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"Let me tell you what you've got to do," said Florida GOP terrorist Allen West. "You've got to make the fellow scared to come out of his house. That's the only way that you're going to win. That's the only way you're going to get these people's attention."
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RICHMOND -- Gov. Robert F. McDonnell, reviving a controversy that had been dormant for eight years, has declared that April will be Confederate History Month in Virginia, a move that angered civil rights leaders Tuesday but that political observers said would strengthen his position with his conservative base.
Let's get this straight, oh, dear people of the South: the North kicked your cracker ass. You begged them to stop. You bent over and said, "No, c'mon, if we let you fuck us in the ass, will you end this?" You thought you were so fucking tough, seceding and daring the North to fuck with you. And when you ended up with your cities burned, your slaves freed, and your fake government in ruins, you never got over it, not since Appomattox. So you fetishize this shit. You build monuments to traitors, you parade around with your shirts and your yards and your pick-ups sporting the flag of your defeated pseudo-country, jacking off to the idea that one day...oh, god, shit, smack it, one day, Dixie will rise again.
Except it won't. And as much as you prance around and pretend that the good ol' days are anything but ol' and gone, you'll wallow in the mud pit of ignorance with the rest of the pigs of history.
Now, as an expatriate from the South, the Rude Pundit has had more than his fair share of discussions with knuckleheads pretending to be smart over the cause of the Civil War, usually ending with his question to said knucklehead, "Would it have happened if it the South hadn't had slaves?" Because whatever other "grievances" the South had with the North, go fuck yourself if you think, at the end of the day, there was any other reason for the war.
But, hey, go ahead, Virginia, and celebrate your slave-owning exploiters of the poor, white, racist yeoman farmers who made up the bulk of the Confederate Army. Celebrate how the wealthy plantation owners and politicians manipulated a bunch of undereducated tools into doing their bidding. It's fuckin' par for the course for conservatives, you know.
Remember, though: the Confederacy was a criminal enterprise and its defense was massive thuggery. Polish that horse turd, if you want, but it took two fucking presidential pardons to clean the slate of the huge act of treason that occurred. Congratulations, Virginia, for honoring a violent conspiracy to keep human beings enslaved without even mentioning it in the proclamation.
Historical revisionism is a beautiful thing for, as we learn from the Governor, after they had their asses handed to them by the North, "the surviving, imprisoned and injured Confederate soldiers gave their word and allegiance to the United States of America, and returned to their homes and families to rebuild their communities in peace." Yes, we all remember the century of peace and harmony that existed in the South after the Civil War, until, you know, it was fucked up by the civil rights movement. You can't give an inch, man.
In another coup for the seemingly part-time political pundit Bill Donohue, CNN broadcast on Tuesday a conversation about the Catholic church's thousands of pedophilia scandals that would be awkward to even over-hear in public, let alone broadcast nation-wide.
Objecting to the term "pedophilia" being used to describe the rampant claims of children being sexually abused by priests and nuns, Donohue instead called the acts "homosexuality," later suggesting "that's what gays do."
What Donohue is saying is that the priests who carried out such horrendous offenses against children did not have a psychological fixation on children: they were simply attracted to people of the same sex, and that's just what homosexuals do. His own bar for limiting use of the term "pedophilia," according to his CNN interview, is, "I dunno, 12, 13 years of age?"
In this instance, Donohue simply parrots an occasional meme of the rightwing press, no more true in present day America than it was when similar charges were commonly leveled against other minority groups.
The Ontario Consultants on Religious Tolerance take a differing perspective on the definitions, classifying "homosexuals" as individuals who are solely attracted to adults of the same sex. Pedophilia, they note, "is now generally used to describe an adult who sexually abuses children; a child molester. Some pedophiles are attracted to both boys and girls; some are attracted to children of only one gender."
Meaning: it does not matter the gender of the child, sexual abuse by an adult makes the perpetrator into a pedophile in the eyes of society. Mr. Donohue's argument that "homosexuality" is to blame for the Catholic Church's problems would seem to be misplaced.
