Hear Old Triton Blow His Wreathèd Horn

Rahm Emanuel's competence test:

This performance is inexplicable in light of the enormous Democratic majority in the Senate, which at times has hit the 60 votes needed to preclude procedural measures against nominees. It reflects a dramatic failure of management by senate Democratic leaders like Patrick Leahy and Harry Reid, but it also points to a White House that is simply oblivious to the nominations process. On this measure, Rahm Emanuel is the worst performing White House chief of staff in recent memory.

Obamoron and Rahmoron, here is where I'm unable to molt a layer of roobity: if Obamoron and Rahmoron received their orders from Triskellion Castle to further wreck the economy, expand the scope of American military operations, to further erode civil liberties, Obamoron and Rahmoron would bumble to 4% unemployment, we'd be out of Afghanistan, and habeus would be restored to pre-911 assumptions.

If Democrats and Republicans are the Red Sox and Yankees; if the difference is solely a matter of which team gets the loudest booyehs in tribal contests of brand loyalty motherfuckered for maximum ugliness to distract the fucking roobs and keep them docile; and if the reward for the winning team is getting to feed first and whenever at the elite's (once thought) endless spigot; if there is no moral difference between Barack Obama and Newt Gingrich since both will enact whatever policies their puppeteers tell them to enact; this is the root of my roobity: I bet pints on Obama the gamester, not Obama the Black FDR, and sheeyit, do I look stoopid.

• Campaign season: Some powerful interests who had been dominating the agenda in Washington for a very long time, and they're not always happy with me," the president said. "They talk about me like a dog. That's not in my prepared remarks, but it's true. And it is true. And Obama barks when they say bark.
• Knee-slapper.
• UPDATE! Rumors swirling that Rahmoron is going to resign Chief of Staff to run for mayor of Chicago. Politico runs the possible replacements and defines an "outsider": If Obama wants an outsider who is well known to official Washington, he could look at someone like Tom Nides, chief operating office of Morgan Stanley and chairman of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, who is an eight-year veteran of Capitol Hill.
  
• The ultra-rich are assholes says ultra-rich asshole.
• Key vindicators.
• UPDATE! How not to criticize the two-party straitjacket.
• Pernicious myth of the free market.
• A Labor Day message.
• Latest Mr Fish is snort.
• BYOQ BBQQ.
• Periscope depths.
• Still awesome.
• Today in crackerosity. And for the record, book-burning is free speech.
• UPDATE! Breakfast Club, part three.
• Yup.
• Tomorrow.
• Tenure and teaching. There is a wave building against tenure for reasons good and bad.
• Good news about the Potomac. As well as I know the river upstream from DC, I don't know it at all downstream from DC, but I remember camping on the C&O canal around Paw Paw and the river was turquoise from the crap papermills in Luke and Westernport dumped into the water.
• Which soccer stadiums are closest to major roads?
• New album! (h/t)

• My KEXP t-shirt designed by Langford which serendipitously I was wearing when I discovered the above!

• Obscure Sound's August MP3s has Arcade Fire, but, fine.
• UPDATE! Though holyfuck unto holyfuck, Arcade Fire sucks.
• This week's new releases w/MP3 includes an excellent new Sam Prekop song. Bought! Listening as I type this sentence.
• Stream the new Superchunk for free? Yes, thank you.
• xx wins Mercury. Seb destroyed xx. Send me the link and I'll post it.
• The tribes of contemporary poetry.
• UPDATE! Jameson and Lukacs.
• Booker shortlist.
• UPDATE! Are fat novels back? When did they go away?
• Ten songs.
• UPDATE! Cotton Jones. Hamster, anyone else, Ottobar, October 8?
• Station to Station reissued.
• TVC15.
• Sweetest kill.
• Kimberly.

THE WORLD IS TOO MUCH WITH US

William Wordsworth

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers;
Little we see in Nature that is ours;
We have given our hearts away, a sordid boon!
This Sea that bares her bosom to the moon;
The winds that will be howling at all hours,
And are up-gathered now like sleeping flowers,
For this, for everything, we are out of tune;
It moves us not.--Great God! I'd rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn;
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathèd horn.