Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

We will not go back.

Live so that if you miss a day of work people aren’t hoping you’re dead.

When tyranny becomes law, rebellion becomes duty. ~Thomas Jefferson

Petty moves from a petty man.

This is dead girl, live boy, a goat, two wetsuits and a dildo territory.  oh, and pink furry handcuffs.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Trumpflation is an intolerable hardship for every American, and it’s Trump’s fault.

A sufficient plurality of insane, greedy people can tank any democratic system ever devised, apparently.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

Disappointing to see gov. newsom with his finger to the wind.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

American history and black history cannot be separated.

Stay strong, because they are weak.

The gop is a fucking disgrace.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

The lights are all blinking red.

The Supreme Court cannot be allowed to become the ultimate, unaccountable arbiter of everything.

To the privileged, equality seems like oppression.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

… riddled with inexplicable and elementary errors of law and fact

When I was faster i was always behind.

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Reader Interactions

127Comments

  2. 2.

    JZ

    The alternative universe these people live in is truly astounding. Common is a freaking teddy bear in the rap world. People need to get a hobby.

  4. 4.

    Omnes Omnibus

    If Trump can find Tupac and Biggie, it would be nice to add them to the list. On second thought, they might be better candidates for a beer summit.

  5. 5.

    rob!

    “Furthermore, you are to stick
    to playing normal modes of music…not wild stuff.

    Those we would find acceptable here
    would include Lawrence Welk…Jim Nabors, Mantovani.

    – Percy Faith.

    – Percy Faith. Good!

    Andy Williams, Pery Como and certain ballads by Mr Frank Sinatra.

    – Would Bob Dylan be out of line?

    – Way, way, way out of line.”

  9. 9.

    Bruuuuce

    How about a Brit who has sung about things ranging from sex by numbers to political assassination? He does have lots of other goodies, as well, including killer plants, gang wars, and burglary to his songwriting credit. (I’m speaking of Peter Gabriel, of course. Nice big name philanthropic type.)

  11. 11.

    jibeaux

    @cleek:

    Sheesh, I would not. I think she could do the diamond ones while clapping twice and holding out a leg…

  16. 16.

    Ghanima Atreides

    How about the Flobots?
    my arms are in the crowd scene for this video. There was some local radio chatter about the Flobots playing at the inaugration. Got yoyo instead.
    But the Flobots and Rage played at the DNC in Denver for the battle of the bands. I luff the Flobots, and im a charter at FightwithTools.org.
    ;)

  17. 17.

    Cacti

    Toby Keith

    Suggestions of violence in music are fine, so long as they come from a white ‘Murican and are directed at brown furriners.

  20. 20.

    John PM

    I am more offended by Common’s acting than by the lyrics to his songs.

    BTW, does Palin know that Bristol is going to be sharing an apartment in Los Angeles with two black guys? How is that going to play with the base?

  21. 21.

    Yevgraf (fka Michael)

    Paypal sucks ass.

    A client paid me over paypal with a brand new card. I got the email, but nothing showing in my history. It was a chunky little payment, so I freaked out a bit, and have spent a couple of hours clunking about on their stupid site.

    Went through the pain in my ass to call, only to have the operator tell me that the charge was declined by the card issuer, probably due to a web purchase limitation. I told her it would have been nice for them to have reflected the declination on my account, so as to save me some panic and time.

    Assholes.

  22. 22.

    Comrade Javamanphil

    I’m sure The Nuge could get an invite from GOP administrations. Certainly nothing in his past would cause one to think he might not be the most wholesome or upstanding member of society.

  26. 26.

    natthedem

    Remember that time an aspiring presidential nominee invited a rapper to an event with the President…not any rapper, but a rapper who had once performed these words:

    Yeah, I’m a gangsta, but still I got flavor/ Without a gun and a badge, what do ya got?/ A sucker in a uniform waitin to get shot/ by me, or another n****

    This is blasphemous. Someone call the police union. The President is associating with someone advocating the murder of a cop!