Former porn star and lifelong Democrat Stormy Daniels (may not be work safe depending on where you work - G) has found a new home in the GOP after its notorious expenditures at a bondage-themed strip club in Los Angeles.
Wholeheartedly embracing what has been a damaging scandal for the party, Daniels added, "While this decision has not been an easy one, recent events regarding Republican National Committee fundraising at Voyeur, an LA based lesbian bondage themed nightclub finally tipped the scales."
"As someone who has worked extensively in both the club and film side of the Adult Entertainment Industry, I know from experience that a mere $1,900 outlay at a club with the reputation of Voyeur is a clear indication of a frugal investment with a keen eye toward maximum return," she remarked.
Daniels added:
"And I firmly believe that it is precisely this type of creative and calculated investing that we, as taxpaying Americans, should expect not only from our political parties but from our government. The American taxpayer deserves consistent conservatives who reject wasteful spending and unwarranted government intervention in the private sector.
"As is the case with so many of my fellow Louisianans, I have been a registered Democrat throughout my life. But now I cannot help but recognize that over time my libertarian values regarding both money and sex and the legal use of one for the other is now best espoused by the Republican Party."
Like licking? Favor fantasy? Stoked about stroking? Unable to resist turning, staring and drooling like a whimpering dog/feral cat whenever something callipygian and curvy or firm and sinewy walks by and winks in your general direction, and then invites you to forget your marriage vows for a few days and come identify every bone in the naked human hardbody with your tongue in a giant vulva-shaped bathtub at the MGM Grand with someone named Brandi or Rocco or "Mistress Midori"?
Sailor, have we got the latest trend for you.
Come join Jesse James, Tiger Woods, David Duchovny and many more slut-tastic humans you've never really given a damn about and only recognize because of the endless tabloid headlines assaulting your eyeballs lo these past many months, in the latest spurious rehab trend to hit your internal bulls--t detector since the Catholic Church said it would "look into" the problem of all those priests molesting thousands of children and then lying about it for the past 2,000 years.
...the Catholic Church's heartwarming coloring books that instruct young boys to always be near an open door or another adult when a priest is nearby...
Take the Archdiocese of New York. It has apparently just released new coloring book for kids, all about how to be safe in an age of fear and predation. It is full of nice pictures of kids being sweet and virginal and right, engaging in happy activities that praise Almighty God while protecting themselves from, say, online predators and vegans and atheists. It is about awareness, about listening to your parents and saying your prayers and never, ever being alone with a priest and being nice to animals and never hitting your sister and ...
Wait, what? What was that, about the priests? Oh right. Um, the pedophilia. The sexual molestation and the lawsuits and the hints of deep ongoing perversion for the past, oh, 2,000 years. Yes.
(Of course, to really make amends they'd have to fire pope Benedict XVI and hold a Vatican III conference and abolish the silly celibacy law and the abhorrent "no female priests" law and also the homophobia law and the "sex is bad for you" law and, well, pretty much all the laws restricting spirit and sex and gender and love. But, you know, that might be asking a bit much. So instead: Coloring book. Yep, that oughtta do it).
But it does bring up a rather fascinating question: Is the very existence of this weird little book another odd but undeniable sign (there are many others) that something a bit more spiritually rich, more karmically grand is at hand? A raised awareness? A deeper spiritual awakening? Is this the church essentially telegraphing its own imminent demise? Maybe a little?
It's a slightly mushy notion I carry over to the bizarre parallel universe of conservative Christian megachurches, those giant ultra-bland heavily shellacked stadium-sized fluorescent nightmare warehouses that are still flourishing, more or less, simply because many of them are now dramatically diluting the fire-and-brimstone religion stuff, muting all that thorny theology and eschatology and even the right-wing intolerance (or rather, carefully burying it, to be fed to you slowly, bit by bit, especially around election time) and replacing it with something resembling, well, a giant, cheesy self-help seminar.
Spirit Airlines will start charging $45 for carry-on baggage. You can bet your left gonad that every other airline will follow right along.
