Saturday Limey Ukelele Delta Blues Blogging

My life-long obsession with left-handed ukelele pickers playing delta blues has finally been fulfilled! Tell YouTube what you want, they deliver!

Ukulele All Stars with George Welch on lead vocal at Clennell Hall Folk Festival - May2010

Ukelele All Stars ~ My Creole Belle

Thanks to banjostead, UK.

Rand Paul the Tea Party-Pooper

Andy Ostroy

Rand's bizarre civil rights stand this week illustrates just how loony this movement is and how politically dangerous its candidates will be. McConnell, Kyl and others have good reason to be afraid. They've allowed the smallest faction of their party--led by rabble-rousing blabbermouths like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin--to become the loudest, most influential voice in the room. This renegade band of populist impostors have hijacked the party and redefined it, purging its roster of anyone not of the extreme right wing fringe. You know the GOP's in some serious trouble when the likes of McConnell, Kyl and John McCain appear like the party's moderates.

As I wrote earlier this week, all Paul's victory showed is that the squeaky Tea Bag wheel got the Republican oil. He was victorious only in a Republican-on-Republican feeding frenzy. And in just two days he's demonstrated what an absolute joke his candidacy can and will be come November when facing a Democrat. A Democrat, mind you, who sees nothing at all wrong with blacks eating at a luncheonette counter with whites. Hard to believe we're still actually debating this racist shit in 2010. For that we can thank Mr. "Huge Victory" Paul and his narrow-minded Tea Bag bigots...

One thing's clear: the hypocrisy that permeates the Republican Party also can be found in the "grass roots" Tea Party movement. Case in point, Paul's decision to hold his victory celebration at an exclusive, tony country club in Bowling Green. White men--even the populist Tea Bagger kind--sure do love their golf, don't they

Nah, it ain't the golf. Affluent white people like hangin' out with other affluent white people at places that keep out the riff-raff.

Related:

Joe Conason in Salon:

The roots of Rand Paul's civil rights resentment

Lurking beneath the Paul family's libertarian politics is a strategy of pandering to "populists" like Pat Buchanan

It's worse than that. Good short piece. Go read.

Update, after which I will knock off the Paul shit for the day unless something really juicy pops up later:

MINNEAPOLIS (The Borowitz Report) – In a sign of his increasing prominence in the so-called Tea Party movement, a new poll shows Kentucky senatorial candidate Rand Paul topping former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin among voters who describe themselves as morons.

“I never thought I’d say this, but if Palin is going to stay competitive with Paul, she’s going to have to start dumbing down her message.”

The stupid, it burns...

The Truth Shall Not be Spoken in Arizona

Glen Ford

The State of Arizona has very ambitious goals. It will not be satisfied simply to impose a kind of apartheid system in which Latino-looking persons have no rights that a policeman is bound to respect. Oh no, Arizona’s legislature and governor have a grander plan, a much larger vision to rewrite history so as to place white people back where they think they belong: at the unchallenged center of all things worth knowing and learning. In order to do that, it is necessary to erase and outlaw the past and present of those who are not white. Governor Jan Brewer thinks she can whitewash history and put barbed wired around the present and the future with the stroke of a pen. In signing what is effectively a ban on teaching any version of history other than the approved, white version, in elementary and secondary public schools, the governor seeks to impose an ethnic cleansing of the mind – a kind of official genocide of past generations. She intends to wipe the white historical slate clean of actual genocides, enslavements, land piracies, and all manner of crimes against darker peoples. The truth shall not be spoken in Arizona, if it is detrimental to the reputation and sensibilities of white people. Apparently, the true facts of history cause white Arizona great pain, like sunlight shining on Dracula. Gov. Brewer wants to shut out the light, by shutting down ethnic studies in the classroom, making the schools safe for white lies.

Well said, Mr. Ford.

The Mrs. thinks* I'm crazy ...

