Mannequin Pussy - Emotional High

Awesome punk rock girl singer vocal performance. "Yeah-eee-yeah-ah!!!"

"Rule Number One," Sleigh Bells -

Electro-clash shama-lamma-ding-dong; boombastic Le Tigre, Girlschool, Lady Gaga mashup.  

free trade agreements: a good fight even if Trump is blundering again

“It’s something I had taken for granted, that free trade was here to stay,” says guy from Texas that works for a software startup. Free trade: the tired canard that businesses can't pay living wages and compete. Or next thing you know prices for fruits and vegetables will kill us all, etc. Although, this is one area Trump's blundering politics might do some good. At this point, TPP's value was more geopolitical than economic anyway and these agreements,including NAFTA, generally suck for workers, the poor, and the environment. So, yeah, bust them up, but Trump thinks U.S. free trade agreements are bad b/c we've been giving away the store and he's the guy to make the better trade deals that will put America first. (One of the things that is going to suck most over the next four years is that we're going to have to take him seriously, even when he is acting again moronically.) In fact, U.S. corporations have profited handsomely off free trade agreements and outsourcing for cheaper labor elsewhere for decades now. And it's foolish to think Trump's approach has any chance of increasing trade. It won't. This will be worse than those meager and motley coalitions Bush & Cheney pulled together for their post-9/11 wars. Still, a lot of what passes for free trade just means capital is free to exploit the cheapest labor. So Trump busts up free trade agreements and brings home a few manufacturing jobs, he can and most certainly will do much worse.

"Best to You," Blood Orange

How could this not be a single?! Or w/out a video? All singles have videos nowadays, right? That seems to be the case w/ most chart singles, anyway, but not here and this has chart one-hit-wonder gem all over it. Sweet boy/girl R&B yearning combined w/ building, swirling, Freetown jive. It sounds at once familiar and exotic. Like world pop, if that wasn't usually a pejorative. It has a casual, effortless international urbanity ab it. Nice one.

"Back Up," Dej Loaf (ft. Big Sean)

Representing east Detroit, Fairview Manor, Dej Loaf. I'm not impressed by her choice in singles (she has yet to surpass her first hit, "Try Me"), but she always speaks softly and swings a big stick. Future single suggestion: "I'm Gon Win." And I hope she does.