America Has Reached It's WWI

American has never had an real aristocracy. There is no generational passing of land and wealth that could be called aristocratic by European standards. Inheritance taxes and division of property laws ensured that no such caste could or would arise in this country, at least one that would last for more then a few generations. There is however a broader aristocracy in this country. This aristocracy is more porous then others in the world. People enter and leave it more fluidly, but the resultant decadence and inevitable inbreeding and decay that form in other aristocracies are just as present in America's version.

America's aristocrats are it's corporate executives. This elite group of people who shuffle from company to company taking with them more wealth each time, but often not leaving their fiefdoms any better off once they leave. These dukes and duchesses of industry lead one company or non-profit or investment firm then whether the company does well or not they shuffle off to another corporation or bank and due whatever it is they do. This incestuous practice has given birth to a corporate structure that is as mentally retarded as if a real life brother and sister had born children.

The phenomena parallels Europe's officer corps at the beginning of World War One. Years of promoting based on the social standing of a solider resulted in an absence of real military strategy. The result was the bogging down of WWI to a stalemate. Both sides in the war did come up with new ideas, such as machine guns, and poison gas, but neither side could turn them into significant gains. American CEOs have managed to concoct a variety of moneymaking machinations but have failed to implement them for any long term growth. In both cases the elite fail to make any headway, bog down their own growth, and begin to lose ground while their power ebbs away they need to be saved by a previously untried and underestimated ally.

In WWI that ally was the United States, in the current economic crisis that ally has not yet arrived, but it will probably be China or India. Whoever that savior turns out to be, I hope that the American people will see the problems that promotion that is not based on merit causes. For the sake of the CEOs out there I hope their fate does not mirror the fate of the Russian aristocracy during WWI.

First Impressions II

I've been back to downloading new music, even though I haven't listened to everything I have now. I try and find bands I have not heard about on the radio or in a magazine, instead I just scroll down the list of the new adds for the site and if the band name, or album, or art grabs my attention I write it down.

Later I search them out on-line and I write down the first thing I think of when I hear them. I try and not judge them based on their web page, and I hope I'm not too harsh on them. I list the album name, the band name, and my first impression of them.

Don't take my word for it, the link goes to the bands site. Click it and you can give them a listen yourself.


3 Rounds & A Sound
Blind Pilot
West Coast Alt.Country

Fields & Floods
Joshua James
Another Folk Singer

African Trip
Leeroy
Reinventing The Reinvented
I really liked this guys stuff as I listened to more of it especially after I saw this video.

The Mysterious Production Of Eggs
Andrew Bird
Happy Music For Sad Times

We Play Endlessly
Sigur Ros
Beautiful Ambiance

How To Fake Like Your Nice And Caring
Cargo City
Happy Germans Do American Pop

Green Magic
El-Thule
Metal Mas Macho

The Great Shakes
Swingset
Not Bad

Serve or Suffer
Esoteric
Rolling Metal

Sun Moon & Stars
A Band Called Quinn
Squeaky Girl Makes Pop Pops

Burn Piano Island, Burn
The Blood Brothers
Screaming Thrashing Awesome

This Is Why We Don't Have Nice Things
Every Avenue
Your Radio Station Loves Them

Dirty Urine
The BadSeed
Buy Your Own Beats & Some New Rhymes

Since the band above was not listed as The Bad Seed, I did not find them at first. Instead I found this Bad Seed who is The Anger Of Wilkes-Barre. I thought this Bad Seed was more likely to have an album called Dirty Urine, but I was missing the clever entendre that the Brooklyn Bad Seed was going for, alas. Based on Brooklyn Bad Seed's myspace I hope he doesn't dedicate a beef to these kids, cause I think they would kick his ass. Speaking of Wilkes-Barre...

Leave Ruin
Strand of Oaks
The Love of Wilkes-Barre

Rock and Roll
The New Standards
On Vibes....

Fade to Bright
Squirtgun
America Does Rock Best :P

Truck Off
Goober Patrol
Brit New Punk

Handshakes, Hello & Goodbye
The Prisoners Dilemma
Its Just Soooooooo Sad :..(

The Spell
Ivan
Men Without Hats Goes Solo, Electronique

Wall Of Sound
Natural 7
Roomful of Beatbox

Vibrate You
King Adora
Boring Rocker

When Machines Exceed Human Intelligence
Harmonic 313
Aussies Dig Rap

Hope you enjoyed the list or even better found it useful or best found a band you liked, but before now you had never heard.

Fall of The Empire

Its old news now, but the Republican Party is collapsing. You didn't need to be a soothsayer to see it coming, the writing has been on the wall since August of 2005 and the New Orleans fiasco. An ever lengthening war, a growing budget deficit, an economic collapse, a crumbling infrastructure, and lack of public oversight all overseen by a Republican President, Congress, and Supreme Court, it is no surprise that the American people voted overwhelmingly Democratic in the 2008 elections.

While all of these things represent enormous problems for Americans the problem facing the Republican Party is larger still. The Republican Party has ignored Americans and the result is they are becoming, not just a minority party, but a regional party.

The Republican Party turned its back on there enemies in the "Liberal East" much to their own detriment. America changed and what was once a rural country is now an urban one. By the 2000 census 76% of the population lived in urban areas. The largest density of people in the country is along the Atlantic coast between Boston and Washington DC. The most people live in the area that the Republicans have most ignored, no that is not true. The most people live in the area of the country that the Republicans have most slandered and maligned.

Basing their public policy around corporate rights and farm subsidies left a large population of Americans wondering what the fuck Republicans represent. This resulted in the 2004 "Red State v Blue State" election map. East, North, and West went solidly Democratic while the South and Center of the country went Republican. While G.W. was patting himself on the back and cramming more privatization down the Americans throats the real story went largely unnoticed. The Democratic base was growing. Bush rode his 3% (about 3mil ppl) and called it a mandate. By contrast, Obama, a racial minority candidate who until 40 years ago was de facto disenfranchised in a large chunk of the country (durr, did you forget yet), won a 6% majority (about 6mil ppl).

The election map spread Democratic victories to Ohio, Nevada, and even Colorado. These states went "blue" because the densely populated urban areas cast votes for Democratic candidates. The chickens had come home to roost. Republicans had blamed the Elite East, and Wacky West, claiming their urban blight was the cause of America's woes. Meanwhile the rest of the country started to look like the coasts, the spiteful elimination of projects and programs that would have helped New York or California were now being missed in Cleveland and Denver.

The Republicans look forward to this gigantic problem, and they look ahead cluelessly. I had the good fortune to attend the RNC Winter Meeting in DC a few weeks ago, and as luck would have it, I walked into the room just as the Chairman of the Washington DC Republican Party asked a panel of Republican strategist THE question. "Having ignored and thereby lost a base in the Northeast cities, how do we get back a presence there?"

The answer was sadder still. The experts confessed that the problem was bigger then the Northeast, and had spread to Central, Western, and some Southern cities. After another expert chimed in that the Republican Party was losing ground in such stalwart states as Indiana and Iowa, they went on to offer absolutely NO solution, none, zero, nothing. They had no idea how to get themselves back. They admitted that supporting the desires of this group of people would mean a desertion of values that they feel are so core to the party that they can't give them up.

When you reach a point in your evolution that the landscape has changes, your food source becomes scarce and you habitat dwindles, you have two choices: change or die. From the look of things, the Republicans are choosing die.