The Great Leap Forward

The Wrens - Silver - Tracks 10-12.

Last post before reality sets in.

10. The Wrens - Kevin's hell

11. The Wrens - Minion

12. The Wrens - Crawling

No defense for defense industry CEOs who get rich off the blood of fallen soldiers.

This is from columnist Derrick Z. Jackson of the Boston Globe. Why are defense industry CEOs making obscene amounts of money on the backs of our fighting forces?

The litany of US mistakes and excessive force has the Pentagon commissioning at least two secret strategy studies in Afghanistan and Iraq. ``This is a struggle for the soul of the Army," said Colonel Peter Mansoor, the head of the Army and Marine Corps Counterinsurgency Center.

Just as odorous, a mountain of corporate cash grows next to the piles of bodies. In this bizarre war where Iraqi civilians fear both suicide bombers and the United States, the biggest sacrifice that President Bush asked of American civilians was to get on a plane and show those terrorists a thing or two by going to Disney World.

Defense contractors took that request to a logical extreme. They built their own fantasy land.

There is no evidence of a contractor having a soul in the 13th annual Executive Excess CEO survey by the Institute for Policy Studies, a progressive think tank, and the Boston-based United for a Fair Economy. The report found that 34 defense CEOs have been paid nearly $1 trillion since the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.

As soldiers have died in displaying personal patriotism, the pay gap between soldiers and defense CEOs has exploded. Before 9/11, the gap between CEOs of publicly traded companies and army privates was already a galling 190 to 1. Today, it is 308 to 1. The average army private makes $25,000 a year. The average defense CEO makes $7.7 million.

and

While Army privates died overseas earning $25,000 a year, David Brooks, the disgraced former CEO of body-armor maker DHB, made $192 million in stock sales in 2004. He staged a reported $10 million bat mitzvah for his daughter. The 2005 pay package for Halliburton CEO David Lesar, head of the firm that most symbolizes the occupation's waste, overcharges, and ghost charges on no-bid contracts, was $26 million, according to the report's analysis of federal Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

You won't hear about this in the mainstream media. It's more important that we find JonBenet Ramsey's killer.

O'Reilly's followers respect the law.

From Hoffmania!, here's one about a guy pulled over for listening to Bill O'Reilly in his car at top volume.

The Wrens - Silver - Tracks 7-9.

07. The Wrens - Leather side

08. The Wrens - Fuzz [warning: this track is 28 seconds of feedback]

09. The Wrens - Strange as family

All Over The Place - HomegrownRadioNJ.com - 25 Aug 2006 (#19)

A good show - I had multiple listeners throughout the whole show. AOTP has been starting out jazzy due to Jojo's show. It's actually good for me because it forces me to stretch things a little bit and not rely so much on the music I would usually play.

AOTP - Aug 25 - Part 1 [80 min - start to A House]

AOTP - Aug 25 - Part 2 [80 min - The Grays to the Rolling Stones]

Bee Gees	Holiday	Best of Bee Gees	Atco	12:49 AM
Dr. Feelgood	Riot in cell block #9	Trash! The roots of punk!	MOJO Magazine - June 2006	12:47 AM
The Rolling Stones	Happy	Exile on Main Street	Virgin	12:43 AM
T. Rex	Zip gun boogie	Bolan's zip gun	Rhino	12:36 AM
The Who	Armenia city in the sky	The Who sell out	MCA	12:32 AM
Blind Faith	Presence of the lord	Blind Faith	Polydor	12:27 AM
Mott The Hoople + David Bowie	All the young dudes	All the young dudes	Columbia	12:24 AM
Kate Bush	King of the mountain	Aerial (disc 1)	Columbia	12:18 AM
Elvis Costello + The Metropole Orkest	Clubland	My flame burns blue	Deutsche Grammophon	12:13 AM
Green Day	Boulevard of broken dreams	Bullet in a bible	Reprise	12:08 AM
The Feelies	Everybody's got something to hide...	Four free Feelies songs	A&M	12:00 AM
Morrissey	Cosmic dancer (live)	Pregnant for the last time CD5	EMI	11:56 PM
R.E.M.	Wichita lineman (live)	Bittersweet me CD5	Warner Bros.	11:53 PM
That Petrol Emotion	Hey bulldog (live)	Tingle CD5	Virgin	11:50 PM
Crowded House	Recurring dream	Afterglow	Capitol	11:41 PM
Elton John	Breaking down barriers	The fox	Geffen	11:36 PM
Bachman Turner Overdrive	Hey you	Gold	Universal	11:33 PM
Bachman Turner Overdrive	Four wheel drive	Gold	Universal	11:24 PM
The Grays	Very best years	Ro sham bo	Epic	11:21 PM
A House	I want to kill something	On our big fat merry-go-round	Sire	11:19 PM
Baxter Robertson	Silver strand	Panorama view	RCA	11:15 PM
Richard X. Heyman	Bad business in town	Hey man!	Sire	11:07 PM
Dean Friedman	Ariel	The very best of Dean Friedman	Music Club	11:03 PM
Ad Frank	Davy, I didn't mean to push you off	Mr. Fancypants	Stop, Pop, and Roll	10:59 PM
David Mead	Robert Bradley's surprise	The luxury of time	RCA	10:55 PM
The Wygals	What me worry	Passion 12"	Rough Trade	10:52 PM
Dixie Chicks	Landslide	Home	Columbia	10:42 PM
Caitlin Cary + Thad Cockrell	Big house	Begonias	Yep Roc	10:37 PM
Iron & Wine	Freedom hangs like heaven	Woman king	Sub Pop	10:34 PM
Sandy Denny	It'll take a long time	No more sad refrains: The anthology	A&M	10:28 PM
Return To Forever	The game maker	Hymn of the seventh galaxy	Polydor	10:19 PM
Carlos Santana + John McLaughlin	A love supreme	Love devotion surrender	Columbia	10:11 PM
Gabor Szabo	Spellbinder	Spellbinder	Impulse!/Verve	10:06 PM
Quincy Jones	Dead end	Walking in space	Verve/A&M	10:03 PM

