Sadly, No!

Guitar Wolf – ‘Jet Generation’ (3:29)

I wish there were a better copy of this floating around, because it’s objectively the rulingest thing in the history of the world. That isn’t a judgment; it’s scientific fact.

Dr. Bérubé, over at Bérubé Online, has been trying to puff up the Ramones lately — and truth be told, while his band of Columbia University new-wavers opened for the Ramones in 1982, my band of minimum-wage Jersey-suburban hardcore idiots opened for them in ’84 (at City Gardens, in Trenton). And what Bérubé forgets to mention is that the Ramones were wusses, afraid of competition: Their soundman had standing orders to turn the volume way down for the opening bands so that nobody could upstage them. The thing about Guitar Wolf is that they could have challenged the Ramones with the PA totally shut off and nothing but a couple of cranked Fender Champs in the backline. They only seem louder when you turn the volume down. Try it.

Bad Brains – ‘Attitude,’ live 1979 (1:29)

Hardcore punk isn’t a white-guy genre, but equally a black one. The Bad Brains were Washington DC’s all-black punk band, circa ’79, while New York and Philadelphia each had their own (The NY Niggers and Pure Hell). There are a few West Coast bands who sounded like this a year or so earlier, but nobody remembers them. And a year or so later, the Bad Brains’ DC white-guy fan club had become Minor Threat, Government Issue, Youth Brigade, and all that whole Dischord Records thing that everyone agrees is historically foundational (Henry Rollins, singer of SOA, migrated to Black Flag in 1981).

An ongoing research topic. Which brings us to…

Blitz – ‘Someone’s Gonna Die Tonight,’ homemade vid by Danish skinhead soccer thugs (2:26)

As with Rush, Pink Floyd, the Grateful Dead, and a lot of bands like that, the real issue isn’t whether the music is any good (it often pretty much is), but whether you can stand the other fans. Blitz were actually very moderate politically, and later morphed into a decent synthpop band. If you can believe that.

(More, somewhat later, super-excessive live Bad Brains after the jump.)
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John Merline kindly stops by this humble blog to dispute our assertion that he is an illiterate liar, and writes in the comments to this post:

Interesting line of argument, in that you take Bush’s word for it on his budget numbers when it is convenient, and dispute his forecast when that suits your case.

Our interest piqued, we read on:
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OK, you perverted horndogs, this is the moment you’ve all been waiting for: Marie has written a sex column:

One sure way of not having a wedding ring on your finger

Marie Jon’
February 7, 2006

There is an old saying: “Why buy the cow when you are getting the milk for free.” It is an old and possibly crude saying, but it is one that provides truth.

In a thoroughly modern and pleasure-driven world, might this “old and crude” saying possibly be referring to sex? Indeed.

We’re one paragraph in, and she’s already talking about hot cow sex? Kinky!
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Woof. This is quite the smackdown. Or as a much wiser man once said:

A wise man told me don’t argue with fools
‘Cause people from a distance can’t tell who is who
So stop with that childish shit, nigga, I’m grown
Please leave it alone – don’t throw rocks at the throne
Don’t bark up that tree, that tree will fall on you
I don’t know why your advisors didn’t forewarn you

H to the heh-oh, i to indizz-ay.

Wah-wah-waaaaaaaaaah:

George C. Deutsch, the young NASA press aide who resigned on Tuesday in the center of a storm over claims that he had tried to keep keep the agency’s top climate scientist from speaking publicly about global warming, defended himself today in his first public interviews.

Speaking to a Texas radio station and then briefly to The New York Times, Mr. Deutsch said the scientist, James E. Hansen, exaggerated the threat of warming. […]

In the interview, Mr. Deutsch said that Dr. Hansen had partisan ties “all the way up to the top of the Democratic Party,” and that he was “using those ties and using his media connections to push an agenda, a worst-case-scenario agenda of global warming.” He said that anyone who disagrees with Dr. Hansen “is labeled a censor and is demonized and vilified in the media — and the media of course is a willing accomplice here.”

Mr. Deutsch contended that although Dr. Hansen was a scientist, he wanted to talk about policy as well as science. “He wants to demean the president, he wants to demean the administration and create a false perception that the administration is watering down science and lying to the public,” Mr. Deutsch said. “And that is patently false.”

Start a blog, George. Please, please, please start a blog.

Over at TCS, John Merline writes:

All of which raises the question: Did anyone actually bother to read the budget? Apparently not. [He likely meant Sadly, No! –S,N!] Because a casual look through the document finds that few of the claims holds water. As it turns out:

As it turns out = let the fun begin!

The Defense budget is going down, not up. Bush has set total Defense spending for 2007 at $504 billion, down from $512 billion in 2006. (Bush is increasing the “core” defense budget; the savings come from a proposed cutback in “emergency funding” for the Iraq War.) Bush wants to cut Defense spending still more in 2008, to $473 billion.

