Saturday, December 10, 2011

Word



And not in MY face either.

There'a an art to condensing important subjects so they'll fit on a bumpersticker. Right-wingers are very good at doing it with talking points. They have to be, given the attention span of their base. It's much harder to do with the truth.

An example of "compassionate conservatism"?

Thanks to YubaNet.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Bremen - 1977

Thanks to modoBLIND.

Friday, December 9, 2011

Duh.

Thanks to YubaNet.

Super-sized Lunar Eclipse on Dec. 10

This'll be totally bitchin'! Go see. Good graphics.

Ron Paul gets it right

I like Ron Paul. I like guys who go against the common idiocy, and his personal idiocy is anything but common. He'll never be President, of course, and he knows it, so we're safe from him. He's a pure Libertarian, which means he's a right-wing anarchist. The rest of the right wing, who claim to be against big government, really only want the current big government to be replaced by their big government so they can tell the rest of us what to do and make money. I picture a totalitarian right-wing United States as sort of a minimum-wage fundie-or-die coast-to-coast chain gang. Paul's idea of actual every-man-for-himself personal freedom will never fly with them. Or, frankly, with any of us who think if we don't hang together, we'll hang separately.

Another reason the righties don't like him, or maybe the main one, is that, batcrap crazy as he seems, he occasionally commits the biggest gaffe of all: sometimes he tells the exact truth, which is anathema to wingnuts on both ends, money and base alike.

Raw Story, links at site.

Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul said Thursday that President George W. Bush’s administration was actually happy after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2011.

Speaking to about 1,000 students on the Iowa State Campus in Ames, Iowa, Paul explained that the Bush administration was eager to capitalize on the attacks.

“Think of what happened after 9/11, the minute before there was any assessment, there was glee in the administration because now we can invade Iraq, and so the war drums beat,” Paul told the crowd, according to Politico. “That’s exactly what they’re doing now with Iran.”
...

“Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda have been explicit, and they wrote and said that we attacked because you had bases on our holy lands in Saudi Arabia, you do not give Palestinians a fair treatment,” Paul said before being interrupted by boos from the tea party crowd. “I didn’t say that, I’m just trying to get you to understand what the motive was behind the bombings.”

As you can guess, the neocons/Busheviks are not exactly thrilled with this, having spent ten years trying to hide the truth which was expressed in public in ten seconds. They're calling Paul crazy. Heh. The truth will set you free, which is the last thing they want because it will put them outta business.

Obama Derangement Syndrome: Hanukkah Edition

Media Matters, links at site.

Right-wing media have spent years claiming President Obama incorrectly celebrates or snubs Christian holidays like Easter and Christmas, so it's no surprise that this year, they're attacking how he celebrates Jewish holidays, too.
...

And blogger Jim Hoft featured a post about the Hanukkah celebration on his blog Gateway Pundit, writing, "It's OK. It's just a Jewish Holiday. Obama celebrates Hanukkah two weeks early and lights all the candles."

This follows the right-wing media's long crusade to desperately portray Obama as antagonistic to Jews. Blogger Pamela Geller has claimed that Obama was "wet-nursed on Jew hatred," while Instapundit's Glenn Reynolds suggested he "hates Jews." This year, conservative bloggers attacked Obama's Passover statement, calling him "vicious" and "tone deaf" and saying he "punch[ed] the Jewish people in the face" for comparing Passover's story of freedom to the revolutions that were then sweeping the Middle East; few of them noticed, though, that Sarah Palin made the exact same comparison in a Passover statement of her own.

And right-wing media figures have also claimed Obama is anti-Israel, saying his policies will lead to the "destruction of Israel" and claiming he's "sided with terrorists" and "people who believe that Israel doesn't have a right to exist." Yet recent polls show that a majority of Israeli Jews support Obama.

First of all, Israel is well on the way to destroy itself, but that's not the point.

The fucking Repuglitards would climb Obama's frame if he started putting on a sock and a shoe rather than a sock and a sock and a shoe and a shoe, probably call it "socialist foot dressing".

