The First Casualty of Elections

As I finish my morning blog-reading, I'm naturally depressed by the possibility that the country really doesn't give a shit about the truth. At The Nation, Ari Berman refers to a Ron Suskind piece from 2004 in which a Bush aide said:

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." ... "That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality--judiciously, as you will--we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Also at The Nation, Adam Howard celebrated the tough-ish questioning John McCain received on The View, which emphasizes the point that the way to reach voters is not through CNN or traditional news outlets, and the voters people are after aren't reached or appealed to through traditional means.

I hope the Obama campaign is shifting out of Sarah Palin mode, and rather than catching her in lies - which obviously isn't working - use her to illustrate John McCain's shaky judgment. With all the Republican talent available to him - male and female - he chose one of the least known and least prepared to assume the presidency should something happen.

Don't Stop Believin'

I've attributed Bush's election and re-election to the fact that no voter feels stupid next to him - a variation on the idea that people voted for the guy they'd most like to have a beer with. I understand comfort and how it's a more driving force than anybody would like to admit, but seriously - are you qualified to run the country? Are any of the people you drink with at the bar? At the coffee shop?

Today's transcripts of Charlie Gibson's interview with Sarah Palin show the shortcomings your buddy, the candidate. The news today is that she doesn't know the Bush Doctrine of pre-emptive defense, and how she inadvertently put America's foreign policy in the Middle East in the hands of Israel, and by admitting Georgia and the Ukraine to NATO drawn America into war with Russia. But let's go beyond such trivialities as details. Joan Walsh at Salon.com made this connection:

Talking to Charles Gibson tonight, Palin sometimes reminded me of poor Miss South Carolina, who, asked why many Americans can't find the U.S. on a map, famously said: "I personally believe that U.S. Americans are unable to do so because, uh, some people out there in our nation don't have maps. And I believe that our education, like, such as in South Africa and the Iraq, everywhere, like such as, and I believe that they should, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., or should help South Africa and should help the Iraq and the Asian countries so we will be able to build up our future for our children."

This statement from Palin about Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is better, but not hugely: "I believe that under the leadership of Ahmadinejad, nucular weapons in the hands of his government are extremely dangerous to everyone on this globe, yes. We have got to make sure these weapons of mass destruction, that nucular weapons are not given to those hands of Ahmadinejad, not that he would use them, but that he would allow terrorists to be able to use them. So we have got to put the pressure on Iran."

I thought more of another, more generic sad sack when I read this transcript:

GIBSON: Governor, let me start by asking you a question that I asked John McCain about you, and it is really the central question. Can you look the country in the eye and say "I have the experience and I have the ability to be not just vice president, but perhaps president of the United States of America?"

PALIN: I do, Charlie, and on January 20, when John McCain and I are sworn in, if we are so privileged to be elected to serve this country, will be ready. I'm ready.

GIBSON: And you didn't say to yourself, "Am I experienced enough? Am I ready? Do I know enough about international affairs? Do I -- will I feel comfortable enough on the national stage to do this?"

PALIN: I didn't hesitate, no.

GIBSON: (INAUDIBLE -- Didn't that take some hubris?)

PALIN: I -- I answered him yes because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can't blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we're on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can't blink.

The gobbledygook logic of that last statement - her rationale for believing she's ready to be vice-president and if necessary president - boils down to, "I believe in me because I believe, and I have to believe." Usually we hear some variation on that logic from a teenager talking to Ryan Seacrest just before he or she walks into the American Idol tryout room to be crushed and sent to therapy by Simon, Randy and Paula. Or on the tryout show for America's Next Top Model, where the poor underfed dears explain that they're going to be America's next top model because they really want to be America's next top model. Not surprisingly, the women who actually win have more reliable attributes like good bone structure, a consciousness of their bodies and a sense of how they present themselves for photos.

We've just spent eight years with a president who reduced every issue to a matter of belief; another candidate who believes because she believes really isn't change.

Here's the interview.

Obama Art

A friend who was in Denver for the Democratic National Convention sent me photos of Obama-inspired art from a Manifest Hope show that was surprisingly good. Much of it riffs off of established graphics and styles, and it embraces the cultures that have come together to support Obama. I'm trying to decide what speaks to me more: the Warholesque Obama-as-Lincoln, or the pair of Air Obamas.

Go here for photos, and an account of organizer Shepard Fairey's arrest for postering to hype the show.

What's Wrong with Me?

Am I falling down on the job because I haven't yet typed a few thousand words of love for the new TV on the Radio album? All the cool kids seem to be doing it.

New, Free Raveonettes EP

Here's some press release:

FIRST EP AVAILABLE TODAY FOR FREE

Following the success of this year's critically adored album Lust Lust Lust, Danish noir-rock duo The Raveonettes today announce plans to release a series of digital only EPs on Vice Music. Not content to let time lapse between releases, the group is breaking the mold by dropping a series of four short form releases over the course of the next three months, leading off with a free remix EP today.

