Comments on: "Skunk" Baxter

"Skunk" Baxter

dhoyt — Wed, 25 May 2005 07:31:26 -0800

Rocker Jeff Baxter Moves and Shakes in National Security • "Jeff Baxter played psychedelic music with Ultimate Spinach, jazz-rock with Steely Dan and funky pop with the Doobie Brothers. But in the last few years he has made an even bigger transition: Mr. Baxter, who goes by the nickname "Skunk," has become one of the national-security world's well-known counterterrorism experts."

By: fleetmouse

fleetmouse — Wed, 25 May 2005 07:37:35 -0800

8-o

By: COBRA!

COBRA! — Wed, 25 May 2005 07:46:59 -0800

As a proud owner of the Jeff "Skunk" Baxter signature acoustic guitar, I'm pleased to see that my instrument can be used to keep the nation safe as well as rocking the fuck out.

By: stinkycheese

stinkycheese — Wed, 25 May 2005 08:05:16 -0800

So he's a hawk in dove's clothing?

By: aaronetc

aaronetc — Wed, 25 May 2005 08:08:11 -0800

What's most interesting about this isn't just that he has this weird dual career path -- although that is pretty interesting -- but that he's a self-trained missile defense expert. Honestly, it's the kind of story that KISS probably turned down while hearing the pitches that ultimately generated KISS Meets the Phantom of the Park.

By: Outlawyr

Outlawyr — Wed, 25 May 2005 08:14:47 -0800

One more reason to find Steely Dan suspect

By: quonsar

quonsar — Wed, 25 May 2005 08:16:45 -0800

katy lied.

By: johnny novak

johnny novak — Wed, 25 May 2005 08:20:47 -0800

Mr. Rohrabacher passed the report to another influential Republican lawmaker, Rep. Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania. Mr. Weldon says he immediately realized that Mr. Baxter could be a useful public advocate for missile defense because his rock-star pedigree would attract attention to the issue. "Most of Hollywood is from the liberal, 'let's hug the tree and be warm and fuzzy and sing Kumbaya,' bent," Mr. Weldon says. "You put Jeff Baxter up against them, and he cleans their clocks because he actually knows the facts and details." So in essence he's a shill for the Beltway Bandits.

By: scratch

scratch — Wed, 25 May 2005 08:45:20 -0800

One of his bands was named after a dildo, another was a marijuana reference. Good to know you can pass the background checks with stuff like that.

By: papakwanz

papakwanz — Wed, 25 May 2005 08:49:12 -0800

He flew 230,000 miles last year, and makes a point of dissolving brightly colored packets of vitamin supplements into his drinks to stave off illness. Yeah. "Vitamin packs". Suuuuuuuure.

By: IndigoJones

IndigoJones — Wed, 25 May 2005 09:19:03 -0800

I'd like more details. What exactly does he do for his healthy six figures? What are some of his out of the box insights? (And what's this about this creating strategy in gummint war games? I thought that embarrassing the pentagon in those situations usually went to real soldiers?) As with so much media, it raises more questions than it answers.

By: fixedgear

fixedgear — Wed, 25 May 2005 09:25:15 -0800

Not exactly a double post, but previously noted in this thread. Just sayin'.

By: sydnius

sydnius — Wed, 25 May 2005 09:29:18 -0800

Every time I hear a story about this guy, and I see his picture, I think "what a fucking prick". I wonder why.

By: SteveInMaine

SteveInMaine — Wed, 25 May 2005 09:59:39 -0800

Every time I hear a story about this guy, and I see his picture, I think "what a fucking prick". I wonder why. Has to be the 'stache.

By: alumshubby

alumshubby — Wed, 25 May 2005 11:40:46 -0800

I thought it was weird that Buckaroo Banzai was a world-famous rock musician and a brain surgeon, and he was fictional fer cryin' out loud.

