No cabin fever here...

...but it's perfectly OK to go crazy outdoors!

All that's on the news today is the snowstorm back east. With Amtrak and the airports in D.C. shut down, perhaps we'll get a coupla days of good government, i.e. none!

Anyway, some people know how to have fun with winter. More likely they just know how to have fun and screw winter. Check out these Krauts. I suspect the involvement of alcohol...might be a little 'watch this!' thrown in...

Elefantentreffen Arcitc-Nudes (0°C), Mud-Hillclimb & Boxer-Pirouette

Fortsetzung folgt!!!

I can't wait...

53.BVDM Elefantentreffen 2009 (1) in Thurmansbang-Solla / Germany

In for a pfennig, in for a dollar update:

Here's a vid of this year's Elephant Rally, just put on YouTube today. Call it "post-apocalyptic snow camping" or just plain fun. Hey, these are Fixer's people! Hardy, fun-loving, and more than a little crazy! In the good way.

I understand very little of what these folks are saying, but I understand this - motorcyclists are the same the world over. I'd feel right at home there.



See also Teil 1. Shows folks arriving at the campground, with a musical reference to the Donner Party, I think. Heh. I could watch these all day. Oh, it's snowing again. Probly will...

Danke to amandeis, Germany.

"...the Devil's in the backyard fryin' his brain..."

Travis Mayer ~ The Devil Went To Jamaica

Thanks to Edsell2009.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Sheryl Crow & Emmylou Harris ~ Juanita

Thanks to Edsell2009.

Eminently qualified ...

For a job in D.C.

Three Girls and Their Buddy

I watched this show last night. Terrific. Watch it if you get the chance.

Quote of the Day

Will Durst

I think Obama's main obstacle in affecting real change is the culture of DC. To them, erosion is a radical concept.

True enough, but his real obstacle is all of the Repugs and some of the Democrats.

It should be the norm ...

Not the exception.

Sen. Al Franken ripped into White House senior adviser David Axelrod this week during a tense, closed-door session with Senate Democrats.

...

The sources said Franken was the most outspoken senator in the meeting, which followed President Barack Obama’s question-and-answer session with Senate Democrats at the Newseum on Wednesday. But they also said the Minnesotan wasn’t the only angry Democrat in the room.

...

We don't elect these fuckers to a social club and it's sad that all but a handful of Dems are there only to play the game. We need more guys like Franken who realize they aren't there to make friends but to get something done.

At least ...

Somebody is doing something besides patting them on the head. Our next Governor NY's Attorney General crawls up Bank of America's ass:

The New York attorney general yesterday accused Bank of America Corp. and its former chief executive, Kenneth Lewis, of deceiving shareholders and manipulating US officials during the company’s $50 billion purchase of Merrill Lynch.

...

The civil fraud charges against Lewis, Price, and the company itself concern a series of rapidly unfolding events from September 2008, when the financial industry pitched into crisis, to January 2009, when Bank of America ultimately received $20 billion in government money to cover Merrill’s losses. Bank of America had previously received $25 billion from the government.

...

The only bonuses these clowns should have received are the ones from their prison husbands.

Hey!

The interwebs works again! Couldn't get a page to load last night ... If you sent me an email yesterday, I'll look at it tonight.

Calamari for everybody!

LATimes

Giant Humboldt squid taking Southland anglers by storm

Go see the picture! I've had little bitty squids wrap themselves around my hook, but nothing like this!

Anglers from all over Southern California are crowding area landings for a chance to fish for the giant squid, which are reportedly a lot of fun to catch and put up quite a fight when boated, usually dousing those nearby with gallons of cold seawater and/or ink.

Doused with gallons of squid ink? Well, not my idea of the dream day on the water, but to each their own.

"The fishing was squidtastic!" said Michael Gannon, of San Clemente, who was aboard the Clemente out of Dana Wharf on Sunday. "My arms are about to fall off because the squid are so huge and put up such a fight."

Also called jumbo squid, they were once found primarily off South America and have slowly expanded their territory.

Good thing there's no global warming, huh? In a few years this report might come from the Bering Sea.

