How Dishonorable

What a surprise! John McCain’s latest TV ad blatantly misrepresents a quote from Barack Obama by simply taking out one little phrase and presenting it out of context and calling it “dishonorable” and “dangerous” before concluding that Obama is “too risky for America." What a sham. Once again, McCain is the dishonorable one. Today’s Washington Post lead editorial breaks it down to illustrate the ad as the blatant distortion that it is:

THE TONE is ominous, the shadings dark. "Who is Barack Obama?" asks the latest campaign advertisement from Sen. John McCain. "He says our troops in Afghanistan are 'just air-raiding villages and killing civilians' . . . How dishonorable. . . How dangerous. . . . Too risky for America."

Here's what Mr. Obama actually said about Afghanistan in August 2007: "We've got to get the job done there, and that requires us to have enough troops so that we're not just air-raiding villages and killing civilians, which is causing enormous problems there." The gap between that reality and the McCain ad -- not quite a lie, yet not a fair representation, either -- is where the campaigns seem to be heading with four weeks to go until the election.

But the relevance of character can't excuse an anything-goes assault. Mr. Obama's use of the word "just" in his statement on Afghanistan was inartful. But Mr. McCain knows perfectly well that Mr. Obama doesn't believe U.S. troops are killing only civilians. He also knows perfectly well that the problem Mr. Obama described -- the alienation of Afghan civilians by military tactics that lead to too many civilian deaths -- is real and demands a rethinking of strategy. What's dishonorable in this case is the McCain ad, not the Obama statement.

This John McCain ad blatantly distorts Barack Obama's words in an effort to paint him as callous about the role of the U.S. military. His meaning was the opposite of what is portrayed in this spot.

How the McCain Campaign Changes a Light Bulb

Found this posted on the web, not sure of its origin....

How many members of McCain/Bush/Schmidt/Rove campaign does it take to change a light bulb?

1. One to deny that a light bulb needs to be changed;

2. One to attack the patriotism of anyone who says the light bulb needs to be changed;

3. One to blame American Voters for burning out the light bulb;

4. One to arrange the invasion of a country rumored to have a secret stockpile of light bulbs;

5. One to give a One Trillion dollars to Wall Street for the new light bulb;

6. One to arrange a photograph of Bush, dressed as a janitor, standing on a step ladder under the banner: Light Bulb Change Accomplished;

7. One campaign insider to resign and write a book documenting in detail how McCain/Bush/Schmit/Rove was literally in the dark and out of touch with the American Voter

8. One to viciously smear #7;

9. Sarah Palin to campaign on TV and at rallies on how John McCain has had a strong light-bulb-changing policy all along;

10. And finally one to confuse Americans about the difference between screwing a light bulb and screwing the country.

CD Review: Earth Beings On Exhibit

The Jonas Brothers aren’t the problem. And we can’t blame Kanye West’s ego, Rolling Stone magazine, or the hype of the next U2 album. Nor can we blame The Eagles for charging $250/ticket to their shlocky concerts. And it’s not Kid Rock’s fault, and we cant blame Toby Keith. (OK, we can blame those last two guys for being no-talent symptoms of some things that are horribly wrong with society and popular music.)

To attempt an analogy, it’s almost like getting so caught up in the salaries, scandals, steroids, stadium-naming rights for corporations, merchandise marketing, and TV ratings that swirl around professional sports that it’s easy to forget that these are just games that we all played ourselves as kids and could simply go outside and play again right now with other people (if we still played outside and interacted with other live humans).

Somehow we’ve all managed to lose sight of the fact that music is…. MUSIC. It’s not product, though it certainly has been marketed and sold as such. Music is not a popularity contest, despite what millions of American Idol fans have been programmed to believe. Karaoke is not music. Guitar Hero is not music. Your myspace page and your iPod playlist may contain music, but it, itself, is not music.

