Folks I watched The Moyers this week and his interview with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was a humdinger. Anybody watching it for new tidbits or ammunition came away terribly disappointed. Will it make a difference? Of course not, it contained too much information... too much TRUTH to be contemplated by white folks patently un-eager to look the fullness of the American Experience in the face (what Bill Moyers literally calls "the Full Monte"); plus it called out the corporate media for it's complicity in a great many things and therefore will not be mentioned in said corporate media. Maybe we'll get lucky and his press conference tomorrow will make some positive waves.... but I'm not too hopeful.





* I don't even want to know what the kids in private schools are learning about our great nation. Actually I do- it probably explains a lot.

As you can well imagine, I've been wandering in the wilderness these last 48 hours. It's not been pretty. I've been kicking around all sorts of shit; pondering grim possible outcomes, chewing on all kinds of gristle, and pulling at my hair (my beautiful hair!). Yesterday the Old Man himself, my dear father, laid his disgust as a lifelong Democrat over this shit and growing ambivilance about even voting this November on me. A lifelong Democrat and true blue UNION MAN. And he laid all of this on me.


Fuck people. We are totally entering the danger zone. This shit ain't funny any more. The waters have been muddied enough folks, we can't take 40 more days.

All Is Quiet On The Western Front

I had to interrupt my pure enjoyment of the Flight of the Conchords album for MSNBC's coverage of the Pennslyvania Primary and shit damn it I am starting to feel a little loose. Not good. Loose.

It's 8:15 PM. Dateline USA. We are chilling out.

Adios Muchacha?

Now this is what I call "strategy."By slagging off the liberal wing OF HER OWN PARTY, HRC has essentially declared herself unelectable.

The Clinton Death Star has run amok.

No Shame In His Game

This is some damn fine oratory, with some good stand up thrown in for good measure. And you've just gotta love how he turns those lameass attacks around into razor sharp rebukes that: 1) light up the crowd, 2) sticks it his opponents for trying to stick it to him, 3) provides clever meta criticism of the process that a) contextualizes his opponents as part of the "establishment" manipulating the process, b) lifts Obama and his supporters up, and c) speaks to the "common sense" of his audience; and 4) drives his message home. "Somebody is playing politics...." what a great line.

Welcome to the Nonsense Season

Oh boy, it's only April and the 2008 Elections are still way off and already we've rocketed well past being in the "silly season" full bore into the abject "nonsense season." Obama is "elitist" for saying folks in small town America are "bitter?!?" Meanwhile... back in America... 81% think the country is going in the wrong direction and amazingly enough folks are a bit pissed off... all over the country in town and cities large and small. It's amazing I tell you, and apparently a real shock to the folks in Washington. Some folks are mighty pissed, and some folks want change mighty bad. Wow, what a news story. What a feast for the bloggers . Alas I'm almost starting to wonder if I should start lumping bloggers along with the folks in Washington DC and the right wing media in the "out of touch" bin. The good news is that in addition to being inexcusable, this phony ass outrage is hilarious- watching these poor nimrods are tee it up for Obama to label them as "out of touch Washingtonians." This week could be fun.

And CNN let's a nincompoop like David Frum comment on it? That's not fair to anybody, including David Frum, who shouldn't be given more opportunities to embarrass himself on television anymore (obviously the guy's got no friends because a friend would've talked to him about his problems sounding intelligent on television).

One Upmanship

Is that how it

This is what I call a sex scandal. It totally puts the Spitzer in perspective.

Now that's hot. I wanted to link that YouTube bit to the blog but thought better of it. I have standards. And speaking of thinking better how about that Jonah Goldberg stuff? That guy's a total mess... all torn up inside being Jewish.... yet ceaselessly trying to link liberalism with fascism... I'm really amazed his head just doesn't explode right off his shoulders. I'd say that's the root of his profound cognitive dissonance but he's a neocon hack, and that means cognitive dissonance is par for the course...