    Oh, wait…what’s that…

    The aspiring presidential nominee was a Republican and the President was white back then? Oh, my bad…I guess that doesn’t count then.

  28. 28.

    Bruuuuce

    @Chyron HR: Considering that Mick and the boys lived in New York as much as in London for long stretches, I’m cool with that. As long as they get to play “Starf*cker” for President O’s girls.

  30. 30.

    NamelessGenXer

    Can’t go wrong with I-can-name-that-tune-in-one-note Classic Rock. How about inviting the nice, gentlemanly old white guy David Gilmour to sing his Ode to the GOP, Dogs of War?

    Everybody, sing along…

    One world, it’s a battleground
    One world, and we will smash it down

  31. 31.

    Suffern ACE

    That story (in the Daily Caller) contrasted Common’s widely circulated spoken word piece criticizing police, “Letter to the Law,” to a poem written by 19th-century poet Emily Dickinson.

    Beyond being alive, doesn’t Common have the advantage over Dickinson of actually leaving his house? I’m thinking Miss D would have declined the invite even if the Obama’s offered one.

  32. 32.

    Ghanima Atreides

    @Omnes Omnibus: lol, i luff handlebars.
    The Flobots do a lot of local good here.
    In the second video I linked their community organization FightwithTools is shown in a treeplanting day at the superfund site at commerce city.
    they just rawk.
    ;)

  36. 36.

    Ghanima Atreides

    @different church-lady: no, because i got up really early to help with the crowd scene for the Flobots mtv Rise video. We had to get up at 4 am to get in line for the filming.
    ;)
    I loathe hipster music, that was all the Glibertarian Hivemind at TAS ever linked.
    Hipster music is all libertarians play.
    its gross.

  44. 44.

    Mr Stagger Lee

    FOR bi-partisan events invite Skrewdriver or any of those nice groups at Resistance Records. :-)

  46. 46.

    Ghanima Atreides

    @different church-lady: the flobots are anti-hipster, they are counter-culture protest rappers. for one thing, they are not ALL white.
    wow.
    pop-culture challenged much?
    I bet you can’t tell emo from scene either.
    ;)

  48. 48.

    Yevgraf (fka Michael)

    @R-Jud:

    Man, you’re lucky. Your clients pay you.

    I’m mean that way. I don’t care about justice for them at all – all I care about in my work is money, which is why I won’t do free work for them which either gets them money or saves them money.

  53. 53.

    Nemesis

    Have Men Without Hats sing their radical hit “Safety Dance”. Bland, 80’s, synth pop poop for the conservafucks.

  54. 54.

    nancydarling

    @Just Some Fuckhead: Cash was an avowed soshulist—just never talked about it. His lyrics say it all though. Wingers are just too stoopid to get it. Just like they tap there toes when someone sings “This Land is Your Land”, a soshulist anthem.

  55. 55.

    Ghanima Atreides

    @Omnes Omnibus: use your googlefu man.
    I’d add Animal Collective, Decemberists and Karen O and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.
    Theres tonnes of indie-crap bands like that. Libertarians and glibertarians like Gillespie, Suderman, Friedersdorf, McArdle and Kain all dig that dreadful musik and are wannabe hipsters.
    Wannabe hipsters are marked by a ferociously cultivated air of diffidence and elitist pretensions.
    Who does this remind you of?

    Lives in a young, artsy neighborhood of a major city such as Wicker Park in Chicago, Greenwich Village in Manhattan, or Williamsburg in Brooklyn. Usually has some degree of monetary conformability, although sometimes only because of their parents, due to cost of living in these areas.

    Reeks of McMegan and her urban renewal project.

  59. 59.

    R-Jud

    @Yevgraf (fka Michael): I also don’t do free work, but I’ve been learning recently that working with great big clients means a great big wait for invoices to be processed. As a one-woman shop, I don’t really have many options when it comes to getting them to cough up.

    An ex-boyfriend I’m on good terms with is an assistant attorney general in the state where my most delinquent client is based, but as he has just been diagnosed with cancer, I doubt he has time to look into the matter for me.

  61. 61.