In the 'comments' to the article, some folks are saying this happens once in a while and is no big deal, others are saying it forebodes Armaggedon. ¿Quien sabe?

Update:

Go see the video at HuffPo. Ya gotta wait for the awful title-of-this-post-related pun at the end! Heh.

Rest Your Beverages With Confidence, Says Carmaker

TOKYO (The Borowitz Report) – Embattled automaker Toyota today said that despite problems with accelerators and brakes, the cup holders on its most popular car models were "perfectly safe to use."

But Mr. Kyosuke's upbeat comments about Toyota's cup holders were undercut somewhat later in the day by congressional testimony from Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood.

"You should only feel safe to use your cup holder if your Toyota is parked in your driveway," Mr. LaHood said. "At 80 miles per hour, the cup holder becomes a rocket launcher."

O'Keefe's race problem

Max Blumenthal has an interesting article on that little wingnut prick and future jailhouse shaggin' piece O'Keefe.

His right-wing admirers don't seem to mind that O’Keefe's short but storied career has been defined by a series of political stunts shot through with racial resentment. [...]

According to One People's Project founder Daryle Jenkins, O'Keefe was manning the literature table at the gathering that brought together anti-Semites, professional racists and proponents of Aryanism. OPP covered the event at the time, sending a freelance photographer to document the gathering. Jenkins told me the table was filled with tracts from the white supremacist right, including two pseudo-academic publications that have called blacks and Latinos genetically inferior to whites: American Renaissance and the Occidental Quarterly. The leading speaker was Jared Taylor, founder of the white nationalist group American Renaissance. "We can say for certain that James O'Keefe was at the 2006 meeting with Jared Taylor. He has absolutely no way of denying that," Jenkins said. [...]

By O’Keefe’s own account, his racial troubles became acute when he entered the multicultural atmosphere of Rutgers University’s dormitory system. In an online diary that has since been scrubbed from the Web (but not before being captured on Daily Kos), he wrote that he was forced to live on an all-black dormitory floor after refusing to live with the gay roommate he was initially assigned. O’Keefe claimed his next roommate was “an Indian midget ... who smelled like shit.” The roommate left, however, and was replaced by “a greek kid.” The new roommate complained to a residential administrator that O’Keefe had called his neighbors “niggers,” prompting the school to expel him from the dorm. [...]

Meanwhile, O’Keefe lost his job at the Leadership Institute in 2008 for a prank call he made to an Ohio-based Planned Parenthood clinic. During the call, O’Keefe offered a donation to the clinic on the condition that it would be earmarked to pay for aborting African-American fetuses. “Because there's definitely way too many black people in Ohio,” O’Keefe remarked to the receptionist. “So, I'm just trying to do my part.”

Let's make the sure that all the brothers and hermanos at whatever hoosegow this little prick ends up in all get a copy of Blumenthal's piece. He might only get 30 days or so, but that oughta be time enough for them to widen his, er, perspective.

Update:

More on this from Max.

Pants On Fire

If you missed this yesterday evening take 11:10 and watch it.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

The 'R' Word

There certainly seems to be a lot of of people flinging the words 'retard' and 'retarded' at one another and calling for each other to be fired for it.

Political Carnival on the latest case, Perry v Hutchison:

Le mot du jour seems to be making the rounds in the "more politically correct than thou" circles.

Andrew Sullivan on Palin v Rahmbo:

Did she really just call for Rahm Emanuel to be fired because he allegedly used the term "fucking retarded" to refer to fellow Democrats in a private meeting? Last summer? Did she really?

I don't like the term myself. I think it is offensive. I think Rahm Emanuel is offensive. But at least he's real. And he has now apologized. And at least he used the term metaphorically.

On naming her latest baby:

The medical term for Down Syndrome is Trisomy-21 or Trisomy-g. It is often shortened in medical slang to Tri-g.

Now that's retarded.

Since apologies for the use of a very valid and useful word meaning basically 'slow' or 'slow down' but hijacked and co-opted to mean only one thing, sorta like 'gay', seem to be in order, I hereby apologize to the thousands of ignition systems I've set to 'full retard'. I was just trying to get the engines to start easily and idle correctly and in my ignorance had no idea I was insulting them.

