20041029

Election Post

5 more days until the election (as evidenced by the amount of e-mails I've gotten from moveon.org, asking me to call Kerry supporters in swing states), so today I've gone blogging crazy. I'm putting aside my mistrust of the two party system for the moment and supporting Kerry (and by Kerry, I mean "Not Bush"). But first, let's start with the nonpartisan stuff. Even though no one has any excuse what-so-ever to forget to vote, let me just say again, go out and vote. Newly registered voters should be aware that there has been speculation that many people may not be able to vote because of "honest mistakes," like what happened to many minorities who happened to have similar names as convicted felons in Florida in 2000. The fact that many people don't know about this means that it could easily happen again. So bring your cell phones if you've got 'em. If you're given any problems, report all the details to 1-866-MYVOTE1. If it's an emergency and you need legal assistance, call 1-866-OURVOTE. Keep these numbers with you, you never know. Even if you don't have any problems, someone else might when you're there. Do what you can for them.

Now, because of a bit of confusion, I somehow made it to a list of "conservative bloggers" (apparently, I've been too ambiguous on this blog) and was sent an e-mail of documents about Bush and Cheney, including DUI's for both of them, the Bush twins' possession of alcohol, personal memos between George W. and Ken Lay from Enron, etc. They were asking me and other bloggers to try to prove them as false, despite the fact that some of these documents have been undisputed since the 2000 election (also despite the fact that I've never done anything like this, and am therefore probably not that qualified). Unfortunately, the site (which was hosted as yesbushcan.com has now been redirected to the official web site for re-election of Bush and Cheney, so I can't share them with you. But I'm assuming this means that they didn't have a great deal of luck with the other conservative bloggers either. Oh, by the way, in case you missed the few hours when their site was hacked into, you can see the spoof site here.

Ok, remember those couple of weeks where I was blogging much? Well this is my way of making it up to you, by providing a soundtrack for your trip to the polls on election day. I've dug up all the relivant political stuff from posts past, as well as some new stuff. There's tons out there, so keep an eye open. I may be adding to this post this weekend if I find enough to add to it, otherwise, I'll probably leave it as the top post for a couple of days (probably after the election results come in, or November 3rd, whichever comes first). There's a ton of mp3's here, both music and spoken word tracks, so unfortunately I haven't included a source link for all of them. But a lot of them come from Thurston Moore's Protest Records and the satirical group, Billioniares for Bush. On my way out of work today, a man was listening to a cassette teaching him to speak English and learn American customs. The recording said, "The President of the United States is George W. Bush." To this, the doorman laughs and said, "Your tape is outdated." So enjoy, vote, and let's all hope for the best.

Music,
Beastie Boys - In a World Gone Mad

Cat Power - Rockets

Cat Power - Maybe Not

Sonic Youth - Youth Against Fascism

Mike Watt & Thurston Moore - Fourth Day of July

Soylent Gringo - Let's Start a War

Saul Williams - Freestyle (No Man's Land)

Matt Rogalsky & George W. Bush - Two MinutesFifty Seconds Silence for America (repost)

DJ Vadim - Headline News (Revisited) (repost)

Alias - Eyes Closed (repost)

cLOUDDEAD - Rifle Eyes

DJ Shadow and Zach de la Rocha - March of Death (repost)

DJ Spooky & Saul Williams - The Pledge to Resist

Spoken Word,
Noam Chomsky - Big Business And The General Population - A Nation Divided (repost)

Noam Chomsky - Latin America, The U.S. And Globalization (repost)

Noam Chomsky - The Problems With Iraq (repost)

Noam Chomsky - U.S. Doctrinal Constraints On Middle East Peace (repost)

Noam Chomsky - Why Do They Hate Us? (repost)

Jello Biafra - Beat Around the Burning Bush (repost)

Jello Biafra - Miscue 911 (repost)

Jello Biafra - Propane and Propane Accessories (repost)

Jello Biafra - The Big Ka Boom (repost)

Satire - Billionares 4 Bush PSA's,
B4B - In Bed

B4B - Middle Class Nightmare

B4B - Return to Riches

B4B - Democracy on the Block

B4B - Sound Advice

B4B - Max and Jasper

Satire - Billionares 4 Bush Radio Commentaries,
B4B - Clean Air

B4B - Clear Cutting

B4B - Iraqi Handover

B4B - Media Consolidation

B4B - Tax Cuts

B4B - US in Iraq

B4B - Child Sweatshops

B4B - Wealth Consolidation

B4B - Halliburton

B4B - Voting Machines

B4B - Canadian Drugs

B4B - Death Tax

B4B - French Contracts

B4B - John Kerry

B4B - Bribery

B4B - Kenneth Lay

B4B - Swift Boat

More Satire,
Chris Morris - Bushwacked 2

Eric Idle - FCC Song (repost)

20041026

A farewell to a legend

R.I.P. John Peel. One of BBC Radio's most important DJ's has died of a heart attack at age 65. He helped bring a lot of important music to the forefront in England, many of which have songs available here. This is a collection of songs recorded as part of various Peel Sessions for Radio 1. In tribute, I'm going to also add this link to the sidebar.

