i’ll be heading down to the farm for my sixth bonnaroo. the only bad part is having to wait until june.

here’s the official promo video, released earlier today.

great little montage of senator loser mcangry at tonight’s debate.

watching these two together is truly fascinating; the contrast could not be more stark. and the choice could not be more obvious. more fascinating still is the fact that there are actually people out there who believe mccain would be a better leader of this country.

no meaningful comparison between the two would lead one to that conclusion. not a comparison of intellect. nor of temperament. nor of judgment. obama is clearly – to anyone with eyes, ears and a brain – the smarter, more even-keeled, wiser, thoughtful, empathetic, and POSITIVE candidate. it’s not even close.

in fact, it is becoming more and more clear that people who plan on going to the mat for john mccain on november 4th can truly only fall into some simple categories:

• racists. of course they’re out there. sad but true. real support of education policy in this country will go a long way toward eradicating this problem. but until we fix the root cause, we have to turn over the rocks and let them scurry out into the light, exposed for what they are. a black president. get over it. get used to it. understand why it doesn’t matter.


• selfish ‘financialists’. this group can’t see beyond the faux ‘robin hood’ argument put forth by mccain and the republicans about ‘spreading the wealth’. paying one dollar more (regardless of how many dollars one might already have) is “un-american” and “antithetical to the beliefs of our capitalist system.” this group generally has little understanding of macroeconomics or the concept of the greater good.


• the incredibly stupid.  exhibits A and B: gayle quinnell and jonah goldberg. there are many others, unfortunately. they watch fox news. they think jerome corsi is a journalist. they think barack obama is a muslim. they think the republican party is actually looking out for them but they’ve never bothered to actually see if that’s true or not.


• ‘down with the ship’ republicans. often, but not always, a subset or matching set of the ‘selfish financialists’, this group just loves being republican. it’s like a frat. or sports team fan club. USA! REPUBLICAN! there are chants, bumper stickers, and a desperate need for a party with which to identify. republicans to the death, the ‘country first’ mantra of the mccain campaign is a bitter joke. nobody believes that for a second; it’s party first and always has been.


• single-issue voters. gay marriage. gun control. prayer in school. abortion. this group can’t see the forest for the trees. and in most cases, the single issue is one that is not a majority-held position, but rather a morality-based issue of personal choice favored by a few. given most of these ‘wedge’ issues have some association with religious beliefs, the republican party is the only one willing to meld church and state to lock down the voting bloc.

it’s possible there may be more. i’m sure a mccain voter would never want to be put into any of the above buckets, but any arguments made with regard to “better policies” or “higher integrity” or “he was a POW” are easily swatted down like horseflies in 105-degree heat.

i long for a thinking, feeling adult in the white house. we can’t afford to elect a me-first asshole of the first degree like john mccain.

mccain has neither the guts nor the moral compass to denounce the supporter who yells out “terrorist!” in response to mccain’s question “who is the real barack obama?”

this is today’s republican party in a nutshell: ignorant, living in fear of manufactured threats and enemies, selfish and self-serving, and utterly incapable of acting with civility, compassion or grace. i imagine that true self-described ‘fiscal conservatives’ and/or ‘goldwater republicans’ (commonly mistaken for libertarians) have already abandoned the shitheap that is their party. but those who continue to claim proud membership in the republican club are either incredibly and willfully stupid – or morally bankrupt.

a few recent mccain highlights:

• his inability to recall the past 15 years of eastern european history


• his siamese-twin relationships with lobbyists—who have made some pretty coin while screwing americans—and the extent of those relationships dictating his policy positions on the russia/georgia conflict and the home mortgage crisis


• his complete and utter failure to run an “honorable” campaign


• his laughable claim to any moral character (and his charming wife’s ‘family values’)

sometimes it feels as if we’re down the rabbit hole when it comes to mccain. what is so obvious to anyone with a brain just doesn’t seem to register with nearly 40 percent of americans. that’s partly due to the abdication of responsible reporting by the traditional media. but it’s also apparently due to the fact that we really are a nation of idiots.

andrew sullivan, who apparently has grown very very tired of trying to defend any of his fellow conservatives, wrote a brilliant piece in the atlantic yesterday. here’s an excerpt, but please read the whole post. his logic is infallible. his points are devastating. and his apparent loathing of mccain very nearly matches mine.

