Iraq Strategy…

From the two Australian (one is actually from New Zealand, but I digress) comedians who did the “The Front Fell Off” sketch that Drac posted previously elsewhere… This video is from late in 2006 …

Jacky-boy…

I’m sure some of you have seen this Jack Nicholson ad…

But here is a response I stumbled upon, which made me laugh…

I want people to say vile things in the comments for this…

From Billo last night…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQ5unIy52Yk

Neil Young Part I: The Essentials

While driving down Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles, a young folk musician named Stephen Stills spotted a hearse driving in the opposite lane. He recognized the driver as a quiet and intense Canadian whom he had met nearly a year earlier at a folk club in Thunder, Ontario. Upon their initial meeting, the two musicians had immediately taken to one another. They shook hands and departed with a vague agreement to work together in the future, but the transient nature of a musician’s life had made it difficult for the two aspiring artists to reconnect. This moment marked the first time Stills had seen the man since they first met.

Thinking quickly, Stills pulled a u-turn in the middle of the street and flagged down the hearse’s driver. They agreed to form a band on the spot, calling themselves Buffalo Springfield, and released their first album just a few months later. Headlined by a hit single that took a whimsical look at the Vietnam War (”For What It’s Worth”), the band dominated the airwaves with one of the most defining songs of the era.

Buffalo Springfield’s lifespan was brief–the band broke up two years after their formation. Despite this, the Canadian driving that hearse evolved into one of the most famous musicians of the twentieth century. His name is Neil Young, and for the last forty years he has challenged, inspired and confounded the world of popular music.

Due to his prolific output and his propensity for releasing “difficult” material, Neil Young is a daunting figure for those who are unfamiliar with his work. When an artist has released over thirty studio albums, it’s hard to know where to start and what to avoid. The following is a how-to guide for those who aren’t Neil Young fans, but are interested in learning more about this enigmatic and brilliant musician.

I’ve chosen three different categories for Young’s work: the essentials, the train wrecks, and the decent albums that are worth investment but probably aren’t good launching pads. I’m going to avoid discussing the collaborative efforts, such as the aforementioned Springfields and Young’s work with Messirs Crosby, Stills and Nash. All of that material is worth checking out, but this is a pure assessment of Neil Young. I am also refusing to consider Young’s live albums (that’s a topic that deserves its own series of posts), and the bootleg/unreleased material (Chrome Dreams, Where the Buffalo Roam, etc.) This is only the official discography.

I am also dividing this post into installments. The essential albums are included with this post (click the “read more” tab below), with the other two lists to follow at a later date. If you’re interested, I recommend listening to these albums in the order that they’re listed.

Enjoy, and don’t forget to keep on rockin’ in the free world!

In honor of that special something.something moving to Canadia…

Can We?

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I have been supporting Presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich since the race began, but in the back of my mind I always knew that he would never gain the widespread support of the American people. As expected, Kucinich has dropped out of the race, and the most promising progressive candidate at this point seems to be Barack Obama.

But how progressive is he? Obama (so he says now) would not repeal the Patriot Act if elected to office. He has, on numerous occasions, made statements about bombing Iran. He has also expressed admiration for one of the least progressive presidents in America’s history. His campaign has spent more time attacking Hillary Clinton than it has proposing solutions to the festering stinking garbage heap of problems that this country faces in the next four years.

But there’s also another side to all of these statements. Like it or not, this is how successful candidates play the game of politics, and it’s promising to see a Democratic candidate actually acknowledge that. If Obama gets the nomination, he will not become another inept milquetoast like Hubert Humphrey, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Al Gore and John Kerry were come November. The man is unafraid to get some dirt under his fingernails, and those other idiots were terrified to play that kind of political game, and that’s a big reason why they lost.

Obama is incredibly popular right now, and he clearly possesses the knack for bipartisanship that Bill Clinton had. But while Clinton did some very positive things during his presidency–such as leaving office with a surplus–he also pared welfare down to near nonexistence and spent hundreds of billions of dollars on military expenditures. Will Obama take the same track? Is it possible for him to be successful and avoid that path?

I like the guy, and I think he would be a wonderful change for the United States. But he is not a savior, not a folk hero, not an activist, and not your best friend. He is a politician, and like all politicians, he is motivated by personal gain and self interest. That may lead him to fuck up the country less than his predecessor in the hopes that his historical legacy will be more lauded, but it doesn’t change the fact that Obama is in this thing (like every other candidate) for Obama.

Will.I.Am, Scarlett Johansson, John Legend, Herbie Hancock, and numerous other celebrities have made the music video below in support of Obama through DipDive. It’s kind of uplifting, but also just a little schmaltzy. It’s also directed by Jesse Dylan, who happens to be Bobby’s eldest son:

A little background information regarding this phrase “Yes I Am”. The United Farm Workers and Caesar Chavez developed this as a rallying cry in the sixties and seventies as they campaigned for labor reform (though they used the Spanish “Si se puede”). Obama’s commodification has ignited some hostility, since this is a very sensitive subject to the UFW (if you visit the link above, you can read about their legal battle with Aero Mexico over the phrase).

Is Obama using this rhetoric because he genuinely cares about the immigration situation? Is he concerned about the rollbacks on labor rights that have taken place over the last eight years? Or is this just another political maneuver aimed at garnering the former John Edwards supporters?

I’ve given up hope for a candidate like Kucinich, and I think it’s important to support Obama because he clearly would be a better choice than McCain, even if they both are political hacks. In the 2000 election, Nader often pointed out that there was absolutely no difference between Bush and Gore, but clearly there is, even if Gore wasn’t an ideal candidate at the time. I don’t like some of the things that Obama says, but at the same time we are stuck together in an imperfect political system with unappealing alternatives. I wish my support for him could be more idealistic and I wish I could believe in his candidacy the way that Kareem Abdul-Jabbar does.

But you know what? FDR made some questionable decisions as well, and Congress imposed the two term presidential limit to avoid having a politician become as powerful as he became. Even so, if John McCain had been elected to the presidency in 1932 (and I haven’t checked, but he actually may have been an eligible candidate at the time) this country would still be in The Great Depression, and we’d all be conscripted and crawling through tunnels in North Vietnam. I don’t gush over Obama, but I think he’s the best chance we’ve got.

Badass Indian Music Video…

Barack supports/ed marijuana decriminalization. ::Cheers::

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He had raised his hand in an early democratic debate for not decriminalizing marijuana. To quote the Washington Times story…

Asked about the two different answers, Mr. Obama’s presidential campaign said he in fact has “always” supported decriminalizing marijuana as he answered in 2004, meaning the candidate mistakenly raised his hand during the presidential debate last fall.