Heh...

Thanks to YubaNet.

Blame, Not Shame

Go read MoDo on Rumbo's self-serving pack of lies book:

So many to blame. So little space.

Yeah, 815 pages isn't near enough room to shift the blame.

When you think about it, it was really all the fault of his nemesis, George Herbert Walker Bush. Rummy writes how humiliating it was to run for president briefly in the 1988 Republican primary, with no money or name recognition, when front-runner Bush didn’t bother to show up for their candidate forums. Rummy has never hidden his disdain for Poppy, whom he regards as a flighty preppy who didn’t have the brass to march into Baghdad and take down Saddam Hussein. The end of the Persian Gulf war was about manners. The first President Bush had promised the allies he would merely shoo Saddam out of Kuwait, so that’s all he did. Any more would have been “unchivalrous,” as Rummy quotes Colin Powell saying.

There were those in the military who considered Rumsfeld the devil incarnate, and those in diplomacy who considered him more ruthless than any global despot. Rummy dismisses reports of his masterminding as inaccurate rumors.

W., however, loved Rummy’s blunt muscularity and contempt for weakness. “I was still surprised by Governor Bush’s request to see me,” Rummy writes about the president-elect. “He had to be aware that I did not have a close relationship with his father.” At some level, that must have appealed to the wimp-phobic W., who spent more time trying to be Ronald Reagan’s heir than his dad’s.

He blames Colin Powell for posturing with the press and George Tenet for being so cocky about Saddam’s phantom W.M.D. He claims viceroy Paul Bremer messed up Iraq, occupying too long, ignoring the chain of command and carving out a separate relationship with the president.

He even delicately blames the president, for not making incisive decisions at times on pressing matters and for not scheduling “a high-level meeting on my proposals” sent in a memo.

He says it was Tommy Franks who didn’t want a lot of ground forces in Tora Bora, when Osama got away from us. He blames the generals for not telling him he needed more troops to secure Iraq — as though he would have listened. He blames the Geneva Convention’s drafters for not knowing detainees of modern “asymmetrical” wars would need rougher treatment. He blames the Supreme Court for its “novel reasoning” defending detainee rights. He blames Katrina on ...

Oh, never mind. You get the idea.

I get the idea. I get the idea that he should be in Gitmo with the rest of The Worst Administration Ever.

Their Own Private Idaho

Yahoo!News

Neo-Nazis dominate tiny German village

It is set behind a six-foot (two-meter) wooden fence topped with razor wire; a guard tower shines a floodlight at night, and dogs bark incessantly through the padlocked steel gate. The black-white-and-red German imperial flag used in the last years of the Kaiser flies overhead — a common neo-Nazi substitute for the outlawed swastika banner. Through the fence on an inside door the smashed Star of David logo can be seen.

Legally, very little can be done to expel the neo-Nazis — they carefully skirt German laws against displaying Nazi symbols, like the swastika or the SS runes, and the banned songs people hear in the night cannot be pinned on any one individual.

"They sit around the bonfire and sing these songs — `Adolf Hitler is mein Fuehrer' they sing — they call out `heil' — there are sometimes as many as 300 right extremists at these parties," Birgit Lohmeyer said.

"Maybe today they're not talking about Jews but about foreigners in general, but their ideals are exactly the same.

The bonfire could attract a heat-seeking missile, I am sure.

And where's Stasi when ya need 'em? Oh, that's right, it's all one Germany now. The Fifth Reich to these clowns.

Afterthought:

I guess 300 right-wing extremists ain't that many in a country the size of Germany. There's that many at W**M*** any given Saturday morning.

Reagan: Morning After in America

David Corn

Why the Gipper's tax-cut guru is aghast at today's GOP.

Good enough article to go read.

Shorter: G.E. spokesman Reagan made everybody feel good with happy talk while he fucked the joint up, as in "Please, sir, may I have another?"

Today's Repugs have skipped that part. They're just fuckin' the joint up and don't give a shit how anybody feels.

Update:

Click to inflate Reagan's image. Everyone else is doing it.

A tip o' the Brain to John Sheffius.

Headline of the Day

Freshman GOPer Didn't Know Government Paid For Her Health Benefits

David Aquarius said it best in a comment at this post:

You know, remember back in grade school when we used to keep the bullies from beating up on the slow kids that ate paste and drooled?

Well, those bullies finally got their revenge. They got the paste eaters elected to Congress.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

280 Iraqi Prisoners Removed from Camp Honor Just Before Human Rights Inspection, Taken to Camp Justice
Later transferred to Camp No One Will Hear Your Screams.

Finland: Nuclear Storage Site Will Safely Hold Radioactive Waste 100,000 Years
Unless something unforeseen happens.

Republicans Say They Can Cut Billions From Budget
Without hurting Koch brothers.

Exxon Reports Better-Than-Expected 53% Profit Increase Due to Lower Taxes
Also helpful: takeover of U.S. government.

Congrats!

To all those crazy (and you know who you are) Packers fans out there!

Varnishing my desk. Back later.

Update:

This one was my favorite. Hey, I'm a hopeless dog person.



I liked the little kid in the Dick Cheney Darth Vader outfit next.

Los Tres Entierros De Melquiades Estrada

I've wanted to see The Three Burials Of Melquiades Estrada since it came out about 5 years ago. Never got the chance until I got a DVD of it at Safeway for 5 bucks.

It's a really good movie. It's a really dark movie, kind of a modern western film noir. I'm not sure how it did at the box office, but it won all kinds of awards.

There's all kinds of videos of it at YouTube, but this trailer does a fair job.

Melissa Leo, the oldest gal in the flick at 45, nekkid was worth the 5 bucks all by itself! Sort of a comedy scene about, er, failure to erect, yeah, that's it. Perhaps the shallowest moment in a deep flick, but that's how I roll.

Thanks to howlingsin.

Rumsfeld Overheard: "War Lies Are Cool Now"

War Is A Crime.org (formerly AfterDowningStreet)

Donald Rumsfeld began his new book tour with some frank comments, including these:

"War lies? Does anybody really give a rat's ass now? You know what? You know what? They do. They do because war lies are actually cool now. We began the invasion of Iraq in October 2001, but the invasion of Iraq paid off."

"Once we'd expended hundreds of billions of dollars killing hundreds of thousands of people and completely devastated the nation of Iraq, with the only tangible result being a dramatic rise in anti-American sentiment and violence around the world, I proposed a different strategy, and do you know what that jack-ass post-turtle two-bit moron from Crawford did? He told you all that he would keep me on after the election. After the election he gave me the old snake-skin boot in the posterior and told you that he'd had to lie to you so that you wouldn't know the truth. And you said 'Oh OK, well that's all right then. Thanks for explaining it to us. Thank you, sir, may we have another? Thank you, sir, may we have another?' You dumbasses.

"You want to learn something about the way the world works? Buy my book. Do you know why Ronald Reagan was a great president? Do you want me to tell you? Because he believed his own bull. That's what it takes. You think we lie to you for the good of the nation. That's not how it works. We lie to ourselves for the good of our careers, and the marketplace of ideas makes that good for the nation. Or not. That's a known unknown.

