President Obama has announced 15 recess appointments in an attempt to get a fully functioning government in the face of unrelenting Republican obstructionism. This is 15 out of 74 that have been blocked ...
“A profound songwriter and expressive singer, San Franciscan Kathy Kallick is a mountain gal at heart. Her singing has always been earthy and passionate. As a songwriter, she knows how to pen beautiful impressionistic pieces with memorable contemporary messages. A troubadour and exquisite storyteller, (her) arrangements are tightly crafted, with each song given its own non-formulaic treatment.”
—Joe Ross, BLUEGRASS NOW
Kathy Kallick and the band perform her song "Wildflowers" at the grand opening of the new Freight and Salvage Coffee House in Berkeley. The band members from left to right are: Annie Staninec, Tom Bekeny, Kathy, Dan Booth and Greg Booth.
From 'Aly Meets The Cajuns' 1988 UK documentary
(james taylor, steve winwood sheryl crow, levon helm, emmylou harris & jacob dylan)
Craft beers, loosely defined as local brews produced by traditional methods, reflect not just specifics of their regions but offer a peek into the psyches of their creators as well. Like any label, those on craft beers bear a brand name and product information and meet the legal requirements of state and federal law.
But the estimated 1,500 craft brewers in the U.S., who sold slightly more than 4 million barrels of beer in the first half of 2009, are an intensely independent lot. Having broken from the conformity of so-called macro-brews, like Coors or Miller or Budweiser, microbrewers naturally take the next step and produce labels as quaint and curious and quirky as the liquid in the bottles.
Some of the stories beer labels tell turn out to be a bit too provocative for the authorities who oversee the industry.
Nude Beach Summer Wheat Beer, produced by Stevens Point Brewery Co. in Wisconsin, was banned for the mere suggestion that the sunbathers on the bright and playful label were, well, naked behind those strategically placed surfboards and volleyballs.
State liquor authorities in Maine and New York banned the import of Santa's Butt Winter Porter, a seasonal beer that made a visual pun out of a portly Santa seated on a wooden beer keg — known in the industry as a "butt."
And here in California, Weed Beer, brewed in the tiny town of Weed, came under fire for its bottle cap, which jokingly urged shoppers to "Try Legal Weed." (They also offer "Shastafarian Porter" - G)
PHOENIX — John McCain and Sarah Palin will be back on the campaign trail Friday, their first time campaigning together since McCain lost the presidential election a year and a half ago with Palin as his running mate.
Poll: Majority Favor Earlier Bedtime for McCain
I admit it: I had fun watching right-wingers go wild as health reform finally became law. But a few days later, it doesn’t seem quite as entertaining — and not just because of the wave of vandalism and threats aimed at Democratic lawmakers. For if you care about America’s future, you can’t be happy as extremists take full control of one of our two great political parties.
To be sure, it was enjoyable watching Representative Devin Nunes, a Republican of California, warn that by passing health reform, Democrats “will finally lay the cornerstone of their socialist utopia on the backs of the American people.” Gosh, that sounds uncomfortable. And it’s been a hoot watching Mitt Romney squirm as he tries to distance himself from a plan that, as he knows full well, is nearly identical to the reform he himself pushed through as governor of Massachusetts. His best shot was declaring that enacting reform was an “unconscionable abuse of power,” a “historic usurpation of the legislative process” — presumably because the legislative process isn’t supposed to include things like “votes” in which the majority prevails.
A side observation: one Republican talking point has been that Democrats had no right to pass a bill facing overwhelming public disapproval. As it happens, the Constitution says nothing about opinion polls trumping the right and duty of elected officials to make decisions based on what they perceive as the merits. But in any case, the message from the polls is much more ambiguous than opponents of reform claim: While many Americans disapprove of Obamacare, a significant number do so because they feel that it doesn’t go far enough. And a Gallup poll taken after health reform’s enactment showed the public, by a modest but significant margin, seeming pleased that it passed.
For today’s G.O.P. is, fully and finally, the party of Ronald Reagan — not Reagan the pragmatic politician, who could and did strike deals with Democrats, but Reagan the antigovernment fanatic, who warned that Medicare would destroy American freedom. It’s a party that sees modest efforts to improve Americans’ economic and health security not merely as unwise, but as monstrous. It’s a party in which paranoid fantasies about the other side — Obama is a socialist, Democrats have totalitarian ambitions — are mainstream. And, as a result, it’s a party that fundamentally doesn’t accept anyone else’s right to govern.
