FRIDAY!

The Essex Green

Nicholai Dunger

Neko Case (sorry if I've posted this one before. Not much.)

Mission of Burma

Elf Power

Trespassers William

and, go read

Trippy, small, big. Unlike anything I've read. 
You'll love it or hate it.

Here's an interview with Kathryn Davis.

Reslutification

The Missouri House has rejected a proposal for state funding to provide birth control through public health clinics for poor women. Why?

"If you hand out contraception to single women, we're saying promiscuity is OK as a state, and I am not in support of that," Phillips, R-Kansas City, said in an interview.

Of course, if a woman has an unwanted pregnancy - which is her fault alone according to the logic of the above sentence, the participating male having been lured against his will to sleep with the goddamn hussy - the same people who would have barred her from birth control would bar her from an abortion, and the very same people who would bar her from an abortion are the same people who would bar public assistance to her unwanted child.

I've said this differently recently: there are people in this country who are sincerely (and dangerously) anti-abortioncentric, but there is a collective hankering for and a coordinated effort at the reslutification of women's sexuality by conservatives freakishly freaked over sex, by nostalgic wifebeaters and adulterers, and, more importantly, by conservative demagogues ever searching for scapegoats and hate targets. Look at the quote above: promiscuity is a women's sin. Men are victims. This not only relieves men of responsibility for their fuck, it relieves them of the responsibility of the after effects of that fuck. Hey, if the slut had kept her legs shut, I wouldn't have fucked her. It allows the sexual prude to sniff in contempt, the misogynist to come-slap-n-run, and the fat farts in the GOP to demonize women while simultaneously slashing funding to programs that directly aid women (and their children, wanted or unwanted).

Reslutification: good bitches do what they're told, bad bitches deserve what they get. Legislation coming to a State House near you. Soon.

Villanelle at Sundown

     By Donald Justice

Turn your head. Look. The light is turning yellow.
The river seems enriched thereby, not to say deepened.
Why this is, I'll never be able to tell you.

Or are Americans half in love with failure?
One used to say so, reading Fitzgerald, as it happened.
(That Viking Portable, all water spotted and yellow--

remember?) Or does mere distance lend a value
to things? --false, it may be, but the view is hardly cheapened.
Why this is, I'll never be able to tell you. 

The smoke, those tiny cars, the whole urban milieu--
One can like anything diminishment has sharpened.
Our painter friend, Lang, might show the whole thing yellow

and not be much off. It's nuance that counts, not color--
As in some late James novel, saved up for the long weekend
and vivid with all the Master simply won't tell you.

How frail our generation has got, how sallow
and pinched with just surviving! We all go off the deep end
finally, gold beaten thinly out to yellow.
And why this is, I'll never be able to tell you.

Just One Point

While I understand if not agree with most of the arguments why Feingold's amendment was a political mistake, there's one I've just got to scream WTF?

Oh no! the GOP is going to use this to rally their base! Oh my god, save us all!

Oh no! Before this, it had never occurred to anyone - ANYONE - in the GOP that a Democratic House and/or Democratic Senate might start impeachment hearings against a Republican president (who just happens to be one of the least liked presidents ever). Never! Nope.

The GOP is going to use the threat of impeachment to raise money from the 33% of Americans still too stupid to have figured out the ramifications of having a criminally corrupt, idiotically incompetent, and morally obtuse president in the White House? What, homophobia and xenophobia and racism and sexism and jingoism and maudlin demagogic patriotism isn't enough to rally the base? Yep, the threat of impeachment, that will squeeze the few more pennies out of rural America that tilts the balance come November.

Look. This line of argument against Feingold is either specious or fatuous. Any Democrat in a position of power within the party who makes strategic moves calculated on how the GOP base is going to react needs to be fired from that position. It smacks of reaction, not proaction; it smacks of calculated cowardice and stupifying political naivete. Be angry at Feingold if you want because you believe the Dems need to cohere to a fixed message or maintain a chain of command or whatever. I'll disagree. But don't try to scare me with the GOP base.