Music is Girl Love's Distortion's debut CD, Earth Beings on Exhibit (Etxe Records). I say that because it’s not pretentious. Sure, they look cool in the photos and they made damn sure that the CD sounds great, but they aren’t trying to look cool or sound marketable or capitalize on a niche or do anything but just… play… music. So it’s aptly titled: Earth Beings on Exhibit…. This is us, this is our art. It is rock music, and like it or not, it is real.

And that’s what’s so rare. GLD is a band of actual people making artistic alternative guitar rock. As if that’s not a horrible and generic enough label, I’ll try to categorize it and “tell you what it sounds like,” even though that’s also part of what’s gone wrong. I hear a strong Sonic Youth influence even if it doesn’t actually sound like SY per se. But the elements are there: the guitar prowess, the feedback, the dissonance, the artsy factor, the presence of both male and female voices, the unconventional song structures juxtaposed among flashes of catchy pop (like the houseful of shaggy-looking weirdos living on the same block as the clean-cut Normal American Family).

While it’s great that technology and access has enabled millions of people to “start a band” and made it easier for existing bands to distribute and promote their music in creative new ways (and often without the “help” of Traditional Record Companies), it’s also spawned a whole new generation of amateurs posing as pros. And if they have the coolest clothes, the right haircuts, and a little bit of money behind them, you might not notice that they suck.

Well Girl Loves Distortion doesn’t suck (how’s that for a glowing endorsement?). They have serious chops to go along with their creative eyes and ears. Lead guitarist and bassist Steve Rubin manages to harness the fury of Crazy-Horse-era Neil Young guitar freakouts and filter them through the tasteful simple/unique approach of someone like The Edge. Guitarist/bassist Chris Goett compliments Rubin perfectly as a songwriter and player and manages to give his own songs a classic Lou Reed/David Bowie baritone that offsets Rubin’s imperfect inner Thom Yorke. Drummer Jenn Thomas isn’t afraid to let all of the creative voices in her head sing out loud, and it’s always refreshing to see and hear a drummer who plays a creative role within the song and makes the drums a real instrument. She doesn’t try to be Neal Peart but still manages to do more than just play along and keep a beat.

GLD’s Earth Beings on Exhibit CD is proof that real people still make real music and, in treating it like a serious art form while not taking themselves too seriously, the result is real good.

Shut Up and Sing

That's usually what you hear shouted from some of the masses anytime a rock star decides to take 30 seconds and excercise his or her right to free speech and utilize their large profile and public platform to convey a message they believe in: "SHUT UP AND SING!!"

Personally I've never had a problem with musicians or actors using their fame to offer their opinions on the issues of the day. Why not?

As a longtime Bruce Springsteen fan, and a current Barack Obama supporter, I'm certainly glad to see Bruce making a few acoustic appearances at rallies and voter-registration drives in key swingstates.

Here are the comments he made from the stage in Philadelphia on Saturday, October 4:

Hello Philly,

I am glad to be here today for this voter registration drive and for Barack Obama, the next President of the United States.

I've spent 35 years writing about America, its people, and the meaning of the American Promise. The Promise that was handed down to us, right here in this city from our founding fathers, with one instruction: Do your best to make these things real. Opportunity, equality, social and economic justice, a fair shake for all of our citizens, the American idea, as a positive influence, around the world for a more just and peaceful existence. These are the things that give our lives hope, shape, and meaning. They are the ties that bind us together and give us faith in our contract with one another.

I've spent most of my creative life measuring the distance between that American promise and American reality. For many Americans, who are today losing their jobs, their homes, seeing their retirement funds disappear, who have no healthcare, or who have been abandoned in our inner cities. The distance between that promise and that reality has never been greater or more painful.

I believe Senator Obama has taken the measure of that distance in his own life and in his work. I believe he understands, in his heart, the cost of that distance, in blood and suffering, in the lives of everyday Americans. I believe as president, he would work to restore that promise to so many of our fellow citizens who have justifiably lost faith in its meaning. After the disastrous administration of the past 8 years, we need someone to lead us in an American reclamation project. In my job, I travel the world, and occasionally play big stadiums, just like Senator Obama. I've continued to find, wherever I go, America remains a repository of people's hopes, possibilities, and desires, and that despite the terrible erosion to our standing around the world, accomplished by our recent administration, we remain, for many, a house of dreams. One thousand George Bushes and one thousand Dick Cheneys will never be able to tear that house down.