In the short run, Republican extremism may be good for Democrats, to the extent that it prompts a voter backlash. But in the long run, it’s a very bad thing for America. We need to have two reasonable, rational parties in this country. And right now we don’t.
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Personally, if this is the tact the GOP is going to take in its insatiable hunger to regain power, I'm all for it. Nothing like positioning yourselves as crybaby, sore-losing, self-serving obstructionist do-nothings hellbent on selling your souls, and the nation's best interests, in order to win a few House and Senate seats. So much for McCain's "country first" campaign promise. As we've seen this week, what truly comes first is the coffers of their fatcat corporate special-interest pals and the personal bank accounts of their rich, tax-loathing constituency. Fuck the poor, the middle class, the sick, the needy, the uninsured. I got mine, now go get yours. At least we know what matters most to these selfish elitists.
Last July Republican Sen. Jim DeMint (SC) arrogantly predicted that health care reform would fail and become Obama's "Waterloo" and that "it will break him." With this week's victory and the political capital its bestowed on the president, even conservatives like American Enterprise Institute fellow David Frum fear that Republicans have not just blown an unprecedented opportunity to help shape major policy, but also served to empower Obama, which is the exact opposite of what they aimed to accomplish. "The political imperative crowded out the policy imperative. And the Republicans have now lost both." He said Obama's health care victory is now the Republicans' Waterloo. "We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat."
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I can hardly believe it, but apparently America's wife beaters have actually decided to use the defense that these Democrats are "asking for" death threats from the right wingers because they are "making them mad." I documented Sere and Cantor's warnings this morning, but there are more:
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TRIBECA (WABC) -- The coyote stalking the city was cornered in an outdoor parking lot in TriBeCa.
The coyote was spotted walking the bike path along the West Side Highway, south of the Holland Tunnel, just before 11 a.m.
Police were accompanying the coyote, which was walking in the bike path along Hudson River Park.
They followed the coyote into an outdoor parking lot, near Watts Street.
Members of the NYPD's elite Emergency Services Unit tranquilized the coyote and pulled it out from under a red car in the parking garage.
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There are songs about love, songs about loss and songs about love lost. There are plenty of songs about trucks and trains, moonlit nights and dogs, but most of those are still about love, loss and love lost.
Then there are a surprising number of songs - across all genres - about food.
Apparently, food is the balladeer's perfect muse. Food is life.
"It's sacramental, it's worship, it's celebration and it's human need," says Marsh. Which means it's often a metaphor for sex.
The two are inextricable, he says. "It's the sensuality and carnality of food that makes it a fitting topic."
The Texas Tornados surely had something other than dip on their minds when they sang about "making guacamole all night long."
Food and sex "are the quickest paths to the most dopamine," says Colin Brooks, a member of the Band of Heathens. [...]
But, while many food songs are about sex, sometimes a doughnut is just a doughnut.
Measure to legalize marijuana will be on California's November ballot
The measure's main advocate, Richard Lee, an Oakland marijuana entrepreneur, savored the chance to press his case with voters that the state's decades-old ban on marijuana is a failed policy.
"We're one step closer to ending cannabis prohibition and the unjust laws that lock people up for cannabis while alcohol is not only sold openly but advertised on television to kids every day," he said.
Possession of an ounce or less has been a misdemeanor with a $100 fine since 1975, when Atty. Gen. Jerry Brown, who was then governor, signed a law that reduced tough marijuana penalties that had allowed judges to impose 10-year sentences.
With polls showing that a slim majority of voters support legalization, the legalization campaign will be trying to appeal to a slice of undecided voters who are mostly mothers. "It's always easier for people to say no than to say yes for an initiative," said Mark Baldassare, the pollster for the Public Policy Institute of California.
SO what do I know about this issue? As the physician and City public health administrator tasked with the initial implementation of Proposition 215 (legalizing medical marijuana) - I learned a lot.
On the data side, I compiled every bit of published research about marijuana (positive and negative) from the previous thirty years, researching every conceivable symptom and/or adverse event. The results were published and widely cited. I also gave talks using this same information about the health implications (and the quality of the data to support or refute claims) to any group interested in hearing it.
