A couple weeks ago the new album was #1 on the Billboard album chart. Kid Rock's new album knocked it down a peg and this week, Springsteen disposed on Kid Rock and is back at #1. The album is already gold and headed right towards platinum and he's got a great shot to win a Grammy for Best Album of the Year. Magic's reviews virtually everywhere are over the top and the intro to his latest interview in Rolling Stone refers to the album's subject matter as "weighty stuff like the direction of our democracy and party stuff that recalls the days when sparks first flew on E Street more than three decades ago."

Republican radio network Clear Channel, a monopoly in many cities and a dominant player in most of the rest, isn't interested. Is it because Springsteen has been an outspoken campaigner for Democrats and progressives? Clear Channel has taken a political stand with its programming in the past. Just think back to their boycott of the Dixie Chicks. Oh, no... not way back, just back to when they released their most recent album. Despite being one of the top 10 best-selling American albums of the year-- across all genres and demographics-- radio studiously ignored it. There were maybe half a dozen country stations that even played it at all. What Clear Channel did to the Dixie Chicks is a watertight case for the need to break the media companies up into a thousand pieces. (John Sununu disagrees; he's pro-censorship.) I spoke with an old friend who heads a record company and preferred to speak off the record.

Fluttering about in seeming random directions, utter high-pitched shrieks--remind you of anything?

Nevermind that Springsteen is 58 years old and that his heyday was thirty years ago. Nevermind that they still regularly play his stuff on the classic rock stations. Nevermind that Clear channel actually owns a number of stations like KTLK in Los Angeles that host Air America. Nevermind that Clear Channel only owns about 10% of U.S. radio stations. Nevermind that they've played plenty of anti-war and anti-American music by younger and more relevant artists like Green Day.

Don't confuse them with the facts--they actually seem to enjoy this perpetual sense of paranoia.

Springsteen is just the latest historical musical artifact attempting to gain a little traction with "the young people" with some anti-Bush lyrics--recall the Rolling Stones "Sweet Neo-con"?

The old farts have a very different business model than modern artists like the Dixie Chicks, who went out of their way to offend their core constituency with anti-Bush remarks. Ironically, various liberal-left interests tried hard to ressurect the Dixie Chicks with faux awards, a triumphalist, but paradoxically angry documentary and imaginary album sale statistics. Unfortunately the reality of their situation was reflected where the rubber meets the road, and where incidentally, the artists make the real money--the tour. the Dixie Chicks had to cancel dates all over the country and rebook them in Canada to pull it out of the fire.

Polarization is par for the course with musicians--up-and-coming groups (or dead-enders for all we know...) routinely sprinkle their onstage patter with cries of "F**k Bush" with the assumption that they are playing to the crowd. Nothing can explain the Chick's delusion about their country music audience's political sensibilities. They squandered a fan base that should have had them doing nostaglia tours into their sixties.

Springsteen etal are established artists--those whose music has been engraved in the youthful memories of an aging and prosperous fan base. The fossils of rock are extracting more money from nostalgia tours than they ever made during their hey day. Tickets are going for north of one hundred dollars in many cases.

An album in this context has no downside. Paranoia demands to be fed, and all one needs is the right approach to monetize it. The Rolling Stones explored the commercial potential of the newly energetic left-wing with the song "Sweet Neocon". Springsteen can hardly be blamed for taking the cash on the table. The fans of the old days are still going to play "Born in the U.S.A." on their iPods or CD players and may not even be aware that he has a new album out.

You just gotta love a country that finds ways to make money, even from mental illness.

Michele Malkin documents the sad plight of children with moonbat mothers.

We take kids away from crackhead and meth fiends because of neglect--this is far worse--its deliberate, cynical and horrific child endangerment.

The left's position on the war is not just immoral, its unconscionable--to essentially abandon millions of Iraqis to the tender mercies of al Qaeda is monstrous. Is it really a surprise that they eat their children?

