Country In Flames

Incredible shots from the Greek riots, including one of 15-year-old Alexandros Grigoropoulos, the teenager whose fatal shooting by Athens policemen started it all. 

The Arrogant, Entitlement-Riddled, Undemocratic Stench Of Dynastic Politics

Back to politics already. I haven't had much to say lately, so forgive my sudden plunge back in the shark infested waters of national politics, but this whole Caroline Kennedy thing has me irked. Despite thinking of her exactly...never, before this year, I appreciated that she came out for Obama back in February and persuaded Teddy to endorse him as well. And I'm sure she's done plenty of good in her life. But why, why, should she be considered for appointment to a newly vacant senate seat? If she wants the seat, run for it, just like Hillary did. But to get it as an appointment?

This is nepotistic, dynastic politics taken to an absurd level. It's undemocratic, feels vaguely un-American, and sends a terrible message. I can't for the life of me understand why anyone thinks this is a good idea. 

I mean, okay, I understand that there is a mystique around the Kennedys that sways people, but still...c'mon. I just don't get it. 

Firstly, the clan just doesn't move me. I am just so over the Kennedys and the insufferable Boomer mythology around them, that I can barely stand to hear the name. I get that JFK was a huge figure and that Teddy has been an incredible lawmaker and stalwart liberal voice. But unless one of them is getting their hands dirty as public servants, I don't care about them. (And why would I, right?) Secondly, even if I was moved by their je ne sais quoi, I'd think this is a bad idea. It smacks of the entitlement—no, it is entitlement…in action. There are far more qualified pols (like Nita Lowry for one example) who have been in the trenches busting ass to get shit done. They have paid their dues and they have the legislative experience. Caroline has star power (apparently), but can she legislate? What does she bring to the table other than her family's name and the celebrity that comes along with it?

This is not a sign of a healthy republic and if it weren't for Obama's election, I'd be more worried than irritated. We've just had a once in a generation election—one which restored both a sense of possibility and confidence in the meritocratic ideals that are woven into the fabric of our collective story. Caroline Kennedy's appointment to Hilary's seat would fly in the face of both. It would undercut the raison d'etre of the campaign chosen by the American people, as well as the country's founding ideals. 

Whether Bushes, Kennedys, or any of the other political families out there, a pox on all their houses as long as they keep squeezing other, lesser-known, higher-qualified people out of the process. 

Their arrogance makes me sick.

Adventures In Baby Swinging

Getting off to a young start in alternative lifestyles? Nope. A weird new Internet phenom.

Oh Shit!

I'm responsible for a lot of dead kittens.

Silversun Pickups

I don't remember how, but I discovered this band earlier this year and fell in love with their song (and its cute, nostalgia-inducing video), "Lazy Eye." The band is from L.A. and has a sort of low-fi, indy sound. Lots of fuzzy guitars and distorted vocals. 

With a female bass player who shares vocals with a male front man, and the soft-loud-soft thing, they obviously invite comparisons to the Pixies. But they remind me more of Smashing Pumpkins or a poppier, more structured Sonic Youth. But never mind comparisons, they stand on their own. 

Anyway, if you're into that sort of thing, go to their website and check them out. I especially recommend the "Lazy Eye" video, but the video for "Kissing Families" is pretty cool, too. (I'd embed them, but they don't offer the option.)

Oh, Snap!

The inimitable Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) on the transition:

"[Obama's] going to have to be more assertive than he's been. At a time of great crisis with mortgage foreclosures and autos, he says we only have one president at a time. I'm afraid that overstates the number of presidents we have."

Pot Meet Kettle. Kettle, Pot.

This is rich: Disney accused by Catholic cleric of corrupting children's minds

Ahem.

Vote For My Big Daddy

Ewwwwwwwwwww!



Dude, watch where you put that hand!

Best. Phone. Ever.

It's hard to believe but someone's built a better all-in-one phone+ device than Apple. Go check out the Pomegranate…and be prepared to be impressed.

