The Autumn Defense, fronted by Wilco’s Pat Sansone and John Stirratt, opened the show with well-crafted (and even better-performed) soft rock music. While their songs don’t hit me viscerally, the band is unbelievably tight. Toward the end of Tweedy’s performance, the whole band accompanied him on a few songs, with Passenger Side and California Stars standing out.

Tweedy’s setlist included songs from every Wilco album, and songs he wrote for Loose Fur (The Ruling Class), Mavis Staples (You Are Not Alone), and Uncle Tupelo (Acuff-Rose). He delivered the latter from the edge of the stage, sans amplification for an intimate finale.

From my seat, the sound was perfect. There were several moments where his guitar created overtones so strong it sounded like he was accompanied by a organ. Or maybe the theater’s haunted. Either way, Tweedy manages to get a full, glowing sound from his instrument, complementing his voice in all of its not-flawless beauty.

For a little context, Josef Stalin’s approval rating in Russia was 31% in 2003, and his popularity has increased in recent years.

Just sayin’.

UPDATE: Even Alaskan Republicans think Palin’s an asshole. Only 15% of her home-state party compatriots want her to be a candidate for the presidency in 2012. No word on their opinion of Stalin.

I was also lucky enough to get tickets to the National Endowment for the Arts’ Opera Honors. I’ve never been partial to Philip Glass’s music, but this piece from his opera Satyagraha blew me away.  I think it neatly represents the whole minimalism thing, featuring a haunting melody over neatly-textured, repetitive instumental parts.

Unfortunately, the jerks at Sony Music don’t want me to embed this song on my blog. God forbid they let go of the past by playing to the internet’s strong points. DO YOURSELF A HUGE FAVOR AND LISTEN HERE.

“Thanks” to DJ for directing me to Bieber & Anastasio.

As a boy, Soros complied with Nazis in Hungary by handing out deportation notices to Jews.  Anyone who has paid even cursory attention to the cancer of Nazi-occupied Europe knows that their unrestrained brutality included the murder, enslavement, and coercion of Jews wherever they metastasized.  It’s no surprise that Soros, a 14-year old Jew, was a victim of this brutality.  To imply that his actions were ignoble acts of collaboration with the Nazis would be cruelly stupid at best.

Glenn Beck is cruelly stupid at best.  He characterized the Soros’ experience with the Nazis this way:

[When Soros was] 14 years old, he had to help the government confiscate the land of his fellow Jewish friends and neighbors. He didn’t grow up in a very Jewish household. His mother was a strong anti-Semite — his words, not mine — but when he had to go over and take the lands from the people…who were being sent to the gas chambers, I can’t imagine what that would do to a teenager, anybody, an adult. Well, what did it do to George Soros? In an interview with Steve Kroft, Soros was asked if he felt guilt at all about taking the property from the Jews as a teenager. He responded, ‘no.’

First, unless Beck has severe cognitive deficiencies, he should know that the Nazis didn’t give a fuck how religious a given Jewish household was.  They were to be enslaved, tortured, murdered, or any combination thereof regardless of whether they kept kosher or shomer shabbos.  The implication that the Soros family’s level of observance made George a cheerful collaborator is grotesque.  Secondly, who the fuck is Beck to imply that Soros ought to feel guilty?  Should all victims of  unparalleled atrocities feel guilty?

It would take a giant tome to catalog all the stupid shit that’s dribbled out of Glenn Beck’s doughy mouth, but this may take the cake.  Of course, he can’t even stand up for what he believes; he’s retreated behind the old “I didn’t actually say anything bad,” in complete denial of the simple fact that his implications lead to our inferences.  The cowardly fuck.

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While you’re all in a viscous lather, check out the BP Cares T-shirts.

Speaking of Stephens: Dr. Hawking recently said, “there is a fundamental difference between religion, which is based on authority, [and] science, which is based on observation and reason. Science will win because it works.” Of course, this pissed off that mosquito Bill Donohue. PZ Myers covers the story nicely. Here’s an excerpt:

The Catholic Church was a religion laced throughout the substrate of Western culture; everyone was Catholic (or alternatively, after the 16th century, some flavor of Protestant), and being anything else was not tenable because the Catholic Church would set you on fire.

Neutrinos are wiggly. Duh.

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