Consequence of Sound's intelligent, thoughtful review of the new Insane Clown Posse record is equal parts Andy Kaufman and Richard Meltzer, and therefore you must read it. Get psyched, Juggalos and Juggalettes.
July 20, 2009 MSNBC Keith Olbermann
You have to hand it to the Black Eyed Peas, who after hugely successful solo outings by their members have returned to hold the top two spots on the Billboard Hot 100.
After eleven weeks at No. 1 with "Boom Boom Pow," the Black Eyed Peas are right behind themselves at No. 2 with the debut of "I Gotta Feeling" on the Billboard Hot 100 this week.
With their No. 1 and No. 2 songs this week, the Peas are the first duo or group since OutKast to occupy the top two spots on the Hot 100. OutKast accomplished that feat with "Hey Ya!" and "The Way You Move" at No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, in the issue dated Feb. 4, 2004.
Will.i.am, Fergie and co. will be playing festivals in Europe all summer before heading out with U2 in the fall. Dates are here.
You may have seen the Fox promos for Glenn Beck's program later today, all about how you, too, can help free the country from the tyranny of "the Fed". Beck calls it "the Civilest War," and he compares it to The Matrix:
In the movie the hero is offered two pills: red to learn the truth about the Matrix; blue to go on living blissfully ignorant to what is really going on.
The way to take our country back will short-circuit the Matrix we are living in. And it has to do with gun rights, state's rights and what I call the civilest war.
No doubt it will be another exercise in right-wing populism. But what most of the attendees -- and probably not even Beck himself -- will be aware of is that the ideas Beck is promoting at this event originated with the far-right Patriot/militia in the 1990s, all about asserting "state sovereignty" in a radical way first devised by radical-right "constitutionalists".
Beck's adoption of these idea originated, apparently, at the April 20 "tea parties," when a Montana legislator appeared on Fox to talk about his legislation -- actually signed into law by Montana's governor -- that asserted that any guns made in Montana could not be regulated by the federal government. Since then, other states have adopted the measure -- and are, moreover, following in the footsteps of those same Montana legislators, who subsequently have been proposing legislation taking this particularly ball even farther down the field:
Along with the gun bill, Montana legislators are considering a resolution that affirms the 10th Amendment principle that the federal government only has those powers that are specifically given to it by the U.S. Constitution.
“The whole goal is to awaken the people so that we can return to a properly grounded republic,” Rep. Michael More, R-Gallatin Gateway and the Montana resolution’s sponsor, said at a House committee hearing Wednesday.
As many as fifteen other Legislatures have also been mulling resolutions that buck federal control in states such as New Hampshire, South Carolina, Missouri and Oklahoma.
This fired up Beck's imagination, who hosted the following segment on his Fox News show earlier this month, on May 8:
Beck, you see, believes that this legislation will be the spark that sets a grassfire that will burn up the federal government. Lotsa luck with that -- especially considering its origins.
Even after all of the criticism that John McCain has received recently for repeatedly citing his experience as a POW as an illogical excuse for everything from his extramarital affairs to his rule-breaking to having so many more homes than most people have pairs of shoes that he can't keep track of them (as if his having been a POW 35 years ago has somehow inoculated McCain from any criticism whatsoever for any thing he does) his campaign sure wasn't kidding when they responded by letting it be known that it had only just begun to exploit his POWness.
In an interview with KDKA radio in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, John McCain POW-POW-POWed when asked about charges that he's an elitist who's out of touch with the American worker on kitchen-table issues.
McCain: [I]n all due respect my friends, I know what it's like to not have a house, I know what it's like not to have a kitchen table. I know what it's like not to have a table or a chair. For five and a half years, I sat in a cell with nothing but concrete floor and three boards to sleep on.
The argument goes something like this: John McCain, as a former POW, can't be out of touch with the average working stiff. He totally understands ordinary folks' financial hardships (obviously) because he was a POW. Is any of this making sense to you? No, me neither. And it's not just the McCain campaign itself that wants to beat you over the head with the fact that McCain must be impervious to any criticism simply because he was a POW. The South Carolina GOP has also hopped on the POW-talk express with perhaps the most POWerful ad ever:
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Okay, this has gone way past ridiculous already, and it seems it's not going to stop until November. Everyone knows John McCain was a POW, and everyone with a brain knows that having been a POW is not a valid excuse for cheating on your wife or for saying something stupid, nor is it a blanket policy qualifier for the office of the Presidency.
There ought to be some simple way to put an end to this kind of nonsense, and DKos' Georgia10 is on it:
Since it's no longer taboo to point out John McCain's ridiculous and offensive attempts to use of his experience as a POW as if it's somehow an excuse for everything from his extramarital affairs to his rule-breaking to his having more pieces of real estate than he can keep track of, and so on, we would be remiss if we didn't point this one out too.
When CNN's Walter Isaacson confronted John McCain about his professed love of the band of ABBA, which of course was a lame attempt to cater to "disaffected Hillary supporters" as his blogger Michael Goldfarb made clear, McCain (you guessed it) whipped out the trusty ol' POW card to explain:
“What were you thinking?,” Isaacson asked him, looking incredulous.
“If there is anything I am lacking in, I’ve got to tell you, it is taste in music and art and other great things in life,” McCain joked. “I’ve got to say that a lot of my taste in music stopped about the time I impacted a surface-to-air missile with my own airplane and never caught up again.”
But, as Spencer Ackerman was quick to point out:
What? McCain was shot down in 1967. ABBA began making music in 1972. Don't try this sh** on me, McCain! Your POW experience has nothing to do with your Partridgey musical taste.