So how'd that go? While giving the exact same talk, using the exact same slides, I received impulsive, giddy gifts from both a San Francisco medical marijuana club (an enameled marijuana pin - "finally, a physician willing to speak the truth about how safe marijuana is!") and from the Santa Clara police department (a navy-blue district attorney mug - "finally, a physician willing to tell the truth about how dangerous this drug is!"). I had simultaneously become the unwilling darling of both ends of the spectrum. I learned from this experience two things:
Correction: Earlier this week, the Rude Pundit erroneously called the Iwo Jima flag-raising photograph "staged." However, as several rude readers pointed out, the photographer says it was not, and all evidence points to that being the case. Either way, Glenn Beck is still a motherfucker.
Facebook 'linked to rise in syphilis'
Coyote in Holland Tunnel: Didn't Pay Toll
We're told that the NYPD's elite Emergency Services Unit has been called to the Manhattan side of the Holland Tunnel to chase down a coyote initially spotted in the tunnel.
According to the most recent report from the cops, the commuting coyote left the tunnel and was last seen on Varick Street. "It's an ongoing job right now," a police spokesman told us moment ago.
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The syphilitic tranny, warned by the Canadian govt not to use hate speech in her act, cancelled her gig when she realized she would have absolutely no material left.
Rush Limbaugh, who vowed to leave the country if HCR passed, has gone back on his word. On the positive side, thousands of young Costa Rican boys can now sleep peacefully knowing the odious, Viagra-swilling gasbag won’t be rolling by any time soon.
Behold, with the astonishing passage of flawed-but-incredible health care reform, we have the concomitant, frightening realization that this remains one of the most acidic, bitter, hopelessly divisive times to live in America and care a whit for national politics while maintaining a shred of morality, hope, a progressive soul.
Like millions, I was fairly convinced it simply could not get much worse or more acrimonious than when Dubya ran the nation into the ground, embarrassing and humiliating us planetwide a thousand times over as the rogue idiot pseudo-cowboy laughingstock war-hungry prick of the civilized world. I was wrong. But not in the way I imagined.
In short, despite all their whining and infighting, the left wasn't pushing HCR because they wanted to stick it to the GOP. They weren't pushing it because they wanted to personally profit from various corporate cronies, though I'm sure some certainly will. They weren't pushing it due to multiple personal agendas. It was an authentic, at least somewhat egalitarian push to advance a basic ideal of the nation. Well, mostly. Which, in politics, is about as good as it gets.
The Republicans, on the other hand, were pure venom. Theirs was a systematic fearmongering, a nonstop bombardment of misguidings and untruths, an acid bath of panic overlaid with a fine sheen of racism and rage. This is turning out to be easily the nastiest, meanest GOP organization in ages, the house that Karl Rove built, a group shaming their own party's once-noble legacy. Even Reagan, who claimed Medicare would destroy the country, would be stunned at this gang's level of savagery.
Verily, health care reform will go down in history for many things -- Catholic nuns kicking ass, Ted Kennedy not having to roll in his grave, Democrats actually vaguely unifying -- but few are as amusing as the creation of the silliest political movement in recent American history, the Tea Party, a group barely cognizant of what it even stands for, with zero grasp of the history it's named after, who nevertheless will doubtlessly grab every tax benefit, housing subsidy, COBRA extension, Restoration Act moneys and (now) health care benefit that evil socialist Obama hands to them and their sniveling home states, even as they spit tobacco juice in his face. Adorable.
What else? Sarah Palin did something retarded, which is a little like saying "Sarah Palin breathed." Her SarahPAC (motto: "You think these hair styles are cheap?") has a poster up on Facebook (of course) that uses gun crosshairs to demonstrate where to target members of Congress for "defeat." Or shooting. Either way. The poster says, "It's time to take a stand," to which one wants to respond, "Um, didn't you already take a stand and lose?"
More offices of Democrats have been targeted by brick throwing idiots. Bart Stupak has received death threats. Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and all of their wannabes are declaring Democrats and liberals enemies of the United States. Somebody is going to get fucking killed, and it ain't gonna be Beck, even if he implies Barack Obama wants to shiv him.
We on the left used the rhetoric of battle during the Bush administration. But we used it when people were actually being killed and tortured by our nation. There's a vast qualitative difference to saying you are going to fight against people who lied us into war and saying you are going to take down those who are trying to get health care to poor people.