They will, however, be leaving office, dropping the national tragedies of Katrina, Iraq, and our financial crisis in our laps. Our sacred house of dreams has been abused, looted, and left in a terrible state of disrepair. It needs care; it needs saving, it needs defending against those who would sell it down the river for power or a quick buck. It needs strong arms, hearts, and minds. It needs someone with Senator Obama's understanding, temperateness, deliberativeness, maturity, compassion, toughness, and faith, to help us rebuild our house once again. But most importantly, it needs us. You and me. To build that house with the generosity that is at the heart of the American spirit. A house that is truer and big enough to contain the hopes and dreams of all of our fellow citizens. That is where our future lies. We will rise or fall as a people by our ability to accomplish this task. Now I don't know about you, but I want that dream back, I want my America back, I want my country back.

So now is the time to stand with Barack Obama and Joe Biden, roll up our sleeves, and come on up for the rising.

Video of his 42-minute set at the Philadelphia rally is available here.

01. The Promised Land
02. Ghost of Tom Joad
03. Thunder Road
04. No Surrender
05. Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street
06. The Rising
07. This Land is Your Land

Lipstick on a Stinking Corpse

If you’re looking for a roundup of VP-debate reaction from the so-called mainstream media, I’ve assembled a few snippets below in the previous post. Now I’ll offer my thoughts, and I’ll start with something that I don’t think ever gets mentioned:

If the rhetoric of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is so despicable and so full of hate (and it is), and if meeting with him or another of Iran’s leaders would in some sense validate him (and his hate speech) and in turn actually give those reckless words an international platform…. Then why does Sarah Palin insist on repeating all of his worst lines about “wiping Israel off the map” and calling Judaism a “stinking corpse”?? She’s a candidate for Vice-President of the United States, and in a debate televised across every network in America and replayed all over the world, there she is delivering Ahmadinejad’s anti-Semitic talking points for him. Sure, she’s denouncing those words, but she’s also constantly repeating them on TV and amplifying them through campaign rally microphones and giving them the largest platform possible by hurling them on to the Presidential political stage. And since we all agree that talking about wiping Israel off the map and calling Judaism a stinking corpse is reprehensible and disgusting maybe Sarah Palin should stop doing it.

Never mind that Barack Obama never actually said that he himself would meet with Ahmadinejad himself; and never mind that everyone from Henry Kissinger and James Baker to Madeline Albright, Condaleeza Rice and others all agree that we should have some diplomatic relations and engage in conversations with Iran and other adversaries, as Obama has suggested. Facts matter little to Gov. Palin. She sang the praises of diplomacy and promised that she and John McCain would engage in diplomacy… but at the same time accused Barack Obama of naivety for wanting to engage in… diplomacy. Huh? I guess it’s possible that she doesn’t know what the word diplomacy means, but I think she does. She’s not as profoundly dumb as she appeared in her few TV interviews. But diplomacy doesn’t sell tickets or boost ratings. She would rather spout fear, and then of course figure out a way to pivot back to talking about oil. And along the way, if she happens to slip in a simplistic, misleading, and disrespectful soundbite like “Your plan is a white flag of surrender in Iraq,” well then that’s okay too, and also you betcha.

Speaking of fear, when asked specifically about the economic crisis and the bailout plan she instead put on her Hockey-Mom sweatshirt and her Joe Sixpack hat and said in her very first response of the night that you can go to a kid's soccer game on Saturday and ask parents how they feel, and "I'll betcha you're going to hear some fear." Fear, fear, fear.

Palin said things like “Nuclear weaponry, of course, would be the be-all, end-all of just too many people and too many parts of our planet” and “We would never allow another Holocaust” and “Darn right it was the predator lenders… There was deception there, and there was greed and there is corruption on Wall Street” and that mortgage lenders were "rearing that head of abuse." She used the word "energy" 29 times.