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So, if you check your baggage, you'll pay a fee. If you carry it on, you'll pay a fee. Oh, you could send your shit by UPS, but when you show up at the airport with no luggage, the happy fuckers working for the TSA will give you a free colonoscopy.
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One more thing - aren't you glad that American, Spirit, United and all the rest phased out those extra baggage charges when gas prices went down over the past year? Remember those were extra charges meant to make up for the surge in gas prices ...
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Ok. So this film released today showed the killing of what turned out to be innocent civilians, including journalists. It also featured sick, disturbing attitudes among the soldiers who fired on these innocent civilians. And it shows that the Pentagon originally lied to the press about what happened. [my em]
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"We don't have the luxury of choosing our wars. We go where and when our president tells us to—without hesitation. I know it's hard for some to understand: no matter how much it sucks at times, we love what we f--king do" (Mike Scotti, in the documentary Severe Clear).
Seven years after the war in Iraq began, it's still refreshing to hear frank words from a Marine who has fought there. Who has endured, killed, seen hell, and returned. Who admits the only thing Marines think about more than sex is their rifles. Perhaps it is because the debate about war is usually dominated by pundits, perhaps because our news coverage of Iraq has plummeted. (Andrew Tyndall, who keeps track of major-network nightly news, found that there has been only one report from a correspondent on the Iraq War this year. One! This is doubtless due to progress made, but 98,000 troops remain.) Or maybe it's because we don't often see real footage of soldiers drinking, being anointed with oil before battle, or getting high on combat, and shouting: "This is the coolest thing ever! It's raining bombs! Steel rain!" Nor do we too often see graphic images of dead, bloodied U.S. soldiers, or the brains of a young Iraqi girl lying on the road after her father did not obey a signal to stop his car.
Mike Scotti's story is particularly arresting because as he fought on the front lines of Operation Iraqi Freedom in 2003, he recorded what he saw on a mini-DV camera. This footage forms the spine of Severe Clear, which is raw and thought-provoking. It reminded me of two lessons of war that are both obvious and constantly forgotten—and a third that is urgent today. The first is that soldiers need a clear, true reason to fight. The second is that surviving a war requires enormous mental strength. The third is that if we send men and women to battle under false pretenses, our responsibility to care for them afterward is even greater.
The first is why Scotti carried a photo of Beth Quigley, a friend who died on September 11, in his pocket when he went into combat. As he watched a bombed patch of land burn with leaping flames, he says: "I knew people were dying out there, but to be honest I didn't give a f--k. For me this was payback for September 11." He wrote in his journal, "There will be no debate once we find Saddam's weapons." When those weapons were not found, Scotti tried to stop thinking about it. But when he came home, feeling like an alien, to discover there was no "imminent threat" from the Iraqi regime, he felt an overwhelming anger and slipped into a self-destructive "black hole." As we saw in the The Hurt Locker — which Scotti found so accurate, it was unnerving—returning home can be profoundly alienating. A 2008 RAND study found that 20 percent of those returning from Iraq and Afghanistan reported symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder or major depression. Only half have sought help, and half of those received "minimally adequate" treatment. Part of this depression is undoubtedly coming back, as a warrior who survived war, to realize you may not have needed to be there in the first place. The moral weight of war, and killing, is heavy enough without strategic errors. As Nancy Sherman writes in The Untold War: Inside the Hearts, Minds and Souls of Our Soldiers, "that psychological anguish in war is also moral anguish is a fact too often ignored."
And there is serious psychological anguish. A report by the Congressional Quarterly found that more U.S. military personnel had killed themselves in 2009 than had been killed in either the Iraq or Afghanistan wars that year. A 2007 CBS investigation found that about 120 veterans committed suicide each week in America in 2005. The highest suicide rate was among veterans age 20 to 24 who had served in the war on terror: between two and four times higher than civilians their age.
When I met Scotti, I was struck by how lean and driven he was. He says he dug himself out of his hole by viewing his war experiences as a source of strength: initiative, discipline, focus, attention to detail, and strategic thinking. He went on to finish an M.B.A. from NYU Stern, work in finance, and found a charity. He wanted me to know how proud he was to be part of Bravo Battery, 1st Battalion, 11th Marines, a.k.a. the Beastmasters, the artillery unit that supported his infantry in Iraq. And that brotherhood and service still mattered more than any strategic reasons to go to war. But of course these reasons matter, even for the few, the proud, the Marines. We owe them honor, truth—and ongoing care.