But I think the greatest thing is that I can give the President of the United States a piece of my mind (which I do several times a week) on his Facebook page. I understand Barry probably doesn't even know he has a page, let alone look at it, but it's somehow satisfying to vent at the man in charge.

*Correction: After 20-odd years together, she knows I'm crazy.

Once again ...

It ain't terrorism if white folks do it:

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — An antigovernment Ohio man who had had several run-ins with the police around the country was identified Friday as one of two people suspected of gunning down two officers during a traffic stop in Arkansas.

...

About 90 minutes before the shootout with the police, Sgt. Brandon Paudert, 39, and Officer Bill Evans, 38, were killed with AK-47 assault rifles after stopping a minivan on Interstate 40 in West Memphis, Ark., the authorities said.

...

I mentioned another attack the other day that was met with complete silence by the national media. Obviously, we have more to worry about from our own people than Muslim Jihadis.

Great thanks to Tristero for the NYT link.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

This is from Emmylou's fabulous album Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town. It was one of very few 8-tracks I ever saw that you could leave on all night in a camp full of dirt riders out in the desert and your rig's battery cable wouldn't be cut by morning. Some other tapes might stop abruptly. Heh.

From Dutch TV; Rotterdam Country Music Festival 1980

Emmylou Harris ~ Easy From Now On

Thanks to 1000Magicians, UK.

Light Blogging Today

Light blogging today. I've run up against a perfect storm, perhaps literally, of Murphy's Law.

A few days ago I bought a new distributor cap, rotor, spark plugs and wires for my Dakota, a little job to be sure, but one that has been bugging me since I changed just the spark plugs 50,000 miles and ten years ago.

The guys down at the local NAPA store, aka "the jewelry store", are my pals but Murphy's Law Of Auto Parts, "when given the choice of clips or screws, sell the distributor cap you have in stock even though it will inevitably be the wrong one", held up and I have to go first thing to get the replacement.

Yesterday was a beautiful day to work on the truck and today it's supposed to snow but the weather window is still open so I have to try to get this job done before that starts.

Later. Go read Morford on oil spill conspiracy theories and nuclear terrorist supernuns.

Update:

Mission accomplished. I got the firing order right the first time too! That cut my failure rate on that particular job on Dodges to 50%. Perhaps the mantra I've been chanting nonstop for three days helped - "clockwiseeighteenfortythreesixtyfiveseventytwo".

We will now wait for Fixer and 'Nucks to quit laughing...

The truck runs noticeably better and the only casualties were a petrified PCV Valve hose which I replaced with in-stock heater hose, and one teeny little flap of skin, a willing sacrifice to the mechanical gods. If ya don't bleed on it, it won't work.

See yas.

SSI primer ...

A good post by GP on how Social Security actually works and why "fixing it" will end up screwing us like the last "fix" did:

...

2. You already "fixed" Social Security, in 1983. In that fix, Ronald Reagan and the Greenspan Commission (yep, Alan Greenspan) recommended increasing Social Security taxes on the middle class, but not on the Big Boys, the wealthy. The declared goal was to put tons of cash into the Social Security Trust Fund — create a huge rainy day stash — for when Boomers started retiring. (If you click the Trust Fund link, watch what happens to the last column, the total amount, starting in 1984.)

Why is it important to understand this?
Everyone making less than $100k per year has been paying for that fix — every working day since 1983. They robbed you once, so they wouldn't have to do it twice. Want them to do it twice?

...

Take a look at how the tax rates on the rich have steadily decreased over the past 30 years.

"Why do you rob banks?"

"Because that's where the money is."

The rich won't be happy until they've bled us all dry and we come to them, begging for crumbs.

Quote of the Day

Deacon Blues:

But if Rand Paul and his ilk are the new face of the modern GOP, then let’s get this party started ...

BP Rules

Raw Story

As oil from the massive BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico approached the US coastline, a CBS News crew was threatened by the US Coast Guard with arrest if they attempted to film a beach in South Pass, Louisiana.