In all the discussion of John McCain’s recently recovered memory of a religious epiphany in Vietnam, one thing has been missing. The torture that was deployed against McCain emerges in all the various accounts. It involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar?

According to the Bush administration’s definition of torture, McCain was therefore not tortured.

Cheney denies that McCain was tortured; as does Bush. So do John Yoo and David Addington and George Tenet.

but i just wish that the one candidate we have who represents even a modicum of honesty and integrity (and obama clearly has more than that) would just stand up and tell it like it is. bush broke the law and has been spying on us. with the help of the telecom companies. who have, in turn, given lots of money to elected representatives to keep their mouths shut. and the american people deserve to find out exactly what has transpired over the past seven years. period. paragraph.

no bill gets passed until bush is out of office and the facts can be brought into the sunlight. that’s it. no compromise. skip the speeches on patriotism and the mild smackdowns of truthtellers like wes clark. save the discussion of faith-based initiatives for another day. stand up (and bring russ feingold with you) and tell us that truth and honesty still mean something. anything. even in a quixotic situation that, may they burn in hell for it, democrats have enabled.

barring the unlikely scenario of the above unfolding, olbermann seems to have taken in at least some of glenn greenwald’s points and internalized them into a pretty compelling if/then/else statement. you can see it here:

dearest fox friends:

i’ve seen the clip of little peter doocy and his sad, smirk-laden attempt at ‘reporting.’ apparently peter is an apt pupil when it comes to aping his father’s dubious ‘journalistic’ style. the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree when it comes to regurgitating GOP talking points and framing questions in that oh-so-familiar faux news manner.

doocy senior should be less concerned with what olbermann thinks and says about his son and pay a bit more attention to his own parenting responsibilities. after all, it was daddy that set up his kid for ridicule and then had the subsequent effrontery to get his panties in a bunch when the inevitable ridicule occurred. peter is certainly entitled to act like an idiot; it’s de rigeur for many college-aged kids. but dressing up that idiocy as “youth-oriented commentary” under the guise of objectivity deserves to be called out for what it is: a transparent act of nepotistic parroting. and papa doocy’s outrage would be merely laughable if it weren’t so pathetic in its tin-ear shrillness.

here’s a fact (and i realize that facts don’t have much currency over there): olbermann’s comments were far more fair and balanced than peter’s ‘broadcasting’ debut or steve’s ongoing parade of blowhard punditry. as long as nepotism and/or cronyism remain the guiding principles for both faux news and the bush administration, doocy shouldn’t be surprised when incompetence and spin are identified as such. if steve doesn’t want someone to “pick on his kid,” then he shouldn’t be putting that kid on the airwaves.

certainly there’s an element of schadenfreude for those of us out here in the reality-based community in watching the murdoch lemmings get apoplectic as the propaganda machine becomes more and more exposed for what it is. but protestations like doocy’s are what generate the real belly laughs and guffaws.

keep it up. you’ve helped to create the dire situation in which this country finds itself; you owe us a few laughs at the very least.

sometimes i look for a show just to fill a gap in the calendar. such was the case when i decided to see Bell X1 (hate the name, btw) after reading the café du nord calendar email recently. not sure what made me click through to read about this band, but i did and the blurb was interesting enough for me to click through to the myspace page and listen to a few tracks. i liked what i heard and decided to fill up wednesday night, march 26. oddly, the opening band had a six degrees of separation (more like three) connection to me and my band from back in the day. i was more familiar with the two musicians—blake hazard and jack dragonetti—that comprise the submarines than i was with Bell X1 (really don’t like that name), but unfortunately i didn’t make it in to see anything but the final minute of the submarines’ set. next time.

so, Bell X1. they’re irish. and, of course, any irish band is going to invite comparisons with other irish bands (i don’t know why this is, but it is). but i don’t think i was imagining things when i heard traces of hothouse flowers (the rolling piano licks that drive some of the tunes) and U2 (some anthemic choruses on a bed of shimmering guitar lines) throughout the night. what really struck me on occasion, however, was the similarity of paul noonan’s voice to that of gord downie of the tragically hip. in fact, i didn’t make the connection until just now listening back as i write this. it drove me crazy all night during the show.

other musical reference points are midlake (again, the piano might be the common ground, but there’s a shared overall vibe as well) and oddly, at times, siren-era roxy music. there was even a moment in “flame” where the vocal melody line was aping the talking heads’ “girlfriend is better.” (and noonan had quoted three lines from “once in a lifetime” earlier in the set) and oddly, i found myself thinking of “axe victim”-era be bob deluxe during “white water song.” together, all of these aural reference points, influences or not, make a pretty interesting stew. irish stew, to be precise.