Nevada Republican Sen. John Ensign is likely to be indicted for a $96,000 payment he made to the husband of the aide with whom he had an affair, a leading Nevada political reporter says.
"If Ensign gets indicted, he will become a national and state nightmare for the GOP," Ralston reports. "National Democrats will brandish him as a symbol of corruption (they may anyhow) and local Democrats will wrap the junior senator around the GOP Senate nominee’s neck...."
Ralston also notes that the Justice Department's failed prosecution of Alaska GOP Sen. Ted Stevens in 2008 "has cast a shadow over the Ensign case. ... The department is being very deliberate in assembling a case against Ensign."
Sedition: Crime of creating a revolt, disturbance, or violence against lawful civil authority with the intent to cause its overthrow or destruction -- Brittanica Concise Dictionary
These two events are a wake-up call for progressives. They're telling us that it's time to openly confront the fact that conservatives have spent the past 40 years systematically delegitimizing the very idea of constitutional democracy in America. When they're in power, they mismanage it and defund it. When they're out of power, they refuse to participate in running the country at all -- indeed, they throw all their energy into thwarting the democratic process any way they can. When they need to win an election, they use violent, polarizing, eliminationist language against their opponents to motivate their base. This is sedition in slow motion, a gradual corrosive undermining of the government's authority and capacity to run the country. And it's been at the core of their politics going all the way back to Goldwater.
At that point -- and we're there -- criminal intent and action become the real issues. Progressives need to realize that the right began defiantly dancing back and forth over the legal line, daring us to do something about it, quite some time ago. And it's high time we called it out -- and, where appropriate, start prosecuting it -- for exactly what it is.
Openly advocating acts of sedition has become the conservatives' main political stock in trade over the past year. (The SPLC offers a strong summary here.) You hear it everywhere from Rush to Glenn to Michelle Malkin to Michelle Bachman. Everybody on the right is now roundly convinced that the fairly-elected President of the United States isn't even a citizen. He's a Muslim, and thus in treasonous league with terrorists. The main goal of his administration is to turn the country over to the One World Government. He's a socialist. He's a fascist. All of these are direct attacks on Obama's fundamental legitimacy and authority to lead the country -- and thus a deliberate incitement to revolt against his administration.
These narratives are coupled with a rising us-versus-them blaming of progressives for all the problems of the country. These days, the screeds sound eerily like free-market fundamentalists freebasing Hitler: they're clouded over with the typical eliminationist vitriol that reduces liberals to subhuman vermin that must be violently exterminated from the body politic in order to restore the virtue of the country. (For those who groove on that sort of thing, there's even a slight dash of anti-Semitism in the mix.) This is dangerous stuff. And in the context of the conservatives' longstanding effort to delegitimize the government, it's also an open invitation to sedition.
What these groups are telling us is that they no longer recognize the government's sole franchise on the use of force; and they're actively organizing to seize and exercise at least some of that power for themselves.
Most alarming of all: these right-wing warriors have advanced to the point of actual target acquisition. This should worry us, because law enforcement and terrorism experts know that when groups like this get to where they're settling on specific targets, they're the final stages of gearing up for violent confrontation.
It's time to confront the sobering fact that the entire right wing -- including the GOP establishment, which encourages, endorses, and echoes these sentiments almost every time its officials appear in public -- is now issuing nearly constant invitations to criminal sedition. They're creating a climate and using language that lowers their base's inhibitions around violence -- and irresponsibly eggs on the handful of sociopaths in their midst who are already primed to kill. They've given their newly-expanded corps of flying monkeys permission to brandish their guns in public, empowered their militias, promised them glory, and are now telling them explicitly which targets to hit.
We'd be idiots not to regard this as an overt threat. Especially when they keep telling us, very explicitly, that they mean it to be. When somebody says they're going to shoot you, believe them.