"When we tried to reach the beach ... a boat of BP contractors with two Coast Guard officers on board told us to turn around under threat of arrest," CBS's Kelly Cobiella reported on Tuesday.

"This is BP's rules, it's not ours," an officer can be seen calling from the other boat in the CBS video.

Hey Coastie, does your paycheck say 'BP' on it? Oh, that's right - you get a check from one of their wholly-owned subsidiaries.

I know the Coasties were just doing their job which they swore to do - protecting the United States of BP from domestic enemies like the First Amendment and trial lawyers.

Headline of the Day

Birther Queen: Obama Persecuting Me with Placenta Painting!

That broad is so far beyond paranoia that she can watch her own back. Yeesh.

Hmmmmm...

Fixer has made it known that he wants to retire in Paree. Is it possible he has hit on a method of financing it?

BP: Beyond Prosecution

How Bush's DOJ Killed a Criminal Probe Into BP That Threatened to Net Top Officials

Why doesn't this surprise me?

We've had 1½ oilmen in charge of our country and look at the mess they made. It will be with us for many expensive years. Never again.

US/Israel Challenged on Iran

The very last thing the United States - or the world - needs is another American military clusterfuck in the Middle East over made-up bullshit, but that's exactly what the goddam neocons are up to. Ray McGovern writes about two nations that agree with me. A 'must read':

The times may be a-changin’ – at least a bit – with the United States and Israel no longer able to dictate to the rest of the world how crises in the Middle East must be handled, though the new reality has been slow to dawn on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her neocon friends in Congress and the U.S. media.

They may think they are still in control, still the smart ones looking down at upstarts like the leaders of Turkey and Brazil who had the audacity to ignore U.S. warnings and press ahead with diplomacy to head off a possible new war, this one over Iran.

Tellingly, U.S. officials and their acolytes in the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) could not bring themselves to believe that Brazil and Turkey would dare pursue an agreement with Iran after Clinton and President Barack Obama said not to.

However, the signs were there that these rising regional powers were no longer willing to behave like obedient children while the United States and Israel sought to take the world for another ride into a Middle East confrontation.

By all rights, the surrender of half Iran’s uranium should lessen those concerns, but the bomb does NOT appear to be Israel’s primary preoccupation. You see, despite the rhetoric, Israel and its supporters in Washington do not view the current dispute over Iran’s nuclear program as an “existential threat.”

Rather, it is viewed as another golden opportunity to bring “regime change” to a country considered one of Israel’s adversaries, as Iraq was under Saddam Hussein. As with Iraq, the selling point for intervention is the accusation that Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon, a weapon of mass destruction that might be shared with terrorists.

Thank you Turkey and Brazil for having the sack to stand up to the neocons and warmongers in the U.S. and Israel and derailing their plans somewhat. I hope others follow your lead. Are ya listening, Russia and China?

Marijuana Fuels a New Kitchen Culture

If you like to get high and eat better stuff than the contents of the local 7-11, you'll like this article in the NYTimes.

Call it haute stoner cuisine.

The chefs of the haute stoner cuisine movement are just as obsessive about their marijuana as they are about olive oil, wine or coffee.

“It’s like getting the best cheese,” Mr. Falcinelli said. “I have like four or five different types of marijuana in my refrigerator right now.”

The sensibility extends to the latest wave of coffee culture. Coffee geeks are as infatuated with their Pacas varietal beans from Central America as pot users are with their sticky sinsemilla from Humboldt County in California.

Enjoy.

Behind the 8-Ball ...

I've been a painting fool this morning. As you'll remember, I began the master bathroom work before we left for Bermuda. Well, thanks to a few SNAFUs (nothing to do with the project), I'm way behind schedule, so I'm spending every spare minute dicking with that. I'll have pics of the progress up later.

They didn't care ...