Marine Hero vs. Defense Industry: A Cautionary Tale

Via Common Dreams.

Dakota Meyer was a 21-year-old Marine sergeant in Afghanistan when he came under ambush, defied orders to stay put, and under heavy fire saved 36 men, including two dozen Afghans. Back home, he was awarded a Medal of Honor and went to work for massive military subcontractor BAE Systems. But when he protested the sale of advanced thermal-optic scopes to Pakistan, his "superiors" launched a smear campaign against him to make sure he could never work in the industry again; he responded with a defamation lawsuit. A look at how veterans are used and abused by a defense industry interested only in the brutal bottom line.

Click on the 'smear' link.

Sgt. Meyer knew damn well that any military technology sold to Pakistan will end up being used against our troops, probably within days of delivery. He spoke out and the MIC is fucking with him.

These bastards would have sold 8-shot M1 Garands to the Wehrmacht to replace their bolt-action Mauser 98s during the Battle of the Bulge. Hey, it's just business.

Not only should we drop Pakistan like a hot rock, we should drop the Military Industrial Complex that sells arms to our enemies as well.

You go, Sgt. Meyer. Semper Fi. From some of us.

The Final Indignity

William Rivers Pitt

For the record, this program of indecent disposal of dead American service members began, and concluded, during the administration of George W. Bush. It is no accident, for that administration - despite perhaps the slickest PR campaign about America and patriotism and "Supporting The Troops" ever undertaken in our history - had no more regard or concern for the troops they consigned to death and dismemberment than a dog has for the snowbank it pisses on. They consigned thousands of US service members to death, tens of thousands of US service members to gruesome injury and the permanent aftermath of PTSD, and hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians to the same fates, for two reasons: to win elections, and to make money.

The soldiers themselves? The ones who have borne the battle? They are turned away from VA hospitals for lack of funds or insurance coverage, foreclosed upon by predatory lenders, left to shrift for themselves if alive, buried in the cold ground of a soldier's grave if not, or simply tossed into a landfill like a bag of household garbage. If anyone ever needed to see and fully encompass the true sum and substance of the administration of George W. Bush, and of all that has gone wrong in America, this despicable scandal tells you all you need to know.

Amen.

A hundred years on ...

And Teddy Roosevelt is just as relevant today:

...

With only minor adjustments, Roosevelt could have said precisely the same thing today about Republican critics of the Occupy Wall Street movement who refuse to even consider the causes which first provoked average Americans to take to the streets to protest Wall Street abuses, preferring instead to focus entirely on the bad behavior of a few in order to satisfy themselves as to the stupidity and illegitimacy of the movement as a whole.

Many of us have been saying for the past three years that the hysterical nature of right wing attacks against this remarkable and much-maligned President -- called a dangerous radical bent on destroying the country and undermining its history, institutions and traditions -- says a lot more about the current state of the Republican Party than it does about Obama himself.

Extremists, after all, always need extremists on the other side to justify their own extremism. And claims that President Obama is a "radical socialist" were always preposterous when Obama's actual performance was placed within the currents of American history, since Obama has always been squarely within the American mainstream.

...


Teddy had the same things to deal with a century ago as we do today. I think Barry should (where he's here fucking up traffic anyway) take a little trip out to Long Island and visit Sagamore Hill. Some TR might rub off on him.

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Outrage doesn't begin to cover it

TPM

The Air Force reportedly dumped the ashes of at least 274 U.S. troops in a landfill in Virginia before it ended the practice three years ago, according to records obtained by the Washington Post.

Somebody needs to be stood up against a wall and shot.

Savages

This must be the festivity mentioned by Fixer in 'comments' on this post.

NY Daily News. Video!

Update:

Do not miss the video! Heh.



Posters on Facebook, identifying themselves as cops, call participants in Brooklyn West Indian Day parade 'animals' and 'savages'

They say that like it's a bad thing. Looks like fun ta me!

Update:

Around here, we get guys in Sorels doing the manual of arms with snow shovels in the 4th of July parade. One sentence from Fixer led me to believe my scope was somewhat limited and inspired me to do some scientific research to broaden my cultural understanding. It's working...

