“ESPN would duct tape Brett Favre to Derek Jeter and throw them both into the mouth of a live volcano if it meant they could have the Cubs and Red Sox in the World Series.”

If you’re not reading King Kaufman over at Salon, then you’re missing one of the best sports writers in the country.

Decemberists’ new track, “Valerie Plame”

“Oh Valerie Plame / if that really is your name”

A Decemberists post on top of a Metallica post. I don’t know what’s going on here either.

Via Matthew Yglesias

Death Magnetic: Old Hetfield is to Hemingway as New Hetfield is to …?

                                

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My review of Metallica’s Death Magnetic is up at C-VILLE. I posted some thoughts on the album after giving it a quick listen, and for the most part, I think my first reaction to the record stands.

The Chicago Tribune’s Greg Kot (who is also the author of the best book on Wilco I’ve read, Learning How to Die) does a good job of putting Death Magnetic in context. I’m somebody who’s willing to overlook the occasional lyrical pothole — the “this I swear” business on “The Day That Never Comes,” for instance — in favor of the record’s speed and riffs. 

The Hetfield of “One,” “Creeping Death” and “Leper Messiah” is gone, I’m afraid. In my review, I compared him, somewhat tongue in cheek, to Hemingway, sparce and violent in subject and nature. Now? He might be a little closer to Sylvia Plath, though I’m not sure I’d say that to his face.

And before you get all up in arms about me typing the words “Hemingway” and “Plath” in a post about Metallica, remember, this is heavy metal. The literary bar is a bit lower.

Still, I think the Metallica of Ride the Lightining through …And Justice was a pretty literate group of guys in cut-off t-shirts swilling Jagermeister.

ANYHOW … like the geek I am, I saw a the lastest issue of Guitar World yesterday — the one with Kirk Hammett on the cover — and bought it to read the oral history of Metallica that I already know because I’ve read a 400-page book on the subject. But, hey, I might have missed something, you know?

And it turns out I did. Kirk Hammett comes clean about “Enter Sandman”:

I think the time has come to reveal whereI actually got the guitar lick before the breakdown in “Enter Sandman”: It’s from “Magic Man,” by Heart, but I didn’t get it from Heart’s version; I got it from a cut off Ice-T’s Power album, where he sampled it. I heard that and thought, I have to snake this!

I think we all owe Sen. McCain a word of thanks …

… for building a winning coalition on the bailout bill. Thank God that thing passed, huh?

What’s that? The bill actually failed? Well shit, somebody needs to tell the Senator and his aids. Via Politico:

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and his top aides took credit for building a winning bailout coalition – hours before the vote failed and stocks tanked.

Thanks John McCain. Wouldn’t know what we’d do without ya’.

House Republicans kill bailout because it offends Ronald Reagan’s corpse

Um … did somebody leave the house this morning and forget to fix the fucking economy? Here’s a little graph from the NYT:

The bailout failed. The Dow is down by 500. The S&P, the index that describes mutual funds, is heading towards a new 1-day low. 

It sounds like everything is still awhirl on Capitol Hill, but from what I can tell House Republicans stopped the bailout bill after a morning of fiery speechs from both parties. From the NYT:

Representative Darrell Issa, a Republican, said he was “resolute” in his opposition to the measure because it would betray party principles and amount to “a coffin on top of Ronald Reagan’s coffin.”

Good. We’re not voting for this plan because a dead president would be pissed. Glad to see House Republicans stick by their principles. Wouldn’t want to disturb, you know, Ronald Reagan’s fucking coffin.

UPDATE: More Palin?

According to Ben Smith at Politico, the worst-may-be-yet-to-come clips of Couric’s interview with Palin will air Wednesday and Thursday. 

The Vice Presidential debate is Friday. What does this do to the debate dynamics? Campaigns regularly try to lower expectations for their own candidate and raise expectations for their candidate’s opponent. 

Regardless of what surfaces in the next two days, I’d say the McCain team’s job is done. Any bets on what Palin’s next fuck-up is going to be?

