor and regulate Wall Street is fucked up.
Just ask the people who tried to do the right thing..."
The Takeover.
Words.
"Let's be clear: The high-stakes standoff in Wisconsin has nothing to do with balancing the state's budget.
It is about money, though - but only in the sense that money translates into political power. At this point, it's clear for all to see that Gov. Scott Walker's true aim is to bust the public employee unions, thus permanently reshaping the political landscape in the Republican Party's favor.
Democratic state senators who fled the state to forestall Walker's coup have no choice but to remain on the lam. Protesters who support union rights have no choice but to keep their vigil at the capitol in Madison. This is a big deal..."
TELEVISION TELEVISION!
New flava in MY ear!
Theophilus London feat. Devonte Hynes & Solange Knowles.
Flying Overseas.
Theophilus London feat. Devonte Hynes & Solange Knowles.
Flying Overseas.
Monday, February 21, 2011
Days of Our Lives.
Words. For Your Consideration...
"Last week, in the face of protest demonstrations against Wisconsin’s new union-busting governor, Scott Walker — demonstrations that continued through the weekend, with huge crowds on Saturday — Representative Paul Ryan made an unintentionally apt comparison: “It’s like Cairo has moved to Madison.”
It wasn’t the smartest thing for Mr. Ryan to say, since he probably didn’t mean to compare Mr. Walker, a fellow Republican, to Hosni Mubarak. Or maybe he did — after all, quite a few prominent conservatives, including Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Rick Santorum, denounced the uprising in Egypt and insist that President Obama should have helped the Mubarak regime suppress it.
In any case, however, Mr. Ryan was more right than he knew. For what’s happening in Wisconsin isn’t about the state budget, despite Mr. Walker’s pretense that he’s just trying to be fiscally responsible. It is, instead, about power. What Mr. Walker and his backers are trying to do is to make Wisconsin — and eventually, America — less of a functioning democracy and more of a third-world-style oligarchy. And that’s why anyone who believes that we need some counterweight to the political power of big money should be on the demonstrators’ side.
...it’s not about the budget; it’s about the power.
In principle, every American citizen has an equal say in our political process. In practice, of course, some of us are more equal than others. Billionaires can field armies of lobbyists; they can finance think tanks that put the desired spin on policy issues; they can funnel cash to politicians with sympathetic views (as the Koch brothers did in the case of Mr. Walker). On paper, we’re a one-person-one-vote nation; in reality, we’re more than a bit of an oligarchy, in which a handful of wealthy people dominate.
Given this reality, it’s important to have institutions that can act as counterweights to the power of big money. And unions are among the most important of these institutions..."
"The Party's Crashing Us Now".
A Moment of Clarity.
Words.
"Take five steps back and consider the nature of the political conversation in our nation's capital. You would never know that it's taking place at a moment when unemployment is still at 9 percent, when wages for so many people are stagnating at best and when the United States faces unprecedented challenges to its economic dominance.
...Take five more steps back and you realize how successful the Tea Party has been. No matter how much liberals may poke fun at them, Tea Party partisans can claim victory in fundamentally altering the country's dialogue..."
THE WASHINGTON POST: The Tea Party is winning
Words.
"Take five steps back and consider the nature of the political conversation in our nation's capital. You would never know that it's taking place at a moment when unemployment is still at 9 percent, when wages for so many people are stagnating at best and when the United States faces unprecedented challenges to its economic dominance.
...Take five more steps back and you realize how successful the Tea Party has been. No matter how much liberals may poke fun at them, Tea Party partisans can claim victory in fundamentally altering the country's dialogue..."
Saturday, February 19, 2011
Friday, February 18, 2011
Bright Eyes.
Words. For Your Consideration...
"In the year and a half since Vulture first wrote about him, Bieber has exploded: 3.7 million albums sold, reports of riots from Long Island to Australia, a movie that grossed $30 million in its first weekend, just missing the No. 1 box-office spot. And, as AEG Live's chief executive Randy Phillips gushes in Never, a place in the rarefied air of the touring arena acts, in his first go-around.
But why?
...By all accounts, Bieber should be creepy. He's 16, but he looks 12 (or, alternately, he looks like a lesbian). He spends most of his time around people at least a decade older, all of whom, including his mother, are employed by him. He is shrieked at, constantly. And so he shows up on late-night shows and you expect another automaton. But you get something closer to a realistic approximation of, as advertised, a normal teen miraculously shoved into stardom.