Sunday Morning Tidbits

Briefly:

• Kudos to Reliable Sources' Harvey Kurtz for his salvo at MSNBC and Keith Olbermann in the ongoing CNN/MSNBC donneybrook over Maria Milito's crack about "pimps not sharing hoes" the other night on Countdown. Very classy and sharpHowie. And for my part though I hope that Keith doesn't pull a Samantha Power on Maria because I think her weekly American Idol updates are great for water cooler talking points.
• I am probably a bad person for not talking about the war more on this blog. God knows I've blogged about the war, but the war makes me angry, and depressed, and I guess I didn't want to share that here. The reality? I've given up. I follow the war in the alternative media, but the reality is it ain't ending until this guy is out of office, and that's that. We had our shot in 2004, and we blew it.
• This week's Frank Rich is right on the number.
• But it's not all serious. I shoehorned in last night's Torchwood and yikes. Freaky. Circuses and freaks always freak me out, and last night's evil soul stealing circus.... yeeaaarrggghh. 3 new episodes left... until new Doctor Who and Sarah Jane Adventures at the end of April.
• Is hope alive for the Sabres? I don't even know anymore at this point. But I will be watching the last HD broadcast of the year, and who knows, maybe my mother will win a player jersey at Fan Appreciate Night. The Sabres should at least do her that courtesy.

Go Sabres.

The Dude Helps His Fellow Honkies in General and 97 Rock in Particular

The Dude's tips for white people about to talk out their _____ on the subject of race:

• Ask yourself: would you be COOL or SORE with the fact that your ancestors were enslaved and shipped to America to be slave labor? Yeah.... hmmmm.... never thought about that before... did you?
• 140 years (the amount of time that's elapsed since the abolition of slavery) does not qualify as ancient history by ANY measure.
• You are aware that segregation was 100% legal in the US until about 50 years ago, right?!? And you're also aware that the Civil Rights Act wasn't signed into law until about 40 years ago, right?!?

Yes my silly crackers, that's not even a generation ago.

• Slavery and Jim Crow seem like they happened "ages ago" because they didn't happen to you or your people. You probably read about slavery and Jim Crow in a history book back in school, and odds are good that you probably got defensive about it back then too.
• Try to think about race with a perspective larger than just your lily white cracker worldview. Try... just try... to think about race if you were African American. Yeah it might be hard... it might even blow your mind... but it's worth trying. Trust me.

We gotta try.

I finally got around to watching last Friday's Newsnight and man alive, I wasn't amused at all watching Richard Perle, one of the brightest of the bright lights of the neoconservative movement, get skewered by the BBC's Jeremy Paxson. No, instead I was just embarrassed to be an American... watching Perle absolutely babble proven nonsense and then make statements that required immediate backtracking, the very epitome of cognitive dissonance.... no folks, this was actually something of a dispiriting exercise. I mean, neoconservativsm is the reigning political and economic ideology of the United States of America, and that was sad... and that sort of makes me sad. Thankfully I inflicted Newsnight on myself before the glorious macho frivolity Top Gear, so I won't be too sad for too long. Actually my sadness is fading away now that Jeremy Paxson is verbally clubbing a grubby swine over the Diana inquest. Now that's what I call journalism.

Sunday Odds and Sods

• Happy Easter.
• This week's Torchwood was brilliant: sex, violence, conflict, maneating aliens, humor, a wedding- it had it all. God Torchwood is such a good show.
• The new Gnarls Barkley disc is awesome. More to come later.
• The Dude dissects the obvious appeal of Lonelygirl15's exploits on YouTube: her cans.
• I gotta admit it folks, I did think that it was cool that Cafe Aroma came in dead last in yesterday's Buffalo News coffee judging. Yes, the most ludicrously pretentious coffee joint in Buffalo also serves the lamest coffee in Buffalo. A coincidence? Probably not.*
• You know what the worst part of all this divisiveness among the Democratic party, in addition to the fact that it might well give the GOP the keys to the car for a third consecutive term? The fact that win or lose you know it's gonna fall to Barack Obama to (try) to unite and save the party. Yes, the guy on the receiving end of all this divisive BS, the chap playing far more defense than offense over this divisive BS, is gonna have to (try to) save the bloody day with his much maligned (by his opponent) pretty talk. Now does that qualify as irony, or is that the height of cynicism?
• It is waaaaay past time for activist Democrats to check themselves, and to ask themselves "WHAT EXACTLY AM I DOING?" Seriously. It's time.
• I used that Frank Rich link twice on purpose.

*I'm sorry, but I am gonna nurse that grudge against Cafe Aroma. I mean, what's the point of even showing World Cup matches if you can't get in the place because half of the seats are taken by the backpacks and tote bags of the wankers clogging up the joint?

And those wankers weren't even watching the matches!