i like this band. there is an earnestness that doesn’t feel calculated or silly—just honest. and though i wholeheartedly recommend and support changing the band name, it isn’t likely given the amount of success they’ve had in ireland and europe (i was reminded of this by bbernardini over on DIME).

here’s the second song of the set, “My First Born for a Song.”

as the subtitle to my blog says, this is a place for ‘live music and liberal rants.’ i’ll be the first to admit that it’s been a little light on the former and heavy on the latter of late. that doesn’t mean that i haven’t been keeping up my usual insane schedule of seeing live music. au contraire, mon frere (ou soeur). it just means that in recent months i’ve been particularly aggravated by both republicans and democrats. which is probably why i’m not affiliated officially with any political party. don’t get me wrong… i love a good party. which is why i go to see so much live music.

in the coming days, i’m going to be posting lots of clips from my huge backlog of shows. big microscope will train its lens on recent (and not so recent) appearances by the charlie hunter trio, rickie lee jones, dumpstaphunk, the gourds, explosions in the sky and iron and wine. well, some of those at least.

but today’s clip comes from a show i attended last sunday at the rickshaw stop (a very cool little club, btw) by the relentlessly hyped vampire weekend.

i went into this show expecting unbelievably great things. so that might explain why i was underwhelmed. after reading all of the hype and hearing nothing but raves from folks who had heard the record, i decided a few months ago (when i bought tickets to this show) to keep myself in a bubble and not listen to any VW (studio album or live shows or youtube videos or anything) until this night. i’m glad i did because i think it allowed me to evaluate this band on the criteria that mean the most to me: are they dynamic live performers? are their songs compelling in a stripped-down live setting? is there tonal variety to the overall ‘sound’ of the artist/band?

while i enjoyed the show, i thought the songs all began to sound the same after a while. there was never any variation in the guitar tone (i understand that this is intentional… the african influence is a deliberate ‘signature’ of the band’s sound). but that just made me hunger for another guitar in the mix. the guys were as pleasant as can be in terms of onstage demeanor… no “we’re the next big thing” swagger, which was refreshing. but it also added to the overall feeling that another year of playing columbia frat parties might have been a good thing for them in terms of developing a broader stylistic range.

i think it will be interesting to see what this band sounds like in three years—if they make it that far.

the complete show from the rickshaw stop can be downloaded here if you do the bit torrent thing.

here’s a sample: a new song of theirs, called “little giant” (if missmodernage over at youtube knows what she’s talking about).

ignorance is strength.

most of us know, instinctively, that these three statements are absurd. yet these are all things republicans believe. how else can one explain the past five years of war in iraq? the bush administration would like you to believe that through war, we can achieve peace and ‘democracy’ in the middle east. they’d like you to think that freedom in this country will be protected by making us all slaves to the watchful eyes and ears of data-devouring, privacy-eviscerating government ‘security’ programs. and they want you to put those goddamn stubborn facts aside and just trust them to ensure america stays strong in the face of grave threats ‘out there’. truth be damned; dogma be praised.

eric blair was more than eerily prescient when he wrote 1984 back in 1949—he was keenly observant. blair had just lived through world war II and had seen the ugly face of totalitarianism up close. and though ‘democracy’ carried the day to defeat hitler and those who had rallied around him, it wasn’t too hard to extrapolate a future in which a more insidious form of fascism could take root underneath the fertile ground of post-war prosperity.

fast-forward to 2008. today marks the fifth anniversary of the iraq invasion and occupation. as many others have written, this military disaster has gone on longer than world war I, world war II and the civil war. it has cost us dearly in human life, dollars, reputation and our ability to make sound judgments as a nation. it has been, arguably, the single greatest foreign policy disaster in our history. and we’re nowhere near close to ending it. that pathetic shell of a man, mccain, wants to keep us there for another 100 years. he claims it’s inevitable. the only thing that’s inevitable about iraq is that it will take us decades to recover from our blunders there.

it didn’t have to be this way. and it better not be this way in the future. because if we can’t learn from this colossal mistake, then we are truly ignorant. truly slaves to immoral so-called leaders. and truly locked in a never-ending war—with ourselves.