She didn’t want to fully admit that global warming and climate change is man made. ("I'm not one to attribute every man -- activity of man to the changes in the climate. There is something to be said also for man's activities, but also for the cyclical temperature changes on our planet.") She dismissed the causes as unimportant ("there are real changes going on in our climate and I don't want to argue about the causes"), but then claimed to want do something about it. Memo to Governor Palin: it’s a good idea to know what’s causing a problem if you truly want to actually fix it.

She complained about “the mainstream media filter” and wished that she could just talk to the American people…. Well who was or is preventing her from going on Meet the Press or any other news show and sitting down and talking to the American people? And was it the “media filter” who couldn’t even name one other Supreme Court case beyond Roe v. Wade? Was it the “media filter” who, when asked what newspapers or magazines she reads, answered “Oh, uh, y’know, all of ‘em, or any of ‘em… a vast variety of sources….”?

Back to the debate, when they tried to delve further into economic issues and Biden started getting into some specifics about bankruptcy laws and mortgages, Palin’s response? “I want to talk about, again, my record on energy versus your ticket's energy ticket, also,” because her state has oil and, y’know, and also she’s just a Washington outsider and also a maverick. And while the real real regular Americans are worried about losing their homes, and while moderator Gwen Ifill and Sen. Joe Biden want to talk about the nitty-gritty specifics of these very real concerns, the Governor who plays a regular American on TV actually admitted that “I may not answer the questions the way the moderator wants me to” and instead seemed proud of herself for correcting Biden by explaining that the chant of her mindless followers is “Drill, baby, drill!” and not “Drill, drill, drill” as Biden alluded to earlier.

Oil. Fear. Oil. Soundbites. Oil. Folksy. Oil. Remind you of anyone currently holding the title of President?

So, just to clarify since some people didn’t seem to get it the first time: the Bush/Cheney administration is the pig; the McCain/Palin campaign is the lipstick.

VP Debate Reaction Doggone-it and, Also, You Betcha!

One aptly written headline read “Sarah Palin exceeds expectations -- and still loses.” Another claimed "Biden Wins, Palin Wins, Obama Wins, McCain Loses." Biden used the word "fundamental" many times, while Palin sprinkled in a heckuva lotta folksy language and seemed to enjoy falling back on the word "also."

The Washington Post’s Harold Meyerson said, “She responded to any question that required real-time thinking by ignoring it and dredging up a canned answer from the McCain campaign’s canned-answer pool. She had memorized her answers, even if they weren’t the answers to the questions Gwen Ifill posed. Her performance was dissociated, jumbled, and at times completely contradictory, with soundbites appearing and reappearing almost at random.”

Some other reaction, starting with the New York Times:

She succeeded by not failing in any obvious way. She mostly reverted to and repeated talking points, like referring to Mr. McCain as a “maverick” and the Republican ticket as a “team of mavericks,” while not necessarily quelling doubts among voters about her depth of knowledge.

Although Ms. Palin name-dropped several times, presumably to show fluency in foreign affairs, she did not always drop the right name. At one point, she referred to the top American commander in Afghanistan, Gen. David D. McKiernan, as "McClellan.”

Ms. Palin also tended to seize on a single point or phrase of Mr. Biden or the moderator and veer off on her own direction in her 90-second answer. Asked whether the poor economy would cause Mr. McCain to cut his spending plans, Ms. Palin picked up on Mr. Biden’s discussion of energy to criticize Mr. Obama’s positions on energy and talk about her fights against oil companies in Alaska.

In response to a question about her views on an exit strategy in Iraq, Ms. Palin championed Mr. McCain’s support for the “surge” of American troops there; hailed “a great American hero,” Gen. David H. Petraeus; and attacked Mr. Obama’s Senate votes.

After that, Mr. Biden turned to the moderator and said, “Gwen, with all due respect, I didn’t hear a plan.”

