ByronCrawford.com

Louisiana: Kinda racist?

I'm gonna keep this one brief, because I'm black and I can't always muster very much in the way of effort, even though it's not like I've got shit else to do.

Today at XXL I discuss that state rep down in Louisiana who's trying to pay poor women $1,000 to have their tubes tied. I know one of you fruits had mentioned that in the comments section yesterday, so you might wanna check that.

And after the jump is a video I found, over on Sandra Rose, of Cynthia McKinney, the Green Party candidate for president, talking about how the government shot 5,000 black prisoners and dumped them in a swamp, in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

Murs - Murs for President: Album Review

Murs, Murs for President (Warner Bros., 2008)
The album of the month club Murs had started up with 9th Wonder wasn't working out as well for him as he would have liked, so he decided to get down with Warner Brothers and start making that Bugs Bunny money. Is this the album that's gonna catapult Murs to superstardom, or just someone's tax write off? Let's have a look.

• Murs @ MySpace

Libraries shouldn't have special computer labs where bums can stroke it

According to Last Week's Poll
When I was in college, sometimes some of the bums from the town where the school was located would come into the school's library, Club Pickler, and use the computers.

No one really gave a shit, since there was roughly a gozillion computers on campus, and no one really bothered using the computers in the library, unless you just happened to be out and needed to check something, or you were working on a group project with a girl and you didn't want her to come to your room and accidentally look up at the ceiling.

I imagine for a lot of these bums, though, the computer labs on campus were their only access to the Internets. So not only were they reliant on these computers for checking their email and what have you, but for all of the various other reasons one might use the Internets.

You could see where this was gonna lead.

During the first of my several senior years of college, a bum was finally caught stroking it to Internets pr0n using one of the computers in the libraries. I was consulting Google just now, and I found the story about it in the school newspaper.

As I remember, they said this guy was roughly my age, but he wasn't a student in the university. They said that he was wearing red sweat pants and an olive-colored jacket at the time, which just wouldn't seem to make sense, unless you've spent a significant amount of time in Chicken Switch, MO, and that he was basically told he could never come on campus again, or else he'd be arrested.

They say this guy wasn't using one of the computers best suited for that sort of thing, and that it may have been his intention to get caught, or at least noticed. But it occurred to me: Why not have a few computers located in an area where that wouldn't be an issue?

Last week's poll had to do with whether libraries should have special computer labs where bums can stroke it. Check the results:

Should libraries have special computer labs where bums can stroke it?

1. No (62.3%)
2. Yes (37.7%)

Total Votes: 377

Again, I can't help but be surprised by the results of one of these polls.

I know a lot of you dudes have a generally anti-bum outlook, as I do. If I had a dollar for every time a bum came up to me looking to borrow some of my parents' hard-earned money, and I wondered whether anyone would give a shit if I just killed him, I could retire at the ripe old age of 27.

But I'm not so coldhearted that I can't sympathize with the plight of a man that doesn't have anywhere to choke his chicken.

I mean, sure you could just give it a tug in a public restroom, or in an alley, or at the back of the bus or whatever. But what's the real harm in giving these guys their own room in the library, where they can marvel at the magnificence of Internets pr0n - arguably the only thing in this life that's managed to improve since I've graduated high school?

Imagine if libraries had free access to all of the Internets pr0n there ever was, in the same way that they have free access to a shedload of other material no one gives a shit about.

Admit it, as much as you turn up your nose at the idea of a special computer lab where bums can stroke it, you'd be tempted to go have a look.

After the jump are the classic YouTube videos of Carl Monday investigating a guy who got caught stroking it at a library in Cleveland, and the subsequent Daily Show spoof.

Who won the first debate?

I'm gonna keep this brief, because I'm several beers in at this point, and I'm not a very good typist even when I'm sober.

First of all, I didn't see a very clear winner in tonight''s debate. McCain kept driving home the point that Obama doesn't know what he's talking about re: foreign policy, even though it's obvious McCain doesn't know shit about shit. If Obama had more balls, he would have run away with this thing.

More importantly, after the jump is a video of what supposedly Sarah Palin in a bathing suit, from her beauty pageant days. Admit it, this video, grainy though it may be, gave you a semi. But you've got to be pretty concerned about the fact that this woman could be president, regardless of what side of the aisle you're on.

Slacker Uprising

Watching Slacker Uprising, you get the idea that Michael Moore shot it, during his tour of college campuses to get out the vote in the weeks leading up to the 2004 election, thinking John Kerry was actually gonna win.

Mad people had already died in Iraq, and at that point, pretty much everyone realized the war was bullshit. I can't remember what the economy was like back in 2004, but I know I was broker than a motherfucker. As usual. It probably wasn't that good, though.

John Kerry had a pretty good shot at winning.

If he had won, I imagine Michael Moore would have released Slacker Uprising at some point during 2005, after Kerry had taken office. Which would have been one hell of a coup for him, as far as the perception of his influence.