By: gottabefunky

gottabefunky — Wed, 25 May 2005 11:49:38 -0800

He went to my high school (as did Trey of Phish), and donated a recording studio later on. Met him once - nice enough guy. The stache was bigger back then.

By: kimota

kimota — Wed, 25 May 2005 12:46:00 -0800

sydnius, do you think the same about this guy? If so, then I suspect SteveInMaine is correct!

By: essexjan

essexjan — Wed, 25 May 2005 13:44:37 -0800

Good grief, you couldn't make this shit up, could you? But I'm glad he still has the walrus moustache :-{

By: fatbaq

fatbaq — Wed, 25 May 2005 15:07:16 -0800

We've been over this people. it's a handlebar moustache, sheesh.

By: archae

archae — Wed, 25 May 2005 17:07:41 -0800

I'm with johnny novak. He's a shill. Or prehaps a frank abagnale character. Or likely a bit of both. It just goes to show how far you can go if you parrot back the party line to the right people, and climb up from there. You can be declared a genius by people who have dedicated entire careers and multiple doctoral degrees to get to where they are. Incomprehensibly powerful forces have been pursuing missile defense for decades. The profit potential is just too good to pass by. That's the real reason for this guy's success. Makes me want to switch careers. From now on, I'm a self-taught-expert-in-social-security. Now all I have to do is wait for the black DoD SUV's to roll up, and deliver a fat six-figure check in exchange for my mumbling policy advice that's heavily inspired by whatever the current buzzwords are on faux news...

By: wendell

wendell — Wed, 25 May 2005 17:25:25 -0800

They obviously put "Skunk" through the Skunkworks.

By: jonp72

jonp72 — Wed, 25 May 2005 19:30:50 -0800

One of his bands was named after a dildo, another was a marijuana reference. Good to know you can pass the background checks with stuff like that. Actually, I heard that Ultimate Spinach came from a quote by Timothy Leary about LSD is the "ultimate spinach," much like spinach transforms Popeye into a muscleman. Either way, that's a lot of primo 1960s coded drug references for one background check. By the way, true fans of Ultimate Spinach know that the band was stronger under its founder Ian Bruce-Douglas, while Baxter's version of the band, which played on the group's third and final album, was a much inferior model cobbled together by the record company.

By: afroblanca

afroblanca — Wed, 25 May 2005 23:15:57 -0800

As a fellow hippie-turned-capatalist-whore, I can only sympathize with this man.

By: afroblanca

afroblanca — Wed, 25 May 2005 23:18:47 -0800

(oops, I meant capitalist. Just because I sold out doesn't mean I learned how to spell.)

By: ph00dz

ph00dz — Thu, 26 May 2005 05:34:40 -0800

Think about if we dug up all those aging rocker guys to consult on stuff. Todd Rundgren could offer sagely advice on the spread of the avian bird flu. Davy Jones could consult on relations between Ecuador and the United States. Bob Weir could talk about the long term rates of inflation given the prospect of rising oil prices.

By: LairBob

LairBob — Thu, 26 May 2005 08:11:33 -0800

gottabefunky writes "He went to my high school (as did Trey of Phish), and donated a recording studio later on." Holy crap...they went to my high school. (Trey and I were in the same graduating class, along with the "Dude of Life", and my college roommate's band were the first to record in that studio.) What year were you?