Who is Ashleigh Banfield? Watching her talk about the legal aspects of the Spitzer Thing on CNN this morning made my morning. Kudos to you Ashleigh for those fine black leather @#$%boots. Ha cha cha.

Political Odds and Sods

• Geraldine Ferraro has thrown herself upon her sword at last... if anything else to (try to) avoid the lambasting she and the Clinton campaign will be getting on tonight's Countdown. Also, let's be fair to Gerrie, of course she's not a racist... she's just somebody willing to cynically play the race card. There is a difference. But alas she is still a foul ball and that's dirty baseball.
• I am really looking forward to tonight's Countdown. A Special Comment aimed at the HRC campaign Death Star?!? That ought to be something.
• Yes the Spitzer Gotterdammerung is many things: a tragedy, a betrayal, sad, a farce, the height of either madness or arrogance, a mass betrayal of all who supported the "Mr. Clean" who was supposed to be President eventually ( as almost a foregone conclusion), pathetic, disgraceful... oh I could go on and on for days. But, all things being equal, that hooker is one fine piece of ass. She's also a U2 fan, and you gotta respect that.
• And hey, at least you can tell that Spitzer is a Democrat: he got caught with a (good lookin') woman. If he was a Republican it'd be some airport men's room hanky panky or some such thing.
• Mary Anne has been caught up in the justice. It really makes you wonder where the Professor is in all of this....

This is funny.

This is a whole new experience for us. Members of our own party causing so much pain, agita, and teeth gnashing. Maybe this whole thing just stings more because we've become so inured and blaise about El Presidente's shit that seeing similarly painful shenanigans coming from our own camp stands out and hurts that much more. Either way, it's going to be a long haul, and I just hope we can shake hands and make up when all this is over.




Also, pay close attention to Richard Wolfe's comments on "experience." Therein lies the whole nitty gritty. Really kids. Ponder Wolfe, consider briefly McCain's status as POW and war hero, and then recall how many times on The West Wing you saw Stockard Channing present in the Oval Office during policy meetings or in the situation room. That is game, set and match in November- and another 4 years with a Republican in the White House.

You gotta believe me folks, I did not read this until after I came up with the whole Godzilla crack. It really is a total coincidence, just like the fact that Samantha Power was compelled (by the power of Christ?) to resign from the Obama campaign the same day I got the new issue of Playboy in the mail... an issue that happens to contain a review of Power's new book that gave it four bunny rabbits. Like I said, a coincidence.


Or... a harmonic convergence. Cue The X-Files music.


Also in the new Playboy, an interview with that lead singer from Nickelback that I think includes him being asked what it feels like to be hated by all people who fancy themselves to be "lovers of music." That ought to be great.

Uhhh... what else would you call Godzilla when it's trashing Tokyo?


That whole quote is hilarious, and if you ask enough people about it, totally accurate.

Disaster

You know what I am talking about. I can't even talk about it. It's all gonna work out in the end, but right now it's giving me too much agita.


And the Sabres totally suck. There was no desire in that third period. They could have tied the game but they didn't have the fire in the belly to get that goal and they were practically begging for the Caps to get that third goal, and they buried us for it. That second goal would have been nice (I'll have to take Lindy's word that it wasn't a goal), but they didn't dig in until after the jig was up and that's not good enough by half. The Sabres ain't done yet but the job ahead has gotten that much tougher.

Update to the Update

• The Sabres won in a genuine "show of guts" and thus kept their/our playoff hopes alive. The open thread live blog of the game over at was a lot of fun tonight. Let's go Sabres!
• In a bizarre twist Ain't It Cool News has a Super Tuesday II post and thread. I feel less bad about inflicting politics on you (actually I don't feel bad at all). Kudos to all of you fine Americans!
• And now I am done for the night. The Real World beckons, and I am tuckered out from all of these exertions. And now let us pray...

I really wanted to turn off the akward and unfunny Hillary interview from last night's Daily Show but the beautiful college girl (you know, the one wearing the hat) strategically positioned just behind Hillary's left shoulder succesfully kept my finger off of the fast forward. At last the Hillary campaign does something right. And is it me or is The Daily Show strangely not funny as of late? Yeah I saw some of Stewart's unfunny Oscar bits and yeah that's probably coloring my thoughts on the matter, but come on now, I can't be that biased. The Daily Show was the first show I watched after the writer's strike for Jebus's sake. I'm a Daily Show fan.

And for it to be not funny.... man... that just ain't fair.