The White House says!

Provides $439.3 billion for the Department of Defense’s base budget—a 7-percent increase over 2006 and a 48-percent increase over 2001

Of course, to anyone outside of the TCS brain trust, it’s quite apparent that FY 2006 isn’t quite over yet, so any conclusions about the Defense department budget for that year is a bit early. Especially in light of this:

The country’s two overseas wars and its homeland defense could cost as much as $10 billion a month this year, nearly 50 percent more than last year, the White House estimates.

But hey, John has seen the future and knows the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan won’t cost any more than projected in 2007, just as it has so far:

Even the White House admits its deficit projection for 2007 is probably low because this budget only asks for $50 billion in war money; we needed $120 billion in 2005.

Back to John:

Bush proposes spending $43.6 billion on Homeland Security, down from $43.8 billion in 2006. The figure keeps dropping each year for the next five.

Funny that’s not what the White House says:

The President’s Budget:
Increases spending on non-defense homeland security activities by 8 percent Government-wide compared to 2006;
The 2007 programmatic Budget request for the Department is $35.6 billion, an increase of $2.3 billion (7 percent) over 2006

Or even:

Total, Homeland Security Funding 54,862 (2006, enacted) 58,282 (2007, requested)

Two strikes John, wanna take another swing?

Education spending is through the roof: Even if Bush does convince Congress to trim back on education spending in 2007, the Department of Education’s budget will be 80% bigger than when Bush took office.

Survey says!

Total, Outlays 72,945 (2005, actual) 83,984 (2006, estimate) 64,484 (2007, requested)

The requested authority stays at the 2007 level through 2011. Which is another way of saying that:

Nearly all of this growth took place between 2001 and 2003, as the No Child Left Behind Act was being implemented. Most of the new spending was for aid to K-12 schools (including special education funding), which jumped from $19 billion to $32 billion. An $8 billion hike in college student financial aid dominated the rest of the spending increase.

Three strikes, but we give John one extra swing anyway:

Medicare “cuts” aren’t cuts at all: The program will continue to grow at a healthy clip over the next five years, spending $100 billion more in 2011 than in 2007. All Bush is proposing is a modest adjustment in the rate of increase. Yes, the change adds up to $36 billion over five years, but that’s a mere 1.6% of the $2.2 trillion in projected Medicare spending for those years.

This is an old argument, and one that won’t be settled here. Does funding at a level that is short of the increase in the cost of a given program (whether that increase is due to inflation or whatever,) amount to a cut or “simply” a reduction in growth? If inflation goes up 10% and your take home pay goes up by 5%, did your salary increase in any meaningful way? Did it go down?

You make the call — but of the four “points” made by John in his opening, keep in mind that this is strongest one.

If you are a producer or reporter who is interested in receiving more information about this article or the author, please email your request to [email protected]

Sadly, No!

It’s so easy to win when winning is defined as “announcing that you’ve won:”

In short, the larger political battle over wiretaps is over, and the President has won the argument among the American people.

Sadly, No!:

Should the Bush administration be required to get a warrant from a judge before monitoring phone and Internet communications between American citizens in the United States and suspected terrorists, or should the government be allowed to monitor such communications without getting a warrant?

Should be required to get a warrant, 50 percent
Should be allowed to monitor without a warrant, 48 percent

Partisan attacks continue to be launched against William Tweed! However, it is the opinion of this journal that, marked according to his considerable successes, no man is better suited nor situated to occupy a position guarding the funds of our fair Republic. Therefore we greet as excellent news that Mr. Tweed has been vouchsafed a position on the Senate House* Appropriations Committee.

Appropriate on, Mr. Tweed, and may History in her fairest and most jubilant measurings henceforth reckon the balances.

[This entry is all Gavin, baby!]

* Thanks to SullyWatch.

Andrew Longman, the Renew America pundit who recently wrote about the apocalyptic perils of nuclear-armed Islamist gay cowboys, is back with a public safety feature on how to prepare for nuclear war (WARNING: this piece contains dangerously strong levels of wingnuttery, so read it at your own risk. Sadly, No! is not responsible for any brain hemorrhages you may incur):

Preparing for nuclear war, vol I

Andrew Longman
February 8, 2006

While the subject is not very enjoyable, the times seem to require that we disseminate basic information about how to deal with nuclear detonations on American soil so that much loss of life may be averted if, in fact, the difficult happens.

Ridiculing this article is going to be the easy.
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The Wall Street Journal takes a dump on the Oscars and adds:

The “controversial” label won’t stick forever. In fact, few of the hot topics in movies mentioned in any award category this year are truly original or daring.

We’d guess it’s too bad that no one in Hollywood had the courage to tackle a truly original theme like Mel Gibson’s Crouching Jesus, Hidden Agenda.