    Fe E

    @Ghanima Atreides:

    The important thing to remember is that your favorite band sucks.

    The coolest thing about that statement is that it is universally true. What I hate about hipster music goes for jazz too–the whole “look-surprised-when-you-encounter-people that-don’t-automatically-assume-that-your-personal-favorite-artisit-are-above-reproach” shtick.

    I want to listen to Miles Davis as much as I want to listen to John Coltrane, which is as much as I want to hear the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, or the Jayhawks.

    Which as chance would have it, is just exactly as much as I want to hear the Flobots.

    Which is to say “not at all,” because your favorite band sucks, and hard.

    Just like mine does–to most other people.

  62. 62.

    Bruce S

    This shit started when Nixon invited outlaw gangster rapper Johnny Cash to the White House back in ’72. The country has been going downhill ever since. Terrible. Just terrible.

  64. 64.

    Kilkee

    @nancydarling: And they don’t seem to be familiar with, or ever sing, one of the better verses:

    In the squares of the city – In the shadow of the steeple
    Near the relief office – I see my people
    And some are grumblin’ and some are wonderin’
    If this land’s still made for you and me.

  65. 65.

    Ghanima Atreides

    @Fe E: but i love Miles Davis.
    its true that hipsters are fervently into that hipper than thou schtick and they generally prefer “undiscovered” or “underappreciated” music so they can sneer at the proles.
    Flobots are protest rappers. totally undeck for hipster wannabes, flobots are activists.
    Hipsters hate protest rap….its like anti-matter to them.
    Meh, I relly only like dance music. One of my friends said I have bubblegum taste in classical music even, because I only like Rimsky-Korsakov, Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev– music you can dance to.
    Miles is epic jazz.
    spirit fingers!

    so….what is your favorite band?

  66. 66.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    Johnny Cash looms large in my consciousness. Anyone heard The Man Comes Around, one of the last songs he wrote before he died? Wow.

  67. 67.

    Juicetard (FKA Liberty60)

    @Just Some Fuckhead:

    Can we dig up Johnny Cash?

    I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die.

    Funny how time and age gives even chilling sentences like that a nice mellow patina, the hard cold edges rubbed smooth and soft.

    In 10 years time, right wing blogs will be dropping in snippets of Common to demonstrate their hip credentials, while freaking out over the lesbian Chicana POTUS putting her feet up on the Oval Office desk.

  68. 68.

    Ghanima Atreides

    I think hipster music is pretty much all white bread too.
    Are there black hipsters?

  69. 69.

    Juicetard (FKA Liberty60)

    FWIW, there is a reason why white folk and black blues music influenced most of rock n roll, because the white Appalachians and Okies were the equivalent of inner-city rappers today.

    We like to romanticize them today, but the blue collar hardscrabble Okies and black sharecroppers were every bit as mean and sawed-off as any rapper alive today- they sang about what they knew, the hard bitter life at the bottom of the social pyramid.

  73. 73.

    Fe E

    @Ghanima Atreides:

    so….what is your favorite band?

    well, I suppose I’ll get to that in a second, but I just wanted to make the point that no matter how widely revered a given example of music is–even the Beatles for example–way more people dislike than like it, or are at least indifferent to it. And once you start getting in to niche areas like hipster rock or protest rap or Norwegian Death Metal the ratio starts getting overwhelming.

    I’m not gonna say I’ve never indulged in an internet music flame war, ’cause I sure have, but I know going in to it that my favorite stuff isn’t going to be popular and over the years I’ve gotten pretty matter of fact about it.

    In particular I’d say Judas Priest is my all time favorite Tipton and Downing are seriously underrated even within “guitar wanker” circles. In general I tend to like stuff with lots of notes, whether it is Joe Satriani, Ahsley MacIsaac or what have you, busy fingers tend to make me happy. Failing an avalanche of notes, a surplus of pomposity always helps out so I’m usually in for some Yes or ELP.

    I know Miles should scratch my “lots of notes” but for some reason I can’t quite articualte it just doens’t do it for me. Maybe I just don’t like brass.