Who are the bigger fools? A Brattleboro, VT activist group seeking universal jurisdiction for it’s town council to try Bush and Cheney for high crimes and misdemeanors (is Chavez next?) or the Vermont attorney general who thinks the effort is “of dubious legality” but vacillates because he has “not seen the proposal” nor done “legal research on any of the issues”.

I didn’t realize extrajudicial laws were tough calls for state AGs.

I had to laugh when I read this.

A little girl thought she was getting an iPod for Christmas but ended up getting a rude surprise. She got the box but when she opened it up, she found a surprising switch: the iPod had been replaced with a bizarre note.

The note reads in part "Reclaim your mind from the media shackles."

Jay Ellis, the girls father, returned the ipod to the Germantown, Md. Wal-Mart store where he purchased it. The store manger told him that another customer returned an iPod with a similar issue.

The notes entire text says, "Reclaim your mind from the media shackles. Read a book and ressurect yourself. To claim your capitalistic (sic) garbage, go to your nearest Apple store.

Its like a microcosm of socialism--they steal from you and then tell you its good for your moral development.

Although I'm pretty sure it was unintentional, Kevin Drum made me laugh today when he indignantly criticized former Quayle speechwriter Lisa Schiffren for her "sick" hatred.

As long as we're laying our cards on the table, this is one of the things that keeps me on Hillary's side regardless of anything to do with issues or tactics or rhetoric or anything else. I just hate the idea that the fever swamp has been able to turn a perfectly decent liberal woman into such an object of malign loathing. If she loses, then she loses. But by God, I don't want her to lose because millions of Schiffren's fellow travelers have carried on a 15-year vendetta of sick-minded smears and hatred. Enough's enough.

Setting aside the numerous instances where Hillary has demonstrated that she is anything but a decent liberal woman, Drum either doesn't see or chooses to ignores the massive, institutionalized hatred the left cultivates for Bush. His commenters sensed the elephant in the room and produced additional humorous statements.

To hate someone not for something she's done but for what she seems to represent to the hater, that's heinous.

Whereas Bush hatred is totally justified because of what a shitty mess he has made of this country...

Everytime I hear or read this, I look around and wonder if they are in the same country I am.

I'm having a hell of a good time reading blog posts of Bush-hating lefties just apoplectic about the media's treatment of Hillary Clinton. First, the offending comment by Chris Matthews:

Matthews: That's how she got to be a Senator from New York. We keep forgetting it. She didn't win it on her merit, she won because everybody felt, "My God, this woman stood up under humiliation," right? That's what happened. That's how it happened. In 1998, she went to NY and campaigned for Chuck Schumer as almost like the grieving widow of absurdity, and she did it so well and courageously. But it was about the humilation of Bill Clinton.

To which Christy Hardin Smith responds:

What is wrong with Chris Matthews? With all of these media people? I mean that, in all honesty, what in the hell is wrong with them? Their personal loathing of Hillary Clinton shone through in every sniggering, overwrought report this week. Their building up of Barack Obama is only their prelude and set-up for the frenzied clawing and shredding of him that is to come. And they have well and truly written off coverage of either John Edwards or Bill Richardson solely based on their current fundraising numbers, and never mind that, as of yesterday, there had been two -- count them, only TWO -- Democratic contests.

The unspoken sentiment is, "they're supposed to be on our side..."

Ironically, Hillary Clinton herself doesn't make this mistake because she knows from experience--sharks maybe liberal or conservative, but they are always sharks. Chris Matthews doesn't really care if he's savaging Bush or Clinton, it just business. Find someone with high negatives and jump on the bandwagon.

Of course the real problem for moonbats is that it makes them face a very uncomfortable proposition: maybe, just maybe, their hatred for George W. Bush isn't something as noble as say, moral indignation. Maybe its just garden-variety, base hatred, indistinguishable from the kind that leads to lynchings, cross-burnings and other mob-violence.