When they used to burn Negro churches either:

On May 10th, a middle-aged man carried a can of gasoline and a pipe bomb into the Jacksonville Islamic Center of Northeast Florida during evening prayers and detonated it. Fortunately, there were no injuries to people, though the bomb did damage property.

...

So, a mosque is bombed by a white guy and the bomb isn't exactly small, but the national media sees no value in reporting it? Really? And yet, that is evidently the case.

...

Muslims are the new Black, don'tcha know ...

Update:

And they're doing stupid shit in another country that I love too:

...

The French government decided Wednesday to impose a $185 fine on women who wear a full-face Islamic veil in public, pushing ahead with a controversial ban despite signs of tension between France’s Muslims and the Christian-tradition majority.

...

The French have a strong right wing undercurrent too (not as bad as it is here), most notably the National Front, with a Bill Donahue-esque leader named J.M. Le Pen. No place is perfect but at least over there, most of the really insane crap we have to put up with here is laughed at.

Random Observations on Yesterday's Vaguely Meaningful Voting Activities

El Rude-o

2. However, the Republican Party is now owned by the Tea Party so, hey, enjoy the smell of Sarah Palin's ass. The base has been stolen by the wackanoids, and Mitch McConnell's enormous philtrum must be quivering and sweat-covered about now. The old guard GOP has a choice: double-down on Jim DeMint-like crazy or try to crawl its way back to relevance. The latter takes guts. So you know which way things are about to go in the Congress until November. Bring out the tranq guns, 'cause it's gonna be a long summer.

If ya shoot yourself in the ass it doesn't hurt much. The peace and quiet is worth it.

4. Other than Arlen Specter, is anyone even vaguely upset that Arlen Specter lost? Fuck, the President pretty much shivved him at the end there, when Specter was begging Obama to come in and hold a rally. Obama had promised Specter all the help in the world in exchange for the party switch, but when the end was nigh, Obama told him to shove a magic bullet up his Bush-loving ass. The lesson here? When Barack Obama is done with you, he's fucking done. Pick up your shit and get the fuck out. Besides, Joe Sestak appears to actually have...wait, what's the word?...oh, yeah, principles. Funny things, those.

Funny things, those.

Time and Tide and Devil Horns

Mark Morford on the passing of Ronnie James Dio, a hard rocker I never heard of:

It's a little disquieting. The lions of hard rock, guys like Robert Plant, Roger Daltrey, Brian Johnson, Rob Halford, these monsters feel completely timeless, iconic, eternal. They simply shall not, will not, do not die. It's almost impossible to imagine a musical world without Robert Plant. No metal fan of any stripe can imagine a day when, say, Iron Maiden shuts it all down because Bruce Dickinson turned 85 and suddenly can't remember the lyrics to "Hallowed Be Thy Name." Metal revels in the raw energy and unchecked phantasmagorical ridiculousness of youth. It is all fire and testosterone and rebellious fantasy. It doesn't go well with reality.

So it is for hard rock and a guy like Dio, an elfin titan with an undying love for lasers and sorcery, dragons and kings. The man wrote some terribly corny metal songs, but he sang every one with a ferocity and love and total honesty. He also wrote some of the finest hard rock melodies of all time, sang them with a precision and love unmatched by any hard rock singer since. It's a rare thing to give metal some heartfelt props. It is time. Raise your devil horns and salute.

Metal ain't my cuppa tea and it doesn't matter whether I heard of him or not. The loss of a powerhouse of whatever genre is sad. Tempus fugits on. So long, Ronnie.

New Bumpersticker and State Motto?

Will Texas change its slogan from "Don't Mess With Texas" to "Texas Blows"?

Pedophile Island

I read a lot of stuff every day, and sometimes I run across things that are so bizarre I just gotta share.

Political Carnival

I was just sitting here minding my own business, and then Paddy sent me to a web site belonging to a candidate for governor of my state, California. Meet Douglas Hughes.

I now understand why people in other parts of the country thing we’re bonkers. Take a gander at this:

Just...go.