At the time, he was coming off of Fahrenheit 9/11, which was the biggest documentary evar, and for which he won the Academy Award. (Remember that shit?) Imagine if he'd actually managed to swing a presidential election.

Between Fahrenheit 9/11 and the campus tour depicted in Slacker Uprising, he probably would have been in as good a position as anyone to claim that it was all him, even if it wasn't. I mean, who was his main competition? P Diddy with those dumbass Vote or Die t-shirts?

He must have been kicking himself on election night, when he realized George W. Bush was about to be reelected. A man of his girth, I'm surprised he didn't keel over right then and there. I almost did myself, and I'm half his age.

And so Slacker Uprising sat on a shelf for the past few years. Basically a compilation of clips of him talking to college students about voting and how much he supports the truth, it probably wouldn't have been compelling enough to play very well in theaters even if Kerry had one. They probably could have released it straight to DVD, but then people would have gotten the wrong idea about Michael Moore's career, especially in light of the relatively tepid response to Sicko.

So this election cycle was probably his last good chance to do something, anything with Slacker Uprising. Only thing is, it wasn't made to help the rally the vote for the next presidential election, and it doesn't really play as if it was. The parts at the beginning and end, where it says that more young people voted in 2004 than ever before, and that Bush still won, but this year the Republicans won't be so lucky, just feels tacked on. As I recall, there isn't even any mention of who's running this year.

You wish he'd gone back, taken the best of the footage he got in 2004, and updated it with new material relevant to this year's election. Especially since his guy lost last time, and this time, he's not even going out on tour. He's just putting some of his b-roll footage up on the Internets for free download.

Don't get me wrong. I didn't find Slacker Uprising to be a complete waste. What's there is reasonably amusing for what it is, if not on the level of, say, Bowling for Columbine. But if you're into that sort of thing, you might want to DL and have a look.

Now is the time to resist Wall Street's Shock Doctrine

Naomi Klein on Democracy Now!

Related:

• My review of The Shock Doctrine
• Naomi Klein on Wall Street's Shock Doctrine in the Huffington Post

Parts 2 and 3 after the jump.

That's some bush league psych out shit!

I can't believe John McCain tried to pull this shit today of trying to get Barack Obama to stop campaigning, because the economy is too fucked the fuck up. He's also trying to talk Obama out of participating in the first presidential debate, this Friday night.

I mean, who ever even heard of a presidential candidate, weeks before the election, suspending his campaign for, like, anything?

It's obvious John McCain could give a rat's ass about going back to Washington to help fix the economy. As if he's even capable of helping matters. Even before his brain began to grow a thin candy shell, he probably wasn't smart enough to have a very good handle on Wall Street. And as this election cycle has proven, he's probably got Alzheimers.

Wouldn't it be fantastic if, during the debate, he forgot what year it was and suddenly flashed back to his days in the Hanoi Hilton. If Charlie Gibson or whomever asked him what's the difference between a Sunni and a Shiite, and his response was, "Fuck off, gook!"

No but really, it's obvious what's going here. John McCain realizes he's not gonna do any good on the campaign trail anyway. He can't raise either of his arms up over his head, he has no idea what the fuck he's talking about, and he can't get more than a few old people to show up to his events. If the two of them were to appear in a debate together, it would be like Kennedy and Nixon back in 1960s.

The real question is: Is John McCain really that desperate? I don't think you pull some shit like this unless you think you're gonna lose otherwise. If Barack Obama doesn't agree to this BS, which supposedly he's not going to, McCain's gonna take a pretty big L on this one, no?

Termanology - Politics as Usual: Album Review

Termanology, Politics as Usual (Nature Sounds, 2008)
Termanology is a young latino kid out of Massachusetts who must have pictures of DJ Premier engaged in some sort of bizarre sex act. Not only does he have three Primo tracks on this, his debut album, but two of them don't even appear to be from Primo's budget line.

• Termanology @ MySpace

Damn, DMX had a stroke?

First Bobby Brown, then Nate Dogg, and now DMX. Supposedly. Damn.

I wonder if this means Nate Dogg was on crack, or was it just the usual penchant for fried chicken and what have you that did him in? You'd think he would've been skinnier, if he was hitting that pipe. Hmm...

As far as DMX is concerned, they're not saying for certain whether or not he had a stroke - just that he had to be taken to a hospital yesterday for "fear of a stroke." I wonder if that means they're not sure whether or not he had a stroke, or if they're just not allowed to say so yet.

Checkit: DMX Stops, Drops, Goes to Emergency Room [TMZ}

Blu and Mainframe - Johnson & Jonson: Album Review

Blu and Mainframe, Johnson & Jonson (Tres, 2008)
Johnson & Jonson is the latest entry in the Blu album of the month club. Past entries, you'll recall, have included Below the Heavens, which was a lot of people's favorite album of last year, and that CRAC album, from earlier this year, which was actually that good.

• Blu @ MySpace