The anti-war far-left routinely quotes the Lancet study, performed by Iraq war opponent Les Roberts at Columbia university, which concludes, through the use of controversial methodology, that 650,000 Iraqis have died as a result of the Iraq invasion.

It is more than ten times the estimate of other studies.

Its now been revealed that Roberts accepted half the research funds from Open Society Institute, a George Soros funded front group for his left-wing agenda.

His team surveyed 1,849 homes at 47 sites across Iraq, asking people about births, deaths and migration in their households.

Professor John Tirman of MIT said this weekend that $46,000 (£23,000) of the approximate £50,000 cost of the study had come from Soros’s Open Society Institute.

Roberts said this weekend: “In retrospect, it was probably unwise to have taken money that could have looked like it would result in a political slant. I am adamant this could not have affected the outcome of the research.”

Roberts' credibility account is overdrawn. I predict various anti-war spokespersons will dismiss the source of the funding as irrelevant to the conclusion, but these are the same people that are indignantly critical of global warming deniers who have received funding from big oil.

I feel almost silly putting it so baldly, because one actually sounds like moonbat when saying it, but the left lies...

Jay Grodner has had his day in court, and got off lightly, with a misdemeanor and a 600.00 fine. He could have been charged with a felony by producing $2,400.00 damage to Marine Sgt Mike McNulty's BMW. Grodner deliberately keyed the car because as a moonbat, he objected to the military insignia on the vehicle.

His plea agreement required that he admit that the act was deliberate, in exchange for a lesser charge.

He arrived late, hoping to avoid the media, came in dressed like a Jack Abramoff and reluctantly, and only after the judge forced the point, acknowledged that he had deliberate keyed McNulty's car.

The courtroom was full of marines, including notably, Judge William O'Malley, U.S. Marine Corps 1961-1964.

"You're probably also wondering why there was a whole crowd of people here, Mr. Grodner," said Judge O'Malley.

"I don't want to wonder," said Grodner, continuing in his new meek voice, not in his tough divorce lawyer voice, but the gentle, inside voice he'd just learned.

"That's because there is a little principle that the Marine Corps has had since 1775," the judge continued. "When they fought and lost their lives so that people like you could enjoy the freedom of this country. It is a little proverb that we follow:

"No Marine is left behind.

"So Sgt. McNulty couldn't be here. But other Marines showed up in his stead. Take him away," said the judge and former Marine.

Grodner revealed his plans to spent a little time in the South of France and wait for this all to blow over.

We stood outside, in the parking lot, talking for 20 minutes. He smoked, and I didn't. He explained that he wasn't anti-military and why he pleaded guilty.

"The judge, he's the guy with the black robes," Grodner said. He could have been slapped with a felony, but Sgt. McNulty's family said they wanted to put this behind them and let it go as a misdemeanor. Grodner showed no remorse, and I asked if he'd apologize.

"Yes, I'd say, 'I'm sorry if I scratched your car.' It escalated. That's when he wanted me locked up and thrown away," said Grodner, always the victim.

Grodner tells me he plans to leave for the French Riviera and get some sun.

Sgt. McNulty will get some sun, too. In Iraq.

The south of France? Grodner might want to consider Miami instead. Last I checked, southern France wasn't very friendly to Jews.

From RWN's interview of Ann Althouse.

I have found that people on the Right are much more likely to link to me, write about me favorably when they agree with something, and just ignore what I am saying when they don't agree. It's the other way around on the Left. ...My experience in life generally is that people on the Left think you are evil if you don't agree with them, that you're actually a bad person...

Its actually rather amazing not note how completely progressives represent every social ill. Its where you'll find the racists, the sexists, the homophobes and the just plain stupid. Female bloggers aren't just being "sensitive" to criticism--some years back Michelle Malkin posted the a selection of the kinds of comments she was receiving--absolutely hair-raising stuff. As vile as you can possibly imagine. The left's peculiar distaste for homosexuality is, like the sexism, a perplexing contradiction. In the previous post's quote of Sean Penn, he refers to Sean Hannity as Rupert Murdoch's homosexual lover in clearly perjorative terms.