Since I'm one of those nutty Californians, naturally the first thing that popped into my head was a new 'reality' show: Survivor: Pedophile Island.

I've never even heard of this Hughes guy and he's not going to be governor, but what rankles me a little is that he proposes to fuck up a perfectly good island in a lovely National Park.

The stoopid, it burns...it's for the children. Yeesh.

I think we should send our child molesters to Arizona or somewhere in the South, like Texas.

Rand Paul, Spurious Superpatriot of May's Sort of Super Tuesday

Pretty good piece on the teabagger victory in Kain-tuck yestiddy.

P.M. Carpenter

On Kentucky's Republican side, however, yesterday brought little but pure joy for Democrats everywhere, as the unctuous Mitch McConnell, in the befuddled personage of Trey Grayson, went down to a humiliating 24-point defeat to the populist hooey of the populist humbugger Rand Paul.

A good lose for McConnell and the Repug establishment.

Yep, that's just about all that's required of Republican success in this, the 21st century: unadulterated anger, served with a side of exotic, mid-20th-century Austrian economics, which, if followed, would hurl us back into the malign economics of the 19th century.

Which further, for reasons not entirely clear to rational minds, seems to be the political desideratum of Mr. Paul's Tea Party and all its Kentucky tea partyers. "We have come," said Paul at the oddly chosen Bowling Green Country Club last night, "to take our government back" -- a most appropriate slogan.

Much more.

The 'baggers should get some cheerleaders to chant their mantra, "Push us back! Push us back! Waaaaaay back!". Maybe Rentboy has 'em.

Update:

Last Night's Big Loser: National Republicans

Ahhhhhhhh...

Related:

PA's 12th Loss Shows Tea Party What's Really in Store for November

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh...

Quote of the Day

Our pal Montag (in toto):

As the less stable element of the right wing heaps scorn and approbation on the latest Miss USA, we need to give thanks. We should be thankful that none of her critics has yet called her a Lesbianese.

The stench of hypocrisy ... Part Eleventy Billion and One

Heh ... "Abstinence" and "Family Values" ... At least this one did resign (if you're a Republican, you could rape your own children and keep your job), for, as Fez says: "Meanwhile, Jon Ensign continues on."

Don't let it hit ya ...

In the ass, Arlen:

...

Arlen Specter was something of a pet for President Obama, having provided the president with a coveted 60th vote in the Senate when the veteran Republican switched parties last year in order to avoid being vanquished in a GOP primary. Tonight Specter met that fate at the hands of a Democrat, Rep. Joe Sestak, a former admiral. Backed by the Progressive Change Campaign Committee, Democracy for America and other netroots progressive groups, Sestak, according to what the Philadelphia Inquirer called “unofficial returns,” received about 54 percent of the vote to 46 percent for Specter.

...

Outstanding!

Some Dreams Are Bad Dreams

Digby

Yesterday I wrote about Glenn Beck's surreal commencement speech at Falwell's Liberty U in which he cried, giggled inappropriately and said things like "cabs smell bad in the summer." It was awe-inspiring in its own freakish way. Certainly memorable.

Contrast that with a sane political TV broadcaster:

Beck did offer the sage advice "shoot to kill" so he's no slouch in the "words of wisdom" department. But ironically, the Smith graduates seemed to have received the more Christian message. (And from a lesbian!)

Update: LOL

Liquid alert on the 'LOL' link!

I liked the "sane political TV broadcaster"'s speech so much, I recommend you go watch it. This is a commencement address, not a sound bite, so it's a little long at about 20 minutes, but I think it's well worth watching.

Teacher questioned after using Obama assassination as example in geometry class

Raw Story

An Alabama geometry teacher, in an apparent effort to teach his students about parallel lines and angles, used a theoretical assassination attempt on President Barack Obama to demonstrate the angle at which a gunman would have to shoot the president.