Thanks to SpottedXtreme.

Frisco Steamer

Title reference is to the last line of this post. No, it's not a ship.

Nancy Pelosi provides Newt Gingrich ethics report

Here’s the 1280 pages of the Ethics Committee report.

I'll wait for someone else to read me the good parts.

Related:

"Progressives Must DIE! SHOOT Nancy Pelosi!"

Dear Santa,

All I want for Christmas is five minutes with Glenn Beck and a bar of soap. I will need four of those minutes to wash thoroughly.

I've been a good boy this year. I deserve this. Please make my dream come true.

Gordon

P.S. There'll be some single malt scotch and a plate of Alice B. Toklas brownies for you in my living room. Not a bribe. Think of it as a lobbying effort.

He said 'gay' heh ... heh ...

Beavis and Butthead in Michigan:

Talk about a war on Christmas.

The music teacher at Cherry Knoll Elementary School in Michigan decided to replace the word “gay” in the popular Christmas carol “Deck the Halls” because students were giggling.

...


I giggled (and so did all my buddies) too when I was 8 years old. They're kids. Seems the teacher hasn't made it out of high school yet. At least emotionally ...

Quote of the Day

The "Frothy Mixture":

"If hunger is a problem in America, then why do we have an obesity problem among the people who we say have a hunger program?"


The man truly has no grip on any part of reality.

Yay!

Good news from up north:

Former White House financial reform adviser Elizabeth Warren has jumped to a healthy lead over incumbent Republican Sen. Scott Brown in the Massachusetts Senate race, according to the new University of Massachusetts-Lowell/Boston Herald poll.

...

Christ ...

John Bolton for Secretary of State? Rudy Giuliani as Attorney General? And people actually think these are good ideas?

We don’t even a have a Republican nominee yet, but they’re floating names for cabinet appointments.


Why don't they just get Cheney to run for VP?

Thanks to MBRU for the link.

Good ...

They should be scared:

...

And yet organized resistance to foreclosures and evictions continues to grow, thanks to the joint efforts of Occupy Our Homes and Take Back the Land to occupy empty houses while calling attention to fraudulent business practices by the big banks. The resistance is having an effect, as a leaked memo from Bank of America indicates:

...


Rat bastids created the mortgage crisis and then screwed thousands (if not millions) of Americans out of their homes. We should have nationalized all the big banks and carted their CEOs and boards of directors off to jail.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

Tickle yer ass with a feather, officer?

I was reading this NYT article on "When the Police Go Military" wherein "Occupy" is mentioned a lot.

Yet lately images from Occupy protests streamed on the Internet — often in real time — show just how readily police officers can adopt military-style tactics and equipment, and come off more like soldiers as they face down citizens. Some say this adds up to the emergence of a new, more militaristic breed of civilian police officer. Others disagree.

The cops are probably the ones disagreeing. They lurves them some macho gear to deal with unarmed protesters, the more heavy-handed the better. Nip those kids, nip 'em in the bud! (Visual of Barney Fife in an exoskeleton maintaining law and order in downtown Mayberry.)

It dawned on me some time back that one of these days some police department or other is going to need to be taken down. A campus cop force seems like good place to start, especially after that dick move with pepper spray at UC Davis. They're small and not particularly well trained, sometimes staffed with badge-heavy wannabe badasses who couldn't hack it in a real police department, and could be overpowered by motivated protesters with a little training.

Remember, the idea is to humiliate them, not hurt them. Well, not too badly anyway. They've got a few lumps and bumps and bruises coming.

I've been thinking of ways to best accomplish a cop takedown. First, pick your target. Make sure they deserve it, that they're acting like total dicks. If they're just trying to keep the peace and not using excessive force, go with the flow. Don't fuck with guys who aren't fucking with you.

Next, block access to other law enforcement reinforcements. Bodies, lots and lots of people, as many as you can get. Hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands. It's what we have the most of to counter a few cops with weapons. The whole point is to keep the cops from using the weapons and embarrass the crap out of 'em in the process.

