Cut Chemist Saturday

street-hassle's favorite dj CUT CHEMIST who if you are not aware has silent partner formation status with Jurassic 5 as well will be POPping at Engineering Cinémathèque Saturday, October 4th, 2008 - 9PM to 2AM. Also on the bill: THELONIOUS DUB, BLACK BIRD, PHLUID, SOUL OR SYSTEM.

$5 in post-bailout-rejected american dead presidents gets you in and we would recommend rsvping to studio1636@gmail.com.

or take a chance and get in line. Engineering Cinémathèque is at 1636 Wilcox, Hollywood, CA, 90028 (Wilcox at Hollywood Blvd.)

Brad Friedman, "Uncounted" at Fairfax Cinema tonight

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When some of we who blog get a chance to interview politicians, there's typically one guy who the pol's staff wants to call on later. His name is Brad Friedman, and he has become one of the nation's leading experts in voter fraud issues. His blog is Bradblog.

Tonight Brad and some other voter epidemiologists will be at the Fairfax Cinemas (7907 Beverly Blvd.) at 7:30pm for a special screening of Uncounted: The New Math of American Elections. If you like documentaries that aspire to tell the truth about American politics, I hope you'll attend; I know I'll be there.

And as Brad says:

Oh, and psst...say the super-secret password "NO DIEBOLD!" at the box office tonight, and get $3 off your ticket! But don't tell anyone! We'd like to keep that as much of a secret as Diebold's own passwords for all of their voting systems ("1111").

There are still enormous problems with the way America votes, especially in the electronic arena. Brad and a few others are trying to fix things.

au revoir, encore

Ne boudez pas encore! I am commencing a project and taking a break that is likely to last for a couple of months this time. Write if you like; see you soon enough!

French Theory author on KCRW today

Today at 2:30 p.m. on KCRW, Michael Silverblatt of the show Bookworm interviews François Cusset, author of French Theory: How Foucault, Deleuze, Derrida and Co. Transformed the Intellectual Life of the United States. I've written and spoken much about French Theory since May when a friend at Book Expo America gave me a copy. More info on today's show is here.

French Theory is a very important book, likely the most important book of this year in academic America. It is no less than an exhiliarating American intellectual history of the past thirty years. Occasionally (but not always), intellectual history impacts political history as well, and certain this is such a time, with one party offering a coalition of civil rights/identity politics benefactors forged over the past two generations, and the other party pushing forward another ancien régime stalwart of the nomadic war machine.

Cusset not only explains why French theory, which helped to forge identity politics and also identified the Deleuzean concept of the "nomadic war machine" for what it is, took root in American academic life, he also explains why French theory didn't take root in France itself, which is a story equally as compelling.

The interview was taped two months ago, when Silverblatt was in Paris; I hope you'll listen today or rewind it on the Internet. The show promises to make for a perfect complement to today's convention-season climax.

Put Sarah Palin on eBay

Snide, snippy, a hypocrite, and a remorseless liar, Sarah Palin is the most toxic politician to be thrust onto our national scene since the man she supported in 1996, white-apologist Pat Buchanan. You can tell that she is vindictive and Rovian at a glance---she doesn't want to disagree with you, she wants to fire you, she wants to lock you up. A mother? Huh? She is even crass enough to allow the party to pass around her unfortunate child like a prop, even pivoting him to the camera for maximum air-time.

Of all the coded white garbage she talked, for me it just ran to farce when she said, of Alaska's governor's jet, that she put it on eBay. She had too much of the impish schoolgirl in her voice---"Guess what I did, Republicans...don't tell anyone...I used a computer!" Other than that apologetic nod to life on today's planet, the rest was all carefully coded to 1950's white America--Hockey Mom, PTA, Small Town Girl...lily-whiteness.

Hypocrite: she didn't say "Jesus" once, but she said "evil" at least ten times. But what is evil to Sarah Palin? You already know if you know fundamentalists the way we in relaxed earshot of them do: it's not only terrorists, it's San Francisco, the south side of Chicago, community activism, non-Republican props...it's anything other than wholesome whiteness. Like many of her age a couple generations into white-flight now, she's meant to appeal to whites who need to save the country from you-know-who...which was what probably appealed to McCain most of all.

Contrasted to the fundamentalist gentleman who also spoke last night, Mike Huckabee, who took time to recognize the progress made in his lifetime, it made me think that an opportunity was missed: the GOP could have appeased their angry base and also selected someone polite, who actually was vetted during the campaign. No, they chose to stir and divide.