What this belies is the point the Rude Pundit's been making again and again: not one of these mass actions is going to happen. There will continue to be incidents, yes, and some of them may even veer into what we might call, if we weren't such racists, "terrorism." But mostly, this is done, this health care battle. The last stand happened. The battle was joined. The war was fought. And we won. And you lost, dear conservatives. Now, stop trying to dictate the terms of your defeat.
Repeal (requiring a veto-proof majority as long as Obama is president) is virtually impossible, not to mention unpopular. But the very GOP lies that came close to blocking health reform have brainwashed the Republican base into demanding its rescission. Consequently, many Republican leaders feel forced to perpetuate their doomsday and Armageddon claims and fight for repeal, even though they know it’s a lost cause.
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Republicans: Stuck Between Their Crock And A Hard Place
By Madeleine Begun Kane
The GOP base screams “Repeal!”
And Republicans pledge to with zeal.
Cuz they set their own trap
With their factual gap:
Nixing laws that have widespread appeal.
How ironic that GOP state leaders are vowing to challenge the Affordable Health Care for America Act in court. For a party that’s always lambasting trial attorneys and activist judges, Republicans sure are litigious:
Republican Trials (Limerick)
By Madeleine Begun Kane
Republicans constantly boo
Trial lawyers. They do it on cue.
For a party that feels
Such attorneys are heels,
The GOP sure likes to sue.
GOP Seeks Federal Mandate: Everyone Must Buy Their ‘Bullshit’
A proposal to put the legalization of marijuana in California to a vote this November is causing some growers of the plant in the state to worry about a sharp drop in the value of their crop if the measure succeeds.
On Wednesday, Los Angeles County elections officials must turn in their count of valid signatures collected in the county on a statewide legalization initiative. The number is virtually certain to be enough to qualify the initiative for the November ballot, according to a tally kept by state election officials.
That will once again make California the focal point of the long-stewing argument over marijuana legalization, a debate likely to be a high-dollar brawl between adversaries who believe it could launch or stifle another national trend.
California is not alone in weighing legalization. Several state legislatures have considered bills and two other Western states may vote on initiatives. In Nevada, a measure aimed for 2012 would allow state-licensed pot stores. And a campaign in Washington hopes to put a legalization measure on the fall ballot.
The 10-page California initiative would allow anyone 21 or older to possess, share and transport up to an ounce for personal use and to grow up to 25 square feet per residence or parcel. It would allow local governments, but not the state, to authorize the cultivation, transportation and sale of marijuana and to impose taxes to raise revenues.
To make the ballot, the measure needs 433,971 valid signatures. By Tuesday, it was just 15,000 short. Los Angeles County, where supporters collected 142,246 signatures, is expected to put it over the top.
For all the political and economic uncertainties about health reform, at least one thing seems clear: The bill that President Obama signed on Tuesday is the federal government’s biggest attack on economic inequality since inequality began rising more than three decades ago.
Nearly every major aspect of the health bill pushes in the other direction. This fact helps explain why Mr. Obama was willing to spend so much political capital on the issue, even though it did not appear to be his top priority as a presidential candidate. Beyond the health reform’s effect on the medical system, it is the centerpiece of his deliberate effort to end what historians have called the age of Reagan.
Before he became Mr. Obama’s top economic adviser, Lawrence Summers told me a story about helping his daughter study for her Advanced Placement exam in American history. While doing so, Mr. Summers realized that the federal government had not passed major social legislation in decades. There was the frenzy of the New Deal, followed by the G.I. Bill, the Interstate Highway System, civil rights and Medicare — and then nothing worth its own section in the history books.
Now there is.
Ari Fleischer quits PR job for Tiger Woods because his legacy was so bad it harmed Tiger’s rehabilitation.
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Nowhere in the constitution does it authorize the Federal Aviation Administration or the Center For Disease Control either, so I guess they're out too. The fact that the founders weren't psychics or time travelers is a real problem for us, apparently.
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Expecting cooperation from the Repugs is like expecting Pamela Anderson to get an Oscar.
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This wasn't just a major victory for Obama. This was a resounding defeat for the increasingly marginalized Republican Party and its controlling and now thoroughly repudiated conservative movement.