Eugene Robinson wrote in the Washington Post: “I thought Sarah Palin made one huge, central mistake -- and I expect it to be reflected in surveys asking voters who won (as it is already, indeed, reflected in a CBS snap poll of uncommitted voters indicating that they saw Joe Biden as the winner). Her error was that she hardly talked at all about policy solutions, except when the debate got onto the subject of energy and offshore drilling. But on everything else -- the financial crisis, the economy in general, health care, the war on terror -- she gave little more than promises of reform and ‘maverick’-y governance.”

From Salon’s Joan Walsh:

She lost the debate when Biden choked up over losing his wife and child in a car accident in which his sons were critically injured -- and she went straight back into “John McCain is a maverick.” I truly expected her to express human sympathy with Biden, and her failure to do so showed me something deeply wrong with her.

She made other mistakes that others have already caught: She called the top commander in Afghanistan General McClellan; his name is McKiernan. She said the troop levels in Iraq are down to pre-surge levels; they're not. She simply didn't answer a lot of the questions. Moderator Gwen Ifill tried to pull her back, but Palin is stubborn; she had her talking points, and she stuck to them.

John Nichols wrote in The Nation: “Let's be clear that Palin did not crash and burn as her most ardent detractors anticipated – or, at the least, hoped – she would. Yes, the governor rambled at times, and she had no comebacks at those moments when Biden directly challenged the validity of her over-the-top claims about Obama's Senate voting record. But Palin gave Republican spin doctors enough material – mainly in the form of folksy one-liners -- so that they could cheer her ‘success’ without sounding entirely ridiculous.”

In a Slate article titled “So Palin spoke in complete sentences; She still knows nothing about foreign policy,” Fred Kaplan writes:

When Palin repeated her charge that Obama was "beyond naive" in calling for negotiating with adversaries "without preconditions," Biden explained what the phrase meant, then noted that it was supported not just by the five former secretaries of state who recently co-authored an endorsement of the idea but by our allies, with whom Palin had just said we needed to work together.

When Palin recited McCain's line about applying the principles of the Iraqi surge to Afghanistan, Biden (correctly) noted that the U.S. commanding general in Afghanistan has said the surge wouldn't work there.

Finally, when Biden said the Bush administration's foreign policy has been an "abject failure," and proceeded to list the many ways in which that was so, Palin's only reply was to smile and say, "Enough playing the blame game." If Obama and Biden talk so much about change, she added (as if this were really a clever point), why do they spend so much time looking backward?

To which Biden replied, with uncharacteristic pith, "Past is prologue." And so it is. At another point, he noted, "Facts matter." And so they do.

More to the point, he noted that McCain has never explained how his policies would differ from Bush's on Iran, Lebanon, Pakistan, or Iraq. In other words, even if Palin is right that 2009 is Year Zero, what would she and her No. 1 do differently? She didn't answer the question, any more than McCain ever has, perhaps because there is no answer.

When Biden was asked what line he would draw in deciding whether to intervene in other countries militarily, he cited two criteria: whether we had the capacity to make a difference and whether the countries in question were committing genocide or harboring terrorists—in which case, he said, they would have forfeited the rights of sovereignty.

Palin replied merely by hailing John McCain as a man "who knows how to win a war, who's been there." (McCain has said this about himself as well several times, though, with all due respect for his military record, where's the proof of this claim? What wars has he won, and what did he do there?)

Um, What Was the Question?

Maybe Sarah Palin doesn't know that "Achilles heel" means "weak spot." Or maybe she was just very much conditioned to ignore the questions and pivot to the buzzwords and talking points. The transcript says it all:

MODERATOR: Let's talk conventional wisdom for a moment. The conventional wisdom, Governor Palin with you, is that your Achilles heel is that you lack experience. What is it really for you, Governor Palin?

PALIN: My experience as an executive will be put to good use as a mayor and business owner and oil and gas regulator and then as governor of a huge state, a huge energy producing state that is accounting for much progress towards getting our nation energy independence and that's extremely important.