I've been slacking a bit again, I know, but a longish post will be up in a day or two with a ton of stuff.

20041024

To All Fans of The Daily Show

For anyone interested, the media company that I work for has produced a show about presidential campaigns hosted by former Daily Show corespondent, Mo Rocca (he was also on a bunch of VH1's I Love the 80's shows). I did some work for the show a couple of months ago, mostly research and post-production, so I didn't actually get to work with Mo Rocca or anything. But from what I've seen for it so far, it should be a good show, especially if your a fan of his. Very tongue in cheek humor about deciding on a presidential based on their hair, choice of pets, etc. The show's called How They Won and it will be on this Tuesday, October 26th at 9pm (EST) on the History Channel.

20041021

Jimmy Edgar

Very quick post today, sorry about that. Just felt like I should get something up here since I missed a couple of weeks of posting. That said, Jimmy Edgar really furthers my belief that one day I should take a pilgrimage to Detriot. I feel like you can generally tell a lot about a place from the music it produces and between Derrick May, Juan Atkins and Carl Craig, I've always wanted to see the place anyway. But Jimmy Edgar combines the styles of Detriot; the own brand of techno, early hip hop, electro, etc. I posted a track from him a little while back until his Morris Nightengale alias. This one comes from his new Warp Records release, Bounce, Make, Model.

Jimmy Edgar - I Wanna Be Your STD

(source)

20041019

Untitled//Tarwater

First off, to John at Tofu Hut, sorry about pointing out the skanky remark and taking it out of context a bit. I kid of course. It was too good not to mention, but I have nothing but respect for the Hut.

Oh, an update on a track the 808 State tracks that I posted a little while ago (I meant to post this since my brief hiatus started). Rephlex recently released some old stuff by them, including an EP of New Order remixes they used to play live and Prebuild, a collection of early demos from the days when Gerald Simpson was still with them. I got a copy of Prebuild (which takes its name from the first 808 State release, Newbuild, also available on Rephlex) and it's an incredible cd. The Gerald Simpson tracks are some amazing lo-fi, particularly Cosacosa. A must for any 808 State or acid house people out there. I think it actually rivals Newbuild.

In my searches for some new To Rococo Rot tracks, I came across Tarwater, a side project from TRR's Ronald Lippok. These are the bands that become the logical extension of German krautrock, like a current day Can. But the sound isn't Can, Neu, Kraftwerk or any of the original krautrock artists. Instead it draws some its influence (along with those artists) from modern, minimalist electronic experiments. So while it can be pretty glitchy, there's a familar feel to it, more of a human fault than computer error.

Tarwater - Visit (To Rococo Rot Mix)

(source)

20041018

Jon Stewart on Crossfire

For those people who, like me, missed The Daily Show's Jon Stewart appearing on CNN's Crossfire, Stereogum was good enough to post some highlights and an mp3 of the audio from the program. If you read the comments on the post, there are also some links where you can find the video too. It's a really amazing interview. I have a lot of respect for Jon Stewart to be saying the things that he is; it needs to be heard. Read/listen/watch here.

Blogger News//Beans

Back to blogging on a regular basis (with music again). I have a lot of stuff that I've missed out on updating, so I'm going to try to catch up with it all. First of all, blogging news and some new links I've added over the past few weeks. Please take up some of your disk/ipod space with downloads from Aurgasm (listen to Cinematic Orchestra and Skalpel), Dozer (To Rococo Rot and Venetian Snares) and Edit 209 (bootlegs!). New nonmusic blogs include Loveecstasycrime, sort of a blog of a blog addict, with postings about politics and music too. And who knew that Salam Pax has had a new blog for a few months now. It doesn't update as often as the old one, but it can offers some good insight into the current state of a Iraq from someone who's been living in Baghdad. The new one is called (admittedly somewhat less poetically) Shut Up You Fat Whiner!