"Let me just leave you with this, you embarrassing facsimiles of sentient animals. Let me provide you, outside of your comprehension, a little demonstration of your inability to be awakened by a five alarm fire in your jock straps. Are you ready? Here it goes. We're making progress in Afghanistan.

This shit really works. See my "Fear The Facts" post a couple below this one.

They might as well just come out and say they're lying. We all know it anyway. Some of them are. And why not? They know they're safe from prosecution, in this country at least.

Headline of the Day

Surge of immigrants from India baffles border officials in Texas

Fear of Facts Endangers the Nation

PETER MICHAELSON FOR BUZZFLASH AT TRUTHOUT

What may be hurting our country more than anything is a thick-skulled mentality that refuses to face the facts.

Sad to say, people don't necessarily change their minds when their erroneous assumptions are corrected. A University of Michigan study found that misinformed people, particularly those loyal to their politics, rarely change their minds when exposed to corrected facts in news stories. Instead, they often become more strongly set in their beliefs.

This restriction of intelligence may be America's most baffling and self-destructive problem. The nation's complex challenges won't get solved by all the dead brains cells insisting that President Obama is foreign-born, death-panels are coming, and gun controls destroy liberty.

While we're at it, let's deny the fact that the carbon we're producing from oil, gas, and coal is causing global warming.

Why are many of us so obtuse? [...]

Read on...

Wallflowers at the Revolution

Daddy Frank on Americans' media-fed ignorance about Egypt and the Middle East:

A month ago most Americans could not have picked Hosni Mubarak out of a police lineup. [...]

The live feed from Egypt is riveting. We can’t get enough of revolution video — even if, some nights, Middle West blizzards take precedence over Middle East battles on the networks’ evening news. But more often than not we have little or no context for what we’re watching. That’s the legacy of years of self-censored, superficial, provincial and at times Islamophobic coverage of the Arab world in a large swath of American news media. Even now we’re more likely to hear speculation about how many cents per gallon the day’s events might cost at the pump than to get an intimate look at the demonstrators’ lives.

Perhaps the most revealing window into America’s media-fed isolation from this crisis — small an example as it may seem — is the default assumption that the Egyptian uprising, like every other paroxysm in the region since the Green Revolution in Iran 18 months ago, must be powered by the twin American-born phenomena of Twitter and Facebook. Television news — at once threatened by the power of the Internet and fearful of appearing unhip — can’t get enough of this cliché.

The social networking hype eventually had to subside for a simple reason: The Egyptian government pulled the plug on its four main Internet providers and yet the revolution only got stronger. “Let’s get a reality check here,” said Jim Clancy, a CNN International anchor, who broke through the bloviation on Jan. 29 by noting that the biggest demonstrations to date occurred on a day when the Internet was down. “There wasn’t any Twitter. There wasn’t any Facebook,” he said. No less exasperated was another knowledgeable on-the-scene journalist, Richard Engel, who set the record straight on MSNBC in a satellite hook-up with Rachel Maddow. “This didn’t have anything to do with Twitter and Facebook,” he said. “This had to do with people’s dignity, people’s pride. People are not able to feed their families.”

Al Jazeera English, run by a 35-year veteran of the Canadian Broadcasting Company, is routinely available in Israel and Canada. It provided coverage of the 2009 Gaza war and this year’s Tunisian revolt when no other television networks would or could. Yet in America, it can be found only in Washington, D.C., and on small cable systems in Ohio and Vermont. None of the biggest American cable and satellite companies — Comcast, DirecTV and Time Warner — offer it.

Unable to watch Al Jazeera English, and ravenous for comprehensive and sophisticated 24/7 television coverage of the Middle East otherwise unavailable on television, millions of Americans last week tracked down the network’s Internet stream on their computers. Such was the work-around required by the censorship practiced by America’s corporate gatekeepers. You’d almost think these news-starved Americans were Iron Curtain citizens clandestinely trying to pull in the jammed Voice of America signal in the 1950s — or Egyptians desperately seeking Al Jazeera after Mubarak disrupted its signal last week.

The consequence of a decade’s worth of indiscriminate demonization of Arabs in America — and of the low quotient of comprehensive adult news coverage that might have helped counter it — is the steady rise in Islamophobia. [...]...it’s no wonder that Americans are invested in the fights for freedom in Egypt and its neighboring dictatorships only up to a point. We’ve been inculcated to assume that whoever comes out on top is ipso facto a jihadist.

Our media and pols figured out long ago to treat us like mushrooms - keep us in the dark and feed us shit and we will think(?) the way they want us to.

Puff up another one!

This guy was stupid before he puffed up his first fattie:

... As Daily Intel writes, Michelson was interested in growing his own plants—he even bought all the seeds and materials needed for it online. But something was itching at him still. So he called 911 ...

Blogroll Amnesty Day

Late to it this year (thanks to the flu) so I'm directing you to other folks' pages who've found some great blogs you might not know about.

Skippy: Here, here, here, here, and here.

Nucks: Here.

Jill: Here.

Vagabond Scholar: Here.

Left in the West: Here.

Pruning Shears: Here.

Cookies in Heaven. Here.

Mike Finnigan/C&L [our pal Michael Stickings filling in]: Here.

That should hold ya for the better part of the morning. Chelsea v. Liverpool in a couple hours. Don't bother me. Heh ...

Switzerland ...

It's beautiful this time of year*:

GENEVA (Reuters) - Former U.S. President George W. Bush, under fire from human rights group over allegations of ordering torture, has canceled a visit to Switzerland where he was to address a Jewish charity gala.

Bush was to be the keynote speaker at Keren Hayesod's annual dinner on February 12 in Geneva. But pressure has been building on the Swiss government to arrest him and open a criminal investigation if he enters the Alpine country.

...

Aside from the fact Obama should have the CIA "disappear" him to Geneva, it says something that our former leadership (Bush, Cheney, and cabinet members) can't travel abroad for fear of arrest.

Update:

Stolen from Maru:

*Great thanks to our pal Montag for the link.

Varmint Dancing

Whether you like cowboy music or don't like it yet, if you ever get the chance to see Riders In The Sky (wiki) in person, go. They put on a Cowboy Themed Multi-Media Music & Comedy Show that will knock yer socks off.

I am not endorsing their product because I know nothing about it, but thanks to 00YellaWood00.

Republicans Vote To Repeal Obama-Backed Bill That Would Destroy Asteroid Headed For Earth

From America's Finest News Source:

Repealing the act, which opponents have branded 'Obamastroid,' has been the cornerstone of the GOP agenda since the law's passage last August. Throughout the 2010 elections, Republican candidates claimed that the Democrats' plan to smash the space rock and shield citizens from its fragments was "a classic example of the federal government needlessly interfering in the lives of everyday Americans."

"This law is a job killer," said Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-NC), who argued the tax increases required to save the human species from annihilation would impose unbearably high costs on businesses. "If we sit back and do nothing, Obamastroid will result in hundreds of thousands of lost jobs, which we simply can't afford in this economy."

Many GOP members have also criticized the legislation for what they consider pork-barrel spending, claiming the act includes billions in "giveaways" to NASA, nonperishable food manufacturers, and pharmaceutical companies contracted to produce mass volumes of vitamin D supplements in the likely event that dust from the asteroid's impact blots out the sun for a decade.