But it wasn't just that experience tapped into, it was my connection to the heartland of America. Being a mom, one very concerned about a son in the war, about a special needs child, about kids heading off to college, how are we going to pay those tuition bills? About times and Todd and our marriage in our past where we didn't have health insurance and we know what other Americans are going through as they sit around the kitchen table and try to figure out how are they going to pay out-of-pocket for health care? We've been there also so that connection was important.

But even more important is that world view that I share with John McCain. That world view that says that America is a nation of exceptionalism. And we are to be that shining city on a hill, as President Reagan so beautifully said, that we are a beacon of hope and that we are unapologetic here. We are not perfect as a nation. But together, we represent a perfect ideal. And that is democracy and tolerance and freedom and equal rights. Those things that we stand for that can be put to good use as a force for good in this world.

John McCain and I share that. You combine all that with being a team with the only track record of making a really, a difference in where we've been and reforming, that's a good team, it's a good ticket.

Political Stuntman

John McCain is looking more and more like a desperate and dishonest politician willing to pull any stunt to change the subject and grab some headlines in hope that he can save his dwindling chance at power.

He said he was “suspending” his presidential campaign to go back to Washington to deal with the economic crisis and the bailout discussions. But after lying to David Letterman, cancelling his appearance cuz he just had to hop on a plane and head to DC (but then staying in NY and sitting down for an interview with Katie Couric), his campaign changed their story and said he cancelled because “this is not a time for comedy.”

Oh, spare me the drama. Sure the economic crisis is very serious, but “this is not a time for comedy”??? This isn’t Sept.12… and oh by the way, I guess it was okay for The Formerly Honorable Sen. McCain to appear on the Conan O’Brien show on August 29, 2005 after celebrating his birthday with President Bush… that same day Katrina and breached levies were drowning an American city. Was that a “time for comedy”?

By most accounts, McCain’s announcement that he was bringing the presidential campaign circus to Capitol Hill actually served to inject partisanship into the negotiations and kill what everyone thought was a deal on the bailout. Heckuva job there Johnny!

If all this wasn’t bad enough… he didn’t actually suspend his campaign. His advertisements were still running in key swingstates. His campaign offices were still open and running. His surrogates were still all over TV talking him up. And, despite McCain's stated campaigning hiatus, his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, paid a highly visible visit to memorials in lower Manhattan to those killed on Sept. 11.

Ohh, okay. Suspend the campaign.... but go ahead with the 9/11 photo op. Stay classy McCain/Palin!!

And then there’s this ridiculous stunt about wanting to cancel/postpone the first debate. The rest of us regular working Americans are somehow capable of taking care of our kids in the morning, going to work and attending important meetings during the day, and then doing something else in the evening. To paraphrase Obama, sometimes the President has to handle more than one thing at a time. Come on, Uncle John, just show up to the debate.... after all, it is only against some naive inexperienced celebrity community organizer, right? How hard could it be?

When asked about the debate on the CBS Evening News, McCain responded: "I understand how important this debate is and I'm very hopeful, but I also have to put the country first." Is anyone buying this horseshit? This is the guy who has missed more Senate votes than anyone. When the latest G.I. Bill was voted on, he put Campaign First and blew off the vote to appear at a high-price fundraising dinner. But now all of a sudden he wants to make this all about him (despite his Country First talk), as if Congress cant function without him. As if the first debate in this crucial Presidential contest is somehow not important to the country.

Back to the bailout negotiations, from the Washington Post’s late Thursday afternoon update by Michael D. Shear and Lori Montgomery:

Sen. John McCain returned to Washington on Thursday after declaring that he has suspended his campaign, but he appeared largely detached from the flurry of negotiations on a $700 billion economic rescue package that appeared to be headed to a successful conclusion.

McCain's "Straight Talk Air" landed at National Airport just after noon, and McCain's motorcade sped toward the Senate. But by then, senior Democrats and Republicans were already announcing that a deal in principle had been reached.

"This is the presidential campaign of John McCain undermining what Hank Paulson tells us is essential for the country," said Democratic Rep. Barney Frank, (D-Mass.), chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. "This is McCain at the last minute getting House Republicans to undermine the Paulson approach."