Also to take the establishment's only real power - violence - away. That'll scare the shit out of the front office.

I came up with a three-men-per-cop tactic. Not to exclude the ladies by any means, but it will take strength. It will also take practice. One man dives for the cop's legs and bear hugs 'em. One man grabs each arm and takes him down. The man with the cop's gun hand hangs on tight, the other sits on the sonofabitch. Then use the cop's own handcuffs or those big cable-tie ones you wisely stuck three of in your pocket first. If the cop needs a little extra persuasion at this point to quiet down, so be it. Line 'em all up in a nice neat row for the TV cameras.

Let's say 20 cops, 60 men to do this, all going down with split-second timing. Perfect.

And absolutely unworkable. A platoon of Marines could pull off shit like that because they work at training day in and day out. Civilians who have to go to classes to try and learn something so they can hopefully get a better job than the one they've got to get through school and still try and sleep a coupla hours a night haven't got the time.

The whole point is to immobilize the cops. If they can't move, they can't fuck with you, right? I thought of hosing 'em down with fast-drying concrete or that foam crap they ship Harley-Davidson engines in, but that brain fart passed pretty quickly.

I thought of boleadoras and other variations of ancient hunting weapons. Wow, a coupla those wrapped around a cop and he might as well turn in his time card for the day! Then my research turned up this:

The reason sectional, chained or flexible shafted tools make such excellent weapons is because of the "whip" amplifying effect of the "cords" causing a small hand movement to be translated into a much larger movement and hence bigger momentum. This then translates into either a greater throwing distance and/or bigger impact once the head of the weapon hits the target. You will most likely already know this if you have ever been hit by some fast moving poi.

Had that happen at a luau once. Ouch. No, swinging bits of whatever flying around in a crowd would have unintended consequences, like knocking out everyone but the intended. Why do the cops' work for them? Nope.

What to do, what to do. Came to me almost by mistake while I was culturally expanding my understanding of the performing arts whilst watching this. Research takes me many places.

Boas. Lots and lots of boas. Hundreds, thousands of boas, each in the hands of a scantily clad twisting gyrating nubile young Freedom Fighter! Extra long boas, perhaps modified for the job at hand by the addition of a length of ultra-flexible 7x7 motorcycle throttle wire down the long axis. To the beat of drum circles, the gals close in on the cops, mesmerized by the jungle beat, the bare skin, the bouncing butts 'n boobies! Then the dancers STRIKE! In one swift motion, the boas are whipped around the cops, two, three to a man, strategically placed, arms, legs, a neck or two of the worst offenders, pulled tight and the ends done up with a granny knot.

Deal done. The cops can't move. The TV cameras would have a field day with the brightly colored bits of feathers that took down America's Finest. Those cops would slink off as laughingstocks from the annual cop goat roping or whatever it is they do.

And let that be a lesson to the rest of 'em. Harrumph.

Ah, to dream... That was good shit ya sent me, F-Man...

They're almost gone

The Beeb

The Pearl Harbor Survivors Association said it would disband after this year's landmark commemoration because so few veterans remained.

Those guys made the rest of us who have served since look good. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.

Probably not the best place to put this next, but...

It was the last assault on US soil until al-Qaeda's attacks of 11 September 2001, another surprise offensive that shocked the US into military action and transformed its strategic outlook.

If Bush had been Preznit on 7 December 1941, he would have declared war on Mexico and told everyone to go shopping. War with Germany would have been out of the question. The Bush Crime Family was making too much money there.

Please text me your naked email URL

If it's Wednesday, it's Morford on a whole bunch of social communication problems that until recently we didn't know we would ever have.

And so I thought, I need to reconnect with her. Need to send her a note. Need to say hi and see what's what and how wildly her world is spinning.

So I reached for the phone to... wait, no, I clicked on the link to... no no, I opened the chat window to... um, text her an email about the Facebook photo I was about to Skype in the... dammit, wait a second.