Its increasingly clear that they left is a haven for damaged people who are being exploited for the purposes of political power when they should be submitted for counselling.

UPDATE: Rep John Conyers promises to try to jail Bush and Cheney...

At a gathering of liberal activists in Washington on Tuesday, Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) was asked if he would commit to holding the Bush administration accountable once a Democrat is in the White House and illegal acts have been pinned on President Bush.

"Yes, you have my word on that," Conyers replied. He then shook the questioner's hand as a sign of his commitment.

Yesterday was the five year anniversary of the invasion of Iraq and the people who don't believe in war celebrated by executing a nation-wide series of vigils in their campaign of moral and polemical intimidation.

War by other means.

That is perhaps the signal irony of the anti-war movement--it is child of people who just love conflict and confrontation. These are people don't actually mind war, they had no problem with the wars engaged in and supported by the former Soviet Union, nor do they decry the aggressive actions of their favorite socialist dictators against democratic neighbors or the non-compliant opponents of the glorious revolution.

The long and short of it is that these people are not anti-war protestors--they've been at war with free enterprise and free peoples for generations at this point. So why the Iraq war? Why oppose that war but not the U.S. involvement in the conflict in the former Yugoslavia?

After typing a clever witticism for the benefit of Crook and Liars readers, and clicking the post button, I discovered that I had been banned from the site!

Apparently I had not been sufficient reverential to the stream of lefty consciousness that passes for political commentary over there.

I had intended to reply to a disdainful review of the Conservapedia site (which until I read the post, I had never visited...), and particularly the opinion that conservatives "suck at satire".

Conservatives suck at satire and are rarely funny on purpose, but I think Conservapedia struck comedy gold. Using sources such as Charles Krauthammer, Brent Bozell and World Net Daily, they couldn’t help but create a belly-laugher of a website and plenty of red meat for the frothing fringe that now dominates the Republican base. It’s going to be a long year…

I experienced a brief instant of cognitive dissonance as I read this in context of the excerpts the author posted for his audience's "amusement", such as Obama's false claim to having been a constitution law professor (true and documented), Obama's famous eloquence deserting him when he is without a teleprompter (true and documented), or details of the Whitewater investment fraud (also true and documented).

Like so much left-wing commentary, it basically comes down to playground taunts rather than any real attempt at refutation. Not surprisingly, the comment stream was similarly inane.

Far-left blog Think Progress demonstrates how CBS destroyed its credibility.

Yesterday, liberal blog Think Progress published an explosive and "EXCLUSIVE" charge, that John McCain had plagiarized from a1996 speech by Adm. Timothy Ziemer.

Now they take it back.

Think Progress had gotten and a tip, and searched Nexis to verify the scoop. But they never contacted the campaign. From the explanation: "After we published the post, the McCain campaign contacted us and pointed to a speech given by the senator in 1995, which appears on McCain’s Senate site."

Oooh. Sorry about that, apparently Ziemer quoted the McCain speech and not the other way around.

Ironically, Politico appears to be according more credibility to Think Progress than they deserve. Just as its not news that Jay Leno tells jokes, it not news that Think Progress makes accusations without foundation--it is a highly-partisan, left-wing site--its their job.

The left have been engaged in a rather traditional psychological reaction to finding out everything they ever believed is wrong--they've simply recreated their universe so they can be right. Its not generally a question of "I'm going to lie now", but rather the imperative of fitting facts to a conclusion that must be defended at all costs.

I don't really mind that Think Progress does this, because they know what they are and we know what they are--its transparent. Its only when we muddy the waters by attempting to claim a degree of credibility that isn't warranted that we get into trouble.

I've heard Randi Rhodes on the radio a few times and while not particularly impressive, it was memorable as one of the most concentrated streams of hatred towards George W. Bush, Republicans, and any and all conservatives that I've ever heard.

For this she was being lauded, payed and promoted as left-wing talk radio star.

