Posts
Some Thoughts
-Man, what news to wake up to. I don't have the immediate access to news that I once had, but an early-morning walk to the coffee shop revealed the happenings in Chile. When I saw the number 8.8, my stomach immediately dropped. I can't recall ever hearing of a quake of that magnitude. It looks like Chile had the largest quake in the past 110 years in 1960 with a 9.5. Last night's quake ranks fifth. Thoughts are with the folks down there. -I bought Damien Jurado's new LP yesterday Hoquiam yesterday. It's a collaboration with his brother, and two listens, proves that Jurado's still on a roll. Beauty. -There is a temporary dog-adoption center one block from me today. Could it be the day? -I was in Amoeba yesterday and it looks like Stephin Merritt is guest DJ'ing at Amoeba-SF at 2pm on Sunday. I will be going to a screening/Q&A of the Merritt documentary on Sunday night. -This song by the Everybodyfields playing via my iTunes right now is very, very nice. ...
Chomsky : The Corporate Takeover of U.S. Democracy
Imagine if we lived in a country where the collective masses absorbed the gravity of this and acted. Chomsky writes: January 21, 2010 will go down as a dark day in the history of American democracy, and its decline. The editors of the New York Times did not exaggerate when they wrote that the Supreme Court decision that day "strikes at the heart of democracy" by having "paved the way for corporations to use their vast treasuries to overwhelm elections and intimidate elected officials into doing their bidding" -- more explicitly, for permitting corporate managers to do so, since current laws permit them to spend shareholder money without consent. Nor does Michael Waldman, executive director of the Brennan Center for Justice at N.Y.U. School of Law, exaggerate when he writes that this exercise of the radical judicial activism that the rightwing claims to deplore "matches or exceeds Bush v. Gore in ideological or partisan overreaching by the court. In that case, ...