I was, for a ridiculous and surreal moment, paralyzed. What's the best way to reconnect in this particular context? Which mode has the right tone and feel? Should I send her a text? A funny photo? Facebook message? Skype? How about a more thoughtful, considered email? It's been a few months, after all. Maybe a postcard? An iPhone Postagram of an Instagram of a Hipstamatic snapshot of a letter I wrote on an iPad chat window's notebook app? Who can tell?

Or maybe I should do the least common, most archaic thing of all, something with which the next generation apparently has almost zero skill and hence which might just spell the end of civilization as we know it, and pick up the damn phone?

I've got email, Facebook, Alternate Brain, and a land line and sometimes that's too many. Sometimes there are advantages to being a dinosaur.

Quote of the Day

John Perr:

Florida Governor Rick Scott now slightly more popular than ebola virus.

Heh ...

A good ugly Christmas sweater.

Hitting the 1% ...

I never thought Royal Governor Il Cuomo II had it in him:

ALBANY — Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and legislative leaders announced on Tuesday that they had reached an agreement to overhaul New York State’s income tax, creating a higher tax bracket for the highest-income residents and reducing the tax rate for millions of middle-class residents.

...


Now, if that kind of thinking would only rub off on Little Napoleon down in NYC, this would start working a little better in this state.

70 years ...



Dad-in-law Fixer signed up the very next day and so did millions of other young men. He was lucky and came home in one piece. Many others didn't. Remember them today.

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Just once, oh please...

Senator Kyl (R-Idiotzona) said (you can look it up, this is a quickie) "We'll extend the payroll tax cut if Obama makes the Bush tax cuts permanent".

Just once I'd like to see Barry put on his best, and it's damn good, shit-eatin' grin and reply to him:

"Fat chance, white boy!"

I Call A Barnyard Fulla Shit On B of A

This video is great in one respect and total horseshit in another.

It's great for Pink's Hot Dogs. Pink's is an institution in L.A.. It's world famous. I've been there lotsa times. I think Fixer has even been there. One reason: absolutely great hot dogs. The sidewalk ambience is pretty good too. It's a fun place to go.



Here's the three foot deep swamp of pig shit: Pink's has been where it is, with other locations now, for 70 years. Back in the day, Bank of America was a California-only bank owned by the Giannini family, whose patriarch founded it in San Francisco as the Bank of Italy in 1904. The name was changed in 1922 and again in 1930.

When the banking rules were changed under Reagan is when B of A was able to operate outside California and became the 5th largest criminal enterprise in banking it is today. They're trying to pass it off as though today's version was responsible for Pink's and they're still a small business and family friendly neighborhood bank.

Bullshit. Far from it.

They're doing the exact same thing about an enterprise up in Washington, a grocery store chain started after WWII by a returned Japanese-American concentration camp internee. Whatever in-state bank that made that loan was acquired by B of A after Reagan started us down the yellow brick road to ruin.

B of A is claiming credit for startup loans they didn't even make.

When I researched this, I discovered more B of A ads than you can shake a stick at, all trying to convince us they're a force for good and we should love them for the royal screwing they've been giving us for years.

I gotta go wash B of A chickenshit off.

Pelosi To Take Big Dump On Neut

Following up on Fixer's post. WaPo

Pelosi, in an interview with Talking Points Memo, echoed Rep. Barney Frank (D-Mass.) in saying “I never thought I’d live such a good life that I would see Newt Gingrich be the nominee of the Republican Party.”

From the TPM interview:

There’s no better illustration of how ecstatic Democrats are about Newt Gingrich leading the GOP primary pack than Nancy Pelosi’s strategic silence.
...

Pelosi didn’t go into detail about Gingrich’s past transgressions, but she tipped her hand. “One of these days we’ll have a conversation about Newt Gingrich,” Pelosi said. “I know a lot about him. I served on the investigative committee that investigated him, four of us locked in a room in an undisclosed location for a year. A thousand pages of his stuff.”

Pressed for more detail she wouldn’t go further.

“Not right here,” Pelosi joked. “When the time’s right.”

Which is to say that if Gingrich somehow clinches the nomination, there’s one hell of an oppo dump coming.

Gotta go get a bigger microwave oven...