Update: off the thesis of my post, but here's a chart of a poll on censure

Don't let the GOP mouthpieces and the MSM or Democratic Senators
tell you you're a loon for advocating censure.

Poll source.

3/14: Just wanted to show the cover of the new Stephin Merritt album, Showtunes.

3/14: First listen: better give it a second.

3/15: Second listen: remind myself that I abhor showtunes.

3/15, 3/16: Third, fourth and fifth listens: Ba'al, it's dreadful. Or rather,
it's dreadful for me. The lyrics are brilliant, but each listen, it gets worse.
Merritt has earned too much credit for me to blame him. This one's on me.

Your President

Makes you proud.

I've asked this before, but worth asking again: Which is worse, that he believes what he says or that he knows what he's saying is a lie?

Hah! Trick question - got you again. Give me a lying psychopath over a delusion psychopath any day. Trouble is, this President is both.

Sleepless? Call the Waambulance!

It's not incompetence or arrogance or cronyism or delusions of grandeur or corruption or obstinate stupidity or stubborn myopia that hinders the Bush Adminstration, it's lack of sleep:

Of all the reasons that President Bush is in trouble these days, not to be overlooked are inadequate REM cycles. Like chief of staff Card, many of the president's top aides have been by his side nonstop for more than five years, not including the first campaign, recount and transition. This is a White House, according to insiders, that is physically and emotionally exhausted, battered by scandal and drained by political setbacks.

Perhaps the weary should be replaced. Perhaps new eyes on old problems, new ideas for unsuccessful solutions, new oversight for old responsibilities, would bring vigor and freshness and new accountability to this White House.

New ideas? New oversight? New accountability? Beyond not wanting any new ideas, new oversight, new accountability (which would signal there's something wrong with the old ideas, old oversight, old accountability), the very last thing this White House would welcome is a new set of eyes. It really is the incompetence and arrogance and cronyism and delusions of grandeur and corruption and obstinate stupidity and stubborn myopia that hinders the Bush Adminstration, and anyone whose loyalty has not been proven - anyone whose loyalty cannot be guaranteed by their own legal, moral, and ethical culpability in all affairs Bush - won't work in this White House.

You wonder how they sleep? The answer is, they don't.

Hotel Lautreamont

By John Ashbery

1

Research has shown that ballads were produced by all of society
working as a team. They didn't just happen. There was no guesswork.
The people, then, knew what they wanted and they go it.
We see the results in works as diverse as "Windsor Forest" and "The Wife of Usher's Well".

Working as a team, they didn't just happen. There was no guesswork.
The horns of elfland swing past, and in a few seconds
We see the results in works as diverse as "Windsor Forest" and "The Wife of Usher's Well",
or, on a more modern note, in the finale of the Sibelius violin concerto.

The horns of elfland swing past, and in a few seconds
The world as we know it, sinks into dementia, proving narrative passe,
or in the finale of the Sibelius violin concerto.
Not to worry, many hands are making work light again.

The world as we know it, sinks into dementia, proving narrative passe.
In any case the ruling was long overdue.
Not to worry, many hands are making work light again,
So we stay indoors. The quest was only another adventure.

2

In any case the ruling was long overdue.
The people are beside themselves with rapture
so we stay indoors. The quest was only another adventure
and the solution problematic, at any rate far off in the future.

The people are beside themselves with rapture
yet no one thinks to question the source of so much collective euphoria,
and the solution: problematic, at any rate far off in the future.
The saxophone wails, the martini glass is drained.

Yet no one thinks to question the source of so much collective euphoria.
In troubled times one looked to the shaman or priest for comfort and counsel.
The saxophone wails, the martini glass is drained,
And night like black swansdown settles on the city.

In troubled times one looked to the shaman or priest for comfort and counsel
Now, only the willing are fated to receive death as a reward,
and night like black swansdown settles on the city.
If we tried to leave, would being naked help us?

3

Now, only the willing are fated to receive death as a reward.
Children twist hula-hoops, imagining a door to the outside,
If we tried to leave, would being naked help us?
And what of older, lighter concerns? What of the river?

Children twist hula-hoops, imagining a door to the outside,
when all we think of is how much we can carry with us,
And what of older, lighter concerns? What of the river?
All the behemoths have filed through the maze of time.