By: troutfishing

troutfishing — Sun, 29 May 2005 22:09:32 -0800

In the immediate few days following the September 11th 2001 terrorist attacks, Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, ex Steely Dan guitarist turned weapons expert, recommended the use of nanorobots to re-engineer the attitudes of those in the Mideast hostile to the US. "Several days after the destruction of the World Trade Center, speaking at a seminar on terrorism before Department of Defense members, defense contractors, and military analysts at a Washington D.C. think-tank, the "Potomac Institute for Policy Studies", former lead guitarist for the rock group Steely Dan, Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, made a visionary proposal for a radically new, cutting edge strategy to counter the seething hatred of the United States in the Middle east, reports David Corn writing for Alternet.org. Acknowledging that the U.S. needs to fight a PR war on terrorism, The rock guitar legend, who has refashioned himself as an expert on the SDI initiative, the "Star Wars" Defense scheme first initiated during the Reagan years, suggested that the U.S. needed to use advertising, nanotechnology and Valium to " reengineer the perceptions of our enemies." Dealing with the deep hatreds which led to the fiery destruction of the World Trade Center would be difficult, the rock legend noted, because "You live in a dirt-poor place, but if you blow yourself up in the name of Allah, you'll get 73 virgins, all the dope you can smoke, backstage passes to Bruce Springsteen ... How do we nullify and negate that threat?" Answering his question Baxter, who refuses to acknowledge the origin of his nickname, noted that "The way to keep a kamikaze pilot out of aircraft ... is to deal with it at the source" and suggested a "Manhattan Project" for "perception engineering", a propaganda campaign run by the finest advertising talent money can buy - the elite ad execs of Detroit who were "selling Chevrolets when they were crap with the 'heart beat of America' " Applying his keen grasp of futuristic technologies, Baxter suggested that the United States could develop specialized types of microscopic robots - called "nanobots" - to infect the brains of those who hate the US and re-engineer their thought patterns away from "Great Satan" sentiments and towards a deep love of Coca-Cola , the World Trade Organization, and the American way. Showering poor, U.S. hating, fundamentalist middle eastern neighborhoods with free packages of Valium or even Prozac might do the trick too. According to Baxter, "it's an information war.... a war fought with the ideas...I can give you a Valium and make you feel good. I can give you a musical score and engineer your perceptions. All this is doable."

By: troutfishing

troutfishing — Sun, 29 May 2005 22:40:26 -0800

"(Washington - September 14, 2001) X-Steely Dan guitarist proposes brain implants, TV, Valium for those who hate U.S. Several days after the destruction of the World Trade Center, speaking at a seminar on terrorism before Department of Defense members, defense contractors, and military analysts at a Washington D.C. think-tank, the "Potomac Institute for Policy Studies", former lead guitarist for the rock group Steely Dan, Jeff "Skunk" Baxter, made a visionary proposal for a radically new, cutting edge strategy to counter the seething hatred of the United States in the Middle east, reports David Corn writing for Alternet.org. Acknowledging that the U.S. needs to fight a PR war on terrorism, The rock guitar legend, who has refashioned himself as an expert on the SDI initiative, the "Star Wars" Defense scheme first initiated during the Reagan years, suggested that the U.S. needed to use advertising, nanotechnology and Valium to " reengineer the perceptions of our enemies." Dealing with the deep hatreds which led to the fiery destruction of the World Trade Center would be difficult, the rock legend noted, because "You live in a dirt-poor place, but if you blow yourself up in the name of Allah, you'll get 73 virgins, all the dope you can smoke, backstage passes to Bruce Springsteen ... How do we nullify and negate that threat?" Answering his question Baxter, who refuses to acknowledge the origin of his nickname, noted that "The way to keep a kamikaze pilot out of aircraft ... is to deal with it at the source" and suggested a "Manhattan Project" for "perception engineering", a propaganda campaign run by the finest advertising talent money can buy - the elite ad execs of Detroit who were "selling Chevrolets when they were crap with the 'heart beat of America' " Applying his keen grasp of futuristic technologies, Baxter suggested that the United States could develop specialized types of microscopic robots - called "nanobots" - to infect the brains of those who hate the US and re-engineer their thought patterns away from "Great Satan" sentiments and towards a deep love of Coca-Cola , the World Trade Organization, and the American way. Showering poor, U.S. hating, fundamentalist middle eastern neighborhoods with free packages of Valium or even Prozac might do the trick too. According to Baxter, "it's an information war.... a war fought with the ideas...I can give you a Valium and make you feel good. I can give you a musical score and engineer your perceptions. All this is doable."