If this is just political grandstanding to energize the base, they're playing with fire, and they need to bring this incendiary campaign to a screeching halt. Right now. This Mickey Mouse pussyfooting around, play-acting at sedition is criminally dangerous chickenshit politics that puts the short-term needs of the Republican party ahead of the long-term viability of the American democracy they've sworn to uphold. In case the party leaders haven't noticed, their base has taken them as seriously as a heart attack -- and they're genuinely making ready for armed revolt.
On the other hand, if seditious overthrow is what they intend, let them stand up, follow through, and face the charges. They're either Americans, committed to working in good faith within the democratic process to create our common future; or else they're seditionists in intention or fact -- and thus enemies of the state, plain and simple.
For the good of the country, we cannot continue to let them have it both ways. They need to choose whose side they're on: America's, or their own.
There are no constraints left to halt America’s slide into a totalitarian capitalism. Electoral politics are a sham. The media have been debased and defanged by corporate owners. The working class has been impoverished and is now being plunged into profound despair. The legal system has been corrupted to serve corporate interests. Popular institutions, from labor unions to political parties, have been destroyed or emasculated by corporate power. And any form of protest, no matter how tepid, is blocked by an internal security apparatus that is starting to rival that of the East German secret police. The mounting anger and hatred, coursing through the bloodstream of the body politic, make violence and counter-violence inevitable. Brace yourself. The American empire is over. And the descent is going to be horrifying.
Those singled out as internal enemies will include people of color, immigrants, gays, intellectuals, feminists, Jews, Muslims, union leaders and those defined as “liberals.” They will be condemned as anti-American and blamed for our decline. The economic collapse, which remains mysterious and enigmatic to most Americans, will be pinned by demagogues and hatemongers on these hapless scapegoats. And the random acts of violence, which are already leaping up around the fringes of American society, will justify harsh measures of internal control that will snuff out the final vestiges of our democracy. The corporate forces that destroyed the country will use the information systems they control to mask their culpability. The old game of blaming the weak and the marginal, a staple of despotic regimes, will empower the dark undercurrents of sadism and violence within American society and deflect attention from the corporate vampires that have drained the blood of the country.
“We are going to be poorer,” David Cay Johnston told me. Johnston was the tax reporter of The New York Times for 13 years and has written on how the corporate state rigged the system against us. He is the author of “Free Lunch: How the Wealthiest Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense and Stick You With the Bill,” a book about hidden subsidies, rigged markets and corporate socialism. “Health care is going to eat up more and more of our income. We are going to have less and less for other things. We are going to have some huge disasters sooner or later caused by our failure to invest. Dams and bridges will break. Buildings will collapse. There are water mains that are 25 to 50 feet wide. There will be huge infrastructure disasters. Our intellectual resources are in decline. We are failing to educate young people and instill in them rigor. We are going to continue to pour money into the military. I think it is possible, I do not say it is probable, that we will have a revolution, a civil war that will see the end of the United States of America.”
“If we see the end of this country it will come from the right and our failure to provide people with the basic necessities of life,” said Johnston. “Revolutions occur when young men see the present as worse than the unknown future. We are not there. But it will not take a lot to get there. The politicians running for office who are denigrating the government, who are saying there are traitors in Congress, who say we do not need the IRS, this when no government in the history of the world has existed without a tax enforcement agency, are sowing the seeds for the destruction of the country. A lot of the people on the right hate the United States of America. They would say they hate the people they are arrayed against. But the whole idea of the United States is that we criticize the government. We remake it to serve our interests. They do not want that kind of society. They reject, as Aristotle said, the idea that democracy is to rule and to be ruled in turns. They see a world where they are right and that is it. If we do not want to do it their way we should be vanquished. This is not the idea on which the United States was founded.”