Here's what's really going to happen:

As much fun as we're having with this, and as much as we'd like to see Neutie have his ass handed to him 75% to 25% in Obama's re-election, Neut is NOT going to be the Repug nominee.

All the brouhaha about the Repug clown car is simply a function of 24/7 cable news air time. The Beltway gasbags gotta fill it with something, no matter how inane/batcrap crazy the candidates. It's great entertainment and means nothing.

It doesn't matter if Neut wins every caucus/primary in the nation. The Repug establishment, i.e. the 'money' end of what's left of the party, KNOWS that Obama is going to be re-elected. They know it. Period.

They know the 'crazy' end of the party, i.e. the Dead End Quarter can't elect anyone in the general, but they think Willard can come closer so it won't appear as such a rout. They know they're going to be left standing in the wreckage of the Repug party, but they want at least some wreckage to stand in. Run Neut, they'll be standing in a smoking hole where their party used to be.

The money boys will see that Willard is the nominee. If they have to flat exclude Neut delegates from their sham convention, so be it. I'd bet a dollar the deal is already done.

All that said, I still wanta see Nancy lift her skirt and drop a giant Frisco Steamer on Neut's face. Heh.

Color me surprised ...

Not:

NEW ORLEANS -- BP has accused Halliburton of destroying damaging evidence about the quality of its cement slurry that went into drilling the oil well that blew out last year and caused the worst offshore oil spill in U.S. history.

In a court filing, the oil company alleged that Halliburton did inadequate cement work. BP also asked a federal judge to punish the oilfield services company.

...


You mean Halliburton would actually destroy evidence of their criminality? Oh what is the world coming to?

Really?

It's an insidious conspiracy; the brainwashing of our children by ... Kermit the Frog and Miss Piggy. No, really:

Life’s a happy song, but not when Fox Business is singing along. The network is upset that the new Muppets movie, The Muppets, features an oil tycoon as a villain, with various contributors complaining last week that the film amounts to “indoctrination” of young people into “hating corporate America” that borders on “Communist[ic].” Dan Gainor of the conservative Media Research Center agreed with host Eric Bolling that “liberal Hollywood is using class warfare to brainwash our kids” and the discussion rambled on from there.

...


Me thinks some might be getting a bit paranoid over there on the right.

I can imagine ...

Nancy Pelosi says she's got an encyclopedia worth of dirt on Neuticles and he's worried she might release it all:

Republican presidential candidate hopeful Newt Gingrich sounds a little worried that Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi might follow through with her threat to divulge details of his past transgressions.

...


Nancy, I got like $25 bucks in my wallet. It's all yours if you follow through. Heh ... Get me the popcorn!

Monday, December 5, 2011

Swimming with Jim Crow in Negro Creek

I think I posted on something like this a while back. We have a similarly re-named canyon at the edge of my town, but you can't swim in the two-rut road that goes up it. You can haul some black ass on it on a bike though! Heh.

YubaNet

It's the tale about the laudable efforts of a local property owner -- who happens to be a county employee -- with an offensively named creek on her land to drag Nevada County government kicking and screaming into the 21st century by renaming it on current maps -- like the Assessors parcel maps (APN maps). Emphasis on the word current.

For now, the name Negro Creek will remain on federal maps since it was the federal government that removed the word Nigger on all its maps in 1964 and replaced it with Negro. In 1983 (during the Reagan administration) the Board of Names enacted the following: "The Board will not adopt a name proposal that includes the word "Jap" or the word "Nigger" whether or not it is in current local usage and regardless of by whom proposed." That directive, signed by the Secretary of the Interior, whizzed right by Nevada County.

Not hard to do. Hell, the Twentieth Century never caught on all that big around here either.

Nevada County's conservative Republican majority on the BOS is famous for declaring its disdain for government in general and its preference for local control over state or federal mandates. OK, so how does that work in this case? Let's see...

Yeah, Nigger Creek'd be fine with them.