More Palin? But I’m all cringed out

By now you’ve seen the clips of Palin trying to but a subject and verb together and faling. Today the chattering classes are abuzz with this little nugget from the WaPo’s Howard Kurtz:

And the worst may be yet to come for Palin; sources say CBS has two more responses on tape that will likely prove embarrassing.

More Palin tape? And worse than her Putin’s Head and Healthcare Equals Wall Street Bailout riffs? 

Oh. Dear. Lord.

We’ll see if these segments surface. Surely some CBS intern can leak them to Gawker or something, right? But I thought this paragraph was the most interesting, detailing the right-wing commentators who are in full abandon-ship mode:

While some journalists say privately they are censoring their comments about Palin to avoid looking like they’re piling on, pundits on the right are jumping ship. MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough says Palin “just seems out of her league.” National Review Editor Rich Lowrycalled her performance “dreadful.” Dallas Morning News columnist Rod Dreher described the interview as a “train wreck.” Conservative columnist Kathleen Parker urged Palin to quit the race, saying: “If BS were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.”

Paul Newman, dead at 83

If you were to ask me who my favorite actor was, I probably couldn’t tell you off the top. It’s not a subject I tend to dwell on.

But if you gave me a couple of minutes, chances are I’d say Paul Newman. His role as Brick in “Cat On a Hot Tin Roof” just kills me every time I watch it. He’s just such a tightly wound coil of self-loathing. And his small monologue about drinking “until I feel the click,” well, I can relate.

I was vaguely aware of Newman as an actor until I read Scott Raab’s 2000 Esquire profile while I was in college and dabbling in acting. It’s one of the best celebrity profiles I’ve read, period. So I’m glad to see Esquire’s got it on the homepage today.

The New York Times has the best obit that I’ve read so far.

“… murderous dictators / the value of your home could plummet …”

You probably ought to watch Jon Stewart have a “freedom memory.” 

And did Bush really say that the value of your home could plummet? As if this is a vague threat in the future?

Now, I could be wrong here, but didn’t the this entire mess start with the real estate bubble bursting–you know, home prices dropping dramatically? Which led to the subprime crisis. Which spread to other mortgage lenders. Which spread throughout the credit markets.

The value of your home could plummet?

Shit, I guess I’ll have to take Bush’s word for it. He is the first president with an MBA, after all.

There is confusion, and then there is utter confusion

Pool reports are basically memos from one reporter to a bunch of reporters–a pool. The press does this when 1) space is limited, 2) the event is too large for everyone to cover everything, or 3) only a few reporters are able to travel with the subject, e.g. a campaign. 

Reporters use pool reports to fill in gasp in their stories. So usually these reports have a lot of details, what people were wearing, snippets of conversation,  general atmosphereics 

From the McCain campaign, here is one of the most straight-forward pool reports I’ve ever seen (via The Page). I’ll quote the whole thing, since it’s so brief:

McCain now boarding plane at DCA with Cindy, Salter, Rudy Giuliani, wife Judith, and other aides plus pool.

Heading to Memphis, 1:50 minute flight, then motorcade to site

General atmosphere is utter confusion.

After kinda-sorta-not really suspending an entire campaign, rushing to D.C. to have the problem you’re allegedly trying to fix blow up in your face, then reanimating said campaign and reversing your pledge not to debate, I can understand why McCain and his people might be utterly confused.

Connection v. Exception: Cohen on tonight’s debate

Here’s the money quote from Roger Cohen:

I’m going to try to make this simple. On the Democratic side you have a guy whose campaign has been based on the Internet, who believes America may have something to learn from other countries (like universal health care) and who’s unafraid in 2008 to say he’s a “proud citizen of the United States and a fellow citizen of the world.”

On the Republican side, you have a guy who, in 2008, is just discovering the Net and Google and whose No. 2 is a woman who got a passport last year and believes she understands Russia because Alaska is closer to Siberia than Alabama.