    Unless it’s Tower of Power on Waiting for Columbus–then it rules. Who can say?

  75. 75.

    Joel

    the wingnuts would find a way to complain if the President invited P.M. Dawn to the White House.

  80. 80.

    Jay in Oregon

    @Rihilism:

    That reminds me of a definition I heard once:

    Chutzpah is killing your parents and then asking for leniency because you’re an orphan.

  81. 81.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @R-Jud:

    I fucking love that song. I love it when Cash gets all prophetic.

    It gives me chills, it’s so perfect. Lyrically a masterpiece, and the upbeat “happy” music to what is otherwise a tragic harvest tale makes for a sublime contradiction.

  82. 82.

    j low

    @Ghanima Atreides: I hate to come to the defense of The Decemberists, but they have a conservapedia page dedicated to how evil they are, and they are known around PDX for supporting progressive causes.

  83. 83.

    4jkb4ia

    I guess Jay-Z was too obvious. But he’s matured into a relative teddy bear and a published author. Maybe 20 years from now there will be a longtime Jay-Z fan in the WH and a performance dedicated to him.

  85. 85.

    4jkb4ia

    The Dixie Chicks, or any members thereof. For “Goodbye Earl”, not for anything they said about Bush. Of course Earl had it coming.

  86. 86.

    Ghanima Atreides

    @j low: conservapedia?
    /giggles behind hand
    so uncool.
    I just dig how conservatives, having been wholly disenfranchised from youth culture make fake youths…creatures like James O’Keefe and Hannah Giles– old people in fake-young people suits so crude you can see the zipper a half mile off. …like monsters in a Scooby Do cartoon.

    Conservative is the very definition of undeck anymore.
    You can’t get to Cooltown on the conservative express …it only goes to crazy town and jesustown.
    I bet the Decemberists are crypto-libertarians. ;)

  87. 87.

    piratedan

    I would humbly suggest an under the radar Brit who has been there and done that… Nick Lowe

    he could perform a song dedicated to the Republicans…. Stick It Where The Sun Don’t Shine

    one for times times at hand Cruel To Be Kind

    and one that everyone could agree on What’s So Funny About Peace Love and Understanding

    and maybe one especially for FLOTUS Man of a Fool

    and a special one for the folks at Faux News…. All Men Are Liars

  90. 90.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Ghanima Atreides: I know the broad definition of hipster. I know the broad definition of hipster music. I was really how you personally defined it. Everyone’s take is slightly different.

  91. 91.

    Ghanima Atreides

    @Fe E: hipster rock is an oxymoron. hipsters dont rock. death metal rawks. ;)
    I hate hipster music because of Reihan Salam and Peter (mr. mcmegan) Suderman and TAS.
    Suderman actually tried to pretend he had lissened to screamo in his “youth”.
    But he had never heard of FFTL, Sonny Moores band.
    What a poseur.

  94. 94.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Ghanima Atreides: FWIW hipster music changes over time. For example, there was a period of time when the Dazz Band and the Gap Band were a thing among hipsters. As far as rock goes, I offer the Pixies. Don’t assume things remain static. Anytime a person can say “Yeah, they used to be cool until their third album when they totally sold out” or “My favorite band…. You’ve never heard of them,” you will have found a hipster. Genre doesn’t really matter.

  95. 95.

    Just Some Fuckhead

    @Omnes Omnibus: She’ll read something on a C list blog tomorrow, have an epiphany and decide hipster music is transcendent of genre and therefore the future of music and we should all embrace it.

  97. 97.

    Fe E

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Anytime a person can say “Yeah, they used to be cool until their third album when they totally sold out” or “My favorite band…. You’ve never heard of them,” you will have found a hipster

    Oh man, that covers it just about perfectly!

    On a somewhat related note, if the music critic in your local paper just looooooves a band, you can pretty much assume that it will: 1) suck hard, 2) be a band you will never hear from again.

  98. 98.