What the BOS fails to acknowledge is that the word "Negro" – while hardly as odious as the word "nigger" -- is perceived by many people today of all races as offensive, and not just "outmoded" -- to use Supervisor Weston's inane adjective. "Outmoded" is a word more appropriate for describing unfashionable hairdos and clothing styles like mullets and go-go boots, not to describe what an entire generation of the biggest racial minority in the United States chooses to name itself in view of past discrimination. The term "Negro" is "outmoded" today precisely because it is offensive to many since it is reminiscent of the Jim Crow period. And, it is used by racists today as a replacement for the now "outmoded" term "nigger." Bottom line, the word "Negro" is still used today by people who don't have the guts to use the word "nigger." Does anybody remember the song "Barack The Magic Negro" played ad nauseam on the Rush Limbaugh show during the last presidential campaign? Had he used the word "nigger" on the air, he would have lost his job. He was safe using "Negro," but we all heard the dog whistle.

There's more and please read it, but here are my questions:

Is the word "Negro" really offensive, or is it just outmoded, or is it one or the other simply out of political correctness? Or is it just the way it's used to convey positive, neutral, or negative meanings depending on the speaker?

I had occasion the other day to post a song on Facebook by an outstanding Old Time String Band called "The Carolina Chocolate Drops". The album name is "Genuine Negro Jig". I suspect a little tongue-in-cheek poking fun at us white devils, so is it OK for some folks to use the word and some not?

Here's the first Google entry for "Negro". There are 478,999,999 others. So much for research...

Opinions, please.

Decoy

I was reading an article at Truthout about "I Know How to Beat Republicans". Quite a good article, but not really much in there about that. This snippet really caught my eye:

[...] And then there was the Bosnia-Kosovo war. As Bismarck said, the risk of Europe being set aflame occurs when some damn fool starts a war in the Balkans. And then there was the way it was conducted: $200,000 US missiles were decoyed by the Serbs wiring $100 microwave ovens to operate with the door open.

The "lights on in yer head, dipshit" light came on in my head! How simple. If you're trying to get radar-seeking missiles to go off someplace else besides where you are, jam the doorlatch on a microwave oven so the oven thinks the door's closed and the signals can get out and fool the missile into thinking it's going to kamikaze something important!

Brilliant, and it doesn't get much simpler than that. Might be good to know that sometime.

Might be good to know where the electrical outlets are at somebody's house you would like to see the missile land on too.

Neut Thinks You Can Go To Hawaii On Food Stamps (And Other Nonsense)

Addicting Info

As if that isn’t bad enough, Newt has decided that not only is he running for president, he is also laying claim to the crown of the King of Making Shit Up (You didn’t think Karl Rove could hold it forever, did you?)
...

Recent cases in point:
...

–He said of the Occupy movement, that they should “go get a job after you take a bath.” Because as everyone is aware, you can then go jump on the back of the job unicorn who will take you to the land of jobs where the man behind the curtain will open the drapes and expose the place where there aren’t 4 job seekers for every job. I think that place is called China.

–Then he pointed out that poor people have no work ethic and no understanding of what it’s like to have a job unless they are involved in an illegal activity. His solution, is to channel Marie Antoinette, ignore child labor laws, turn them into janitors, and let them clean shitters. Nevermind that by far, most poor folk are of the working variety and often have multiple jobs that may just allow them a hand-to-mouth existence.

“We have people who take their food stamp money and use it to go to Hawaii.”

If the food stamp system bars beneficiaries from buying decorative gourds rather than pumpkins, you can be sure it also bars the purchase of airline tickets. (Our guess: The benefit amount would be less than the tickets anyway.)

Yes, you read that correctly, the Food Stamp Program, disallows the purchase of decorative gourds, but according to Newt, you can just take that card and swipe it at the airport and land in Honolulu later in the day, or conceivably, Mordor.

Which leaves us with this question: ”Why would Gingrich make these claims, and what the hell is he thinking when he does?” Well, Newt is laying a bet that becoming the master of the right-wing dog whistle plays well with a republican primary electorate that has little use for pesky things like facts or evidence. And you know what? He’s probably right. The republican field has only one candidate in it that is neither a clown or certifiable and his name is Jon Huntsman (my em). And the former governor of Utah is polling so low nationally, that he has not even qualified to attend the two upcoming Iowa debates.