If I were Obama, I’d put it this way: “Senator McCain, the world you claim to understand is the world of yesterday. A new century demands new thinking. Our country cannot be made fundamentally secure by a man who thought our economy was fundamentally sound.”

Friday Night Fights

The debate is on, says McCain. Apparently the fundamentals are strong again.

Bush on economy: “This sucker could go down”

So … anything happen after we went to bed around 10ish? We got that massive, country-saving bailout deal done, right?

Right?

Not quite. Instead, we had the largest bank failure in our nation’s history and bailout negotiations break down after John “I’m too busying saving the world to campaign” McCain rode into D.C. and sat quietly doing nothing.

You don’t think this is a big deal? Check out this scene in the White House as reported by The New York Times:

Thursday, in the Roosevelt Room after the session, the Treasury secretary, Henry M. Paulson Jr., literally bent down on one knee as he pleaded with Nancy Pelosi, the House Speaker, not to “blow it up” by withdrawing her party’s support for the package over what Ms. Pelosi derided as a Republican betrayal.

“I didn’t know you were Catholic,” Ms. Pelosi said, a wry reference to Mr. Paulson’s kneeling, according to someone who observed the exchange. She went on: “It’s not me blowing this up, it’s the Republicans.”

Mr. Paulson sighed. “I know. I know.”

Nothing says economic confidence like a Treasury secretary on his knees.

So what happened to McCain swooping in and saving the day? Here’s the WaPo’s Eugene Robinson:

Negotiations between a Democratic Congress and a Republican administration on these and other points seemed to be proceeding at lightning speed, given the usual pace of such things in Washington. But then, for reasons known only to himself, in charged McCain to rescue the unimperiled. Said Rep. Barney Frank(D-Mass.), who has been the lead negotiator for the Democratic majority in the House: “Now that we are on the verge of making a deal, John McCain airdrops himself in to help us make a deal.”

So, let me understand. House Dems and Repubs were finally working together. The President had all but ceded negotiating power. And we were inching closer to a bailout to save our fucking country until you, Mr. McCain, came in to see if there was anything you could do.

You know what? McCain is like the guy who comes to your party, drinks all your good booze, breaks a lamp or two, stays way too late, then walks into the kitchen just as you’re drying to last dish and says “Oh no, no, no. Let me clean up.”

And then knocks the entire rack of drying dishes on the fucking floor.

Thanks for all your help.

Palin on Russia: More uncomfortable than The Office

Okay, a lot of people have had some laughs at Sarah Palin’s expense. But this clip from tonight’s interview is literally disturbing. It’s even worse than the segment of the interview that aired last night. And that one was disastrous.

Here’s Palin on Russia, and why she has the foreign policy experience to step into the No. 2 spot:

You know who I feel bad for after watching the two clips? Katie Couric. I’ve been on the other side of an interview where the subject is just hanging him/herself, stumbling through bullshit and quite obviously out of his or her league.

And you have to sit there and not gasp, all the while knowing how this thing is going to play when it hits print or is aired, how much of an idiot the person is going to look like. And even if you don’t like them, even if you despise them, you begin to feel bad for them.

God bless Couric, she was mostly able to keep a poker face.

But go back and watch some of the reaction shots. There are moments when you can see just how incredulous she is listening to Palin stutter through another sorry attempt to evade a question. Oh man.

It’s just not funny anymore. Someone compared watching the interview to watching Ricky Gervais on The Office. It starts out funny, becomes uncomfortably funny, then suddenly turns almost unbearably humiliating.

What he said …

Kevin Moore makes a damn good point in the comments of C-VILLE’s Final Countdown blog:

What amazes me is that McCain is placing his bets on negotiating a bailout package that nobody wants. That he thinks that as President he would be in the thick of Capitol Hill negotiations on such matters, and not, say, sending advisers while using the bully pulpit of his office to drum up support and/or opposition.

That said, perhaps McCain is a little leery of sending in his economic advisors, since one’s fingerprints are all over the subprime mess and another is a posterchild for issues concerning CEO (over)compensation and golden parachutes that have got the nation all in a froth.