All Over The Place returns tonight.

10 pm EST on HomeGrownRadioNJ.com.

The Wrens - Silver - Tracks 4-6.

04. The Wrens - What's a girl

05. The Wrens - Darlin' darlin'

06. The Wrens - 6

I don't wanna grow up.

Chris Ott's Shallow Rewards is a blog that I like to drop in on every once in a while. Its main concern is to talk about and deconstruct music-related items that are available on eBay (example: a Lemonheads/Flaming Lips flexidisc that sold for $15.50). Once in a while, Chris takes on a weightier topic. This particular post is about a class of people I was heretofore unaware of: The Grups. So what's a grup? New York magazine has an idea:

This is an obituary for the generation gap. It is a story about 40-year-old men and women who look, talk, act, and dress like people who are 22 years old. It’s not about a fad but about a phenomenon that looks to be permanent. It’s about the hedge-fund guy in Park Slope with the chunky square glasses, brown rock T-shirt, slight paunch, expensive jeans, Puma sneakers, and shoulder-slung messenger bag, with two kids squirming over his lap like itchy chimps at the Tea Lounge on Sunday morning. It’s about the mom in the low-slung Sevens and ankle boots and vaguely Berlin-art-scene blouse with the $800 stroller and the TV-screen-size Olsen-twins sunglasses perched on her head walking through Bryant Park listening to Death Cab for Cutie on her Nano.

Chris takes the Grups analysis a bit further (read the whole thing):

A key point goes unaddressed in Sternbergh's fun-for-the-park look at too-old-to-be hipsters: namely, where this disease comes from. By and large our parents didn't concern themselves with pop culture as self-definition, at least not for so long, which is why we were allowed to grow up with the delusions of entitlement and possibility we're so infected with. Sooner rather than later, they worked to provide our leisure. We don't seem to appreciate that they made personal sacrifices to afford us the blasé liberal arts cynicism we've returned on their investment. And I'm not talking about wars or even financial constraints, I'm talking about entertainment, and, more in line with Sternbergh's piece, passion. Our parents dreamt of doing lots of things and didn't, dousing their desires to make sure we could explore ours more fully. The working at gas stations and walking miles in the snow...many of our parents had to supplement their family's income, and wanted better. They sought to erase the pain of institutional education, peer pressure, hazing, and all the other social trauma they endured growing up. They wanted to make sure we knew we were "special," because nobody ever told them they were, or at least not often enough. Every one of the Grups was told they were "special." They were overpraised and overadored, and for some reason, as adults, are now undereager to confront that their sense of self-worth is necessarily exaggerated by this legacy.

Ann Coulter cuts and runs.

Two amazing things happened on Faux News last night.

1. A Democratic commentator made Man Coulter disappear.

2. A Democrat was allowed to speak uninterrupted for more than 10 seconds.

The proof is over at Crooks and Liars.

The Wrens - Silver - Tracks 1-3.

I am going to make a lot of friends with the next featured CD - Silver, the 1994 debut release of New Jersey's The Wrens. You can find it on Amazon for as low as $26.

01. The Wrens - Propane

02. The Wrens - Napiers

03. The Wrens - From his lips

[p.s. - this was TGLF's 1000th post!]