Standing TALL!

Words.

"If you take them at their Facebook word, at least 223,609 people plan to attend the Jon Stewart/Stephen Colbert "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" on the National Mall in Washington on Saturday. According to enthusiastic posters on the social network site, the rally is either a) "the start of a massive, powerful movement … to turn back the vehement, reactionary discourse in this country" or b) "very much like a music festival."

The Comedy Central satire twins don't have an agenda exactly, although Stewart has a motto: "Take it down a notch, for America." That's enough for left-leaning pundit and new-media guru Arianna Huffington to pay a reported $250,000 to bus at least 11,000 people from New York to D.C. for the festivities, while bosses at NPR have banned its off-duty journalists from attending because the rallies involve issues that NPR covers. (Apparently, NPR now reports on "sanity.")

But then, absurdity is certain to abound when thousands of Americans rally in the shadow of the Capitol dome — just four days before a hotly contested midterm election — to mostly make this grand political statement: In irony we trust.

...When King and his fellow marchers returned home from the Mall to the Deep South 47 years ago, they knew they faced nightsticks or worse on the rocky road toward the Voting Rights Act of 1965. Today, the challenge facing rallygoers is, as Stewart suggests, asking "the sitter if she can stay a few extra hours, just this once."

Ultimately, it will be those kids at home who learn the history of whether 2010 was just an autumn of harmless entertainment or the throes of a nation amusing itself to death."

LOS ANGELES TIMES: In irony we trust

Bedknobs & Broomsticks.

A Moment of Clarity.



Words.

"With their "Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear" this weekend, political satirists Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are late to the party. This weird campaign has been Comedy Central all along.

The main source of hilarity has been the Tea Party movement and its candidates, quite a few of whom give every indication of being several sandwiches short of a picnic. Whether they win or lose - and yes, there remains the possibility that some might actually be elected - they leave us with mondo-bizarro moments that may require years of psychoanalysis for our collective political psyche to purge..."

THE WASHINGTON POST: Restore sanity? Too late for the Tea Party

Indestructible.

A video.

Starring Robyn.

For Your Consideration.

SOUNDCLOUD: Swim Remixes [Album Stream]

Move That Body.

A video.

Starring Nelly, T-Pain, & Akon.

Loving You No More.

A video.

Starring Diddy Dirty Money & Drake.

Coming Attractions.

Cee-Lo Green.

Bright Lights, Big City.

A Trailer.

Off Our Backs.

A video.

Starring MEN.

Crime & Punishment.

LOS ANGELES TIMES: Marijuana profiling

Right Thru Me.

A video.

Starring Nicki Minaj.

Get Real. Get Right.

Get Smart.

A Moment of Clarity.



Words.

"As battle cries go, the Tea Party's "Take our country back" is a pretty good one. It's short and punchy, and it addresses a very widespread sense that the nation that Americans once lived in has changed, and not for the better.

When the Tea Partyers get around to identifying how America has changed and to whose benefit, however, they get it almost all wrong. In the worldview of the American right -- and the polling shows conclusively that that's who the Tea Party is -- the nation, misled by President Obama, has gone down the path to socialism. In fact, far from venturing down that road, we've been stuck on the road to hyper-capitalism for three decades now. The Tea Partyers are right to be wary of income redistribution, but if they had even the slightest openness to empiricism, they'd see that the redistribution of the past 30 years has all been upward -- radically upward.

...In short, the economic life and prospects for Americans since the Reagan Revolution have grown dim, while the lives of the rich -- the super-rich in particular -- have never been brighter. The share of income accruing to America's wealthiest 1 percent rose from 9 percent in 1974 to a tidy 23.5 percent in 2007.

Looking at these numbers, it would be reasonable to infer that when the Tea Partyers say that they want to take the country back, they mean back to the period between 1950 and 1980, when the vast majority of Americans encountered more opportunity and security in their economic lives than they had before or since. Reasonable, but wrong..."

THE WASHINGTON POST: When Tea Party wants to go back, where is it to?

For Your Consideration.

MOG: Weezer - Death to False Metal (Album Stream)

Derezzed.

STEREOGUM: Daft Punk – “Derezzed” Video

Turn on the Bright Lights.

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U Don't Like Me.

A video.

Featuring Diplo & Lil Jon.

Check It Out.

A video.

Starring Will.i.am & Nicki Minaj.

Quality Control.

A Moment of Clarity.

Words. For Your Consideration...

"PRESIDENT Obama, the Rodney Dangerfield of 2010, gets no respect for averting another Great Depression, for saving 3.3 million jobs with stimulus spending, or for salvaging GM and Chrysler from the junkyard. And none of these good deeds, no matter how substantial, will go unpunished if the projected Democratic bloodbath materializes on Election Day. Some are even going unremembered. For Obama, the ultimate indignity is the Times/CBS News poll in September showing that only 8 percent of Americans know that he gave 95 percent of American taxpayers a tax cut.

The reasons for his failure to reap credit for any economic accomplishments are a catechism by now: the dark cloud cast by undiminished unemployment, the relentless disinformation campaign of his political opponents, and the White House’s surprising ineptitude at selling its own achievements. But the most relentless drag on a chief executive who promised change we can believe in is even more ominous. It’s the country’s fatalistic sense that the stacked economic order that gave us the Great Recession remains not just in place but more entrenched and powerful than ever.

No matter how much Obama talks about his “tough” new financial regulatory reforms or offers rote condemnations of Wall Street greed, few believe there’s been real change. That’s not just because so many have lost their jobs, their savings and their homes. It’s also because so many know that the loftiest perpetrators of this national devastation got get-out-of-jail-free cards, that too-big-to-fail banks have grown bigger and that the rich are still the only Americans getting richer..."

THE NEW YORK TIMES: What Happened to Change We Can Believe In?

"...And the Home of the Brave(?)."

Words. For Your Consideration...

"Americans like to think of themselves as bold. It was boldness that gave birth to the country, built it, protected it from external threat and rescued it in times of domestic turbulence. Americans are proud of dreaming big and taking big chances, and as far as individual feats go, it may be true.

But the larger truth is that, foreign military adventurism aside, the American government hasn't really acted boldly since the days of Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal and Lyndon Johnson's Great Society. Americans talk a lot about change during elections, but they recoil from action once the election is over. An economic stimulus? Make sure it is a small one. Healthcare reform? Half measures. Climate change legislation? No action at all. We blame politics, deficits and bad leadership, when perhaps we should be blaming our national genes.

...why hasn't the Great Recession, another deep convulsion, created an equal cry for government activism? The need for the Democratic cavalry to clean up the Republican mess could hardly seem clearer. And that was precisely why Barack Obama was elected: to act boldly. But no sooner did he enter office than the old chants of fearfulness reverberated across the country: An economic rescue would only ratchet up the deficit; regulation of Wall Street would destroy Wall Street; healthcare reform would result in socialism.

What happened to our resolve? Nothing really. Americans just reverted to form.

...The fear of not doing something has occasionally outweighed the national inclination not to act. But only rarely, and, it has become obvious, not now.

...Instead of bold adventurers confronting our demons, we are a nation of the frightened, hoping to turn back the clock and railing against the only tool that can really help us: action."

LOS ANGELES TIMES: America the timorous

And the Beat Goes On...

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LIFE.