On second thought, I’m not that worried at all.

I'm worried. I'm worried Neutie won't get the nomination.

Headline of the Day

After Signaling Support, John Boehner Calls Tax Break For Middle Class ‘Chicken-Shit’

There ya go.

Speaker John Boehner referred to the package he’s putting forward as turning “chicken-sh — into chicken salad,”...

As any mechanic can tell you, this cannot be done, but Boner's idea of chickenshit is anything that doesn't advantage the 1%. Or gives Obama the tiniest victory.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Secret Senate Bill Would Allow Indefinite Detention of U.S. Citizens Without Charge or Trial
To bring our justice system in line with those of other dictatorships.

It's Legal to Buy a Gun if You're on the Terrorist Watch List
When a terrorist can't buy a gun in America the terrorists will have won.

Christian terrorists only, please.

Ignoring Their Concerns, Republicans Line Up Behind Gingrich
Values voters ignore his three marriages, anti-immigration activists ignore his liberal stance, evangelicals ignore his conversion to Catholicism, fiscal conservatives ignore his profligate personal spending and everyone else ignores his pseudo-intellectual bullshit.

Expert: Mayan Tablets Do Not Predict Apocalypse in 2012
They predict slew of 3-D movies about the Apocalypse, which is worse.

New York City Posts New Pedestrian Warning Signs in Haiku
One reads:
Hey you with the hat
Want to walk across the street
Fuhgeddaboudit

The Clueless ...

Perfesser Krugman explains what it's like to be a Republican this election cycle:

...

Think about what it takes to be a viable Republican candidate today. You have to denounce Big Government and high taxes without alienating the older voters who were the key to G.O.P. victories last year — and who, even as they declare their hatred of government, will balk at any hint of cuts to Social Security and Medicare (death panels!).

And you also have to denounce President Obama, who enacted a Republican-designed health reform and killed Osama bin Laden, as a radical socialist who is undermining American security.

So what kind of politician can meet these basic G.O.P. requirements? There are only two ways to make the cut: to be totally cynical or to be totally clueless.

...

Heh ...

The top ten reasons why the Black Walnut quit the race:

...

10) Couldn't tolerate the idea of another one-on-debate with Newt Gingrch, especially one moderated by Donald Trump. Even THE Herman Cain has standards, bitches.

9) Campaign was beginning to seriously cut into his texting and phone sex addiction.

8) Soul-searching turned up no results.

...

Take a lesson ...

From the Icelanders:

Iceland's special prosecutor has taken Larus Welding, the former head of the failed Glitnir Bank, into custody, Reuters reports.

Glitnir Bank was the first of the top three Icelandic commercial banks to fail in 2008.

...


This country would be in a better place if we'd have done that two years ago.

Great thanks to Chris in Paris for the link.

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Ach du Liebe!

I don't know how many times I've driven through here:

KOBLENZ, Germany — Officials in Germany's western city of Koblenz say some 45,000 residents have to be evacuated as officials try to defuse a World War II era bomb discovered in the Rhine river.

The BBC reported that this is the biggest bomb-related evacuation ever in Germany since the war.

...

Quote of the Day

Fez:

Herman Cain announced he's "suspending" his Presidential Campaign. Much like just under a century ago the Titanic suspended floating.

You are ein idiot!

The Germans have their eyes open when looking at our Republicans:

...

The US Republican race is dominated by ignorance, lies and scandals. The current crop of candidates have shown such a basic lack of knowledge that they make George W. Bush look like Einstein. The Grand Old Party is ruining the entire country's reputation.

...

Welcome to the wonderful world of the US Republicans. Or rather, to the twisted world of what they call their presidential campaigns. For months now, they've been traipsing around the country with their traveling circus, from one debate to the next, one scandal to another, putting themselves forward for what's still the most powerful job in the world.

...


And people think I'm exaggerating when I come back from Europe and say they think we're a buncha idiots. The really do.

Thanks to our good pal Montag for the link.

Timing is everything ...