Cue the mockery... Nicole thinks maybe we should just put out a distress signal for McSame instead
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Gosh, who needs campaign surrogates when the mainstream media will only too gladly suffice? Tom Brokaw continues in his role as Republican concern troll by citing an anonymous email from a military man (who is "not crazy" about McCain, natch; that only increases the credibility, right?) objecting to Biden's crack yesterday about seven kitchen tables because, after all, McCain was a POW. And Chuck Todd agrees, that while Democrats--citing Maureen Dowd, who has never met a Democrat she didn't metaphorically castrate or feminize-- don't like it, it still works with voters.
BROKAW: Chuck Todd, a career military person-who is not crazy about John McCain-immediately emailed me about that crack about seven kitchen tables, saying, "Wait a minute, that's pretty gratuitous. Here's a guy who spent five years in prison, not knowing where his next meal was going to come from."
TODD: It's interesting that..that Democrats are getting a little more upset by that line of defense now. Coming, there's a column this morning by Maureen Dowd in the New York Times sort of laying out this case that you know, is the McCain campaign using the...using that defense too often to pushback everything, but it does work, I think, with voters.
You know, I normally think Todd's fairly astute, but this is just ridiculous. I'm ready for Brokaw and Todd to appear in a YouTube video complete with smearing mascara, screaming "Leave McCain alone!" The reason that Democrats are getting upset is not that McCain is using it too often, it's that being a POW IS NOT A LINE OF DEFENSE. Jumpin' Jiminy, these guys are clueless.
McCain gets pulled over for speeding: "But Officer, I was a POW!"
McCain misspells 'onomatopoeia' at the National Spelling Bee: "But judge, I was a POW!"
McCain forgets to pay taxes on one of his multiple homes: "But Mr. IRS Auditor, I was a POW!"
That's how ludicrous McCain's "defense" is, and yet the media sees nothing wrong with it. In fact, they're shocked by those who point out that being a POW isn't a "get out of gaffe" free card. It's not working with the voters, you McCain Media types, it's working with you. You're just not on the ball enough to know you're getting played.
Watching this two-minute bio-ad from John McCain's first campaign (1982), "you don't exactly get the impression of a candidate reluctant to discuss his war experience" That's because he never has been. McCain has relied on using his service and sacrifice to his country as a major campaign asset from day one, and repeatedly ever since despite claims to the contrary. Not that there should be anything wrong with that in that context, but, as Steve Benen pointed out:
Four years ago, when John Kerry campaigned in part on his military service, McCain criticized him for it, saying he was “sick and tired of re-fighting the Vietnam War.” McCain even disparaged Kerry personally, saying his emphasis on his military record is “clearly a tactical or strategic move.”
What makes McCain's claim all the more hypocritical is the fact that his campaign has recently been invoking the 'POW card' anytime their candidate is questioned, not just biographically for political benefit as the senator did over and over during pastor Rick Warren's Saddleback Presidential Candidates Forum, but quite literally offering it as an excuse for anything and everything to the point many in the media have begun questioning the tactic:
Whether he's deflecting criticism over his health-care plan or mocking a tribute to the Woodstock music festival, Senator John McCain has a trump card: the Hanoi Hilton. ...
That was followed by Newsweek's Howard Fineman, Politico's Ben Smith, and Time's Ana Marie Cox (h/t Greg Sargent) all calling foul. The Washington Monthly's Steve Benen inferred that McCain is becoming the new 9iu11iani, and that's not all. McCain even caught the ire of Brandon Friedman at VetVoice and then Lt Gen Robert G Gard really took him to task in posts at DailyKos and Huffington Post:
We obviously honor and respect McCain's service and the five-and-a-half years of horror that he went through at the hands of the North Vietnamese; but it's not an excuse for everything. He has already used it to explain away his infidelities in his first marriage. He's used it to defend his healthcare plan. He just the other day used it to deflect accusations of having skirted the rules of the Saddleback forum.
It's time for the Senator to stop cheapening the war experiences of thousands of vets and his fellow POWs, and his own as well, by stretching the boundaries of logic to make his POW status a wild-card rebuttal to all accusations or an answer to all difficult questions.
And in today's NYT, Maureen Dowd hits on all of the above and goes even further by questioning whether what has been McCain's 'get out of gaffe free card' could actually be considered a handicap:
... While McCain’s experience was heroic, did it create a worldview incapable of anticipating the limits to U.S. military power in Iraq? Did he fail to absorb the lessons of Vietnam, so that he is doomed to always want to refight it? Did his captivity inform a search-and-destroy, shoot-first-ask-questions-later, “We are all Georgians,” mentality?
You think?
Take the AOL poll on whether John McCain is overplaying the POW card below.
Someone had to say it.
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"I think they are going to it way too many times. It's the original story that defined John McCain, that still when you read it in his book 'Faith of my Fathers,' when you read about it in 'The Nightingale's Song,' you can't help but have admiration and respect for the guy. And I think he wisely for many years stayed away from it as a political tool, he really did. But now it not only defines him, it's become a crutch in the campaign. And I think he is in danger of trivializing it. By the time they get to the convention in St. Paul, there might not be much of it left to use."
This is just another sad chapter in the tragic descent of John McCain. Sure McCain has used his powerful biography to help him throughout his political career, but I highly doubt he's comfortable with the depths he's now forced to sink to in order to compete for the presidency. Again....tragic.
Brandon Friedman at VetVoice has more...