The White House meeting was in part the result of McCain's stunning pronouncement Wednesday that he would stop campaigning to return to Washington, where he had urged Bush to convene a summit to address the crisis.

… for most of the afternoon, McCain has not visibly been part of the action on the issue. He was not present when House and Senate negotiators emerged from a two-hour meeting to declare success. That announcement was made by Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.), chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Sen. Robert F. Bennett (Utah) and Frank.

McCain, by contrast, spent some time in his office with several Republican colleagues, briefly stopped at Boehner's office, then left for lunch at the Capitol's Mansfield Room before returning to his office in the Russell Senate Office Building.

So he doesn’t land until after noon…. Then goes and dicks around the Senate with his boy Joe Lieberman, and then he goes out for lunch? But he doesn’t have the time or inclination to go before the American people and debate Barack Obama and show and tell us why we should trust him to be the leader of the free world?

McCain's not putting Country First. He's not showing leadership. He's just a stuntman in a political theater.

The Replacements Reissues: Can't Hardly Wait

Today marks the much-anticipated release of Rhino’s remastered and expanded editions of The Replacements four Sire-era albums, Tim, Pleased To Meet Me, Don’t Tell A Soul, and All Shook Down. These new versions feature remastered sound, plus bonus tracks of unreleased demos and alternate versions.

A few months ago, their earlier material (originally released on Twin Tone) was given the same treatment. While Let It Be, from that earlier era, is often held up as their “best” (and I do like that one a lot), I’d say that Tim and Pleased To Meet Me are my favorites. I was working in a record store when Pleased To Meet Me came out and there was a ‘Mats fan there who would play it all the time. It grew on me and I ended up loving the Replacements too… I can't say enough about how monumental these guys were in influencing a generation of bands from indie rock to alt.country and every suburban music-lover inbetween who just wanted to crank up some great tunes and fuck off.

TIM was the band's last album fueled by the legendary original line-up of lead singer and songwriter Paul Westerberg, Chris Mars (drums) and brothers Bob and Tommy Stinson (guitar and bass, respectively) and their first on a major label, Sire Records. Rhino's newly remastered and expanded edition features the original 11 tracks plus 6 previously unreleased bonus tracks, including three tracks recorded at a 1985 session with Westerberg's idol, Alex Chilton, among them an electric outtake of “Can't Hardly Wait.”

Their fifth full-length and second for a major label, PLEASED TO MEET ME was recorded in Memphis with legendary producer Jim Dickinson. The new remastered/expanded edition from Rhino features the original 11-song classic album from 1987 plus 12 rare bonus tracks, half of them previously unreleased.

These great Replacements reissues are also available on 180-gram virgin vinyl, minus the bonus material. Don’t buy this stuff on Amazon or look for it at Best Buy. Support your local independent record store (while it still exists) and buy your ‘Mats reissues from them.

Bush Urging We Must Act Fast (Again)

This is a great post courtesy of The Rude Pundit:

You know, the Rude Pundit realizes there's only so many ways to describe a dire situation, but, really, and, c'mon, is it all not a variation on the same tune?

From the statement by President Bush on September 22, 2008 on the current economic crisis and the possible bailout: "Failure to act would have broad consequences far beyond Wall Street."

From Bush's speech explaining why he needed war authorization for Iraq, October 7, 2002: "Failure to act would embolden other tyrants, allow terrorists access to new weapons and new resources, and make blackmail a permanent feature of world events."

2008: "It would threaten small business owners and homeowners on Main Street."
2002: "He would be in a position to threaten America."

2008: "Americans are watching to see if Democrats and Republicans, the Congress and the White House, can come together to solve this problem with the urgency it warrants."
2002: "We have an urgent duty to prevent the worst from occurring."

It's all lessons from childhood: If you cry wolf often enough, you may just ignore it when that toothsome fucker is carrying away your infants and livestock. You say the sky is falling and it's not, then next time there better be clouds around your ass.