As one Political Carnival commenter said,

...this whole pseudo-controversy is retarded.

I would never use the word to refer to people with "moderate cognitive disabilities", but I sure as shit will to describe wingnuts and Repugs in general. Fuckin' retards, the whole backwards lot of 'em. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Yeesh.

Update:

P.M. Carpenter wasn't writing about this subject but he hit its nail right on the head:

Saying the GOP is the party of no is one thing – and technically correct – but more so it’s the party of antediluvian cluelessness

Shorter: Fuckin' retards, the lot of 'em.

Update II:

Think Progress

[...] Claiming Emanuel’s regrettable remarks gave him permission, hate radio talker Rush Limbaugh endorsed the language and said the liberal activists truly are “retards”:

Palin has called into Limbaugh’s show at least twice. Will she now call on him to apologize for his slur?

Hell no. IOKIYAR.

Dream on, pal ...

Rules are for the little people:

... And there is only one way to stop it. When the guy at the top takes the fall for it along with those approving the deals, then you would see due diligence. But I am just dreaming again.

Headline of the Day

Maru:

Fairies are coming for my penis

Ignoring Iraq ...

Because if we don't, we'll start asking difficult questions like "when do Bush and Cheney go on trial for war crimes?"

...

Since the galling announcement a year would be lost withdrawing totally—more or less—according to plan the American corporate propaganda has studiously ignored Iraq, that’s very much part of the denial plan, ignoring Iraq won’t make it go away but at least keeps those awful conversations of imprisoning Bush and Cheney out of the news. Right? Anyway, it’s been relative easy because Iraq has been so blessedly quiet, things have gone fairly well to the glacial withdrawal plan, praise baby Jesus.

...

Dangle Dat Junk, Souljah Boy!

The Rude Pundit, obviously a regular reader of the Brain, follows up on Fixer's post:

Underneath the glowing sheen of rationality given to the most despicable of beliefs, there is always irrational fear. Implicit in the language of the men who want to leave in place the U.S. military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy regarding gays and lesbians in the military is this fear: "Gay guys might rape my ass." The proper response to that is, "Oh, get over yourself, Mary."

It's as if there's a group of predatory queers out there jonesing for some Marine ass and are willing to sign away a few years of their life to get it. It's as if the notion of openly gay service members (yeah, yeah, ha, ha, "members") will stop all the straight dudes from hanging out nude with other straight dudes, an image that, in any context, is totally gay (as in "homosexual"). Seriously, if you wanna walk around, dangling your junk in front of other guys, there's probably something you need to ask and tell yourself.

Junk-dangling soldiers aside, it's not really as if the straight guys are the models of sexual decorum here. "According to several studies of the US military funded by the Department of Veteran Affairs, 30% of military women are raped while serving, 71% are sexually assaulted, and 90% are sexually harassed," says a BBC report from last year, with an estimate that "some 90% of military sexual assaults are never reported." It's pretty damn likely that the vast majority of those assaults were not committed by lesbians.

Tony Perkins, whose Family Research Council (motto: "Why doesn't Jesus stop us from going bankrupt?") has a petition against the repeal of DADT, says, "Forcing soldiers to cohabit with people who view them as sexual objects would inevitably lead to increased sexual tension, sexual harassment, and even sexual assault." Or, in other words, the straight dudes might be treated like they treat women. Or, in other words, please don't rape our asses, Mr. Gay Guy.

Indeed, by the right's own logic, the military should ban heterosexual men.

Ooh! 300 would be required viewing in basic training! Wouldn't wanta over-oil, after all...

Reminds me of the time I asked the First Shirt for a 96 hour liberty - "Harrumph! I wouldn't give youse a 96 if I wuz fuckin' ya."

Guantanamo beats Illinois: Sen. Hatch

The Swamp on comments by Sen. Hatch (R[etard] - Cultah):

All things considered, one senator suggested today, the accused terrorists housed at the military-run prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, are better off than they might be at a state prison in Illinois that the Obama administration wants to buy for them.