Some Blunt Advice

Screw Lonely Planet, here's the guide you really need when traveling abroad.

Guide to Smoking Pot Around the World
Despite the popularity of weed and hash, most governments in the world have deemed it harmful to the individual and society as a whole.

There are only 11 nations in the world where weed and hash have been decriminalized. A handful of countries impose mandatory prison sentences and other harsh punishments for the possession or sale of any form of weed and hash. Another handful look the other way when dealing with cannabis.

Some places that are easy on weed heads can be broken up by region:

Click here for the low down.

Change We Can Believe In

I've been itching for a while now to give the blog a facelift and decided it's finally time. Hope you don't hate it too much.

Comeuppance

One almost feels badly for our failed boy king.

Back To The Future

A funny and serious encomium to our First Lady-to-be's booty.

First Lady Got Back

But what really thrills me, what really feels liberating in a very personal way, is the official new prominence of Michelle Obama. Barack's better half not only has stature but is statuesque. She has coruscating intelligence, beauty, style and -- drumroll, please -- a butt. (Yes, you read that right: I'm going to talk about the first lady's butt.)
…
As America fretted about Obama's exoticism and he sought to calm the waters with speeches about unity and common experience, Michelle's body was sending a different message: To hell with biracialism! Compromise, bipartisanship? Don't think so. Here was one clear signifier of blackness that couldn't be tamed, muted or otherwise made invisible. It emerged right before our eyes, in the midst of our growing uncertainty about everything, and we were too bogged down in the daily campaign madness to notice. The one clear predictor of success that the pundits, despite all their fancy maps, charts and holograms, missed completely? Michelle's butt.

Lord knows, it's time the butt got some respect. Ever since slavery, it's been both vilified and fetishized as the most singular of all black female features, more unsettling than dark skin and full lips, the thing that marked black women as uncouth and not quite ready for civilization (of course, it also made them mighty attractive to white men, which further stoked fears of miscegenation that lay at the heart of legal and social segregation). In modern times, the butt has demarcated class and stature among black society itself. Emphasizing it or not separates dignified black women from ho's, party girls from professionals, hip-hop from serious. (Black women are not the only ones with protruding behinds, by the way, but they're certainly considered its source. How many gluteally endowed nonblack women have been derided for having a black ass? Well, Hillary, for one.)

But Michelle is bringing those two falsely divided minds together in a single presentation -- finally, unity for the real world! Talk about a power base. Thanks to Michelle, looking professional and provocative in a distinctly black way will become not only acceptable but also part of a whole presidential look that's more, well, inclusive.

P.S. Bonus points killer use of coruscating.

That's A Relief!

Cute. 

Life

Google has archived Life magazine pics from the 1860s onward. Enjoy. 

h/t: Daily Dish

Sarah, Plain And Small

Vanity Fair's James Wolcott bemoans the never-ending soap opera of Bible Spice:

Que Sera, Sarah
It isn't that I loathe or fear Sarah Palin. It's that she grates. If she were any more grating, she could cut cheddar.…

Sarah Palin isn't pursuing mere transient fame but actual power, a pursuit driven by a brassy assurance shielding an apparent lack of knowledge about nearly everything and a breathtaking complacency about that voluminous lack. She doesn't seem to care about what she doesn't know, it doesn't seem to register that what she doesn't know might matter and might be worth knowing even if it didn't. Her sentences seem to be missing vital ligaments when she speaks, yielding a concrete poetry similar to Rumsfeld's musings but with nil intellectual content (Rumsfeld's known unknowns and unknown unknowns at least had an ontological coherence).

 Now we're stuck with her twangy shtick and her family soap opera, which makes the former Clinton saga look like Les Sylphides. Just as Al Gore must live with the shame of elevating Joe Lieberman to the national stage, no act of contrition John McCain can perform will be penance enough for foisting Sarah Palin on us, subjecting us to her supreme sense of entitlement.

I love Wolcott. He's an adult version of Christopher Hitchens—what Hitch could be if he'd outgrow his adolescence. Rapier wit, dry sense of humor, and none of the bilious qualities.

