You can thank me later…
July 12, 2008
You could only get this if you were at the EL-P/Dizzee Rascal Tour
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July 12, 2008 — 1 Comment
Nation Poll
Now that telecom immunity has passed, how can the Democratic Congress redeem itself?
- Impeach Bush and Cheney.
- End funding for the war in Iraq.
- Open up a real debate over universal health care.
- Abolish the Bush tax cuts and restore economic fairness.
- There’s nothing they can do. They’ve blown every opportunity.
This is a poll that I just saw on a website called The Nation. I’m not going to directly criticize the site, because well….for one they do a decent job for the most part. And for #2, EVERYONE has a poll of some sort.
But what I don’t understand is why they do the polls in the first place – they are complete bullshit.
Let’s check out the one above.
Now the question is asked of whether the Democratic Congress can redeem itself after the telecom immunity ruling. So they list some options. They go thru them.
Choice #1- Utterly ridiculous. Impreaching the President NOW……this far down the line? Really?
Choice #2- This is a non option. For one, we are never leaving Iraq. Look at the signs – multiple Western oilcos got large NO-BID agreements (excluding like 40 other NON Western companies…interesting) to basically pull up the black gold. The UAE has decided to forgive all of Iraq’s debt – if this is not a sign, I don’t know what is……I mean Shell and BP are drilling everywhere in the world…..but the UAE forgiving like $7 billion in debt? You don’t wipe that much away for nothing. Mark my words – Baghdad will look like the Dubai of the desert in 15 years. YOUR kids will come to Baghdad as adults to travel at leisure in 20-25 years.
Choice #3- What exactly is real debate for universal healthcare? It won’t work – believe me, if the hospital systems could find a way to charge you more than they do now, they would. They have NO interest in losing money, or even making less of a profit.
Choice #4- I mean…I guess. They help the rich…so what? You think rescinding a tax is going to fundamentally change anything?
Choice #5- This option is just nihilistic ..and stupid.
Look….the only way to kill the telecom immunity ruling….is to……(drum roll) – fight like hell to get it rescinded. I mean….the options are just peacemeal and somewhat retaliatory, either ridiculous as options or completely unrealistic.
Polls are psychologically rigged. They ask you to make choices that are either relatively (or soon to be) media relationally in hindsight, or not based in a tangible reality. Then they use the result to tailor future content towards the “winning” vote. And so trains you to vote idiotically, based on miniature, baseless opinions.
Let’s practice:
- Barack Obama
- John McCain
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Editorial: The music in 2008 sucks.
July 12, 2008
The music sucks.
I can’t even focus at work right now. No tunes – no good tunes to space out at work for. You can only listen to so much of the stand-bys like Radiohead.
Today, I had a thought – 2008 has been a subpar year for music. I immediately need to validate this thought in some way….so I need to find a trusted site that would give me a nice consensus to seal in my heavily subjective thought.
I went to Metacritic. Thinking to myself that over half the year is already done, I expected to be wrong about my statement.
i was right. As I sorted the top review albums by score – I had a feeling of “I was totally right on that”, yet a bit surprised and actually saddened.
For those of you that don’t know, Metacritic is basically a music/movie/DVD review tally site – they take all the reviews for a particular work and they generate a score strictly based on the the average scores of the combined reviews. It’s actually a pretty fair system. If I’m feeling apprehesive about a selection, I might consult the site, especially if the selection is a bit older than 3 or 4 years (they go back to 2000.)
So….I’m sorting all the scores so far in 2008. And I’m disappointed from the jump. Most of the albums on the top of the list have one of the following qualities: a former Beach Boy, something with Nick Cave, metal, actually been out for a while as singles and/or EPs, generally blah.
I realized that “generally blah” was the order of the year thus far. I mean there are a few gems: Nick Cave, Portishead, Robyn ( I KNOW it’s pop…but it’s good pop), Fleet Foxes, a few of the dubstep releases I’ve copped. There have been some decent releases: Shearwater, Sigur Ros..other some of the stuff I reviewed previously that was released this year. And they’re a a few more I really enjoyed like Natalia Clavier, Flying Lotus, or the new Beck, which I will be reviewing in the next day or two. But for the most part there has either been a lot of blandness or disappointments (The Roots, in a sense), or better yet curiousities (i.e. Coldplay).
I’m actually feeling more compelled to travel back in time – which is why you’ve been seeing a lot of throwbacks and 70s funk compilations…or Gilles Peterson podcasts (CRUCIAL). And if 2008 continues on its current trend…..I may have to keep the DeLorean in 1974 for a little while.
No real reason for me to go forward right now. And don’t even get me going on hip hop in ’08 (on the whole – HOT GARBAGE.)
With that being said – if any of the handful of you that read/write on this blog think I need to hear something you’ve determined to be crucial listening (and it was released in 2008), please post a comment with the album(s) or EPs…..I’ll find the CD, listen, and review it for the blog.