In an effort to counter Republicans' claims, Democrats have asserted that the long-term benefits of preventing the United States from being incinerated by an explosion several billion times more powerful than the Hiroshima bomb would far outweigh the initial monetary outlay.

Repugs would see the prevention of the destruction of the human race and maybe the planet as a victory for Obama and Democrats and are therefore against it.

More.

Headline of the Day

Son Says Reagan Would See Today's GOP as 'Mean-Spirited and Stupid'

Perhaps he would, in a rare moment of lucidity. And he'd be right.

I'm glad all this Fatted Calf Reagan Worship is happening on a weekend so it doesn't fuck with the important shit.

Debunking the Reagan Myth

Paul Krugman on Ronald Reagan, who wasn't really a President but did play one on TV and whose addled reign we still suffer from. This is from January 2008:

Historical narratives matter. That’s why conservatives are still writing books denouncing F.D.R. and the New Deal; they understand that the way Americans perceive bygone eras, even eras from the seemingly distant past, affects politics today.

[...] The fact is that how we talk about the Reagan era still matters immensely for American politics.

Bill Clinton knew that in 1991, when he began his presidential campaign. “The Reagan-Bush years,” he declared, “have exalted private gain over public obligation, special interests over the common good, wealth and fame over work and family. The 1980s ushered in a Gilded Age of greed and selfishness, of irresponsibility and excess, and of neglect.”

For it did fail. The Reagan economy was a one-hit wonder. Yes, there was a boom in the mid-1980s, as the economy recovered from a severe recession. But while the rich got much richer, there was little sustained economic improvement for most Americans. By the late 1980s, middle-class incomes were barely higher than they had been a decade before — and the poverty rate had actually risen.

I understand why conservatives want to rewrite history and pretend that these good things happened while a Republican was in office — or claim, implausibly, that the 1981 Reagan tax cut somehow deserves credit for positive economic developments that didn’t happen until 14 or more years had passed. (Does Richard Nixon get credit for “Morning in America”?)

And like Reaganomics — but more quickly — Bushonomics has ended in grief. [...]

This is, in short, a time when progressives ought to be driving home the idea that the right’s ideas don’t work, and never have.

The right’s ideas don’t work, and never have. You can't change their minds. Bring up the record, they just trot out the folk tales they always use and call you a commie.

A Mid-Winter's Tale

Today is the mid-point of winter. It's half over. Most of our snow has so far sailed over our heads and landed on a lot of you. It's been extreme for some of you folks so I thought I'd try and cheer ya up. Here's an article from yesterday's Sierra Sun, my local paper, by noted area historian Mark McLaughlin about the most severe winter around here ever. I hope it makes you feel better.

Weather patterns were erratic during the winter of 1938, Tahoe's biggest winter. Heavy rain in December 1937 caused major flood damage, but by mid-January there was less than a foot of snow covering the high country. Colder storms finally ripped into the region at the end of January, blasting residents with 12 feet of snow in less than a week. It was the opening salvo of an epic three-week storm.

In February, severe blizzards buried Tahoe communities with more than 9 feet of snow in seven days. At one point, Tahoe City was completely isolated with no automobile traffic and all communication cut off. For 10 days the overwhelming snow shut down Southern Pacific's horse-drawn, express mail and passenger stageline between Truckee and Tahoe City. Small towns throughout the Sierra were inundated by the snowfall. Tahoe City and Truckee residents endured in relative safety, though those areas received 17 feet of new snow within 16 days. There were no mail deliveries to the North Shore for more than a week and no fresh food for twice that long.

By Valentine's Day, the snow was 20 feet deep on Donner Summit. During a rare break in the weather, the steamer that regularly circled Lake Tahoe with mail and deliveries arrived back in Tahoe City. The captain mentioned if anyone wanted some horsemeat, it was available at Glenbrook, Nev. Apparently a caretaker there shot a horse due to injury and was willing to share the meat if anyone was interested. The story spread to San Francisco and even Los Angeles that snowbound Tahoe residents were running out of food. On Feb. 17, the San Francisco Examiner quoted Tahoe City Constable Harry Johanson as saying he was “holding in reserve 1,000 pounds of fresh horsemeat, should the situation get serious and the need for fresh meat become acute.”

California Governor Merriam was alerted and the San Francisco Call Bulletin newspaper enlisted United Airlines to organize an emergency food drop at Tahoe City. Local residents built signal fires in the middle of the Tahoe City Golf Course and that night two airplanes swung in low, dropping 10 boxes of bread, meat and vegetables. Half the boxes shattered when they hit trees, but the remainder was retrieved by cross-country skiers and distributed around the community.

The winter of '38 started late, but made up for it with powerful storms in February. By May, a record 67 feet of snow had buried Donner Pass, the greatest snowfall in Tahoe history.

67 feet of snow "made up" for a "late start" to winter! Sometimes I think we're fuckin' crazy around here. Heh.

This year, we had an early start to winter but there's not much snow* left at my house and the weather has been very nice and I hope that pattern will continue for you as well.

*Coupla feet or less on the ground, bare ground around the trees. "Not much" can turn into "waaaaaay too much" overnight of course, but like the fellow who jumped off the 30th floor said as he went by the 15th floor, "so far, so good".

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Emmylou on the Hank Williams Snr song

Emmylou Harris ~ Half As Much

Thanks to 1000Magicians, UK.

A right-wing combo plate of stupidity, insanity, and talking points, with sides of conspiracy and apocalypse

You must go see the Guardian UK's take on Miss Becky and some of the other right-wing nutjobs' reaction to the unrest in Egypt.

To cut to the chase, a new caliphate will emerge in the Middle East and push further east until China, as Beck puts it, says "Knock it off guys" and takes over India, reaching some way into Pakistan. The caliphate will then push north, which is when it will absorb the UK:

What happens to the overwhelming radical population of the UK, of radical Islamicists. What happens? Do they just sit around on their hands or do they see an opportunity? When you take the Marxists and you combine them with the radical in Islam the whole world begins to implode

So there you have it, an "Archduke Ferdinand moment" which will split Europe, the Middle East and Asia into Chinese and radical Islamic zones. In the full Beck, he also introduces Bill Ayers (who Sarah Palin had in mind when she accused Barack Obama of "palling around with terrorists"), Hizbullah and Code Pink, a feminist antiwar group. But that's enough for now.

We useta say that the most dangerous man in the Marine Corps was a 2d Lieutenant with a map and a compass, but when it comes to getting lost nobody, but nobody, is the equal of Miss Becky with a blackboard and a piece of chalk!

There is so much to quote in this beautifully distilled lump of what's wrong with unlimited garbage free speech that I can go no farther. The last line offers a jewel:

And then there are more non-partisan positions, such as Glenn Beck's Egypt protest theories show he's finally lost the plot.

From the link:

Of course it’s all connected. The media won’t tell you the truth. Only Glenn Beck will.

The man has finally blown a gasket. His pattern-recognition machine is spewing smoke and shards of metal.

Out his ears. His 'brain' done blowed up from no oil pressure. Heh.

Don't miss these. It's fun.

