Dirty Projectors - Stillness is the Move

Phoenix - "Lisztomania"

Grizzly Bear - "Cheerleader"

It's true. That is offensive!

So John Boehner, bless his heart, decides to have whipped up a Bush/Cheney '04 style "Isn't Obama clearly an Islamic terrorist?" video, and I suppose what else is there really for him to do at this point.

But towards the end, after it has delivered the shocking news that Obama doesn't want you to hear and cued the ominous orchestral music, reminiscent of the final scene in "The Usual Suspects," it runs a montage where, in between images of the Hugo Chavez handshake and a burning American flag, is a picture of Obama with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. Just sitting with them around a conference table, as if at a meeting of some sort.

Nydia Velazquez, the chairwoman of the CHC and my representative, called the video "a completely inappropriate message for the leader of the minority party to send to the American people." Rep. Raul Grijalva went ahead and called it "racist," which I think is a super-uncontroversial claim.

Boehner's office responded that the criticism was "beyond silly." When I read that, and I hadn't seen the video, I wondered if maybe there was some context that made it less offensive than it sounded. But no. It's really pretty bad:

Super Furry Animals - "Moped Eyes"

LOLNOM

h/t

Qualcomm brings teh funny

Almost unsettlingly high production values in this April Fool's video from Qualcomm:

h/t

DM Stith - "Pity Dance"

Animal Collective - "My Girls"

British Sea Power - "No Lucifer"

WFaNFC - Sarah Dreams of Summer

Now is the time for pettiness

Why is there even discussion about what to do about Joe Lieberman?

This scumbag was re-elected representing the Connecticut for Lieberman Party, running against the duly nominated Democrat as the de facto Republican in the race. He just finished stumping across the country for the Republican nominee. He should be treated as hostile and efforts should be made to have a real Democrat replace him in 2012. Ned Lamont wasn't a very good candidate, but he still put up a pretty good showing despite his batshit crazy opponent getting endorsed by Barack Obama and other national Dems, and of course the GOP, which provided the bulk of his votes.

There are limits to what the Democratic leadership can do to him, but it should definitely explore them.

Hitting harder now

Back when things weren't looking quite so good on the polling front, there was a lot of speculation that the Obama campaign was just too reluctant to really go after McCain aggressively. Well I'm no expert, but to me this ad appears to be filmed from the viewpoint of an old man staggering around the Oval Office with his vision going dark at the edges:



Strong stuff.

Band of Horses - Our Swords

TV on the Radio - Dancing Choose

The ultimate Sarah Palin interview clip

This one's my favorite. For one thing, it's hilarious, and it contains the ultimate Palin answer ("All of 'em."). But it also has a more troubling side to it: the way she flips it on Katie by pretending the question bespeaks anti-Alaskan snobbery. "You fancypants city folk think we Alaskans don't have newspapers!"

Well she didn't just read one newspaper...



BTW, I don't watch the evening news and if I did Katie Couric would be my third choice, but at this point I'd have to say she did a fantastic job of exposing Sarah Palin. I don't know, maybe any interview would have gone that badly, but from the clips Katie was really not as deferential as Steve Schmidt would have liked.

LCD Soundsystem called it

New York, you're perfect
Don't please don't change a thing
Your mild billionaire mayor's
Now convinced he's a king.

And indeed, it looks like Mayor Mike is not about to let some two-term limit get in the way of his threepeat.

I wish I had strong feelings about this one way or the other, but I have no knowledge of New York City politics. All I know about Bloomberg is that he was mayor when I moved here, and I haven't detected much improvement or deterioration since then. Oh, and his reelection campaign was a brutal display of financial power. There was grousing about running up the score.

[Update: Uber-crook Tom DeLay is on Hardball talking to Chris Matthews about the importance of government transparency, in the course of defending the GOP's bailout bill ambush. So foul.]

Maybe it would be interesting to have a competitive race, but my sense is that the absence of municipal news from the front page of the Times means Bloomberg is doing a good job. The constant barrage of anti-smoking propaganda has been the one personal initiative of his I'm aware of, and now that I've quit (no, I don't give him any credit) it won't be so annoying.

"Hi, I'm corrupt Republican Tom Feeney..."

I was just sitting here having having a cup of coffee. Just reading the paper, next to some fruit, in a douchebaggy lavender open-collar dress shirt... Anyways I just wanted to tell you, the good people of FL-24, that I'm really sorry about that Abramoff thing. I didn't know what the deal was. Really.



Via Chris Cillizza, who writes:
Politicians, as a rule, don't like to apologize, and they certainly don't like to apologize in front of tens of thousands of viewers. And, there is recent evidence that a mea culpa by an endangered politician doesn't make things better...

Oh no, I'm sure "I embarrassed you" (he actually says this in the ad) is actually a stunningly effective bit of political messaging. But time will tell.

Update:
“Obviously, the ‘mea culpa’ ad is not a huge genre in American politics,” said Ken Goldstein, director of the Wisconsin Advertising Project, a University of Wisconsin project that collects and codes political ads. “If someone has done something bad enough that they think they need to apologize for it with a television ad, they’ve usually decided not to run.”
via

Indeed

h/t Tristero

The Walkmen - In the New Year

h/t Metacritic