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... As someone on the intarweb pointed out, the teabagger party logo looks, appropriately enough, like a dick wrapped in a flag ...
Democrats shouldn't expect much cooperation from Republicans the rest of this year, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) warned Monday..
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"There will be no cooperation for the rest of the year," McCain said during an interview Monday on an Arizona radio affiliate. "They have poisoned the well in what they've done and how they've done it."
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No illusions please: This bill will not be repealed. Even if Republicans scored a 1994 style landslide in November, how many votes could we muster to re-open the “doughnut hole” and charge seniors more for prescription drugs? How many votes to re-allow insurers to rescind policies when they discover a pre-existing condition? How many votes to banish 25 year olds from their parents’ insurance coverage? And even if the votes were there – would President Obama sign such a repeal?
We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat. [...]
So today’s defeat for free-market economics and Republican values is a huge win for the conservative entertainment industry. Their listeners and viewers will now be even more enraged, even more frustrated, even more disappointed in everybody except the responsibility-free talkers on television and radio. For them, it’s mission accomplished. For the cause they purport to represent, it’s Waterloo all right: ours.
TEA PARTIERS FURIOUS ABOUT BEING FORCED TO HAVE HEALTH INSURANCE
Say they'll move to Canada.
Obama: Congress Must Act on Financial Reform
GOP warns any reform could mean end of free checking.
GOP: Health Bill Rammed Down Our Throats With No Debate
Unlike invasion of Iraq.
U.S. Senate Bill Threatens China Over Currency
If they don’t revalue yuan, we’ll stop borrowing money from them.
The president of the National Organization for Women said her group is "incensed" about the impasse-breaking deal between President Obama and a group of anti-abortion Catholic Democrats that seems likely to allow historic health-care reform legislation to pass the House later Sunday night, saying the planned presidential executive order "breaks faith with women."Other reproductive rights groups, as well as abortion opponents, are also displeased with the compromise.
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Maybe one day Americans won't be held captive by another group's religious doctrine, but today is not that day.
Here's what's going to happen after the vote on the reconciliation bill in the House on Sunday: Almost every Tea Partyer who was out there protesting will go the fuck away. They will devote whatever energy they have left to posting comments on blogs and Facebook pages. Their leaders, desperate to still be relevant and still draw a paycheck, will try to come up with some other phantom issue to whip up enthusiasm. But once it passes, no one will give a shit except the people it helps. The Civil War won't be re-fought. The Constitution won't be shredded. One or two states might try to force their misinterpretation of the 10th Amendment. Soon, Beck and Hannity and Michele Bachmann and Steve King will discover another Republic-ending crisis, probably immigration reform, and we'll start the magical cycle all over again.
Meanwhile, those poor, ignorant bitches and bastards in the photo up there will shuffle home, curse the process, and, like good corporate tools, continue to suck down fast food and sodas and buy shit they don't need because it's cheaply made in China and sold at Wal-Mart and proudly drive gas-devouring vehicles and keep their children stupid and tell themselves that they aren't the problem, no, they are the solution, wondering how to fill the desperate couple of hours between the end of Limbaugh's radio show and the start of Beck's TV rants, despising those who are attempting to do something for them and their neighbors, wondering where their country went, when, after all, this is where it's gone.
For a couple of them, the day will come when they lose their jobs. And the COBRA runs out. And maybe for a moment they panic about where they're going to get health insurance for themselves and their families. And then it will hit them, that "oh, yeah, there's that" and it just might end up okay. But, like the dunces who want the government to keep its hands off their Medicare, they will go on thinking the same, doing the same, never learning, never changing.
We are Americans, after all. Our swinish laziness, blissful ignorance, and blithely cruel selfishness is something our soldiers are fighting and dying for right now.
It's okay. The rest of us will be out here trying to do good, even for those who would like to see our blood discolor the streets.
Note: If the health care bill doesn't pass, then, well, consider the Rude Pundit teabagged.
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Can I just say once again how much I hate these little "Mission Accomplished" press conferences? I realize that it's human to want to celebrate the (apparent) end of a hard fought battle and that they all loved to be stroked by each other in public, but it's unseemly.
Instead of telling each other how wonderful they all are, perhaps they could spend time time explaining why the bill is important and thanking the American people for their forbearance. They can give each other big smooches and hearty pats on the back when the cameras stop rolling.
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