Though known primarily for their signature blend of lush melodies and over-the-top guitar noise, the EPs show off new, heretofore unknown creative angles of the group. Following today's remix EP will be Sometimes They Drop By on September 23, with electronics that indulge a deeper investment into the sampled beats and textures that have always lurked underneath their sound.

Two more EPs will follow on October 21 and November 25, the first further twisting the familiar Raveonettes' sound, and the last being an EP of Christmas songs done in a modern nostalgic way.

Today's free Remixed EP centers around three standout tracks from Lust Lust Lust, presented in radically different new versions. Hypnotic Japanese electro producer 80KIDZ, Alec Empire-conspirator Nic Endo, and Danish DJ superstar Trentemøeller reconstruct these now familiar songs into new shapes.

I'm amused by these, all of which do what they can to take the Jesus and Mary Chain out of the band. One reduces them Sharin Foo's coo to chopped stutters, one focuses on her deeply echoed voice, and one is all about Sune Rose Wagner's guitar. Now if only one track were beats and feedback. Then we'd be getting somewhere.

Tracklisting for today's three song free remix EP:
1. Dead Sound (80KIDZ remix)
2. Aly, Walk With Me (Nic Endo remix)
3. Lust (Trentemøeller Remix)

Dylanology

My feature on Bob Dylan as America's leading Dylanologist ran yesterday in the San Diego Union-Tribune. Here's the story, and here are two sidebars - a downloader's guide to I'm Not There and a list of necessary reading - lumped together into one list.

Hurricane Gustav Notes

Some semi-organized thoughts now that I'm home:

-Prince gouging is illegal, but that didn't stop a Tobacco Road-like family gas station from charging $4.84 a gallon in Hammond, LA Tuesday with a cop helping to make sure the line of cars didn't get too restless. Pappy walked around with a pistol in his belt, sis pumped gas in a tight T-shirt, two older African-American men pumped gas and a backwoods Elizabeth Ashley sat in a resin lawn chair fanning herself with a file folder and overseeing the cage of chicks for sale.

-At one point, Mayor Nagin announced that Gustav was "the mother of all storms." At a literal level, what does that mean? It sounded like more of the same faux-hip nonsense that Nagin seems to think is one of his strengths, as if New Orleanians like being led by a guy who doesn't think before he speaks, then speaks in slang at its most banal.

-This time, the story was the evacuation and re-vacuation (if such a word exists). We tracked a friend's 10-plus hour trip from New Orleans to Tuscaloosa in a crawl across I-59. Others reported similarly hellish stories:

I am livid with the information we are receiving from the authorities and the media about traffic on I-59. We left our home at 3:45am and didn’t get to Hattiesburg until 1:00pm. The contraflow, which we took, was a joke. It only lasted about 10 miles or so, and was bumper-to-bumper from start to finish.
And authorities and media keep saying how wonderful contraflow is and keep downplaying the reports by drivers that there is serious traffic problems on I-59. It is irresponsible and potentially fatal to families to continue to tell them to evacuate at this time and to tell them that it is safe to go down I-59. People will run out of gas. People will not even be able to outrun the storm at this point.
It is a travesty. They are lying. And I’m tired and angry.

Mississippi also closed I-10 traffic eastbound into Alabama:

The Mississippi Department of Transportation (MDOT) has announced that hurricane evacuees will be unable to enter Alabama on I-10 eastbound due to major delays from the Biloxi-Ocean Springs area to the Mobile Tunnel. Drivers will be diverted north on Mississippi 63 at exit 69.

Evidently, Mississippi was more concerned with preserving traffic in Mobile, Alabama than getting people safely out of Louisiana.

Here's a contraflow evacuation story, and here's its official rebuttal. You'll notice nobody in that story can account for why contraflow efforts - both lanes of the freeway going away from the Gulf - ended just 10 miles into Mississippi, when four lanes had to merge back to two before cars reached points when they could disperse.

-After the storm, someone in rural Louisiana slashed my wife's tires. Country folk can complain about how lawless we city folk are - this sort of talk really goes on in Louisiana - but mean people in New Orleans have reasons for their meanness. Usually bad reasons, but reasons.

-Nagin's obstinacy when it came to re-vacuation really sounded needlessly imperial, doing things his way regardless of what other parish presidents were doing. When everybody opened around Orleans Parish, he had no choice but to let people come into the city because they couldn't be kept out if they could get into Metairie, but he shouldn't have wanted to. The underlying premise of keeping them out was to save the city from its people - that they'd come home and be pissed off at the lack of power or food and go nuts. The fact is, people help each other. They can do more to bring about the reopening of the city because they can open their stores and restaurants, they can help each other clean up, and by occupying their houses, they deter crime. Punishing people who followed the plan and left by not letting them return as quickly as is safely possible makes it less likely that they'll evacuate next time, and it treats everybody who evacuated as under suspicion, someone who'd most likely act out if allowed back in the city.