When all we think of is how much we can carry with us
Small wonder that those at home sit, nervous, by the unlit grate,
All the behemoths have filed through the maze of time.
It remains for us to come to terms with our commonalty.

Small wonder that those at home sit nervous by the unlit grate.
It was their choice, after all, that spurred us to feats of the imagination.
It remains for us to come to terms with our commonalty
And in so doing deprive time of further hostages.

4

It was their choice, after all, that spurred us to feats of the imagination,
Now, silently as one mounts a stair we emerge into the open
and in so doing deprive time of further hostages,
To end the standoff that history long ago began.

Now, silently as one mounts a stair to emerge into the open
but it is shrouded, veiled: we must have made some ghastly error.
To end the standoff that history long ago began
Must we thrust ever onward, into perversity?

But it is shrouded, veiled: we must have made some ghastly error.
You mop your forehead with a rose, recommending its thorns.
Must we thrust ever onward, into perversity?
Only night knows for sure; the secret is safe with her.

You mop your forehead with a rose, recommending its thorns.
Research has shown that ballads were produced by all of society;
Only night knows for sure. The secret is safe with her:
the people, then, knew what they wanted and how to get it.

Required Reading

Major article on Mark Warner in particular and Democratic Party politics in general in today's NYT magazine. A key paragraph:

So formidable are the obstacles to challenging Clinton that even a lot of party operatives who don't think she's the best candidate are likely to work for her, just to be on the winning side. And this is precisely the strategy that her team has thus far cultivated. Just as Karl Rove set out to make George W. Bush's nomination seem inevitable in 2000, successfully freezing much of the money and talent that might have flowed to his competitors, so, too, do Clinton's advisers seem to be sending out signals that resistance is not only futile but also dangerous. When I asked Warner's aides for permission to attend some of his policy briefings in January, word came back that the outside experts who had been asked to make presentations, some of whom worked in the Clinton administration, balked because they were afraid the Clinton camp would find out that they were granting courtesies to another candidate. No one wants to cross the party's presumed nominee.

And one more:

The question for a potential candidate like Mark Warner is just what kind of outsider he intends to be. The problem with Warner's theory of the race — that he can run, like Carter and Clinton, as a centrist, electable Southern governor — is that neither Carter nor Clinton had the misfortune of having to unseat a de facto nominee. They ran as outsiders pounding at the door of the party apparatus, but the weary party more or less invited them in. That won't happen in 2008. If Hillary Clinton does decide to run, the best Warner or any other rival can hope for is that this next election will be more like 1984, when Mondale, the insider, had to use every advantage at his disposal, including the superdelegates, to hold off Gary Hart's torrid attack on the interest groups that made up the Democratic establishment.

I live in suburban Maryland just outside DC, so I get my share of Virginia political news, and though I can verify that Warner was very popular in NOVA, it bares mentioning that most of Virginia considers NOVA as suspect as Red China (just across from the District, the county that would have been SW DC is known, to the Virginia GOP, as the Peoples Republic of Arlington).
On the biggest issue in NOVA, the blocked colons of traffic, Warner managed to initiate improvements without pissing off everyone, or to put it another and perhaps incongruously better way, he managed to make improvements while pissing off everyone equally. That's a distinction worth noting. While it's a worn cliche to say that if everyone's mad than you've found the middle, it takes no skill to piss everyone off; it does, however, take real political savvy to anger everyone and still affect real change.

But... I do not completely buy the Hillary the Inevitable line, though articles such as this one, a lengthy piece on a fresh Democratic face, in which what will be taken by most readers is not the profile of Mark Warner but the indelible meme of Hillary's already sewn-up nomination, doesn't give those of us praying for a bracingly clean but contentious campaign much hope. Putting aside whether Clinton would be a good candidate and a good president (not so much the first, very good the second, imho), the very thing that would help Clinton the most if she does become the Democratic nominee in 08 IS a cleanly bruising primary campaign. And Warner is the best opponent to give it to her.

Which makes him odds-on favorite to be her running-mate (should Obama say no).