If the terrorists view Guantanamo as a rallying cry for recruitment of new terrorists, he suggested, wait until they see Thomson.

"It's pretty nice compared to Illinois -- the place in Illinois where they want to put them," Hatch said in the committee hearing. "It'd be nice and cold in the winter time and... all I can say is that I imagine there'll be a hue and a cry that we're not fair by bringing them here."

I think Hatch is confusing a prison cage in Cuba with the warm fair breezes and room service at wherever he and Rushole stay in the Dominican Republic.

Prison's prison. It's about the loss of freedom, not the weather.

The arguments for keeping these prisoners out of the U.S. where they might perhaps come under the protection of the Constitution and thus be less of a recruiting tool for al Qaeda are getting feebler and feebler.

US Trade Group Wants Stanky, Formaldehyde-Laced FEMA Trailers Sent To Haiti

"Pimp my FEMA trailer."

Treehugger

FEMA has put the notorious Katrina Trailers, some 100,000 of them, up for auction; and the bidding has apparently driven down prices for the new models. Hence, lobbyists for the Recreational Vehicle Industry Association have suggested sending empty Katrina trailers to Haiti as a 'humanitarian gesture.' [...]

Everybody seems to be against this other than the trailer industry, which is overloaded with the Katrina trailers, and southern white men, but I think it's a fine idea.

I wouldn't live in any new trailer or RV for all the reasons we all know, or come to think of it, a brand new house that hasn't had the windows open for a coupla years, but surely these particular trailers have outgassed by now. What do you think?

Jim Crow Policing

Bob Herbert on NYPD racial profiling which occurs everywhere else as well.

Even the official reasons given by the police for the stops are laughably bogus. People are stopped for allegedly making “furtive movements,” for wearing clothes “commonly used in a crime,” and, of course, for the “suspicious bulge.” My wallet, my notebook and my cellphone would all apply.

Modesty prevents me from commenting further on the 'suspicious bulge' but at least now I know why I get stopped and frisked all the time...

Smoke Signals and Honking Mini-vans

NYTimes on how the Taliban use ancient methods to track U.S. troop movements.

But as the company moved, shepherds whistled in the darkness, passing warning of the Americans’ approach. Dogs barked themselves hoarse. The din rose in every direction, enveloping the column in noise. And then, as the Marines became visible in the bluish twilight, a minivan rumbled out of one compound. Its driver steered ahead of the company, honking the van’s horn, spreading the alarm. Spotters appeared on roofs.

On the morning of the sweep, made by Weapons Company, Third Battalion, First Marines, a large communications antenna that rose from one compound vanished before the Marines could reach it. The man inside insisted that he had seen nothing. And when the Marines moved within the compounds’ walls, people in nearby houses released white pigeons, revealing the Americans’ locations to anyone watching from afar.

The Taliban and their supporters use other signals besides car horns and pigeons, including kites flown near American movements and dense puffs of smoke released from chimneys near where a unit patrols.

One of the noisiest things on the planet is a grunt rifle company on the move, especially at night when sound carries much farther than in the daytime. You can hear them coming almost literally a mile away if there's no ambient noise like in a city.

I think the way to operate against the Taliban is to use Spec Ops people, who can move very quietly at night, to Find them and Fix them in position, and then use regular troops to move in in force and Finish them.

The Taliban signalling techniques are a good thing for us to know for when the right wing militias start to move. Work on sight alignment and trigger squeeze too.

Go read how the Taliban know where to place small IEDs on the vast steppe to have the best effect. I think with the militias, we can just mine their bar stools.

Sex and death the Facebook way!

If it's Wednesday, it must be Morford.

Behold, our beloved mechanisms of fear and desire, doom and delight! How they dance and sing in ways that make us giggle like obese children at the county fair, like drunken bears let loose at the campground. How they make us so very happy, horny, powerful like gods, and then turn right around and kill us dead. Ain't it a bitch?

Throughout history, the same. Not 48 hours after Alex Bell invented the very first telephone, his mistress rang him up for a fine Victorian booty call at 2 a.m., and his wife answered and she freaked the hell out and killed the cheating bastard in his sleep. True story! You can Google it!