All that came to an end last week.

According to John Scott, PD of Clear Channel talk KKGN/San Francisco, suspended talker Randi Rhodes and Air America network have parted company as of Wednesday (April 9). In a posting on the station Web site Scott says that on Monday (April 14), "it will be our pleasure to announce the return of Randi Rhodes to the Green 960 family."

You might appreciate the irony of Randi Rhodes being fired for intemperate remarks--not against Republicans of course--those are fair game, but against Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro, after calling them "effing bitches..."

Free speech for the left, "accountability" for the rest of us.

Have the Chinese moved on from bashing Tibetan monks to emulating Mao's Cultural Revolution? No, we have another culprit, but it's the thought that counts...uh or shall we say the lack of it.NY Sun:

PARIS — For more than two decades, 250 historians and specialists labored to produce the first six volumes of the General History of Latin America, an exhaustive work financed by UNESCO, the United Nations organization created to preserve global culture and heritage.

Then, over the course of two years, UNESCO paid to destroy many of those books and nearly 100,000 others by turning them to pulp, according to an external audit.

P.S. It was of course unclear who was responsible. And some good came out of this--the books were recycled.

I wandered over to Huffpo while munching mini after dinner Dove bars. I have to quit both RIGHT NOW, but before I go, here's the quote of the day, Nora Ephron:

...white men cannot be relied on, as all of us know who have spent a lifetime dating them.

Mick noted recently a panicked Code Pinko called out to Marines for help when she was worried about being assaulted by a passer-by in Berkeley. But have they come to their senses? No. Are they grateful? No. Now they're summoning witches to cast spells:

Witches, Crones, Sirens come to the MRS today to cast spells, weave magic, invoke the foremothers, share wisdom, lead rituals to banish war and violence and to bring peace to the MRS, to protect our youth from the powerful spells of pro-war forces, to lead the men of the marine recruiting station off into the oceans of peace! Some witches, crones and sirens are willing to risk arrest, others are not. We call on all crones, witches and sirens to come to the MRS, to bring your energy, your wisdom, your fierce determination to end war now and bring peace to our world. Contact Kali at sylviasoven@yahoo.com or Marie at keeptahoepink@yahoo.com.

Paul Mirengoff puts his hand down the sewer pipe and drags up this, er-r-r, nugget?

The Clintons don't give a damn about our party. Their party, their church, is themselves. To hell with everyone else. I actually liked Hillary up until a few months ago. Other bloggers used to tell me that Joe and I were too nice to Hillary. People just assumed that we were endorsing her. Now I actually loathe her. She makes me yell at the TV like she's George Bush, and no one other than George Bush makes me yell at the TV - until now. I actually can't stand her or her husband any more. I defended her. I defended her husband. And now I'm actually wondering if the Republicans weren't right about them. That's how bad she has damaged her reputation. People who actually liked you, who actually helped you, who actually defended you, LOATHE you now. Call me a Clinton-hater all you like, but people like me were the ones who had your back. And we never will again.

That just about sums it up--John Avarosis, like every other nutroots liberal, is a mewling infant, a puerile, whining little snot who considers himself the center of the universe and his whims the will of God, which is to say, himself.

Another Democrat cult. "Democrat party official charged with Satanic Sex Crimes". And the official was the wife. He is a Rev. with Indigo Dawn, a "devout student of magick". They offered themselves as spiritual mentors.
HT Powerline.

Quite the Democrat faith-based big tent, even as Barack reaches out to evangelical voters. Is there room for everyone, plus his evil twins from Chicago?

So much for those bumper stickers stating "Nobody's born racist":

Toddlers who say "yuck" when given flavorful foreign food may be exhibiting racist behavior, a British government-sponsored organization says.

The London-based National Children's Bureau released a 366-page guide counseling adults on recognizing racist behavior in young children, The Telegraph reported Monday.

366 page guide? Let Mikey read it.

H/T Small Dead Animals