A Real Leader

From Obama's 60 Minutes interview:

Kroft: Does doing something about energy is it less important now than...

Mr. Obama: It's more important. It may be a little harder politically, but it's more important.

Kroft: Why?

Mr. Obama: Well, because this has been our pattern. We go from shock to trance. You know, oil prices go up, gas prices at the pump go up, everybody goes into a flurry of activity. And then the prices go back down and suddenly we act like it's not important, and we start, you know filling up our SUVs again.

And, as a consequence, we never make any progress. It's part of the addiction, all right. That has to be broken. Now is the time to break it.

Emphasis added. Can you believe we now have a president (elect) that speaks like this? My skin is bruised from pinching myself.

In Like A Lion

On to more harmonious topics. Here's Ron Suskind on the beginnings and ends of political eras:

CHANGE

Eras end with a whisper, with reflection and the quiet drift preceding sleep. They start with a roar, the declaration that a particular dawn is different from all its predecessors — a case made, day by day, over years of sunrises.
…
Across the country, a wave was gathering force. But it was diffuse, difficult to measure and seemed to be coming from many directions, many sources at once.

And a bit about the man who grabbed the moment:

Obama sat quietly for a moment, and everyone waited. “This I know: When I raise my hand and take that oath of office, I think the world will look at us differently,” he said. “And millions of kids across this country will look at themselves differently.”

Obama understood, through his own search for identity, how America’s seminal struggle over race was part of a wider story, of a search for dignity and hope that defined the lives of countless people throughout the world. A battered America, he felt, was ready, even anxious, to prove the truth of its sacred oaths — liberty, justice and equality. To show the world. If, through his own ambitions, he could offer his country a chance to step forward, it might rise to the occasion.

And it did, with astonishing speed. You could see it so clearly that night, the last night of a historic 21-month campaign, that last rally, in Manassas, Va. By 10 p.m., there were 90,000 people gathered in the Prince William County Fairgrounds. They’d been gathering since midafternoon. And it was America. Make no mistake. This was border territory, where the edge of Washington’s Northern Virginia suburbs meets the true Old Dominion. Starbucks gives way to gun shops, whole grains to grits and whatever liquid can get you drunk fast.

Prop 8 Push Back

So, now conservatives are whining because of the push back on Prop 8? All I can muster is a big, Waaa. Politics ain't beanbag kiddos. You want to go around disenfranchising fellow countrymen and creating second-class citizens you'd better be prepared to take some hits. 

Here's TBogg from Firedoglake's commentary:  

Blowback is a bitch
The kind of person who contributes money to deny their fellow citizens their civil rights are not someday magically going to be part of the solution: they're the problem. These are not people to be reasoned with; they're ignorant, they're haters and they're bigots and the only thing people like that understand is power.

So when they stick their noses in other people's affairs, they forfeit the right to be considered just another "ordinary person". They're involved and they would be foolish to expect that those other people in whose private affairs they have meddled wouldn't return the favor. As they say: you pays your money and you takes your chances.

Couldn't have said it better.

Click here for a list of those who contributed to Prop 8.

And By Their Fruit, Ye Shall Know Them

While America's favorite child-abusing, polygamist cult is responsible for tipping the balance, it looks like it was one of the world's oldest child-abusing cults that invited them into the mix. Via NYT:

Mormons Tipped Scale in Ban on Gay Marriage

First approached by the Roman Catholic archbishop of San Francisco a few weeks after the California Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage in May, the Mormons were the last major religious group to join the campaign, and the final spice in an unusual stew that included Catholics, evangelical Christians, conservative black and Latino pastors, and myriad smaller ethnic groups with strong religious ties.

Shortly after receiving the invitation from the San Francisco Archdiocese, the Mormon leadership in Salt Lake City issued a four-paragraph decree to be read to congregations, saying “the formation of families is central to the Creator’s plan,” and urging members to become involved with the cause.

“And they sure did,” Mr. Schubert said.

Lovely people, these.