Am I the only one who thinks that music they play between picks sounds like “Will I See You In September?” Is that a play on the fact that the regular season starts in September, so we’ll see this draftees then, or am I overthinking this?
Readership Capture
Early Morning Open Thread: “Ready for the Fight”
Jann Wenner’s new Rolling Stone interview with President Obama is online:
The president was more somber than in our past interviews – and less inclined to depart from the handful of themes he had been concentrating on in recent weeks. He avoided discussing Mitt Romney, even when asked a direct question, and focused primarily on the very real constraints he operates under as president, from the intransigence of Congress to the dilemma of America’s anti-drug laws. He also seemed intent on summing up the arguments he’ll soon be taking out on the campaign trail, making clear that he plans to run on his remarkable record of accomplishments: extending health insurance to 32 million Americans, staving off a major economic collapse, rescuing the auto industry, reforming student loans, ending discrimination against gay soldiers, pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, killing Osama bin Laden, and passing one of the largest middle-class tax cuts in history…
One snippet that’s probably gonna cause some heartburn on the internets:
Do you read Paul Krugman?
I read all of the New York Times columnists. Krugman’s obviously one of the smartest economic reporters out there, but I also read some of the conservative columnists, just to get a sense of where those arguments are going. There are a handful of blogs, Andrew Sullivan’s on the Daily Beast being an example, that combine thoughtful analysis with a sampling of lots of essays that are out there. The New Yorker and The Atlantic still do terrific work. Every once in a while, I sneak in a novel or a nonfiction book.
Early Morning Open Thread: “Ready for the Fight”Post + Comments (78)
Early Morning Open Thread: Slow Jamming
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As the expression goes: Readership capture.
(Via Paul Constant, who adds: “I’m pretty sure the crowd applauded more tax breaks for billionaires by accident.”)
Also entertaining, Mr. Pierce channeling Willard Romney:
… God, you people are saps. You didn’t see this coming? I pandered and I pandered, and then, every night, I went back to my hotel room, stuck my fingers down my throat, and then had a good laugh. You think that whole “Etch-a-Sketch” thing was a staff blunder? Honkies, please. Could I have signaled more clearly that your audience with me was over? Smedley? Show these lovely people waving their Bibles and their rubber fetuses the door, will you? Lovely to have met you. Really. We must do this again some time. Say, if we’re all really lucky, and I’ve always been luckier than you poor deluded hayshakers, maybe the summer of 2015? It’s a date. We have a lovely parting gift for you.
Me.
Not entertaining, unless you are Madame DeFarge: Sean Hannity.
So… what’s on the agenda for another Hump Day?
Do I have to tell the story?
I just heard a weird jazz version of “Fool In the Rain” at the precious coffee shop near the undisclosed location where I am spending the semester. A few weeks ago, I sat through an excruciating dinner where someone insisted on playing “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” on YouTube on his iPhone, even though we were at a nice restaurant (it was my fault, I had mentioned that it made me sad to think that the sweet, dorky, Jamaican tourist Sting of that video had devolved into a pompous rock dinosaur suitable only for tantric monkey sex mockery). Also too, it is supposed to rain a lot today.
So…what are the best songs about rain? There’s a lot that I sort of like — “Bus Stop”, “Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall”, “Rainy Night In Georgia”, “You Left Me Standing In the Rain” — but only one I can think of that I love, “I Wish It Would Rain”.
Document dump/open thread
You know I’m a bit monomancial if you read this blog. My two big political fixations right now are Huey Long/LBJ type politicians and the politics of gender.
Here’s an interesting long piece about Robert Caro’s massive five-volume biography of LBJ. If I have a long retirement, I would like to read all five.
Here’s two short to-the-point pieces about the what an old boys’ club banksterism is. Knowing a few banksters, it rings very true to me, and I think it goes to why a lot of these Very Serious Wall Street types have the political attitudes that they do, regardless of what regular guys they are, what “hard-scrabble” childhoods they might have had, how much they know about “what it takes for America to be competitive”, etc. etc.
What internets have you been reading today?
Open thread
All I do is post videos and talk about movies here, but such is life.
The stuff dreams are made of
For no particular reason — except the new season of “Mad Men” — film noir has been on my mind a lot lately. Also too, I like to talk about dark stuff on spring holidays.
So two questions:
(a) What is the best film noir that I am unlikely to have seen? I’ve seen most of the famous ones.
(b) What is the best film noir theme song? I’ll go with “Portrait of Jennie” just edging out the theme from “Laura”.
Finally, I love parodies of film noir, so much so that I enjoyed most of “Dead Men Don’t Wear Plaid”, so I’m going to share with you an intro to a proposed film noir project that a friend of mine wrote about gerrymandering in New York State politics. It was supposed to be for my old blog, but the other people there took things a bit too seriously.
It was the kind of shape that kept the booze business going; cute on the bottom, big up top, and curves in all the right places. It should have come with a sign that said, “Danger! Hands Off!”. Instead, it read, “Map of Senate Districts in New York State” and was gerrymandered so screwy, the only way incumbents left office was in a wooden box or a jumpsuit. Running against them was a one way ticket to Palookaville. I looked at the set up. The pachyderms still ran the joint, but if the smart asses could get three more seats, they could redraw the lines in big blue markers and deep six the protection racket wholesale. Sure, I thought; about as likely as a three-legged pony winning the Preakness.
I looked across the street as mercury vapor lamps poured a head on the High Falls Brewery. It smelled like Cream of Wheat and syrup. It smelled like time for a drink. I reached for the bottle.
That’s when she walked in.