Bubba Comes Out Swinging

Remember what it was like to have a real president? Check out this recent interview with Bill Clinton.

You can just see Chris Wallace wilting under the heat after his ambush tactics fail.

Capitol of Punk

Short films/pod-casts about the DC music scene of the 1980’s. It’s really well done, particularly for its simplicity — it’s mostly interviews with people who were there.

Remember when the 9:30 Club was actually at 930 F St.? And had national acts playing in a space the size of your living room, if your living room had steel girders blocking your view?

Welcome to the Occupation

From a piece by Rajiv Chandrasekaran in The Washington Post: “I’m not here for the Iraqis. I’m here for George Bush,” from his upcoming book Imperial Life in the Emerald City (via).

Because in order to stabilize and democratize Iraq, the most important thing was to make sure that the residents of Mosul and Tal Afar felt the right way on privatizing Social Security and introducing a flat tax.

It’s staggeringly funny and incredibly sad — these Young Republican wunderkinder, armed with a degree in Poli Sci, some DMB bootlegs on Ipod, and copies of Capitalism and Freedom were going to accomplish what under Bill Clinton was considered utterly profligate and damaging to American security. They were going to nation build (dude) and do it cheaply, quickly, and without repercussion. All because, what, they studied with Straussians instead of those nasty English professors?

The level of delusion suffered by Republicans over the past six years is hard to convey. Chandrasekaran does a good job of combining themes with particular facts to illustrate just how badly a post-Saddam Iraq was planned for (although the word “planned” implies there was one, beyond hand-picked DKE’s and their accompanying sorostitutes getting out there into the streets of Fallujah and asking people to “chill” and play some beer pong with them).

And how interesting that NRO editor Kate O’beirne’s husband is one of the imbeciles who drank too much of the Bremer Kool-Aid, and instead of choosing people who could do things like speak Arabic and know the difference between Sunnis and Shia, tried to formulate a template for reconstruction based on domestic US politics.

Some Bands I Like to Name Check

A retrospective package from the heroes of Athens, GA.

Looks like fun. Not enough fun to purchase, but fun nonetheless. The review at PFM is rather tortured, but at least catches Stipe’s response to Malkmus from way back in 1993.

But no “Harborcoat”? Travesty.

Have Fun Storming the Castle!

Apparently, trenches are being built around Baghdad (via).

The Honesty of Charles Krauthammer

Glenn Greenwald today on “the increasing extremism of Bush followers.”

In it, he links to today’s piece by Charles Krauthammer regarding the upcoming bombing of Iran. Krauthammer writes that “the costs will be terrible,” and goes on to bullet-point some doozies, both economic (oil) and military (all those well-trained and equipped Iraqi Shiites we’ve been putting together? Most of them have relatives or friends in Iran).

I’m going to give some credit where credit is due — Charles Krauthammer and I don’t agree on many things, but as long as Bush apologists and PNAC apparatchiks are going to try and hurtle us all down into a pit of fire (or at least 8$/gallon gasoline and a US military infrastructure that will be shattered for decades to come), I appreciate their complete and utter honesty. We have no good plans for dealing with Iran, so we’re going to bomb the hell out of it, at a cost of millions of lives and billions of dollars. And it has to happen before Bush leaves office. And you, dear citizen, are going to like it. Or at least pay for it.

Sucker.

Wire’s 12XU X12

12 covers of the same song, via.

Pancake Mountain

I think it was my friend Roscoe who told me about Pancake Mountain, a DC-area group putting kid-friendly indie music programming together for the next generation of jaded hipsters. People involved to varying degrees included long-term DC music legends like Ian MacKaye and Brendan Canty, as well as newer residents like Bob Mould.

I hadn’t been there for ages, and I’d assumed it had gone away, but it turns out they’re still doing some really cool stuff including dance parties where kids get to interact with (some really great) musicians.

Lots of fun for all ages, and some neat videos.

Olbermann on 9/11

Powerful.

I’ll mention it again — when the only media outlets still being thoroughly analytical and yes, quite critical, of an administration gone off the rails include a former sports journo and two comedians doing “the fake news,” we’re in trouble.  Or possibly lucky?

TV on the Radio — Return to Cookie Mountain

Their new album, being streamed here.