It is hard to see how this can be prevented. The engines of social reform are dead. Liberal apologists, who long ago should have abandoned the Democratic Party, continue to make pathetic appeals to a tone-deaf corporate state and Barack Obama while the working and middle class are ruthlessly stripped of rights, income and jobs. Liberals self-righteously condemn imperial wars and the looting of the U.S. Treasury by Wall Street but not the Democrats who are responsible. And the longer the liberal class dithers and speaks in the bloodless language of policies and programs, the more hated and irrelevant it becomes. No one has discredited American liberalism more than liberals themselves. And I do not hold out any hope for their reform. We have entered an age in which, as William Butler Yeats wrote, “the best lack all conviction and the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
[...] Those who do not rebel in our age of totalitarian capitalism and who convince themselves that there is no alternative to collaboration are complicit in their own enslavement. They commit spiritual and moral suicide.
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To restate the obvious, the point isn't that there are bad (accused) priests. Of course there are! There are bad people everywhere. The point is the church using its institutional power to cover up alleged crimes, shield perpetrators, and put accused abusers and rapists in positions where they have continued access to teens and children. [my em]
Ice out has been declared on Lake Minnetonka. That means, essentially, the ice is gone. Enjoy your snow. I'll be enjoying my not snow.
The exorcist also said that the abuse scandal showed that Satan uses priests to try to destroy the church, “and so we should not be surprised if priests too ... fall into temptation. They also live in the world and can fall like men of the world.”
Actually, falling into temptation is eating cupcakes after you’ve given them up for Lent. Rape and molestation of children is far beyond what most of us think of as succumbing to worldly temptation.
[...] The Rev. Raniero Cantalamessa, preacher of the papal household, told those at St. Peter’s Basilica, including the pope, that he was thinking about the Jews in this season of Passover and Easter because “they know from experience what it means to be victims of collective violence and also because of this they are quick to recognize the recurring symptoms.”
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He was talking about the collective violence and recurring symptoms of those critics — including victims, Catholics worldwide and commentators — who want the church to face up to its sins.
Father Cantalamessa went on to quote from the letter of an unnamed Jewish friend: “I am following with indignation the violent and concentric attacks against the church, the pope and all the faithful by the whole world. The use of stereotypes, the passing from personal responsibility and guilt to a collective guilt, remind me of the more shameful aspects of anti-Semitism.”
As they say in Latin, “Ne eas ibi.” Don’t go there.
Mindful of the church’s long history of anti-Semitism, Leon Wieseltier, the New Republic literary editor and Jewish scholar, noted: “Why would the Catholic Church wish to defend itself by referring to other enormities in which it was also implicated? Anyway, the Jews endured more than a bad press.” This solidarity with Jews is also notable given that Italy’s La Repubblica reported that “certain Catholic circles” suspected that “a New York Jewish lobby” was responsible for the outcry against the pope.
TEA PARTY MAY HURT GOP IN FALL
Wacko wingnuts could draw votes away from rightwing nut jobs.
Most Governors Defy Order by Guardians of the Free Republics
But some do agree to resign and let ad hoc group of anti-tax lunatics take over country.
REMINDER
Only the little people pay taxes.
Sarah Palin Addresses S&M Convention
Says McCain “kinkier than he looks.”
$700 Billion of Junk Bond Debt Coming Due in 2012
As predicted in Mayan Calendar.
CDC Confirms Norovirus on 3rd Straight Cruise From South Carolina
Investigators focusing on Midnight All You Can Eat Buffet on Vomitorium Deck.
... CNN is losing viewers. In its efforts to get more viewers, they began to suck more than ever before ...
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Here is how it works: If you were employed by a company that retains the Talx Corporation, they will contest every unemployment claim that a fired employee of those companies file. They will do it without having any reasons for such a contest. When the hearing officer rules against Talx, they will appeal.
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A political climate that's already more overheated than any time in a generation. Plans for a large-scale rally of firearms enthusiasts in the nation's capital. A fast-growing group of (mostly ex-) military and cops that pledges to disobey "unconstitutional orders" from the president, and an "urgent" call from the group's leader to flood Washington to "shout your oaths in the tyrant’s face" -- on the 15th anniversary of the worst home-grown terror incident in U.S. history, the Oklahoma City bombing.
What could possibly go wrong?
