Uncle Anacher's Punk Rock Tales: Beck

OK, so in 1994 a new band I was working with played a radio station festival. At said festival a young Beck Hansen was playing his first big show outside LA. Mellow Gold had just been released. If I remember correctly, I ingested half a hit of high quality acid – Hey, I wasn’t driving. It added a nice lil' sparkle to the festivities.

Beck’s band trotted out to a rousing ovation. Their stage clothes and in some cases their hair were adorned with selections from their backstage deli and crudités platters. An original, inventive and highly charged 45 minute set followed. Sadly, the crowd expected “Loser” parts deux through douze. Beck left the stage to a polite smattering of applause while most of the 1500 present were just plain confused. I was one of the smatterers.

Later I found myself standing next to Beck. I struck up a conversation with him. Now this is not something I normally do. I’m not big on bugging musicians I don’t work with, who don’t know me and to whom I haven’t been introduced. Beck looked bummed. So that night I made an exception.

I told him how and why I was impressed by his set. Beck's crisis of confidence was revealed in his reply, “They didn’t get it.” I countered with “Some people take this shit way too fucking seriously.” I smiled, bid him adieu and walked away.

The rest as they say is history.

-AF

They Said It. I Repeat It.

In terms of style, they all did just fine. But this is really not a Commander-in-Chief test. I mean the test is so low here it’s the question is have they flubbed it enough to embarrass themselves and therefore disqualify themselves as Commander-in-Chief. And as we saw in 2000, you can flub any number of times and still be considered to have passed some notional Commander-in-Chief test. And that didn’t work out so well.

Newsweek/MSNBC analyst Richard Wolfe*

*On Countdown with Keith Olbermann describing whether or not any of the Presidential candidates passed any Commander-in-Chief test while grilling Gen. Petraeus.

-AF

LTE: "We Owe Teens This"

While I was in Pittsburgh this weekend, waiting for Mrs. Forester to awaken, I read my complimentary hotel copy of The Post-Gazette. The VP for Education of Planned Parenthood wrote this Letter To The Editor. It deftly exposes the abstinence-only crowd's argument against sex education as a classic straw man:

As an educator who has been teaching comprehensive sexuality education to teens for more than seven years, I wanted to correct any impression that my job is to lecture about condoms, the pill and oral sex.

Our goal is to provide teens with the proper tools and education to help them make healthy and responsible decisions for themselves. Comprehensive sexuality education is abstinence-based: We emphasize that abstinence is the only way to truly prevent sexually transmitted infections and pregnancy. Our classes do cover correct condom use and birth control methods, but teens also learn to identify their own values about sexuality and to practice negotiation and refusal skills to reduce risks involved with sexual activity. All of the curricula that we use are evidence-based, medically accurate and are recommended by the CDC.

Our programs give teens the opportunity to ask questions and get a response that is nonjudgmental and accurate. While abstinence-only-until-marriage curricula take away responsibility by treating teens like they aren't hormonally charged beings bombarded with sexual messages from television and advertising every day, comprehensive sexuality education recognizes that teens are complex people living in a complex society making decisions on their own -- sometimes decisions we don't want them to make.
(Emphasis added).

I could not have said it better myself.

-AF

Top Ten John McCain Myths

Media Matters wraps up the first half:






#5. John McCain doesn't do things just because they're politically expedient.

That's a giant crock.

Free Ride: John McCain and the Media available now.

-AF

They Said It. I Repeat It.

“These people are like barnacles on the hull of Democracy.”*
Christian Finnegan

-AF

*Referring to unregistered voter Heidi Montag's support of John McCain on Countdown with Keith Olbermann.

Ever Come Home From A Wedding...

...With a two day hangover? Me neither. At least not yet.

-AF

The Gun Didn't Know I Was Loaded...

And even if it did, we can't be sure I was holding it. That's my translation of John Yoo's defense of his torture memos. Esquire's interview here. TPM's Paul Kiel has analysis here and here (on Ashcroft initially being kept out of the loop). WaPo has the Ashcroft skinny.

-AF
+Snuck a post in before heading off to the cathedral. And yes, I know snuck is not a word.

OK So I Lied...Wiretapping And Another Top Ten McCain Myth

TPM has a crucial interview with The NYT's Eric Lichtblau re: wiretapping.

I also nearly forgot Media Matters' John McCain Myth #4:
John McCain Is A Reformer.

Free Ride: John McCain and the Media available now.

See you on Sunday.

-AF

Traveling Music

There's no better traveling music than The Singing Ranger, Nova Scotia's own Hank Snow.

No posting till Sunday. I'm headed to a wedding this weekend. It's a good 350+ mile drive.

-AF

Goodling's Part In The Great Republican Perpetual Power Ploy

Harper's Scott Horton reveals on how this latest Goodling bombshell may well indicative of a much larger GOP scheme. I call it The Great Republican Perpetual Power Ploy:

As I noted in “Vote Machine,” one simmering scandal inside of the Justice Department relates to the consistent carefully schemed effort to force career DOJ employees out to make way for political hacks recruited and placed in career positions. A number of different techniques were employed to realize this plan. In an interview I conducted recently with a retired first assistant U.S. attorney, I heard how one U.S. attorney with notorious political ambitions had used a buyout scheme to take out a large number of senior career attorneys. No sooner were they gone than their places were filled with a group of new attorneys–each of whom was well known for involvement in Republican Party politics. On January 20, 2009, the political appointees at Justice will be submitting their resignations so the new president can select and install his own team. However, the career track placements from the Bush era are there for keeps. Will they serve as a fifth column to obstruct the agenda of a new Democratic administration? That may well be the idea.
(emphasis added)

Mr. Horton's touched on something I've been thinking of the for at least a year now. This fifth column is an unbelievably important factor in our future. I have stopped and started an epic series of posts any number of times because it became too unwieldy. Looks like it's time to resurrect them.

-AF