Thematic content hardly mattered to the loyalists any more; the band's canon instead became a series of dramatic gestures, well-timed downshifts, and dance cues. Safe within the fuzzy bubble of Deadhead-land, the band coasted for years on end, but no matter how negligent or desultory the performance, they always had the Deadheads to fall back on. Of course the Dead loved the support—they never had to work hard to earn it.

There's a fair number of bands I currently enjoy that attract many of the above types.  Hopefully these bands don't ride on their backs and fall down the same hole.

"This is just clumsy damage control, an effort to make sense of the fact that the vice-president and the Secretary of State flatly contradicted each other on the central point of the president's foreign policy agenda in less than a week. Consider the administration's conceit: the president's leadership is so vaunted, they say, that when he makes up his mind the allies, who oppose us, will support us. The public, which is ambivalent, will overwhelmingly endorse his policy. But how will he bend the world to his will when he can't even get his own cabinet secretaries to endorse his policy? "

Go Powell, Go Powell, Go Powell.

"Bush and Rumsfeld are bent on war because they want to teach the world a lesson. They want to demonstrate American power to attack any country not willing to become part of the American world order. To do this, they need a scapegoat. That scapegoat is Iraq.

Despite the fact that Iraq has no connection with September 11th, this war has everything to do with the fight against terrorism. One root cause of Islamic terrorism is the inability of Arabs to oppose U.S. hegemony over their countries in any meaningful way. Bush's response is increased repression. In other terrorist situations, like the Algerian revolution against the French, or the activity of the IRA, repression alone has not succeeded. A reduction in violence only comes when a political solution is offered as well. "

Repression's worked real well for Israel.  Not.

On Friday, Verizon filed its formal legal opposition to the Recording
Industry Association of America's request for info about a Kazaa user. RIAA
has invoked a turbocharged subpoena process possibly available to it under
the Digital Millennium Copyright Act; Verizon says that the procedure does
not cover peer-to-peer users. A judge gets to decide which side has the
better argument.

Well, now we've got someone with deep pockets to try and challenge this silliness.  I'll be keeping a close eye on this situation.