Women from Hewlett-Packard and eBay were also in the house last night, touting their girl...made you think, with all the corporate sponsorships of the GOP, why not put the Vice Presidential candidate herself on eBay, to be bought off as all their national candidates are? The auction appears to be open, and it'll be open until November 4.

Why Sarah Palin isn't allowed to field questions

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As the site Politico has noted, Sarah Palin's response to a 2006 candidate questionnaire has been taken down by the conservative website Eagle Forum for Alaska. But if you want to read it, there's a cache of the questionnaire still on the Internet.

This answer does not really qualify her for citizenship, alas.

Are you offended by the phrase “Under God” in the Pledge of Allegiance? Why or why not?

SP: Not on your life. If it was good enough for the founding fathers, its good enough for me and I’ll fight in defense of our Pledge of Allegiance.

Of course, it wasn't good enough for the founding fathers at all. Jefferson's famous epistolatory phrase "wall of separation between church and state" was more like it. And not only does the word "God" appear nowhere in the Constitution, but the Pledge of Allegiance was written in 1892, long after the last founding father passed on.

Great Moments in GOP VP History: Dan Quayle's "Murphy Brown" Speech

Ultimately, however, marriage is a moral issue that requires cultural consensus and social sanctions. Bearing babies irresponsibly is, simply, wrong. We must be unequivocal about this.

It doesn't help matters when primetime TV has Murphy Brown -- a character who supposedly epitomizes today's intelligent, highly paid, professional woman -- mocking the importance of fathers, by bearing a child alone, and calling it just another "lifestyle choice..."

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Never mind president--is she fit to be a mother?

Politico: Sarah Palin's fundamentalist pastor welcomes anti-Semitic group Jews for Jesus into his church.


If this is true, and it looks like it is...

In April Sarah Palin was with Rick Perry and others in Grapevine for an energy forum held by the Republican Governor's Association. She stood out.

The governor from Alaskan was pregnant. As it turned out, her water broke while she was in Texas. According an Alaska television station, she finished her business and then flew back to Alaska to have the baby.

I remember Gov. Palin because she was so frank about her desire to be John McCain's running mate.

...then how fit is the woman to be a mother? It seems an extraordinary risk to take with a child, especially one already known to you to be medically compromised: to give a speech and then hop on a flight, all after your water breaks.

The report jibes with the Alaska Report's news story.

The Palins were thankful that the Governor's labor began yesterday while she was in Texas at the Governor's Energy Conference where she gave the keynote luncheon address, but let up enough for her to travel on Alaska Airlines back to Alaska in time to deliver her second son.

Common sense tells us that after already delivering four kids, that baby could have come at any time. Not to go to the nearest hospital, but to fly home...(presumably without telling airlines, who generally advise against flying after 28 weeks of pregnancy), it's almost unthinkable.

Reports are also that at that very same speech, the power-craven Palin solicited the crowd regarding her becoming the vice president pick.

She has already certainly demonstrated when she decided to become the party's nominee, knowing she was subjecting her poor, unwed, knocked-up teenage daughter to the scrutiny of the nation, that she put her lust for power above being a mother and protecting her daughter from undue scrutiny. She also apparently flew 3,000 miles after her water broke, putting her own son's life in obvious peril, for the sake of bearing that child in Alaska.

This is the way she treats her own fundamentalist offspring. How will she treat godless, agnostic, or mainline religious Americans?

Sarah Palin, censorious hoodlum

Time: Sarah Palin tried to ban books at her local library.

Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor.

That should excite the hillbillies that comprise the power base of today's remaining Republican party even more.

Truly Labor Day at Last?

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NYTimes: Sarah Palin's daughter, age 17, is preggers.

We supersized orders of fries even as Americans were increasing their general girth. We supersized SUV's as oil was becoming more scarce. So it stands to reason that as we threaten to blow progressively larger holes in the ozone layer, we supersize the family itself, after a half century of promising family plannning and women's advancement in the workplace.

NPR had a story last year on the shocking suburban status phenomenon called "competitive birthing," when "four became the new three and five the new four." Forget the old disparaging remarks about Catholics and Irish washerwomen; it's been cleaned up by suburban status-seekers.

In fundamentalist Christian parlance, having a large family is having a "quiverfull" of arrows for Jesus.

Emphasis is on fertility; status conveyed by having enough kids to stay at home. But what of the women whose unions, alas, have been without abundant issue, and who have been at wit's end doubling as mother while pursuing increasingly demanding careers?

They're out of style. Sarah Palin "feminism," large family, no controls, maximum consumption, elitist, fit for Christian soldiering, is on the march.