Witness, won't you, the great and bizarre era of the great and bizarre Facebook. It has become terribly real. It has moved from silly novel dorky sorority-girl hookup bubblegum pop, into something darker, harder edged, lethal.

Like the iPod, like basketball shoes, like God, Facebook has changed cultural position, not because 15 million people use it to post bad poetry or talk about their love of "Mad Men" and Lady Gaga, but because Facebook -- and its brethren MySpace and Twitter (and email and SMS and etc) have become one of those mechanisms, a means and mode of true love, deep pain, and yes, very real death.

I use Facebook mostly to make bad jokes to folks who aren't in the room with me, sorta like here. I've been in danger from those all my life. Nothing much has changed except I have a lot more email to deal with.

Singing ...

Too bad we didn't waterboard the nut roaster "Christmas Day Bomber", eh?

I thought only torture, and sacrificing all of our beliefs, got these guys to talk:

... The information Abdulmuttalab is sharing has been described by other officials as fresh and actionable.

...

He's doing a regular Pavarotti for the feds.

That 'splains it ...

Maru:

Porcine scumbag’s flailathon at Miss America pageant Saturday may have been responsible for earthquakes that shook globe this weekend:

...

See, there's always a scientific explanation for the mysteries of nature. Heh ...

Warning: Video of Rush Limbaugh dancing at the link. May cause permanent injury; nausea at the least.

Quote of the Day

Oliver Willis:

...

For the right, it is no longer 2004 and anyone who doesn’t march in lockstep with U.S. military is no longer a fifth columnist.

Admiral Mullen is now a traitor.

That is all ...

If yer making $250K ...

You can afford to pay a little more tax:

...

More importantly than that, the tax increases on the $250,00+ set are marginal tax increases which only apply to...money in excess of $250,000. People making, say, $300,000 aren't going to see their tax bill increase by very much.

I'm tired of all the sniveling from the well-to-do, but what bugs me more is the sniveling from poor folks who think the well-to-do are taxed too much.

Listen to me.

1. The rich don't care about anyone of a lower economic class than they are. That means you.

2. "Trickle-down Economics" doesn't work. The rich don't "spread the wealth", they hold onto it.

3. Somebody's gonna have to pay. Better those who can afford it than those who can't. Protecting the rich from taxes only assures that the rest of us are gonna pick up the bill.

4. If you fall into the demographic of people making less than $250K, you shouldn't be voting for Republicans. They're not even protecting your "moral values", let alone your financial security.


see more Lolcats and funny pictures

I'm so fucking tired of people complaining about taxes. How the fuck do you expect to run a country? How do you expect to fight these wars that so many seem to love? It's unbelievable to me how brainwashed we are to believe we can have everything we want without having to pay for it.

Oh the morale!

Shit, if they're in the Air Force, they're fucking anyway:

...

It would seem that O'Hanlon's [of course - F] dreamy "18-year-old, old-fashioned, testosterone-laden men in the military who are tough guys" are actually very unlikely to hate gays. He's just going to have to figure out how to think about those young warriors in a way which doesn't require them to be straight and homophobic.

...

Myths and Lies about the Constitution

Excellent article by Glenn Greenwald on Constitutional rights and to whom they apply and who's lying about it. Anybody who cites Yick Wo v. Hopkins is doing their homework! Links at site. First and last ¶:

Over the weekend, Sen. Susan Collins released a five-minute video in which she sounded as though she were possessed by the angriest, most unhinged version of Dick Cheney. Collins recklessly accused the Obama administration of putting us all in serious danger by failing to wage War against the Terrorists. Most of what she said was just standard right-wing boilerplate, but there was one claim in particular that deserves serious attention, as it has become one of the most pervasive myths in our political discourse: namely, that the U.S. Constitution protects only American citizens, and not any dreaded foreigners. Focusing on the DOJ's decision to charge the alleged attempted Christmas Day bomber with crimes, Mirandize him and provide him with counsel, Collins railed: "Once afforded the protection our Constitution guarantees American citizens, this foreign terrorist 'lawyered up' and stopped talking" (h/t). This notion that the protections of the Bill of Rights specifically and the Constitution generally apply only to the Government's treatment of American citizens is blatantly, undeniably false -- for multiple reasons -- yet this myth is growing, as a result of being centrally featured in "War on Terror" propaganda.