Gipperfest!

The Rude Pundit on the upcoming 30th anniversary of Reagan's and our nation's Alzheimer's. Links at site:

[...] It's the centennial o' the birth o' the greatest President that ever Presidented in Presidentin' history. Ronald Reagan, motherfuckers. The man who knocked down the Berlin Wall with a single swing of his mighty dick while finger-fucking Margaret Thatcher and taking a shit on Grenada. He would have been 100 years old had he lived to see this coming Sunday, but who needs the birthday boy when you can have all the cake you want?

Fuck, yeah, let's drag his bones outta the ground so we can ground them up and freebase the dust so that we can shoot it straight into our veins so we can feel some of that Reagan morning in America high one more time, fuckin' A, that shit's like the finest heroin. You get that in ya and you feel that brief buzz, that warmth and delusion of goodness and rightness that tricks your brain into believing that the high is reality and reality is just the buzzkill. No wonder Republicans are addicted to it. No wonder so many Democrats wanna get stoned on it, too.

You can come up with your own ways to celebrate that don't involve shooting up. Like:

1. Go to Best Buy and max out your credit cards on the most extravagant, useless shit you can find, like 3-D TVs and smart phones that you can implant in your brain so you can only think in Google searches and text messages. Make sure it's expensive. Then, when you're tens of thousands of dollars in debt, make sure you die so that your kids have to pay for all of it.

Hey, it worked on the Soviet Union!

Here's one for Grenada Vets:

2. If you're pissed off at your neighbor, but he's an ex-boxer, go to the local day care center and kick the asses of the children there. Declare that you win, even if no one knows what you were fighting for.

More. Go.

(Bonus way to celebrate: Read the Rude Pundit's "tribute" to Reagan upon his death in 1994. It's the finest way to skullfuck the memory of the awful, cruel, incompetent puppet of a man who set the nation on its current path to doom and demise.)

Fear ...

Not the ginned up, scary A-rab fear of our current generation that sent thousands of our young men and women to their deaths needlessly "fighting for our freedom", but the real, existential fear that was quite legitimate in 1942:

...

That terrifying [Axis] momentum was felt most keenly in the United States, which until recently was half convinced it could sit out this world war on the sidelines. Now a reluctant belligerent, America saw itself caught between two hostile, agressive powers, one over each coastal horizon.

In those early days after its involuntary entry into the war, panic must have been a palpable feature of the nation's mood. While it mobilised for the best, America feared for the worst. In its March 2, 1942 issue, Life magazine distilled that national anxiety into six maps, each portraying a different scenario for Axis invasion.

...

If you look over the maps at the link, you'll see we weren't worried about a couple goat humpers in a cave the press turned into supermen with super powers but large armies of industrial powers who'd already conquered major parts of two continents. They had a right to be scared. That is what "fighting for our freedoms" means. In the "War on Terror", we have more to worry about, in terms of losing freedoms, from our own government than we do from al-Qaeda.

If you don't know about Frank Jacobs' Strange Maps site yet, you should take the time to go through it. I always find it intriguing.

Co-opted press ...

NYT v. Guardian. A good read from Marcy Wheeler:

...

Under cover of off the record meetings with top national security officials, the NYT collaborated with the government, at the least on damage control, if not their investigation of WikiLeaks. The Guardian, by contrast, was unwilling to do more than warn State what general topics they’d cover on a day to day basis.

...

Just another example how the "free press" is no longer, very much by their own choosing. I believe we saw that before the balloon went up in Iraq.

And another point that Marcy touches on is the fact Bradley Manning is their only suspect in the leaks:

... Geoff Morrell’s press conference last week made it clear that they still only consider Bradley Manning a person of interest in the leak of the larger dump, meaning that if he leaked them, they haven’t identified how he did so ...

When they know there's someone else (link NSFW) out there too. How? Document security:

...

Now we get to the good part. The feds have made it clear that they are looking for other leakers (aside from BM). Meatballs now know why.

Not all the State Dept cables obtained by WikiL bear the SIPDIS header tag.

...

I'd even suppose there are more than one. Whether we'll see anything Earthshaking in American papers is yet to be seen (maybe McClatchy) but I'm sure the rest of them will "cooperate" with the US government in fear of reprisal or some other such motivation. We'll have to look to the foreign press to learn anything of substance, probably, and the corporate news media won't touch it at all unless they're trying to skewer Assange.

I don't know ...

Why I bother but it has to be called out for what it is (but they haven't invented a word to describe the immense amount of stupid in Sean Hannity's body):

...

Now Fox host Sean Hannity has proclaimed that in the entire history of the world, only one democracy has ever arisen out of an uprising — Iraq.

...

The stupid, on several levels, is detailed at Pensito Review.

It burns ...

In light of this winter ...

This is believable:

Stunning his handlers, from the Punxsutawney Groundhog Club, as well as tens-of-thousands of fans and spectators who make the pilgrimage to this tiny Pennsylvania berg, the infamous prognosticating groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, saw the shadow of the abdicating, half-term former Governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, which spelled out we are in for winter, extending through 2012.

...

I still have a base of snow (3" of ice now) in the yard from Christmas plus everything that fell on top of it. The way it looks now, it will be 2012 before it melts.

Great thanks to J. Thomas Duffy for the link.

Are you serious?

It's not like the balloon went up yesterday. We've been there a decade and this piddly shit hasn't been ironed out yet? What. The. Fuck?

Drugs, swearing and a sometimes insurmountable language barrier are just some of the cultural problems facing US troops striving to hand security to their Afghan counterparts by 2014.

Americans are infuriated by Afghan soldiers smoking hashish while Afghans hate the often florid swearing of US troops, soldiers told AFP in the Zhari and Arghandab districts in Kandahar, southern Afghanistan.

...

We gotta go. If we're still dealing with dope smoking and cursing, it'll be 3 lifetimes before they get it together. These people love fighting too much for us to leave them unsupervised.

...

Although drugs are banned in the Afghan National Army (ANA), many still take them, according to both sides.

"If I don't, I fight with the other soldiers twice a day. It relaxes me," explained Munawar.

...

"I'm bored, let me beat up one of my buddies." Or "It's 1600, time to kick Sarge in the ass."

Shit, I'd give them all opium, tell them which direction to shoot, and then split before the dust settles.

What a fucking horror show. We. Have. To. Go. NOW.

Policing themselves ...

Or, "No shit":

The Senate Ethics Committee's decision to appoint a special counsel to lead the investigation into activities surrounding Sen. John Ensign's (R-NV) affair with a political staffer is raising age-old questions about the panel's relevancy.

Members of Congress are the first to admit that they hate serving on the Ethics Committee, and policing their peers puts them in an unusually awkward position. If that's the case and the panel has to farm out its work to true professional investigators, then why have lawmakers investigating their colleagues misbehavior in the first place?

...

And we all know that if you're a Republican, the odds of having to be accountable to anything are slim to none. Has self-policing ever worked?

It's a theme today ...

Well, a dual theme. A mashup of "Insane Clown Posse" and "Guys in Funny Hats meet Aliens" ... something like that.

