Danny Doom’s Booze Cabinet

An old scan from a trip to New Mexico many years ago. We made a big circle going from Chicago down through Texas to New Mexico and then back up to Colorado for a day, and then home from there. Makes me itchy to think about it…

A great column in the Washington Post, Why Bill Clinton Pushed Back:

Sober, moderate opinion will say what sober, moderate opinion always says about an episode of this sort: Tut tut, Clinton looked unpresidential, we should worry about the future, not the past, blah, blah, blah.

But sober, moderate opinion was largely silent as the right wing slashed and distorted Clinton’s record on terrorism. It largely stood by as the Bush administration tried to intimidate its own critics into silence. As a result, the day-to-day political conversation was tilted toward a distorted view of the past. All the sins of omission and commission were piled onto Clinton while Bush was cast as the nation’s angelic avenger. And as conservatives understand, our view of the past greatly influences what we do in the present.

A genuinely sober and moderate view would recognize that it’s time the scales of history were righted. Propagandistic accounts need to be challenged, systematically and consistently. The debate needed a very hard shove. Clinton delivered it.

A good way to waste time is to spin around Google Earth for a while, like I did the other morning, but I just saw this article that adds a whole new element of intrigue:  “Bloggers ogle at Google Earth’s topless sunbathers.”  There’s also something about hovering cars and missiles in Iraq.  Very cool.

I don’t know what our expectations were for last night’s benefit but, wow, we certainly surpassed them.  Really.  It was quite a good time and thanks to everyone who contributed to our MaM Van fund.  Good times, people, good times!  Time to let that chapter close and move on.

Come on out and enjoy the music of Milk at Midnight tonight at The Pontiac, 1531 N. Damen, in the great city of Chicago. The theme is “Get MaM Back in the Van!” and that sad story has been told before, so let’s just have a party and drink some booze. Things should get going around 9pm and we’ll get loose and have fun, alright people? See you there!

UPDATE:

Chicagoist and Gaper’s Block spread the love.  Thanks, everybody!

I woke up early (4am) with a sick feeling and sore throat and so I drank tea and honey and spun around Google Earth for a while, looking for a place I’d been to long ago that had popped in my head recently. Then I looked for Aspen and Thompson’s compound, which I think I found, and eventually went back to bed, but not after writing a post at Daily Kos.

The last one I wrote over there was about John Kerry and his two-years-too-late ass kicking comment, and with Clinton’s performance this weekend I felt the need to reiterate the point. I don’t call myself a Democrat these days after giving money and emotion to the Kerry campaign and getting another lost cause who can’t defend himself against hacks like the Swift Boat smears, and seeing Clinton doing what he does so well only proved my point.

My point? Gore ran far away from Clinton in 2000 and then grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory without much of a fight. Vietnam veteran Kerry was steam-rolled by a “war President” who ridiculed his service to his country, and Kerry couldn’t formulate a worthy response. This would have done: “Are you fucking kidding me? This guy?!?”

Over at Daily Kos they love yesterday’s candidates. No, not the one who actually won, two terms actually, but the other ones. Listen, I voted and supported these guys too, and I think that Gore would have made a better President than either Kerry or Bush, maybe even better than Clinton himself, but who knows? Once they lose, it’s hard to get that stink off. Easier for Gore than Kerry, since he actually won, but still…

That’s unfair, there are plenty of people who agree with me at Daily Kos, but I must say, at last check the comments were close to 90, which is pretty amazing to me. Go check out that impassioned conversation over there and see what I mean.

What I really liked (so much to like!) about Clinton’s evisceration of Chris Wallace and, by extension, Fox News and their cronies, was his use of Richard Clarke’s book Against All Enemies as a guide, something which I have been doing for some time here on this very site. And it’s not that Clarke’s book is so pro-Clinton (it’s not), it is more the obvious detail and insight into what went on during his time with these administrations, and the way they dealt with these situations. I’ve never doubted his accounts because he doesn’t come across as a partisan or someone looking to settle a score. And as far as I can tell, no one has challenged the veracity of Clarke’s book.

As Clinton forcefully put it “all you have to do is read Richard Clarke’s book to look at what we did in a comprehensive, systematic way to try to protect the country against terror.” He’s right.

But the underlying point of Clinton’s outburst, or, the reason it was necessary, is captured in this exchange, with my italics added:

WALLACE: And all I can say is, I’m asking you this in good faith because it’s on people’s minds, sir. And I wasn’t…

CLINTON: Well, there’s a reason it’s on people’s minds. That’s the point I’m trying to make. There’s a reason it’s on people’s minds: Because there’s been a serious disinformation campaign to create that impression.

This country only has one person who’s worked on this terror. From the terrorist incidents under Reagan to the terrorist incidents from 9/11, only one: Richard Clarke.

And all I can say to anybody is, you want to know what we did wrong or right, or anybody else did? Read his book.

A serious disinformation campaign. There is reality and then there is right-wing spin. Take this latest piece of news:

A stark assessment of terrorism trends by American intelligence agencies has found that the American invasion and occupation of Iraq has helped spawn a new generation of Islamic radicalism and that the overall terrorist threat has grown since the Sept. 11 attacks.

Over at the Loyalist Corner (National Review) this information is interpreted for the ignorant:

Attacking your enemies can be expected to make them angrier. Hitting the beaches at Normandy is going to increase your casualties. Those are things you’ll see on your way to victory.

I wouldn’t believe this if it were in a movie. The disinformation campaign continues on, unabated. Cheers to Clinton, a real American President, for letting them have it.