His fake takeover of Funny or Die, in which he parodies himself as a petulant child star, is a representative highlight: “It's mine. I bought it. And now it's Bieber or die. Anything that's not Bieber, dies.” He does know how to make fun of himself. He does, somehow, know how to carry himself. These were not things, all evidence indicates, taught to him in a secretive teen-pop-star crash course. This means he has — and boy we dislike typing this probably as much as you dislike reading it — a natural star quality..."
Up on the Roof.
Words. For Your Consideration...
"...Yes, this country needs to do something about the national debt. But the United States won't get anywhere near fiscal stability by cutting taxes and cutting only discretionary spending. If you've been paying attention, you've probably heard this, but it bears repeating: Entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare must be reformed along with military spending. Those are the political graveyards where Beltway insiders log the big-league spending. If we're not moving on these issues, we're not making progress on the national debt. Period.
In the meantime, what to do about discretionary spending? If you're like me, you read the GOP's list of proposed cuts and go apoplectic. We cut taxes of the wealthiest of America's wealthy for the next two years, and we're partially paying for it by slashing funds that help struggling mothers feed their children?
We're telling the nation's best and brightest: Don't go to teach in America's lowest-performing districts - we can't afford it. We're going to give oil companies $4 billion in subsidies instead (on top of profits that approached $80 billion last year). You've got to be kidding.
It's time to get real. Time to start thinking sensibly about what we expect from government. Time to decide what sort of country we are..."
Thursday, February 17, 2011
Peace of Mind.
Adele.
Natural Woman - Aretha.
A cover.
SOME KIND OF AWESOME: [Watch] Adele - "Natural Woman" (Aretha Franklin Cover)
Natural Woman - Aretha.
A cover.
Another Brick in the Wall.
Words. For Your Consideration...
"...By the end of the Clinton years, we had a handsome surplus. In came the second President Bush who, with Republicans in Congress, declared the surplus too big. It was one problem they worked very hard to solve. Two tax cuts and two wars later, we were plunged into deficits - again. And the economic downturn that started on Bush 43's watch made everything worse, cutting revenue and requiring more deficit spending to get the economy moving.
Where were the moderate deficit hawks in all this? They have a very bad habit. When conservatives blow up our fiscal position with their tax cuts, the deficit hawks are silent - or, at best, mumble a few words of mild reproach to have something on the record - and let the budget wreckage happen. Quite a few in their ranks (yes, including some Democrats) actually supported the Bush tax cuts.
But when it's the progressives' turn in power, the deficit hawks become ferocious. They denounce liberals if they do not move immediately to address the shortfall left by conservatives. Thus, conservatives get to govern as they wish. Liberals are labeled as irresponsible unless they abandon their own agenda and devote their every moment in power to cutting the deficit.
It's a game for chumps..."
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Tuesday, February 15, 2011
Starship Trooper.
Words.
"I think the Grammy voters made a great call...On my flight home this afternoon, I scrolled through the site. I read pages and pages of people shouting in all caps "I'VE NEVER HEARD OF THEM!" as if that's a valid musical critique, as if that's anything but a braying declaration of proud ignorance. As if somehow the prefab pop royalty whose handlers dropped the most money on promotion are promised a Grammy as a kind of birthright, the way that Will Smith's kids are guaranteed hit singles and blockbusters if they want them; the way that Gwyneth Paltrow is apparently allowed to show up anywhere at any time and sing, whether or not we want to hear her. I've never heard Esperaza Spalding either, but now I'm excited to. It was fun to watch the losers win for a change."
Monday, February 14, 2011
Sunday, February 13, 2011
Friday, February 11, 2011
POP - N - FRESH!
Words. For Your Consideration...
"“Born This Way” opens up the circle as wide as it can, shouting out ethnic backgrounds with fascinating specificity, and working in a line about the disabled. Never mind that I guarantee you Lady Gaga will eventually make some aesthetic choice that offends or disappoints members of every community she reaches out to. Consider instead that the greatest trick Lady Gaga has pulled — the thing that makes her a genuinely impressive pop star — is creating an atmosphere where people can legitimately feel like revolutionary all-embracing gender-queering “little monsters” by listening to one of the most popular artists in the country. That’s rare and makes for vital pop..."
Thursday, February 10, 2011
"LIKE A GOOD NEIGHBOR..."
Weezer is there. For better or for worse. With a jingle for State Farm.
Please enjoy.
VULTURE: Weezer’s State Farm Jingle Is Really, Really Good
Please enjoy.
Wednesday, February 09, 2011
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