Anyway, I mentioned in comments to Gordon on my planet post that all of "God's Mouthpieces" would shit themselves when having to revise our place in the Big Scheme of Things if we discovered (or they discovered us) intelligent life on one or more of these new planets they found.

... Wouldn't somebody's Good Book have hinted that He put His children somewhere else too? Wouldn't "God's representatives" have some inkling of His grand plan, being they lecture us all the time on how in touch with the Big Guy they are?

So that said (the "Guys in Funny Hats" part), we get to the "Insane Clown Posse" part. Amanda has a thoughtful post up (and gives BillO the Clown a kick in the process) about why the religious folks have a problem with gravity:

...

I sometimes still find that people on the liberal, or at least thoughtful, side of the fence still think that global warming denialism and creationism are discrete things borne out of an emotional need not to believe either in global warming or evolution, and while that’s true, I think it’s deeper than that. I think that science itself is under attack, and that the reason that conservatives are so eager to lash out against it has to do with an anti-modernist bent. This is especially true when you understand that science really is a threat to religion. A lot of people say it’s not, because science doesn’t address "spiritual" needs, but said folks are really overrating the importance of spirituality for most people---or assuming that this urge isn’t better scratched by loving others and enjoying life. Religion really draws its power from explanation. It gives order to the world. And science is poaching that territory rapidly, which pisses off authoritarians, because they rightfully understand that if they lose the power to create facile goddidit explanations for everything from gravity to the problem of evil, they will lose their power over people. Thus, the attack not just on specific scientific theories, but on science in general, and most of academia, as well.

...

Conservatives of any stripe, be they from the church (all of 'em) or of the political bent, can only survive if people are kept in the dark. Knowledge is power they have to keep the public ignorant. History holds many examples of this and now science and religion are rubbing against each other in more places than ever. Won't see it in my lifetime but it would be nice to see what humanity can do once they shrug off the crutch of religion.

Hosni Mubarak splits Israel from neocon supporters

Politico. Interesting.

As Israeli leaders worriedly eye the protests and street battles in neighboring Egypt, they’ve been dismayed to find that the neoconservatives and hawkish Democrats who are usually their most reliable American advocates are cheering for Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s fall.

The Egyptian autocrat has kept his side of a chilly peace agreement with Israel for thirty years, permitting an era of relative stability in the Jewish state. And as Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made clear in a cautious speech to the Knesset Wednesday, Israel is deeply worried what will happen to that relationship when Mubarak departs.

One of the big reasons Mubarak kept to the deal is that Egypt, and the Egyptians, got tired of going to war with Israel and getting their asses handed to them every time.

And indeed, while voices cheering Mubarak’s fall can be found across the political spectrum, the Israeli-style fears of the future can be found largely on the margins, and are more likely to be found in the old-line conservative – not neoconservative—foreign policy circles that sometimes clashed with the neocons inside the Bush Administration.

Not often enough.

A longtime nemesis of the neocons, Zbigniew Brzezinski, said he didn’t care much about the stand they are taking on the unrest in Egypt and the broader region, but he couldn’t resist a quick dig.

“I don’t take neocon views very seriously, except when they result in U.S. policy which, in turn, means it turns into a disaster,” (my em) he said, a view he’s elsewhere attached to his criticism of the Iraq war.

Get 'em, Zbig!

Some are worried about this and some are not. Extensive article.

All your problems, instantly solved

If it's Thursday, yesterday musta been Morford.

Generation Facebook is totally bummed, dude. Incoming freshman across the nation report their emotional health is at an all-time low, even though they've barely been on the planet long enough to understand the question, even though they've only been alive about as long as it takes a good single-malt Scotch to reach nirvana.

It's gotten so bad that even the "best and brightest" of today's college flesh admit they'd rather get a good grade, a compliment, some sort of ego-fluffer aimed at their fragile personalities, than have sex. I know, right? What's a porn-loving, kink-obsessed, devoutly hypocritical nation to do?

Does saying "Gee, for a fat girl you don't sweat much" during sex count? Always worked for me...

Some say it's Facebook's fault, that there's a sinister side effect to the world's largest online narcotic, given how whenever you check your friends' status updates, everyone invariably seems to be happier and hornier, traveling and singing in the rain, eating better and doing more giant tennis balls of cocaine with Charlie Sheen than you, so you feel horrible and cut off, and you flip over to the porn, glumly.

Could this be the answer to everything? Turn the heat down a little. Have more sex. Burn more calories. Lose more weight. Stay off the Facebook. Avoid pseudo-happy people who really aren't happy but just pretend to be in their overblown status updates. Emotional health rises! Compliments abound! Problem solved! Everybody into the pool!

OK, maybe not. [...]

I know, it will never happen. We are too obsessed with sex and intolerance, with gender and genitalia. The political right, in particular, absolutely despises you who are reading this sentence right now. It's true. Did you hear how the Republicans are currently seeking to enflame their most fearful, ignorant base by way of igniting the abortion fight all over again? Yep.

How will they do it? By attempting to redefine rape, of course, so as to make it seem less, you know, rape-y.

The GOP would hereby like to inform all women and especially younger girls that, unless physical force was involved, it wasn't actually rape. Therefore, if you got knocked up, the Repubs ain't paying for no slutty abortion, y'hear? Drugged, incest, statutory? Too terrified to struggle? Too bad for you, kiddo. The Republican Party hates you, and your terrifying vagina.

I think Ann Coulter useta have one of those...

So buck up, distraught youth. Sure, the wolves are at the door. Sure, the economy is acrumble. What else is new? The world ain't so bad. In my day, we had to dial rotary phones with our fingers. We had to buy our pot illegally. We had to wait four days for a letter. Buy records in a store. Read a map. Invest in Exxon. Buy newspapers. Use dial-up modems. Endure George W. Bush.
...

[...] What the hell else do you want, a pony?

There is rarely anything to add to Morford, so just...go.

A glimmer of hope...

Glenn Beck Posts Biggest Ratings Drop Of Any Cable News Show In January

So what's behind this drop? It's entirely possible viewers are simply tiring of the chalkboard and the high rhetoric, which has been notably higher of late. And needless to say Beck is not the phenom he was a year ago, merely by dint of the country becoming more familiar with him.

The more you know about him, and it doesn't take much, the less you want him soiling your TV screen or your car speakers.

Glenn Beck is many things but he is not hard news (nor does he generally attempt to be). And considering the nature of the news, perhaps it's not entirely surprising that viewers were clicking away for a while. Sometimes it's nice to be told the world is not ending.

Maybe people are realizing that Miss Becky's koolaid is made of bullshit and snake oil and they're tired of the taste and being told to drink it.

The Reagan Ruins

There's going to be a lotta bullshit flyin' about Ronnie Raygun's 100th birthday, which is also the 30th birthday of his Alzheimer's.

The last few ¶ of a piece by Robert Borosage on the mess he left us with.

Family values, the Republican reach to the evangelical right, were cynically used to divide Americans, not unite them, targeting blacks, women (or feminazis in Rush Limbaugh's lingo), and gays. Reagan, steeped in the ways of Hollywood, was the utter cynic. He was the only divorced man to occupy the White House, was at best a distant parent, and generally avoided going to church. While he pandered to the Christian right, he was never very serious about pursuing their agenda.