But this right-wing demagoguery (coming from both Republicans and some Democrats) has nothing to do with those debates. For one thing, the accused Christmas Day bomber was captured and is being held inside the U.S. (right-wing fear-mongerers have long argued that we should not bring GITMO detainees to the U.S. because, once inside the U.S., they would then enjoy full Constitutional protections). But more important, the standard rhetorical formulation being used -- "extending rights to foreign Terrorists which the Constitution reserves for U.S. citizens" -- suggests that Constitutional rights are for American citizens only. That is blatantly false, and anyone making that claim -- as Susan Collins and so many others have -- is either extremely ignorant or extremely dishonest.

I'm down wit dishonest and worse when it comes to Repug fearmongering and trampling on rights. Go read.

Kvetcher in the Rye

Greg Palast with a bitter rant on our society as seen through Catcher In The Rye.

Then we fell over the cliff.

A bullet through the skull replaced Kennedy with Nixon. We shall overcome was replaced with the vicious "Southern Strategy;" the Cold War exploded in hot jungles; then came the idiot wasteland of the regimes of Ford and Carter and Reagan and Clinton and Bushes, a degenerative march as the machine of America rusted and died.

And here we are today, begging for spare parts from China and my daughter glued to YouTube videos of Lady Ga-Ga's crotch, and my son slicing off a cop's head in Grand Theft Auto and a President, telegenic and painfully hollow, playing the lost and ineffectual shepherd over an electorate divided between the terrified and the greedy. In place of prophets, we are offered a caravan of kvetching clowns piling out of the Volkswagen on MSNBC.

There's no way to wipe the fuck off this smeared planet. I'm supposed to try. I'm an investigative reporter, meaning I have a professional commitment to the childish belief that if I shout loud enough, I can warn people away from the cliff's edge.

You stand on the cliff edge and there's no one left to catch.

Is he right? Sure. Is he wrong? Sure.

Bizarro-World Headline of the Day

Right wing talker says safety recall an Obama 'jihad' against Toyota

And since...

...a Groundhog Day-relevant post is apparently obligatory, here's mine. This is for everybody who thinks just because it's February, Winter's almost over. (wink)

About Yoo ...

Ol' Fez sees the future:

...

So the next President (well, Republican President) who wants to have somebody murdered -- preferably a foreigner -- and gets some Justice Department hack to say he can do it -- by the logic of this precedent, it's just "poor judgment" but nothing too untoward.

It's legal as long as the President says it is. Didn't we settle this 35 years ago?

And since ...

Everybody has a Groundhog Day-relevant post up, I'll posit that the poor animal* has more weather forecasting sechel** than all the twits who do it for a living on the local news. They should leave the poor varmint alone.

*I tell ya, if somebody jerked me out of a sound sleep and stuck my face in front of TV cameras and lights, people would be making hospital visits.

**Yiddish word for "common sense".

Quote of the Day

Athenae on the Teabagger convention:

...

Here's a tip: When your party's too crazy for MICHELLE BACHMANN, it's time to take the lampshade off your head.

...

I'll have the truth ...

Mit a schmear:

Internal documents and e-mails show that Navy officials unfavorably doctored a psychiatrist’s performance record after he blew the whistle on what he said was dangerously inept management of care for Marines suffering combat stress at Camp Lejeune, N.C. The internal correspondence, obtained by Salon, also includes an order to delete earlier records praising the work of the psychiatrist, Dr. Kernan Manion, who was fired last September after lodging his complaints.

...

It ain't about getting these Marines the best care possible, it's about CYA.

Great thanks to Susie for the link.

The Pleasures of a Presidential Pimp-Slapping

The Rude One on last Friday's Presidential dope slap of the Repug reps:

[...] So while the Rude Pundit's weary of trying to figure out what the fuck Obama is up to (getting rid of NASA programs? Really?) he wants to make one observation that may not have been explored in the mass orgasm on the left over Obama handing Republicans their asses and telling them to smell their own farts.

