Listening Post

This is one of those songs that falls into the category of "undeniable," meaning that no matter how hard you might try to get it out of your head -- should you inexplicably want to -- you're going to find that it's pretty much impossible.

Here's Ed Sheeran's The A Team.

Quote of the Month

"They have acted like terrorists."

-- Vice President Joe Biden on the Tea Party Republicans in Congress

Quote of the Day: The Kook of Mormon Edition

"I am to now recuse you from this case. Now sign order to recuse thyself; and allow this proceeding to stop... Step away from this abuse of power against a religious and pure faith in the Lord."

-- From a motion filed in court by super-cuddly fundamentalist Mormon leader Warren Jeffs demanding that the judge in the sexual assault case against him step down under, Jeffs says, an order from God

Every time I think Mormonism -- fundamentalist or otherwise -- is no more crazy than any other religion, Warren Jeffs opens his mouth and brings me back to reality. Or a complete lack of it.

Quote of the Day

"This defense is a smoke screen. The real transgressions of the Murdoch empire are not its outré partisanship, its tabloid sleaze, its Washington lobbying, or even what liberals most love to hate, the bogus 'fair and balanced' propaganda masquerading as journalism at Fox News. In fact, these misdemeanors are red herrings—distractions from the real News Corp. corruption that now threatens to bring down its management and radically reconfigure and reduce its international corporate footprint. The bigger story is this: An otherwise archetypal media colossus, with apolitical TV shows (American Idol), movies (Avatar), and cable channels (FX) like any other, is controlled by a family (and its tight coterie of made men and women, exemplified by the recently departed Rebekah Brooks) that countenances the intimidation and silencing of politicians, regulators, competitors, journalists, and even ordinary citizens to maximize its profits and power and to punish perceived corporate, political, and personal enemies. And, as we now know conclusively, some of this behavior has broken the law."

-- Frank Rich in New York Magazine

Take 20 minutes or so out of your day if you can and read Rich's entire piece; it's relentlessly detailed in its excoriation of Murdoch's empire as anything but your average media conglomerate.

Expanding on what both Rich and the previously linked Peter Daou piece have to say, you might also want to take a look at Fox News's latest completely-made-up controversy that's sure to turn into its next very public crusade. And then read a classic and thoroughly brilliant piece by Matt Osborne that dissects the Orwellian origins of the right-wing fear factory.

Yeah, it's a lot to take in -- but it's gotta be better than staring blankly at that little flashing cursor on your computer screen for hours on end.

The Devil's Triangle

There are moments when Peter Daou comes off as a bit too much of an ideologue for my tastes, but a lot of the points he's making this morning on the debt ceiling fight, politics and the media are tough to argue with.

"Think about it: in a nation where Casey Anthony gets unlimited air time, how many Americans really understand the intricacies of the issues facing them? Most Americans can’t tell you where Europe is on a map, how can you expect them to assess the efficacy of Keynesian economics? And that’s not blaming them. Economists can’t even agree on the basics. So what ends up filling the knowledge void is the brashest, loudest, most confident-sounding voices. Voices of supposed authority and alleged principle. Rush Limbaugh, for instance. Or Sarah Palin. Sean Hannity. Ann Coulter. Bill O’Reilly.

Echoing those ‘voices of authority’ are Republican politicians and the right’s online denizens. Conservative pundits and columnists lend it all an air of seriousness. And the media, desperately seeking to appear 'fair,' give an uncritical national platform to those voices. Not to mention Fox News, which pipes a steady stream of propaganda into millions of American homes. The triangle of establishment, media, and Internet comes together and conventional wisdom is created and/or changed. Pollsters then dutifully register that shift in sentiment and the media regurgitate it.

There’s simply nothing comparable on the Democratic side."

In my lifetime at least, the Republicans have always been better at creating conventional wisdom out of whole cloth than the Democrats -- and it's one of the many reasons the Dems come off as perennial losers.

It's All Downhill from Here

Salon's Andrew Leonard sums up the only exculpatory spin that can be put on the shit sandwich America is very likely about to be forced to swallow whole:

"If one wished to give the president the benefit of the doubt, one could argue that maybe there was nothing he could have done to get a better deal. House Republicans were willing to push the nation into default -- and that's a scenario no sane leader could responsibly endorse. Obama couldn't credibly threaten a veto of any legislation that would reach his desk because Obama ultimately would not and could not voluntarily choose to default on the nation's obligations. Obama had to choose between an awful deal or an outright catastrophe. There's no way to come out of that jam smelling of roses.

But he didn't need to try to sell this resolution as some sort of 'compromise.' The president said it was not "the deal I would have preferred." He should have been stronger. He should have said it's a bad deal that does not address the pressing needs of the nation, and sets in stone cuts in entitlements that will savage an aging population faced by spiraling health care costs. And then he should have acknowledged that he still had to sign it, because the alternative would have ensured a nearly immediate slide into recession and the strong possibility of a global financial shock."

That's about all there is to it. I realize that both sides of the political aisle aren't at all happy with this deal and maybe it could be argued that that's one of the best things you can say about it. Unfortunately, if nobody's happy then that generally means it's a crappy deal, and while I know there are those on the opposite side of the fence who claim differently, they're full of it: the Republicans got almost everything they wanted. The Tea Party put a gun to the head of the entire country and turned what should have been a simple political procedure into an effort to bury us all under a big, heaping pile of its ass-backward dogma -- and that it did. What was one of the most embarrassing episodes for this country in its short but celebrated history has just morphed into an almost unimaginably devastating sucker punch to the American psyche. Thanks to a misguided embrace of austerity in the middle of an economic crisis, we'll no longer enjoy the inviolable powerhouse status we've had as a nation for decades into centuries. We're now no better than the European countries our twisted and treacherous Republican leaders so casually condescend to as part of the prerogative supposedly granted to us by "American exceptionalism."

The world is laughing at us right now -- and maybe it should be.

And we just learned an important lesson that we've, ironically, never really been able to admit to ourselves: terrorism is nearly impossible to defeat because it works. Welcome to the new era of Hostage Politics in this country.

Listening Post

Remember when people actually cared who was doing the James Bond themes? When those songs would sometimes go on to be huge hits? Well, like most people, I spent years not enjoying a Bond theme -- until the inspired combination of Alicia Keys and Jack White did this undeniably bad-ass track for Quantum of Solace.

Here's Another Way To Die.