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From the 1980 Here In California Studio Performance. Accompanied by Nina Gerber and Rick Byars. http://www.katewolf.com
We were somewhere near Newfoundland, crossing the turbulent North Atlantic on a freighter and bound for Cleveland - two things not at the top of everyone's to-do list - along with 19 Polish crewmates and 22,000 tons of steel. My wife and I had boarded the Isadora in IJmuiden, Netherlands, committing to the 16-day voyage in large part because, frankly, I'm afraid to fly. (We had circled the globe using only ground transport, and I was determined to finish without becoming airborne.)
There also was an element of romance: experiencing the sea without the distractions - all-you-can-eat buffets, belly-flop contests, tuxedo dinners with the captain and cheesy lounge acts - that come with typical cruises. The only promises on the Isadora were fresh air, relaxation, hearty Polish meals in the company of the crew and an appreciation for hardworking seafarers.
And, of course, adventure.
"Not exactly the Queen Mary," deadpanned my wife upon seeing the Isadora for the first time, confirming that my enthusiasm for the trip was not as contagious as I'd hoped.
'Tramp' freighter
The Isadora is considered a "tramp" freighter because the company sells her services to the highest bidder; after unloading the steel in Cleveland, the bosses would entertain all offers. Returning empty was not an option. As with many other freighters, the Isadora runs a side business carrying a few travelers, although passengers aren't exactly revenue generators. (The ship burns $500 in fuel every hour. That's about six hours on our dime.)
While my wife was concerned about pirates (I explained that Somalia is halfway around the world), I was more worried about seasickness, especially after the first mate explained that our cargo of steel causes the ship to roll more in the open ocean.
That night, after a dinner of freshly baked rye bread, pork cutlets and sauerkraut, the captain invited us to his cabin to sample Polish culture (specifically, Polish vodka) and listen to American jazz. The cabin swayed as we made conversation, the captain topped our glasses with spirits from his homeland and Dave Brubeck jammed through the speakers.
You don't get nights like this on a Carnival ship.
In the end, I didn't suffer mal de mer nor were we hijacked, but we did have an adventure that we agreed was the best of our global jaunt. (Although it's unlikely that beef tongue, pickled herring and tripe soup will find their way unto my plate anytime soon.)
"Maybe not a queen but certainly a lady," I said.
Depending on where you stand — or the given day — he is either an overintellectual, professorial wuss or a ruthless Chicago machine pol rivaling the original Boss Daley. He is either a socialist redistributing wealth to the undeserving poor or a tool of Wall Street’s Goldman Sachs elite. He is a terrorist-coddling, A.C.L.U.-tilting lawyer or a closet Cheneyite upholding the worst excesses of the Bush administration’s end run on the Constitution. He is a lightweight celebrity who’s clueless without a teleprompter or a Machiavellian mastermind who has ingeniously forged his Hawaiian birth certificate, covered up his ties to Islamic radicals and bamboozled the entire mainstream press. He is the reincarnation of J.F.K., L.B.J., F.D.R., Reagan, Hitler, Stalin, Adlai Stevenson or Nelson Mandela. (Funny how few people compared George W. Bush to anyone but Hitler and his parents.)
What’s clear is that Obama largely remains a fixed point even while the rest of us keep wildly revising our judgments, whether looking at him through the prism of partisan politics, race, media melodrama or any other we choose. It’s our recession-tossed country, not his presidency, that is rocked by violent mood swings.
Native-born Californians regain majority status
Out of the Blue: Michael Gallagher, Pat Seamount, Terry Harris performing Buck Owens'Streets of Bakersfield at the Trout Festival in Kernville, CA
"Pope Benedict XVI's personal preacher on Friday likened accusations against the pope and the Catholic church in the sex abuse scandal to "collective violence" suffered by the Jews." Something tells us with this sort of desperate attack, including one against the New York Times, that the Pope is much deeper into the Pedophile scandal then even we know.
Luxury liner forty tons of steel. Emmylou Harris.
Video: Steam train, Pride of Africa, in south Africa.
cape town - Kimberley - Pretoria - Knysna
U.S. Sues KBR for Alleged False Claims Act Violations Over Improper Costs for Private Security in Iraq
In other words, the Scott Roeder conviction demonstrates that we can successfully try terrorists in a civilian court.
