BIPARTISANSHIP YOU CAN BELIEVE IN

So you may have heard that President Obama has authorized the assassination of a US citizen overseas – which he can do thanks to George W Bush giving himself that authority eight years ago.

Which would be ironic except that, for the most part, Obama has either used, defended or kept most of Bush’s constitutionally-suspect terror-fightin’ processes. For example, the CIA is still allowed to render suspects to overseas prisons for questioning. They just have a little more oversight now. And we can’t waterboard them now.

Progress!

Either way, I’m having trouble deciding which bothers me more:

(1) Conservatives hammering Obama for being a terror-hugging Muslim Socialist whose cuddly liberal terror policies are putting all of you in grave danger despite the fact that he’s more or less doing what Bush did, or –

(2) Liberals having little to say about this when they spent so much time bashing Bush for doing the same thing.

 

Admittedly, there’s no mystery as to why this is happening. In politics, no one wants to dump on their own guy (“He’s a swine, but he’s OUR swine”), and Republicans can’t very well praise Obama in public after spending the last 18 months demonizing him as the New Muslim Socialist Hitler. Because, you know, how awkward is that?

There are exceptions, of course. Jon Stewart, for one. And now (finally) KO, who for all his theatrical bombast and Murrow fantasies was pretty much the only person on TV bothering to report and comment on the Bush admin’s disregard for the Constitution and rule of law. He’s not happy about the assassination thing.

As opposed to Andy McCarthy at the National Review, who (and I can't believe I'm typing this) gave Obama credit for doing something right for once in his life.

Bipartisanship!

(On the other hand, others at the NR are now magically worried that the President might have too much power now that he’s a liberal. Wow. I mean, who saw THAT coming?)

Obviously, none of this matters for people who felt that the economy and healthcare were bigger priorities in Obama Year 1, or who think that terrorism should be exempt from the due process system anyway (because surely you can trust yr govt to know who is guilty and who isn’t, right?). I don’t think it should regardless of who’s President. But then terrorists don’t scare me.

On the bright side, a US court recently ruled that the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program authorized by Bush is illegal, which will theoretically make it harder for Obama to use the same program.

And none of this is to say that we would have been better off with a McCain/Palin dynasty. Still, it’s fair to say the “change” has been cosmetic on the civil liberties/foreign policy front.

Use yr illusion III,

This is dF

THEY DO THE DOUBLE DUTCH, THAT’S THEM DANCING

So Malcolm McLaren is gone.

bedsitter23  has as good a write-up on McLaren’s influence and accomplishments as I could ever write. McLaren’s management skills were often manipulative and ultimately destructive, but no one can deny he knew a good thing when he saw one – New York Dolls, Sex Pistols, Bow Wow Wow, etc – and that he saw the value of punk as a way to make rock exciting and mean something again (even if he frequently destroyed his own bands in the process).

The other interesting thing about him, and something he’s less known for (in the US, anyway) is that when he finally moved on from punk and decided to release his own music, he turned to hip-hop and the idea of sampling for inspiration and was one of the first artists to export it from the US to the UK with Duck Rock.

I wouldn’t say he “got” hip-hop before anyone else who didn’t come up in that scene, but he was probably one of the few that did – which is saying something at a time when most music critics wrote off hip-hop and sampling as a fly-by-night fad for people with no musical talent that would never amount to anything.

Granted, most of McLaren’s solo stuff (hip-hop or otherwise) I can take or leave, compared to the bands he managed. But I do have the two big singles from Duck Rock on my iPod. And I have to say this is my favorite of the two.

Watch on YouTube

Round the outside,

This is dF