Charlie Pierce Owes Roy Batty An Apology

But is otherwise dead fucking right about Mitt Romney and what a Romney administration would look like.

Comes now this pure piece of manufactured product, this vacant replicant of American plutocracy, to lecture a country in the middle of a fragile recovery from an economic disaster brought on by the other soulless replicants on the topics of our vanishing work ethic, and the great moral cleansing power of onrushing poverty. And, because he cares less about the country he's planning to lead than he does about the next nickel he can squeeze out of it, he's doing so with rhetoric that owes more to George Wallace than it does to George Romney, who was a decent Republican in the days before greasy-beaked vultures like his spalpeen hijacked the party. (Which is pretty much what E.J. Dionne was saying recently.) Willard is working the old poor-people-are-robbing-you-blind melodeon again while his real targets are anyone who receives any kind of federal government assistance of any kind whatsoever. And don't fall for the old "states do it better" dodge. Willard knows full good and well that the states can't carry this kind of load, either, and that the costs will just get passed down to lower and lower levels of government until nobody can pay for anything, and the programs that he'd like to see eliminated because it will help him get elected simply disappear.

He is the real austerity candidate, the guy who will run the ball here for the banksters who are crippling Europe, and a lot of Europeans, with economic strategies that keep themselves afloat while children die of preventable diseases, and guaranteeing that whatever recoveries there will be in places like Ireland and the UK will be the sole property of the people who most deserve them. This is what Willard Romney would like to bring to America. He just has to convince enough people that the pain will be imposed upon the undeserving Them. It is a vicious puppet show of a campaign he's running.

Year after year we are told that America is just like a big business, and that all we need is the right cult hero CEO to run it (cue to exhume Steve Job, or Steve Forbes, or whoever). Been there, done that, it always turns out to be flat out wrong for 99% of the country. Besides, do you really want the assclowns who blew up your economy and your mortgage and got rich doing so to have more power than they already do?

No thanks.

Bruce Cockburn Can Really Play

Unemployment Kills

Truth is often stranger - and more terrifying - than fiction:

Instead, in a scheme so macabre that residents here are already speculating on when it will be turned into a movie script, three of the four men, one from Virginia, one from the Akron area and one still unidentified, were lured to their deaths, their bodies buried in shallow graves. The fourth man, from South Carolina, who was hired and driven to the property in rural southern Ohio, was shot in the arm but escaped and alerted the authorities. The “farm” was in fact land owned by a coal company.

More bodies may still be found, as the bogus advertisement, which was picked up by online job aggregators, drew more than 100 responses from Ohio and other states.

The One That Didn't Go Off

I recall the amazing lack of coverage, the shying away from the word "terrorism."

Charles Pierce published this a day before Anders Behring Breivik set off a car bomb in downtown Oslo then went on a shooting spree at a youth camp.

This is wrenching stuff. 

 h/t to Balloon Juice

Twenty Seven Strikes Again

Amy Winehouse is dead.

Given the high profile of her addictions this comes as little surprise, sad as it is. I admit that when she popped onto the music scene I took a couple of listens to Frank and Back To Black and tried very hard to like them.

I did not. Her music just didn't speak to me. Or perhaps I couldn't hear what she had to say.

Humans die in multitudes every second of every day. All but a rare few are utterly unknown to me. Those who exist far outside my small circle of family and friends but who are known to me can have an impact when living, and again when they die. At the very least a recognized name in the obituaries prompts me to say “Hmm...how sad.” The connections we have to public figures exist entirely in our minds. They are forged through our consumption of books, films, music, art, news and the like, but are of our own making. The person who prompted this connection, this kindred recognition doesn't know who we are, or that we even exist. That fact doesn't negate the reality of what they have made us feel, or think, or attempt.

Amy Winehouse is dead. Her music didn't touch or move me, but her desperate, whipsaw dance with addiction, too familiar to me, did. I don't believe there is anything after this world, so wishing peace upon her in some fictitious after life would be dishonest of me. The only peace she has found, intentionally, accidentally or otherwise, is the total surcease of death.

Worth Remembering

In the midst of the fury and frenzy surrounding the debt ceiling kerfluffle a simple fact has been utterly lost.

Congress need not reach any deal of any kind concerning the deficit (about which Republicans care not a whit), taxes, nor anything else. The debt ceiling is a relatively simple thing that can be raised entirely on its own.

That it has become a hostage to the vandals quest to annihilate government by other than military means is rather revealing.

That is all.

Oklahoma Covers Itself In, Well, Something

And it ain't exactly glory.

Our state continues its inexorable regression into the primordial ooze.

Steve Benen has it.

What Does "Melt Down" Mean?

An excellent primer by the ever useful Rachel Maddow.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Gone Silent

Gary Moore Is Dead

This is doubly odd for me as just last night I watched a BBC 4 documentary on the band.  Woke up this morning and read of his passing.


I readily admit I was never a fan of his solo music, but Moore played a significant role in Thin Lizzy, a great Irish rock band best known for cheeky and sometimes truly poetic lyrics and that awesome harmonizing twin guitar sound.

Moore several times rejoined the band on the road to take the place of whomever the latest guitar casualty was in that second spot, and he could seriously tear it up. He was also the other guitarist across form Scott Gorham on Black Rose, arguably the last Lizzy album worth a damn.

Moore was also a driving force behind the gathering of the band's alumni in Dublin in 2005 for a tribute concert set to coincide with the unveiling of a statue of Phil Lynott in the city. At that show Moore was on fire, and it was obvious from start to finish how much he loved the Thin Lizzy catalog.

58 years old. Damn shame.