Located near the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles, the club was a popular destination of tourists and locals alike, known for its glittering stage shows and equally glittering celebrity clientele.
It was a favorite watering hole of the Rat Pack, and for good reason. Mrs. Schiller shrewdly gave her dancers stage names like Fran Sinatra, Samya Davis Jr., Deena Martin and Peeler Lawford, and the originals soon showed up to inspect their namesakes.
The club was also internationally famous for its attached institution of higher learning, the Pink Pussycat College of Strip Tease, familiarly called the Navel Academy of the West…
The Pink Pussycat had a good ride, but by the late 1970s, nude dancing was in and striptease was out. The Schillers, now in their sixties, converted the club to a discotheque called Peanuts that was popular with gay women.
Less than a week after a Nashville man was driven off the road because his car sported an Obama-Biden bumper sticker, Sarah Palin has called on Tea Partiers to stop drivers whose cars have a similar sticker.
Or that bumper sticker you see on the next Subaru driving by, an Obama bumper sticker. You should stop the driver and say, "So how is that hopey, changey thing working out for you?"
The WeatherStrippers will seek to put caulking guns in the hands of disadvantaged former strippers through a 12-week, hands-on training program focused on efficient building erection and maintenance.
HANNITY: When you think about the vast majorities that they have in Congress and they had to bribe, backroom deals, corruption, that’s all because the tea party movement, the people — all these Tim McVeigh wannabes here.
WASHINGTON -- Is the island of Guam in danger of tipping over and capsizing?
U.S. Rep. Hank Johnson recently worried that it might be, according to a videotaped congressional hearing that is getting plenty of play online and over the airwaves.
Johnson's comments came during a House Armed Services Committee meeting as he questioned Adm. Robert Willard, commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet, about the impact of U.S. troops on the little island.
"My fear is that the whole island will become so overly populated that it will tip over and capsize," Johnson said, straight-faced and seemingly serious.
The admiral seemed to take the question seriously, too. "We don't anticipate that," [...]
The derision online quickly gained momentum Thursday.
A note from a reader to a blog at National Review Online said, "My son is stationed on Guam. I just sent him the video and told him to run to the other side of the island. He said one of his shipmates showed up to work with a life vest on!"
On YouTube, about 75,000 visitors had viewed the video exchange through Thursday afternoon.
"Please Georgia, you gave us Cynthia McKinney, now Hank Johnson?" one commenter wrote.
Johnson issued a written statement Thursday as the mockery mounted.
"I wasn't suggesting that the island of Guam would literally tip over," he said. . Johnson said he was "using a metaphor" to describe how adding more military personnel to the tiny island "could be a tipping point which could adversely affect the island’s fragile ecosystem and could overburden its stressed infrastructure."
A group of suspected pirates was captured Thursday after attacking a U.S. Navy frigate in the Indian Ocean, according to a statement released by the U.S. Sixth Fleet.
The USS Nicholas reported taking fire from a suspected pirate skiff shortly after midnight local time west of the Seychelles, the statement said. The Nicholas quickly returned fire and began pursuing the skiff, which was eventually disabled. A boarding team from the Nicholas subsequently captured and detained three people, the statement said.
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The Republican National Committee inadvertently sent a fundraising mail piece earlier this month with a return number that leads to a phone sex line offering to connect callers with "hot horny girls … students, housewives, and working girls from all over the country."
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Most Americans think that the Democrats not only did something illegitimate by passing health care reform on a party line vote, it was so illegitimate that they were asking for violence and vandalism by doing it. Good to know.
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If that's the case, then our democratic system of government is effectively dead. Any minority party can simply block all legislation, make up a bunch of bullshit about "tactics," threaten them with violence and the people will back them. (Unless they are Democrats, of course, in which case they will be told the "elections have consequences" and be called obstructionists who refuse to allow the governing party the room they need to govern.)
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Good for them for making sure that bastard can't appear in public without at least one voice raised to call him a murdering war criminal.