Also, today John over at Tofu Hut posted his interview with me, as part of his Meet the Neighbors blog reviewing. You can read it here. In it, he describes my method of blogging (ie: not paying for hosting and getting my mp3's from elsewhere) as "skanky." And well, I suppose he's right. But here's my reasoning, there are a ton of great mp3's online already. I just put some of my favorites together in one place. That and the fact that most of my money was going towards playing rent, etc. for a while. But admittedly, there's a lot of great stuff that I'm not able to post because it doesn't exist online, so maybe the future of Radio Babylon will include some host based stuff once the money's a bit more steady (it's getting there). Until then, I'm still finding a ton of good music online, so I will continue to skank it up for a little while. (By the way, that interview appears in the same post as some amazing songs by DJ Shadow and Kraftwerk, which should be heard by all).

Which brings us to today's song, a new track from Beans. Unfortunately, Beans usually makes me nostalgic for the old days before Anti-Pop Consortium broke up. After going their seperate ways, Beans seems to have focused on a more accessible hip hop song. Not quite as exciting as the experimental Anti-Pop sound in my opinion, but every once in a while he can still make an amazing track. Diamond Halo Grenade has more of a glitch hop feel that most of the tracks on his solo album. It reminds me a little of the Prefuse 73 remix of his track, Mutescreamer.

Beans - Diamond Halo Grenade

(source)

20041013

More of my liberal bias

Ok, well there's a lot to comment about again, but I'm keeping this session of my debate commentary shorter. This is from the third presidential debate. I promise that my next post will be coming soon (and it'll actually have music on it) (really).

-Did anyone else hear this or was it just me? Bush said that Kerry has not voted on any health care reforms and I swear I heard someone cheer. My understanding is that under the rules of these debates, Bush should have had time taken away from his closing arguments, as the debates are supposed to be completely silent from the audience.

-My current favorite Bush quote: "With all due respect, I don't think it's wise to trust leading news sources on... oh, nevermind." Oops, almost offended your buddy Rupert there.

-Bush: "Look at other countries who have tried government funded health care." Yup, he's now officially insulted every single other industrialized nation in the world, but suggesting that universal health care is a bad move. And exactly who is envious of our health care system?

-Remember back in the mid-90's when the phone companies were fighting with each other. Everyday you'd see a new commercial from company X about how company Y was lying to you about their phone plans, followed by a commercial from company Y about how company X was lying to you much worse. And this would just keep repeating with additional phone companies coming into the fight, until finally you just gave up completely and isolated . That what these debates remind me of. So if you want to know how each side is slanting these arguments in their favor, I recommend spinsanity.org

20041009

"Town Hall" Debate

OK, this is going to be a long one. These are things I noted during the second presidential debate between George W. Bush and John Kerry:

-OK! First question of this democratic "town hall" debate! Alright, so everything is predetermined and controled, so it may put a limit on how tough these questions are can be. Even so, here is it, the people's chance to finally look these two candidates square in the eye and ask the things that people really want to know about the war in Iraq, the questions of homeland security, sky rocketing health care costs and unemployment rate. First question: "Senator Kerry, why do my friends think you're wishy-washy?" And that ladies and gentlemen was the point when our political discourse plummeted down to a question of wishy-washyness. Fuck, this is going to be a long debate...

-We now move on to candidate confidence building questions, because obviously they both need a break after spending the last few minutes trying to look dignified while using the word "wishy-washy" over and over again. Instead they got questions these questions. To Bush: "Was and the War in Iraq justified?" To Kerry: "Would you do anything different in Iraq?" They could have made this a lot easier by just asking them both to paraphrase the same things they've said since the beginning of the Democrat primaries. Apparently, these questions were intended for people who have been living alone in the woods, Thoreau-like, for the past three years.

-So Bush was forced to admit that Iraq is now officially reported to have no weapons of mass destruction. His response, that the intelligence community and even John Kerry himself also thought they had those weapons. So, our intelligence community and both major candidates for president were catastrophicly wrong, leading us into a war for no reason and distracted us from the real people who attacked the World Trade Center and Pentagon, as well as increasing the potential for further attacks on America. I feel safer already! This could be a good approach for Bush, suggesting that Kerry will make all the same mistakes. So, as they say, why change horsemen mid-apocalypse?

-Well the questions are improving anyway. Bush is asked about his plans to work with other nations. He points to his unpopularity in Europe and says that he can't change his mind because of political pressure, although I imagine his inner monologue at this point sounding like a broken record of his old "If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists" speeches. He hasn't used that one in a while. I guess that's not great for the campaign trial.