"He was talking about angles and said, 'If you're in this building, you would need to take this angle to shoot the president,' " said Joseph Brown, a high school senior in the geometry class told The Birmingham News.

The Secret Service questioned the idiot teacher and is bringing no charges, which seems correct, but the school is not going to fire him, which is most definitely not correct in my NSHO.

The assassination of a President is never something to joke about, particularly in this edgy political climate full of right wing nut jobs we find ourselves in, and certainly should not used as an example for children.

Fixer and I used to call for Bush, Cheney et al to be hanged for their crimes, but only after due process.

If that dumb sonofabitch teacher had said something like that in front of my kids, he'd be eating through a straw. In Alabama he'll probably get a citizenship award.

Headline of the Day

Guns outlawed at NRA convention

Irony isn't dead, it just goes over some people's heads.

Miss USA Top Grad of Stripper 101!

Following up on Fixer's post, there seems to be a little controversy arising about the new Miss USA, as this photo of her chewing her shorts has emerged, along with others.

Note to Miss Fakih: Controversy ain't all that's a-risin', and this old man thanks you!


Go see what it's all about at Mojo in the Morning. Be sure to click on "Miss USA Photo Gallery". The gal's a knockout! Also see NY Daily News.

So besides the wingnuts maybe bitching that she's not a 'real' American, some of the anti-fun religionists and phony moralists are likely to add that she's a tramp for participating in a radio show contest and should relinquish her title. We will see.

I stand with Miss Fakih. What's more American than pole dancing?

I think they should add pole dancing to the Miss USA contest. Let's liven that old crap up a little.

Besides, she's a good capitalist:


Now that's American!

How long ...

Have we been saying it around here? Me and Gord are even willing to put our pennies together to pay to move the fence a few hundred miles north:

just let texas leave the union. they seem to hate america anyway and are hellbent on dismantling it.

...

Don't have much time this morning. The Mrs. is in the city office and I had to kick her out at the train station. Go surf the blogroll until Gord has his coffee.

Arizona bans Arabic numerals

Professor Smartass

Tom Horne, Arizona's superintendent of public instruction, explains why he felt the ban was necessary: "I was shocked to learn that students at all levels were being taught with the numbers of our non-European enemies, who we are engaged in a multi-millennial existential struggle to the death with us in the War on Terror. Worse, these numbers are being used all over the country."

"If you look at this photo behind me of Osama bin Laden, you'll notice them squiggly lines in the background. Now I've been told those are actually Arabic letters, and we have absolutely no way of knowing what those letters say--hell, they might not even be spelling words in English. If our children are learning Arabic numerals, they could be passing terrorists messages without us knowing it right under our noses."

Arizona governor, Jan Brewer, fully supported Horne's move. "Superintendent Horne tells me that the Latin language, which has nothing to do with the hordes of Latin Americans swarming our borders but instead was the language of the great Caucasian Roman Empire, has a perfectly good set of numbers our teachers can begin using immediately, Roman numerals."

Bob Herman, a mudflap salesman in Tempe explains their concern. "The Roman Empire was great and all that, but didn't they roll around in the sheets with the Egyptians and Africans they conquered? Can we really be sure that those numerals were invented by a guy who was just, you know, European?"

Horne is looking to address this concern with DNA testing of ancient Romans. To prepare for the possibility of a multi-ethnic outcome, he is also scouting for backup numerals of Celtic, Viking, or at least Albino origin.

Boy, there's an "idea" from our XLVIIIth state that needs to be LXXXVIed toot de sweet, you should pardon my French.

We're Not Greece

First and last ¶ of a Paul Krugman op-ed:

It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good, and the crisis in Greece is making some people — people who opposed health care reform and are itching for an excuse to dismantle Social Security — very, very happy. Everywhere you look there are editorials and commentaries, some posing as objective reporting, asserting that Greece today will be America tomorrow unless we abandon all that nonsense about taking care of those in need.