Today, America is more unequal, its middle class is weaker, its manufacturing sector is hollowed out, its bloated military, laden with baroque weaponry, can start wars but not win them. Under the banner of conservatism, predatory corporate interests -- Big Oil, Big Pharma, Wall Street, global corporations, agribusiness -- have fleeced taxpayers while feathering the nests of the few.

So let's celebrate Ronald Reagan's style. He was a great communicator, an aw shucks American original, a genial optimist. He was a transformational president who launched America on a misguided, 30-year experiment with market fundamentalism. But let's not forget the reality. His race bait politics of division were inherited from the dark side of Nixon. And his conservatism has cost this country dearly.

No shit.

Insane Clown Posse

Following up on Fixer's post about the CPAC Annual Psychopathic Convention, or as it is called at Fixer's link and elsewhere, "The Insane Clown Posse", I got ta thinkin' (uh-oh) about insane clowns. Which led down the twisted passageways of my mind to one of my favorite TV shows, Tripping The Rift and its insane clown Darph Bobo, a Repug if there ever was one!

Darph Bobo is the supreme Dark Clown. He wants to take over the universe because he was teased as a child. He attended high school with Chode, and the two also spent time in prison together. He has a belittling wife, Bernice, and a daughter, Babette. Bobo is often seen with his "clown trooper" guards - a parody of Storm Troopers, while the name is a play on clone troopers. Both his name and outfit are a parody of the Darths from the Star Wars movies, as is his desire to construct a Death Orb, a deadly battle station, which is an obvious parody of the Death Star.

Here's how I hope the CPAC Insane Clowns end up:

Thanks to llinsazz.

Why Ann Coulter Is a Cunt, Part 1,390,873

I don't even need to suggest you go read El Rude-o as he unloads on that aging pathetic skank. Have some fun!

Let us take a break from protest violence and health care reform stupidity and blizzards and typhoons to enjoy the exquisite thrill of kicking someone when she's down:

How awful it must be to be Ann Coulter, especially right now. On that horrible precipice that, to the disgrace of our sexist society at large, many women face of having to choose between aging gracefully and openly or becoming a Joan Rivers-esque plastic surgery gargoyle. Looking around as she sees that her brand of crazy has been co-opted from her by younger, hotter, and dumber upstarts or one-upped by the even crazier, like Glenn Beck and his conspiracy theories so barking-at-one's-own-shit insane that UFO conspiracy theorists say, "Whoa, motherfucker, that's nuts." Yeah, one might feel pity for Ann Coulter if she didn't have a long, long history of being such a cunt.

To paraphrase a quote (out of a book and my head, no cite. Please don't make me look it up.) about The Flying Burrito Brothers and the Eagles, the Coultergeist perfected the style, and Palin and Bachmann took it to the bank and Coulter's hangin' on by the skin of her I-don't-wanta-know.

So, one could ask, and one should, "Why the fuck bother? If Coulter's way past her expiration date and getting lumpy and stinky, why not just walk away?" And the answer is simple: because fuck her. Because she's responsible in no small part for our current disgusting state of political argument. Because you don't get a free pass. Even if, sometimes, the only way to get revenge on the monsters in this world is to piss into their graves.

And load that bladder up, like Patton did before he pissed in the Rhine.

Looks like ...

God's gonna be a little busier:

...

Discover's Phil Plait puts today's findings in proper perspective: "Mind you, Kepler is only looking at a sample of stars that is one one-millionth of all the stars in the Milky Way. So it's not totally silly to take these numbers and multiply them by a million to estimate how many planets there may be in the galaxy...70 million Earth-size planets, and a million in the habitable zone of their stars. A frakking million. In our galaxy alone." [my em]

I'd posit, with those odds, some sort of intelligent life has sprung up on at least one of them. Ya think Jesus got there too? Wonder what the Bible says about that?

Great thanks to Susie for the link.

We're in ...

When we want to be, and out when we don't:

Members of the state Legislature, including Arizona's de facto governor, Senate President Russell Pearce, have introduced a bill that essentially would have Arizona secede from the union without having to do so officially.

...

Twits. If you're gonna go, you'd better go all the way, because if you want to come back, I got a "2nd Amendment solution" for ya. You don't get protection from the US armed forces, nor do you get benefits of being American unless you're all in. Ain't no halfway here.

...

It's called SB1433, (See it here.) It creates a 12-member committee within the legislature that could "vote by simple majority to nullify in its entirety a specific federal law or regulation that is outside the scope of the powers delegated by the people to the federal government…"

Committee members themselves would decide this, then pass along their recommendation to the full Legislature. If, in turn, a majority of state lawmakers go along with the committee then, according to the bill, "this state and its citizens shall not recognize or be obligated to live under the statute, mandate or executive order."

...

Let's start a fund drive to move the border fence. Let 'em worry about their own security. I'm tired of paying taxes for a buncha freeloading idiots who don't want to pay their share and cherry pick which parts of the Constitution they want to abide by.

They called us un-American when we bitched about the loss of lives in a war there was no reason to be in, yet it's so American to disregard whatever laws of our own country they don't like? What happened to "America, love it or leave it"? These idiots in Arizona, and those in Texas, and every other buncha clowns who threaten secession, must not love this country at all being they're in such a big hurry to leave.

If you want out, go all the way. This way we don't have to deal with your ignorance and stupidity anymore.

Great thanks to Oliver Willis for the link.

The annual psychopath convention ...

It's that time again:

In case you haven’t been paying attention or are trying (understandably) to block it from your memory, the annual CPAC conference is going to be at the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington from February 10-12th. Among the confirmed speakers:

Rep. Michele Bachmann, Inspiration for the Who’s “suicidal psychopath.”
Gov. Haley Barbour, bloated racist
Hon. John Bolton, group sex-loving psychopath
Andrew Breitbart, lying, racist psychopath
Ann Coulter, anorexic, Islamophobic closet trangender psychopath
Hon. Newt Gingrich, Islamophobic, chronically unemployed psychopath
David Horowitz, Liberals on the campus-fearing psychopath

...

And there are more psychos at the link. With them all in one place, it would be a good time for a raid by the Mental Health Department. Bring a big net and get 'em all at once.

A 60-second letter to your congresscritter

I posted about this some time ago. Please go read. Damn, didn't seem that long ago. Tempus do fugit, don't it? But I digress.

I got this yesterday via the jungle drums of the trials club I belong to:

We've all heard about the nonsense surrounding lead poisoning and kids motorcycles. Finally, so politicians are acting on this.

SUPPORT THEM!

Go here:

http://capwiz.com/amacycle/issues/alert/?alertid=23903516&PROCESS=Take+Action

Put in your name and address and show your support. This actually makes a difference. 60 seconds. GO NOW!

Don

If you can see your way clear to do it, please go do this. Dirt bike riding is one of the best family sports there is.

I hate this phrase, but this time it's true, so tongue-in-cheekily, it's for the children. Barf.

Staten Island Chuck

I like him better than Punxatawney Phil because Chuck bit Mayor Bloomberg (like every good New Yorker should) a few years back. Every year we wait to see not if Chuck sees his shadow or not but whether he will bite the Mayor again.

...