-Kerry's plan to remove all the enriched uranium from the former Soviet Union in 4 years instead of 13. Mr. Bush, your response? "That answer makes me want to scowl." Moving right along...

-The inevidable question about another draft. Bush hears "there's rumors on the internets." Yup, he said "internets." Plural. Of course this really isn't the issue. You know, Kerry should really use this oppurtunity to point out that there is an active draft for enlisted men and women who think they've finished their service and then get sent back for second and third tours. Wait, did he just say it? I think he did! Points for Kerry!

-Bush says the best way to secure America is to stay on the offensive. I see two flaws with this logic. First, it makes it seem like you're simply using our men and women in uniform as a human shield to protect the homeland. Why go attack America when Americans can come to you? America is a lot safer until you count our military loses. Second, does this mean that we're potentially fighting wars forever?

-Bush asks how we can build a coalition is we say that the war was a mistake? Well I'm no politician, but I would think that Kerry might want to say something like, "Listen, you didn't support our last president's decisions and neither did I. However, I think that we can agree that there is a humanitarian crisis going on in Iraq which is much more important than a question of what corporations are helping to rebuild the war-torn country. We know that we can no longer go at this alone and we'd like to get your support and input on how we can stabilize Iraq and truly give them a nation they can be proud to call their own instead of one that the West created for them." I don't know, maybe that's too long winded. Something more sound bitey might be better, like "You're either with us, or you're with the terrorists" (who was I kidding, it's a still a classic line).

-Bush just said "Missoura," didn't he? Oh what the hell, I'll give him a point for that one. Everyone should get at least one in these things, right?

-OK, Kerry and Edwards with their poor Senate records. I'm wondering, Senators who have run for office in the past, what have their Senate records looked like, considering that they all have to tour the country campaigning? Especially in an election year like this one. And what about all that time Bush spend on vacation in August 2001? Just a thought.

-The environment! This is a good one. Bush says that the air is cleaner and that less people have complained about the quality of water. I seem to remember very early on in the Bush presidency when Bush signed a bill allowing a higher level of arsenic in the nation's drinking water. This was relatively big news at the time and many people were against it. Then shortly after 9/11 (when people had more important things to worry about), there was a tiny article in the paper saying that Bush had repealed it and set the standards back the way they were. Remember the way the game goes now, everytime Bush refers to Kerry as a flip flopper, everyone takes a drink.

-For anyone interested, the comment about Bush owning a timber company refers to his owning a large amount of stock in a timber company. I think that Bush's hesitation there was so that he wouldn't accidently end up making about wood that could be considered sexually suggestive.

-How many people in the audience do you think lied about being undecided in order to get into the debates?

-Bush doesn't think that the Patriot Act waters down the rights of Americans and doesn't seem to understand why some Americans think it does. Yet it's "the most liberal senator" John Kerry that's out of touch with the people of this country.

-Stem cell research. This is a tough one, but Kerry can do it. Talk about the advances that doctors are expecting to find by using these frozen (not living) embryos to cure all kinds of diseases. Go, John Kerry, Go!! NO, DON'T JUST STARE BLANKLY AT THE AUDIENCE!! Oh, I know. What about how first lady, Laura Bush, spoke against their use on the grounds that they were giving false hope to patients who think that the results would be immediate. She basically told the American people that any scientific discovery that wasn't immediate wasn't worth pursuing. Come on, John Kerry! Attack! Crap, let's move on...

-Ok, appointing judges on the Supreme Court, Kerry's doing better. I want to go up to him and whisper in his ear that he should mention how Ruth Bader Ginsburg has been suffering with cancer but doesn't want to step down because she's afraid of who Bush would replace her with. I tried shouting at the TV. It didn't help.

-I really wish Bush would stop talking about the new jobs he created. Didn't he lose more than he created? Anyone have an accurate figure on this?

-"Mr. Bush, can you give three instances where you made mistakes and admit what went wrong?" Bush made it clear that that was for the historians to worry about and then went on to defend his invasion of Iraq, yet again. In other words, he admitted that he probably has made mistakes, but that he doesn't want to admit that he's learned from them, least he appear to be flip-flopping. Perhaps it's just me and my liberal bias, but I would think that part of learning from the mistakes of history is admitting what you did wrong yesterday.

-So that was the debate. My prediction of what the polls will look like: the Republicans will say Bush won, the Democrats will say Kerry won and the undecideds will still be undecided.

-One more debate next week. And I swear I'll get back to posting music and everything else very soon.

20041006


An apology. Lots of stuff that needs to be blogged about, but no time for updates. Radio Babylon will return shortly.