So here’s the reality: America’s fiscal outlook over the next few years isn’t bad. We do have a serious long-run budget problem, which will have to be resolved with a combination of health care reform and other measures, probably including a moderate rise in taxes. But we should ignore those who pretend to be concerned with fiscal responsibility, but whose real goal is to dismantle the welfare state — and are trying to use crises elsewhere to frighten us into giving them what they want.

The last thing in the world the Repugs want to hear is that jobs are no longer being lost, orders for goods are on the rise, TARP and the stimulus are working, etc., etc.

For them to succeed, the nation must fail. Or be seen to.

Assholes. Why do they hate America?

Answer: Because America threw 'em out.

So long, Bernice

Ex-NY police commissioner to begin prison sentence

Note to Bernie: I hope you get a nice cellie for a prison wife. A 300lb baldheaded, tattooed, transvestite biker named Bubba oughta do it. You can while away your time giving your wife blow jobs and catchin' when she pitches.

Repug Women On Parade

Mudflats

“Look out, Washington. There’s a whole stampede of pink elephants coming.”
~Sarah Palin

Yup. She really did. She said it once before and I guess nobody told her what it meant. Presumably she was trying to come up with a cute analogy for Republican women, not realizing the expression was already taken.

Allow me:

“Seeing pink elephants” is a euphemism for drunken hallucination, caused by alcoholic hallucinosis or delirium tremens.

A word of warning to the nation’s capital, from back when Disney was just … well…. kinda disturbing.

Thanks to Gariss.

I came of age during the '60s, so hallucinations don't bother me. They're not real. I wish Moosebreath and her teabaggers weren't real.

You'd think Repug women would be insulted by being compared to a buncha overweight pastel pachydermal cows as seen by quaking drunks, but I guess where there's no sense, there's no feeling. Or else they're used to being seen like that by their husbands.

P.T. Barnum is reported to have said, "There's a sucker born every minute". That's the teabaggers.

The seldom-quoted corollary to that is, "and one more born to pick him". That's Sarah and her ilk.

Update:

Moosebreath's star may be on the wane. Perhaps there is a God. And she's pissed.

Telegraph UK

We are seeing the first signs of wobble on the Sarah Palin bandwagon.

Wagon, meet ditch. 'Bout effin' time, but it ain't over yet, dammit. Go read.

Pat Buchanan Denounces Too Many Jews on Supreme Court

BuzzFlash

Buchanan, who never served in the military and whose only, if any, relative killed in WW II probably fell out of a Nazi concentration camp guard tower, writes in his syndicated column: "If Kagan is confirmed, Jews, who represent less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, will have 33 percent of the Supreme Court seats," Buchanan wrote. "Is this the Democrats' idea of diversity?"

This is the Buchanan who on Rachel Maddow's show basically said only white males should be on the Supreme Court since the founding fathers were all white males.

Oy. He forgot to mention the rest of 'em'll be Catholics. As Molly Ivins said about one of Buchanan's xenophobic speeches, "It probably sounded better in the original German."

Time for him to go rock on the porch with McCain and Specter. And Lieberman. Heh.

Oh, the irony...

Itonic Times

Vietnam Celebrates 35th Anniversary of Communist Victory
Lavish gala too expensive for Western leaders to attend.

Shortage of Plus-Sized Bras Reported
Often first sign of economic recovery.

Conserve, ladies. It's Spring. Leave 'em home! :)

Toyota Recalls Violin-Playing Robot
After sudden acceleration drives concertgoers from theater.

REMINDER
When detained, you probably have the right to remain silent.

Of course they knew ...

James Galbraith via Susie:

...

Ask yourselves: is it possible for mortgage originators, ratings agencies, underwriters, insurers and supervising agencies NOT to have known that the system of housing finance had become infested with fraud? Every statistical indicator of fraudulent practice – growth and profitability – suggests otherwise. Every examination of the record so far suggests otherwise. The very language in use: "liars' loans," "ninja loans," "neutron loans," and "toxic waste," tells you that people knew. I have also heard the expression, "IBG,YBG;" the meaning of that bit of code was: "I'll be gone, you'll be gone."