    Ghanima Atreides

    @Omnes Omnibus: lool, but there are some genres the hipsters will never embrace. The branding of hipsterism is “My Disaffectation”. Hiphop and protest rap..or j-pop for example….thrash metal or heavy metal satanists like the Warlock Pincers. Im sure the Smiths were hipster fodder back in the day.
    But any variety of metal?
    Never.

  99. 99.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Fe E: I, myself, have never made such comments. Nor did I have my dad’s suits and skinny ties from the 60s to wear to parties when I was in college.

  102. 102.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Ghanima Atreides: Well, shit, if we pin the definition of hipster as fans of the Avett Brothers, then you are correct. If we use the broader definition and allow it to change over time, then you are not. I have to say, hipsters existed before either you or I were born. The specific music or item doesn’t matter it is the hipper than thou attitude that is key.

  103. 103.

    Ghanima Atreides

    @Omnes Omnibus: but one cannot be hipper-than-thou when one is abandoned to the music, to dance.
    The dionysians and maenads were never hipsters.

  107. 107.

    DFH no.6

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    The specific music or item doesn’t matter it is the hipper than thou attitude that is key.

    Yes, perfect definition of “hipster”, which, by his comments here, Ghanima Atreides fits to a “t”.

    Only libertarian douches like modern indie music, eh? Brilliant deduction, Sherlock.

    And Atreides really only likes dance music, but is also really into black metal, death metal, etc. (like, maybe, Wolves in the Throne Room or OTEP?). No contradiction there, no siree. Lots of dancing at metal concerts.

    Whatever our hipster friend Atreides thinks, de gustibus non est disputandum pertains here.

  108. 108.

    j low

    @Ghanima Atreides:

    I bet the Decemberists are crypto-libertarians. ;)

    I can say definitively that no one in the band is “crypto-libertarian”. Good people all of them (except for one).

  109. 109.

    j low

    @Omnes Omnibus:

    Well, shit, if we pin the definition of hipster as fans of the Avett Brothers, then you are correct.

    John Cole is a hipster! Hahahahahahahahahahaha!

  111. 111.

    Ghanima Atreides

    @DFH no.6: im a grrl, and im not a hipster. I think hiphop dance is the pinnancle of dance art and ive had 13 years of ballet. where did i claim to be to a metalhed? i said metal rawks and hipster music doesn’t. I also said protest rap is anti-matter to hipster matter, and that hipsters don’t dance, headbang, mosh, krump or dubstep. its undignified.
    ;)
    @j low:
    oh please…conservipedia?
    euwwwwwwwwww

    And that’s how I came your humble narrator
    To be living so easy and free
    Expect you think that I should be haunted
    But it never really bothers me

    being libertarian means never having to say you are sorry.
    I think that sums it.
    Hipsters can’t dance.

  112. 112.

    j low

    @Ghanima Atreides: Speaking of “Oh Please”. Can’t you tell the difference between a song lyric and a political treatise. Your pseudo critical analysis of The Decemberists lyrics (only one of them is the songwriter in case you didn’t know) is the very definition of sophomoric.

  113. 113.

    Ghanima Atreides

    @Paul in KY: i didnt say that everyone who likes decemberists is a hipster, i said decemberists are a band that hipsters like.
    And an entry in conservapedia is more like a biohazard label than a recommendation for me.
    This discussion started when Omnes and the church lady said Flobots were a hipster band.
    They are not.
    They are protest rappers.
    And my favorite bands right now are waka flocka flame, and the qemists.
    guaranteed to make hipsters flee like scalded cats.
    ;)

  114. 114.

    Ghanima Atreides

    @j low: its a free country and i think they sukk.
    you can liek them.
    idc.
    ;)
    As i said to paul, decemberists are a band that hipsters like, but not everyone that likes them is a hipster.
    lemme ax you sumpin’.
    Does Waka Flocka have an entry in conservapedia?
    lawl.

  116. 116.

    Ghanima Atreides

    @fhtagn: i am not fluent in either idiot or moron if that is what you are asking. For example, I can’t read idiot.
    ;)

  118. 118.

    fhtagn

    @Ghanima Atreides:

    DO YOU SPEAK ENGLISH?

