The argument.

Exhibit A.

Today’s absolutely essential Democracy Now! details the similarities of Obama and McCain’s approach to the bailout, Obama’s Wall Street-friendly economic leanings, the difference between “debt nationalization” and socialism, and what will be an increasing pressure to look at actual socialist solutions as the risk of industry collapse, particularly the auto industry, increases. 

A must listen!

From NYTimes:

“Those who were complaining, only months ago, that excessive regulation was making American markets uncompetitive, had it exactly wrong. It was a lack of regulation of the shadow financial system and its players that allowed this to happen. The regulators might not have gotten it right if they had tried to put limits on leverage, or assure that it was clear what risks were being taken, in the world of derivatives and securitizations. But deciding not to even try, and assuming that risks traded secretly would somehow end up in the hands of those most able to bear them, reflected ideology, not analysis.”

An option that Lehman Brothers is considering. 

It seems obvious that they’re going to have to do something – credit default swaps for Lehman are rising, and a secret effort to attract a sale to Chinese or Korean investors failed.   

A lot of this NEEDS to be taken with a grain of salt. Lehman has long been rumored to be the next Bear Stearns, and such fires only need so much gasoline:  a recent Vanity Fair story highlights the momentum and potentially deliberate manipulation of rumors surrounding Bear Stearns prior to its collapse.  A pretty great read.

Via D-Kos.

Joe Vogler, the head of the separatist AIP Party, was killed during a PLASTIC EXPLOSIVES DEAL GONE BAD. 

The Palin story gets better and better.

I regularly hosted The New Afternoon Show on WNYU from 2004-2007, and filled in last Friday for some fine rock and reggae action.  Enjoy!

8/1/08

Click here for streaming audio and MP3 download of the show.

A recent story documenting human rights abuses in the pursuit of coltan, a precious metal used in the production of, among other electronic devices, PlayStations.  The launch of the PS2 was a major contributor to the rise in coltan prices.  

When the war began in 1998, the race for every adult in the West to have a cell phone was well past the starting line. A computer in every household was also becoming a reality. And by the end of 2000, millions of Americans were still waiting for a PlayStation 2, a second-generation video game console, which SONY says was having manufacturing issues.

To fulfill the personal-tech desires of hundreds of millions of consumers, SONY and other manufacturers needed electric capacitors. These capacitors were made with tantalum, which is able to withstand extreme heat. So as multiple technological revolutions occurred in unison at the end of the 1990s, the worldwide demand for tantalum began to boil.

Like today’s demand for oil, this fever puts tremendous stress on tantalum’s supply chain. From the beginning of 1999 to the beginning of 2001, the world price of tantalum went from US $49.00 a pound to $275.00 a pound. At the same time, the demand and price of coltan also began skyrocketing; coltan is needed to make tantalum.

By 1999, the Rwandan army and several closely linked militias had swarmed over the hills of eastern DRC and took many coltan mines by force, said the UN. The Rwandan army that year would eventually make at least $250 million by selling DRC coltan with the help of mining companies and metal brokers. The estimates of the war’s dead range from hundreds of thousands to several million. A couple million Congolese are believed to have been displaced.   

For all the talk of Sun City Girls’ genre-hopping, they never seemed to undergo any wholesale revision or escape their singular aesthetic, which is mostly to their credit. It’d be foolish to argue that they trapped themselves or failed to bridge disparate strains of psychedelia, punk, exotica and cartoon-splatter. The music is problematic, but that’s not due to a lack of subjective generosity or curiosity on the group’s behalf.

Click here to read the rest of the review.

The Disciple. 

On this tip, check out an incredible post from David Bordwell concerning the development of continuity editing in the 1910s.  Basically, at some point between 1913 and 1920, the average shot length decreased from over 10 seconds to between 4-6 seconds, which is more or less comparable to today’s average shot lengths.  Bordwell tries to find out what happened in that time period.

The month of July, electronic-wise.

7/2/2008

Streaming audio and MP3 download available here. 

7/9/08

Streaming audio and MP3 download available here.

7/16/08

Streaming audio and MP3 download available here.

7/23/08

Streaming audio and MP3 download available here.