...

But nobody wanted to derail the gravy train. They should all be in jail, not because they're rich but because they're criminals.

So tell me ...

Ya think the wingnuts will bitch that she's "not a real American"? Do you think, were she walking down the street somewhere in Arizona, she would be asked for her "papers"?

The newly-crowned Miss USA: Rima Fakih

...

Fakih, an Arab-American from Dearborn, Mich., told pageant organizers her family celebrates both Muslim and Christian faiths. She moved to the United States as a baby and was raised in New York, where she attended a Catholic school. Her family moved to Michigan in 2003.

Pageant officials said historical pageant records were not detailed enough to show whether Fakih was the first Arab American, Muslim or immigrant to win the Miss USA title. The pageant started in 1952 as a local bathing suit competition in Long Beach, Calif.

...

Yeah, me neither.

Update:

Well, I was wrong ...

They're not ours ...

So, the Vatican came up with a novel excuse to insulate themselves from lawsuits relating to the priest sex scandal:

VATICAN CITY – The Vatican on Monday will make its most detailed defense yet against claims that it is liable for U.S. bishops who allowed priests to molest children, saying bishops are not its employees and that a 1962 Vatican document did not require them to keep quiet, The Associated Press has learned.

The Vatican will make the arguments in a motion to dismiss a federal lawsuit on jurisdictional grounds filed in Louisville, Ky., but it could affect other efforts to sue the Holy See.

...

Hey, the Vatican says "jump" and all the little penguins ask "how high". In my book, that tells me Rome is in charge. I'm sure if a priest advocated a woman's right to choose or for female priests or to accept same-sex couples in matrimony, the Pope would toss them out so quick heads would spin.

Great thanks to Oliver Willis for the link.

Real Americans Love Racial Profiling

Digby

Chuck Todd subbing for Chris Matthews:

"There's growing evidence that Americans are willing to put up with racial profiling if it means their safety."

What do you mean "Americans" white man? I suspect Hispanic Americans, African Americans and Arab Americans tend to see their "safety" in slightly different terms.

But then they aren't Real Americans, are they?

Yes, it is all about race.

It's gonna hurt...

I don't care what you think of Tom Friedman, sometimes he's right (which means I agree with him). This is one of those times.

DEATH NOTICE: The Tooth Fairy died last night of complications related to obesity. Born Jan. 1, 1946, the Tooth Fairy is survived by 400 million children living largely in North America and Western Europe, known collectively as “The Baby Boomers.” [...]

The meta-story behind the British election, the Greek meltdown and our own Tea Party is this: Our parents were “The Greatest Generation,” and they earned that title by making enormous sacrifices and investments to build us a world of abundance. My generation, “The Baby Boomers,” turned out to be what the writer Kurt Andersen called “The Grasshopper Generation.” We’ve eaten through all that abundance like hungry locusts.

We baby boomers in America and Western Europe were raised to believe there really was a Tooth Fairy, whose magic would allow conservatives to cut taxes without cutting services and liberals to expand services without raising taxes. The Tooth Fairy did it by printing money, by bogus accounting and by deluding us into thinking that by borrowing from China or Germany, or against our rising home values, or by creating exotic financial instruments to trade with each other, we were actually creating wealth.

After 65 years in which politics in the West was, mostly, about giving things away to voters, it’s now going to be, mostly, about taking things away. Goodbye Tooth Fairy politics, hello Root Canal politics (my em).

[...] Because we’ve eaten through our reserves, because the lords of discipline, the Electronic Herd of bond traders, are back with a vengeance — and because that Tooth Fairy, she be dead.

Sucked dry by suckling at her teat. That thing that's making us all gag is her toenails.

Use it up, wear it out.
Make it do, do without.

That should have been our motto all along. It will be.