"No shadow, no shadow," Bloomberg said, donning the infamous thick leather gloves he began wearing ever since Chuck, formally known as Charles G. Hogg, chomped on his finger two Groundhog Days ago. "Spring is coming!"

News of the Bizarre That Almost Makes Sense

Bill seeks to let one-armed people use switchblades

State Rep. Sheryl Briggs, D-Mexico*, said Friday that she's asking Maine to comply with a federal law that allows individuals with one arm to own or carry any switchblade knife with a blade of 3 inches or less.

*Mexico, Maine, is an old mill town. Them old down-east maquiladoras were dangerous places to work. Probly lotsa folks missing limbs. Heh.

But seriously, folks, there are flaws in this proposed law.

First of all, most, not all but most switchblades are flimsy pieces of shit that won't hold an edge and are good only for stabbing. I'm sure that's not the usage the nice Democratic lady had in mind. She's just trying to help lefties, so to speak, and doesn't know much about knives outside the kitchen.

As a mechanic/homeowner/general all 'round guy, I've found myself in the position of a one-armed person many times - you've got aholt of something with one hand that needs to be cut and you need ta out with yer folder, open it, and do the job with the other. With a little practice and some judicious easing of the fit of the blade in the handle ahead of time (valve grinding compound works well), you can open it easily with your thumb. When you are done, operate the release with the same thumb, close it against your leg and put it back in the belt sheath.

Alternatively, put a piece of string inside the handle so the tip of the blade protrudes slightly out of the handle. You can then open the knife by catching the tip on the seam of your pants leg with a lateral swiping motion (be careful if you're wearing shorts). This won't work on knives that have been used as screwdrivers and no longer have a tip. Heh. In experienced hands, this method is lightning fast.

These days, opening a pocket or belt knife with one hand is easier than ever. My Buck Bantam has ambidextrous thumb studs which make my old-school methods obsolete.

There are other one-handed knives available. I do not recommend butterfly knives to the one-armed, as a considerable amount of practice and skill is required to avoid having no hands (see one method). Heh. Also, they're illegal everywhere except, apparently, swap meets and the Phillipines.

Also, there are other one-handed knives such as the Smith & Wesson Out-The-Front Tanto and the German Paratrooper Folder and many others.

(Note to BudK: Keep them catalogs comin', boys! The American Flag Guitar Lighter with the lights that run up and down the neck is killer!)

Given the negative image of switchblades and the fashion faux pas of carrying one without the slicked-back pompadour and Cycle Champ jacket, I would suggest that Mexico, Maine, simply let its arm-challenged citizens carry fixed-blade sheath knives so they won't have to open them, or for the more Scottish amongst them, a wee dirk stuck in the top of the sock next to their wallet and smokes, or for the more Marine-oriented, a Ka-Bar, or...

Ah, fuck it, katanas, scimitars, kukris, cavalry swords, claymores, and bat'leths for everybody! See 'BudK' above. Heh.

Headline of the Day

Afghans can only watch in envy as Egypt revolts

On the one hand, uh-oh.

On the other, rise, goat humpers, and free yourselves! That would accomplish whatever mission it is we're there to do and we could leave.

To everything, spin, spin, spin...*

*Apologies to The Byrds.

This builds on Fixer's post below. The right wing is spinning the whole Egypt thing to their own purposes against Obama and toward any damn fool thing they want to do.

David Corn on the Obama Hate Machine (which I think is a poorly constructed term, but...):

The Egyptian crisis is far from over; Obama and his team can hardly be fully judged. But to date, they have represented the United States well. In fact, Republican leaders in Congress have not been complaining. Yet the Obama Hate Machine has seized on the Egyptian uprising as another opportunity to slam the president. Conservative columnist Dick Morris, who once upon a time was a consultant to President Bill Clinton, hammered Obama for failing to stand with Mubarak against Islamic "extremists" trying "to take over the country." Fox News contributor Ralph Peters blasted Obama for not sufficiently supporting the Egyptian protesters. The right-wing Washington Times editorial page slammed Obama for having "abrogated any leadership role in resolving the turmoil in Egypt," noting, "When the time calls for action, Mr. Obama sits on his hands." The newspaper suggested that Obama's moves would lead to al-Qaeda taking over Egypt. Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment.com published a posting by Wayne Allyn Root, a leading libertarian, that predicted that the United States would soon be hit by Egyptian-style "riots, revolt in the streets, and economic paralysis" and that Obama "might turn out to be just as intolerant to dissent as Mubarak."

Then there's Glenn Beck. In his own bizarro fashion, Beck tied the rebellion in Egypt to radical forces in the United States and elsewhere that are scheming the demise of the United States:

"We have evidence of the uber-left, the anarchists and the communists and the socialists, the radicals, sowing the seeds and helping those in Egypt. All they want is more pressure on the United States. This isn't about the people there. This is about changing the globe. . . . The storm that I've talked about for so many years is here. The coming insurrection is here."

Oh, this is far beyond Barack Obama, he added. The uber-left and the Islamicists, he asserted, "are plotting together." Presumably to destroy the United States and take over the world -- and Obama's not doing anything to stop them. (He might be rooting for them!) Beck called on his followers to prepare for food riots in the United States. This is, of course, crazy talk. But it's the filter through which millions of Americans are viewing the historic events in Egypt.

The Obama Hate Machine never takes a vacation. But its eager exploitation of the uprising in Egypt cheapens the stirring images of those brave Egyptian citizens seeking democracy and the right of free expression. This is no surprise. There's always demagoguery to wage and paranoia to fuel.

As my response to the Quote of the Day just below, yes, sometimes Beck's followers and other teabaggers and right wing loonies are funny with their dorky hats and misspelled signs and deserve to be laughed at, right in their faces.

Other times, they should be taken as seriously as a two-step snake and dealt with pretty much the same way if they can't be avoided. They're dangerous.

Quote of the Day

Mr. Mass-transit:

I know that decadent coastal liberal elitists like myself aren't supposed to laugh at the True Patriot Americans who watch Glenn Beck's show, but really... If you're a genuine fan of the ravings of this lunatic then you deserve to be laughed at.

A thought ...

About this whole Egypt thing. There must be a lot of sphincters tightening in Tel Aviv and Washington.

Over the last couple days, in my flu-induced stupor, I've been trying to envision what could come to pass after Mubarak finally leaves. Both the US and Israel have been lulled into a false sense of security over the past 3 decades and I get the feeling everybody's running around with their hair on fire now that the collapse of the Mubarak/Sadat government has happened so quickly after so long. You can bet whatever becomes of Egypt, the next government won't be as friendly to the US and Israel and certainly not as receptive to our interests as Mubarak was.

I'm surprised the conservatives haven't gone full bore to turn the Muslim Brotherhood into the next al-Qaeda/Hamas/Hezbollah/Islamic Jihad etc.

Oops, silly me. It seems they've infiltrated us already.

Update:

And lo and behold, I'm watching James Baker on MSNBComcast right now referring to the Muslim Brotherhood as "enemies" and "radical Islamists" who will "attack Israel". The Neocons should be having a circle jerk right about now.