You may have heard about an incident regarding the band van for Milk at Midnight this past summer. The full story is up over at the website and at myspace, but the pictures have yet to be shown to a national audience (sorry, international). So here, for the first time, are the pictures I refused to sell to People mag for untold millions, out of respect for the vehicle formerly known as The MaM Van. Unfortunately, after these were taken the van was fire-bombed and I do not have any documents of that. I was going to take pictures of the burnt-out wreckage in the morning but in the brief window of my 2 hour sleep that night they came and towed it away. So just imagine all this but much blacker (how much blacker is the question, and the answer is, well, none blacker).

The only window that did not completely get smashed was the front windshield, but it still had three big holes in it. I originally thought these were bullet holes when I went out there, as that’s what this sounded like from inside. The damage that you see here took about one minute to do, tops.

Anyway, enough of that. Next Wednesday we are having a memorial/party/fundraiser over at The Pontiac, 1531 N. Damen Ave., and we’ll see if we can scrape up some cash to get another van. Come on out and show some love!

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Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, on Benedict:

The world is still talking about the pope’s recent speech—a speech so boring, convoluted and oblique to the real concerns of humanity that it could well have been intended as a weapon of war. It might start a war, in fact, given that it contained a stupendously derogatory appraisal of Islam.

While the pope succeeded in enraging millions of Muslims, the main purpose of his speech was to chastise scientists and secularists for being, well, too reasonable.

It is ironic that a man who has just disparaged Islam as “evil� and “inhuman� before 250,000 onlookers and the world press is now talking about a “genuine dialogue of cultures.�

…one of the pope’s “most profound convictionsâ€? is that contraception is a sin. His agents continue to preach this diabolical dogma in the developing world, and even in sub-Saharan Africa, where over 3 million people die from AIDS each year. This is unconscionable and irredeemably stupid. It is also a point on which the Church has not shown much of an intelligent capacity for dialogue.

And finally:

The West is endangered, primarily, by the religious fragmentation of the human community, by religious impediments to clear thinking, and by the religious willingness of millions to sacrifice the real possibility of happiness in this world for a fantasy of a world to come. We are living in a world where untold millions of grown men and women can rationalize the violent sacrifice of their own children by recourse to fairy tales. We are living in world where millions of Muslims believe that there is nothing better than to be killed in defense of Islam. We are living in a world in which millions of American Christians hope to soon be raptured into the sky by Jesus so that they can safely enjoy the holy genocide that will inaugurate the end of human history. We are living in a world in which a silly old priest, by merely giving voice to his religious inanities, could conceivably start a war with 1.4 billion Muslims who take their own inanities in deadly earnest. These are real dangers. And they are not dangers for which more “Biblical faith� is a remedy.

Amen, brother.

More video:  President Bill Clinton talks to Jon Stewart.  Watching and listening to these quick 10 minutes, I wish the show were two hours long.  You know Clinton could keep talking…

Stereogum posts about “Nevermind” turning 15, and in its honor I will now listen to “In Utero,” the greatest rock album of all time.

Whilst we’re on a video kick, how about this one of Jon Stewart responding to douchebag Robert Novak, who appears to be on the verge, if not already…dead.  Funny stuff.

No, not the Pope!  I’m talking about, of course, the President of the United States.  Check this YouTube exchange with reporter David Gregory, from Sullivan’s site.  Notice the usual “let me finish” in there too.  This guy’s a real prick, let me tell ya.  The Pope?  That’s a whole other bag o’ beans.

I’ve been laughing at some things today, for one, Norm Macdonald on the Daily Show — high-friggin-larious. The croc hunter stuff had me crying.

For two, the comments section of this Stereogum post about the new Who songs. You know I love The Who, and Roger and Pete did an interesting song last night on Letterman, but these two songs here are just, well, they’re not doing it for me. The commentors on the post — high-friggin-larious.

Third funny thing today? The Pope! Always good for some laughs, the Popester really let it rip this time.  I’ll let the religious nuts fight it out and see how things go. Oh hey, and uh, careful not to end the world, ok everybody? Alright then, super duper…

Illinois man dies in molasses pit:

Vernon Schmidt of Danville, Ill., was removed from life support Wednesday night after being found unresponsive the day before on a platform inside an underground storage tank holding thousands of pounds of molasses.

Which reminds me, it’s time for another installment of…Letters from Andrew:

Danny,

Got to love eating molasses. It’s the perfect food. Pure genius. Molasses in a form that you can chew. I’ve been waiting for this my whole life. Those crazy Fins, no one is crazier.

Now I can get back to talking with my hands. Oprah may be queen of issuing the order: “talk to the hand”, but I “talk with the hands.” Remember when she got that award? The golden hand award. It’s an arm with a palm facing you and “Talk to the hand” engraved in a fancy italic font. I think it was because that was voted the best new “pop phrase” of the year. What year was that again?

It’s been so long I don’t know what I should get on with. I did the Henry Miller thing so many times. Did you ever read his autobiography series? Sexus, Plexus, and Nexus. There was a scene (is that what you call it in a book?) where he has a good day and he goes to the beach and lies down. He writes in his mind. He comes up with so much there is no way he can remember it.

Did I ever tell you about the Unemployed Philosopher’s guild? They make toys. They make finger puppets that are hilarious. The box can be cut open into a stage. They have a series of the axis of evil finger puppets. Our public radio station gave some of them away with a pledge. There are 6 puppets in each set. Google it. If you don’t know the URL for google, I’ll google google for you and send it to you. Ok? Or you could go to yahoo to find the URL for google, or metacrawler for yahoo, then yahoo for google. You told 2 friends, and they told 2 friends, and so on and so on and so on.

A strange transaction late at night in an alley in which 3 bowling pins are traded for a bowling ball that’s been sawed in half,

Andrew