    (Does anyone know what language or dialect this strange, rambling person is speaking? Do we have any matoko speakers in the house?)

  121. 121.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @Ghanima Atreides: Do you believe that Johnny Cash actually shot a man in Reno just to watch him die? Did Herman Melville really want people to call him Ishmael? If so, why? Is Cee-Lo really like “Fuck you and fuck her too?” Or are these the words of a narrator in a story told in a novel or song? I know where I would place my bet.

  123. 123.

    DFH no.6

    @Ghanima Atreides:

    i just make everyone so cranky.

    Whatever, dude (yeah, yeah, so you said you’re a grrl – who cares?).

    As we can all see, no matter: you’re just too cool for school.

    And I never claimed you were a metalhed – here’s my take on your earlier comments:

    Atreides really only likes dance music, but is also really into black metal, death metal, etc.

    And here’s one from you you:

    hipsters dont rock. death metal rawks.

    Saying some music “rawks” is pretty much synonymous with meaning you are “really into it”. Unless, like some other things you’ve written here, it’s some secret code that only you (and, perhaps, others as cool as you) understand.

    Seriously, you are the consummate hipster, based on Omnibus’s broad (and accurate) definition, and, better yet, your very own from up above at 65:

    hipsters are fervently into that hipper than thou schtick and they generally prefer “undiscovered” or “underappreciated” music so they can sneer at the proles.

    You again:

    But he had never heard of FFTL, Sonny Moores band. Poseur.

    And:

    my favorite bands right now are waka flocka flame, and the qemists.

    When it comes to music, you appear to have zero self-awareness, and you project like a rightwinger.

    I’ve been to a lot of indie music concerts (and rock, and metal, and techno, and classical, and world music, etc., etc.) and I’ve never encountered at any of them anything like the nose-in-the-air sneering contempt for others who enjoy the “wrong” kind of music (and don’t know or appreciate the “right” kind) that you display here.

    Sorry to get all religious on you, but you might want to take that sage old advice to remove the beam from your own eye before you go around pointing out the specks in the eyes of others.

    Or you can keep on being “hipper than thou”, as you put it. No skin off my nose either way.

  124. 124.

    pattonbt

    @Ghanima Atreides: Because you fail to learn the lessons many people have asked you take. You have about zero self awareness and spout random babble in pseudo intellectual word salad yet when confronted with facts, actual facts mind you, counter to your spew you simply go “NO IT’S NOT, SO THERE!” and smirk and smile like you have just won the junior high school debate contest while the judges look at you and go “WTF was that?” while handing the teeny-tiny trophy to your competitor.

    I think Omnes nailed it though. Based on the prevailing definition of hipster, you are their poster child. The holier than thou attitude, the “don’t look at me, but, really, actually, please DO look at me” anti-anti-street-cred posing, the “my beliefs are so unassailable that I don’t even need to think them through or defend them and you just can’t understand because you are so played out” thinking emanating from you in this thread is of epic hipster proportions. Again, you are the very definition of hipster.

  125. 125.

    andynotadam

    Let the eagle soar! That might pass muster with the Foxes, though would have to be spoken word (please!).

    Seriously though, I think it’s pretty cool that Aimee Mann was invited too…

  126. 126.

    Ghanima Atreides

    @DFH no.6: @pattonbt:

    you are the very definition of hipster.

    lol. hipsters don’t like screamo (From First To Last, sonny moorse’s first band), techno (qemists), anykind of metal, protest rap, dubstep, hiphop, or any sort of high energy music. Hipsters in pop-culture are partly DEFINED by the sort of contemporary music they lissen to. See the UD.

    Hipsters do like Decemberists, featured in the post.

    I suggested Flobots for the WH, and said I hate hipster music.
    I should have said i hate CONTEMPORARY hipster music, because Omnes is correct, hipster music can change with decade. But hipsterism has never included high energy music like screamo, metal variants, and protest rap.
    Then juicers started in saying Flobots are hipster music and i must be a hipster. That is empirically false.
    They are not, and I am not.

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