Nearly peed myself laughing when Baker said something about "protecting the democratic processes" in Egypt. To hear him say it, Mubarak was a friend to all, including furry woodland creatures.

Only in America ...

Seriously:

...

And then I thought about what kind of person, in the face of all this, would choose to honor a key architect and enabler of America’s torture regime as a “Defender of the Constitution.” You’d have to be an unfortunate combination: partisan, cynical, intellectually empty. You’d have to perceive of the Constitution primarily as a cheap prop in a public relations campaign, and be willing to exploit it that way. You’d have to be ignorant of irony and oblivious to Orwell.

...

That's all the Constitution is to conservatives, a cheap prop ... or toilet paper.

Heh ...

Stole this from our pal Jersey Guy's Facebook page. Jerry the Dog's automatic ball thrower.



I'd love something like this for my two monsters but that machine would be nothing but a pile o' parts in an hour.

Statement on Florida Court Ruling

From Ethan Rome, Director of HCAN:

“Judge Vinson gave Republican governors and attorneys general what they wanted, a decision that advances the GOP’s extremist agenda to return control of our health care to the insurance companies. This is judicial activism on steroids. Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court will have the final say on the legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act, and it has corrected such lower-court mistakes when other major laws like Social Security, the minimum wage law and the Voting Rights Act were passed. Two other federal district judges have already upheld the new health care law.

“With consumers already benefiting from the law, this litigation is really about the Republican Party protecting health insurance company profits at the expense of workingfamilies. The Republican politicians who marched in lockstep to bring this suit aren’t really interested in the new law’s individual-responsibility rule. This lawsuit is just another tactic in the Republican Party’s campaign to give our health care back to the insurance companies no matter what the cost.

“The American people will not allow the courts or the Congress to bring us back to the time when insurance companies could exclude people because of pre-existing conditions,drop people for getting sick, or let benefit caps force people with serious diseases into bankruptcy.”

The American people have nothing to say about it. The phrase in the statement that bears repeating is:

Fortunately, the U.S. Supreme Court will have the final say on the legal challenge to the Affordable Care Act

I'm not sure "fortunately" is the right choice of words what with this SCOTUS pretty much a wholly-owned subsidiary of Corporate Amerika. The right wing is doing its best to force this in front of The Supremes for just that reason.

Update:

The Rude Pundit weighs in:

[...] Because, see, the Supreme Court is probably going to be making a decision in 2012 on the Obama administration's appeal of Judge Rodger Vinson's decision that the entire Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 be tossed aside like a used fuckrag. [...]

So the Rude Pundit would advise the White House to start prepping for what happens if the Supreme Court strikes down the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. That means more than just a few rallies by the president. That means that Democrats need to get on board, especially those who voted for it. Shit, it's gonna be used against Democrats in 2012, even if everyone who supported it ends up claiming they were victims of Kenyan hoodoo mind-control. Double down on that motherfucker. Make commercials with people who benefited from it. Run 'em on Fox "news" to twist the heads of the yahoos. It won't be difficult.

Wanna know why? Here's a real conversation between the Rude Pundit and an ultraconservative relative this month:

Go see.

...

Relative: So I guess I have to support it now.

Rude Pundit: Yeah, you do.

In other words, make it so that people fucking fear the Supreme Court overturning the law. Make it so that they're willing to vote out of office anyone who wants to take it away. Make it so that they're begging for the law to have a public option so that there's no question over the constitutionality of it (remember: we're prepping for a negative ruling). Make it so that the next Congress will have to fix it.

The anti-health reform forces scare people into thinking it's the beginning of communist tyranny fascistic Nazi Stalinism. Or some such shit. The counter-argument can't be, "No, that's silly." It has to be, "You'll fucking die without it."

Fuckin' A. Scare the crap out of 'em. That's the way the Repugs do it and they're used to it and it works.

Time to go, Hosni

Egypt’s military pledges it won’t use violence against protesters

Mubarak's toast.

Update:

Montag agrees.

Bolton: If Mubarak falls in Egypt, Israel should bomb Iran

Raw Story

Bolton, a neoconservative, has a long history of promoting military strikes on Iran.

No shit. If that neocon motherfucker wakes up in the morning, Israel should nuke Iran.

Let's hope neither happens.

2012 Republican presidential candidates all have flaws

Besides being Repuglican'ts, you mean? Imagine that! Chris Cillizza lays 'em out:

That's an emerging bit of conventional wisdom about the slow-forming GOP race. And it's right - except that it omits one very important fact: All - that's A-L-L - of the Republicans considering runs for the nomination carry at least one major flaw that could keep them from victory.
...

Let's take a look at the Achilles' heel of some of the best-known candidates:

Yada yada...

"The answer to the riddle lies in the future, not the past," he said. "Who can capture the imagination of Republican primary voters? That is the question."

First of all, if they had any imagination they wouldn't be Repugs.

Second, they don't need imagination. FOXPAC et al will tell them what opinion to have and whom to throw their vote away for.

Headline of the Day

Set your drink down. Just sayin'...

Michele Bachmann Delivers Tea Party Address to Egyptian Protestors

We're Better off Than Egypt -- Right?

RJ Eskow

A tourist who was interviewed last night from Cairo spoke for millions of his fellow Americans when he said he couldn't imagine living a country like Egypt. It is hard, isn't it?

Imagine: A government run by and for the rich and powerful. Leaders who lecture others about "sacrifice" and deficits while cutting taxes for corporations and the wealthy. A system so corrupt that rich executives can break the law without fear of being punished. Increasing poverty and hardship even as the stock market rises. And now, a nation caught between a broken political system and a populist movement that could be hijacked by religious extremists at any moment.

No wonder they're upset! Why, we'd be marching in the streets too.

Heh. Americans are waaaay too lazy. A lot of 'em can barely roll off the couch to wave their guns around.

Egypt's been plagued by the same contradictory "cut taxes and reduce the deficit" logic we're hearing in the US. And why not? It serves the same web of financial interests.

Wall Street banks have a record of chronic criminality in the United States, yet continue to maintain a level of political power and influence that would look familiar to any Egyptian.

Egyptians face much greater hardships and dangers than Americans do, and it would be wrong to minimize either their difficulties or their bravery. But while we shouldn't trivialize our differences, it's also wrong to ignore our similarities. If we do, it lets our nation's leaders do far less than they should be doing to create real economic and political change. It allows us to admire the Egyptian people without challenging our own consciences. It lets us admire their activism without seeing the need for action here at home.

Sometimes it's easier to admire courage in others than it is to seek it in ourselves.

No 'sometimes' about it. Always.

RJ waxes a little hyperbolic, but not all that much. Go read the rest.

Me ...

And Dr. Fez:

Joints hurt - check
Back hurts - check
balls hurt - check


Hooray, the Flu has arrived!

Why ...

Are this man and his henchmen still free? Bush and Cheney have as much as confessed to war crimes, yet they're allowed to run around free to make even more money:

...

He followed it up by saying that he was glad the Congress decided to pass The Patriot Act and renew it again no matter which party was in the majority and defended his administration's spying and torture, or as he called it "enhanced interrogation" that he claimed was necessary to keep us safe from terrorism. He also claimed that The Patriot Act assured that civil liberties were not undermined.

...