What Obama did was to show the GOP House members a respect that they have failed to show him. He treated them like grown-ups, not the worthless obstructionist bags of shit they are. In essence, he gave them a shot, on their terms, at trying to take him down. And they couldn't do it. In simple terms, he was rubber, and they were glue, motherfuckers.

By the time Obama got to talking about spending on infrastructure and how dozens of the gathered Republicans had "gone to appear at ribbon-cuttings for the same projects that you voted against," it was over. In war terms, all that was left was for Obama to walk among the bodies and see who still was moaning or moving before shooting them between the eyes. He worked with Republicans, again and again, gave them things they wanted, and they still chose to vote against the Recovery Act because it was something Obama wanted.

Really, he could have spent the rest of the time answering every question with, "That would be a valid complaint if you guys weren't such enormous douchebags." And when he started mocking the rhetoric Republicans use against him, John Boehner actually lost color in his face and Eric Cantor had shit himself, as if thinking, "We've made a terrible mistake."

If one could actually read tea leaves with this president, it would seem like he is laying the groundwork for abandoning working with Republicans. There's only so many times a dog can bite your hand before you muzzle that fucker. And what did he get for his trouble? By Sunday, Mitch McConnell and John Boehner had already stated that Obama can shove his bipartisanship up his ass.

Figures. Obama tried to play nice with these fuckers and it didn't - couldn't have - worked. He pretty much told the perpetrators of Project Obama Fail to shove their lack of bipartisanship up theirs. In a very nice way, of course, not thw way I would have said it.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Oregon: Voters Approve Measure to Tax Rich
Narrowly reject measure to eat them.

Schwarzenegger Discovers Something He Can Export to Mexico
Prison inmates.

Zsa Zsa Gabor's Husband Running for Governor of California
Prince Frederic von Anhalt, who claimed he fathered Anna Nicole Smith's daughter and was once found naked and handcuffed to the steering wheel of a 2006 Rolls Royce, leads in the polls.

??? ~ News Quiz ~ ???

Which of the following questions, mailed by the GOP in an official looking envelope with the warning, “Official Document, Do Not Destroy,” and labeled “2010 Congressional District Census” does not appear in the enclosed document?
A ) Do you think the record trillion dollar federal deficit the Democrats are creating with their out-of-control spending is going to have disastrous consequences for our nation?
B ) Do you worry that the Obama administration is committed to greatly expanding the government's role in your life?
C ) Is there nothing the GOP will not do to mislead voters?
Hint: You have to ask?

More "looking forward" ...

Yoo and Bybee are gonna skate:

The Department of Justice has whitewashed a report on war criminals John Yoo and Jay Bybee, downgrading the admonition from "violated professional responsibilities" to "exercised poor judgment." The difference is start, in that the former finding could get them disbarred and that latter is a literal slap on the wrist with a wet noodle.

...

You know, Mr. President, giving other nations a hard time about corruption in government (remember your Africa remarks), when you give our own war criminals a pass, isn't the way to foster credibility in the world.

So ...

Yer too batshit crazy for Jesus to qualify to adopt a child in the States, so you have to go to Haiti and steal one?

A Baptist church in Idaho said on Sunday that its members, who were among 10 people detained for trying to take 33 children out of Haiti, were “falsely arrested” and that the church was trying “to clear up the misunderstanding.”

Haitian officials detained the church members out of concern the children might be susceptible to trafficking and said some of the children might have parents. The officials also said the team lacked proper documents to take the children, who range in age from 2 months to 12 years.

...

What were they thinking? Because Haiti is a mess, they don't care about their children? How about adopting some of those American zygotes that you pressure young mothers into bringing to term even if they're unwanted?

Sunday Blues Bloggin'

Mississippi John Hurt ~ Richland Woman Blues

Thanks to scmo08, Norway.

Bramble And The Rose

This has been me 'n Mrs. G's song for over 35 years. This is the prettiest version I've heard.

Patty Loveless ~ Bramble And The Rose

Thanks to INeverSmileAtAll.