Saturday, December 24, 2011

Oy Chanukah

I don't want to leave anybody out in the holiday season. This oughta do it.

The KlezMormons perform "Oy Chanukah" at Muse Music in Provo, Utah on December 15, 2009. For more information about The KlezMormons, search for "The KlezMormons" on Facebook or on Twitter at twitter.com/klezmormons.

Thanks to pyjingo.

Ahuna Ye Tswanang Le Jesu Kammatla

Ya in that Christmas funk, bunkie? This'll snap ya out of it! I don't think this is a Christmas song but I don't think it's inappropriate either. If I should find myself wandering lost and alone in the spiritual desert and stumbled into a church, I'd wanta stumble into theirs!

Thanks to joashstilltheman, U.S., from Nairobi, Kenya.

Tiếng chuông ngân nhạc Nguyễn Ngọc Thiện-Giọt Sương Long Lanh

I didn't know I understood Vietnamese. Heh.

Thanks to HatSuongLongLanh.

Go Tell It

Let's try to remember on these most Commercial of Holy Dollar Days that the Jewish carpenter whose birth we commemorate had a message of peace and brotherhood that got him killed for pissing off and scaring the establishment of His day, and Who did not espouse the hate spewed in His name that is so accepted by some as "Christianity" today.

A traditional recording of "Go tell it on the Mountain" by Peter Tosh/ The Wailers/ Bob Marley & The Wailers or whomsoever it may be. Tosh singing lead.

Thanks to Tonesullock, Eire.

Asterisk*

*Where would the GOP be without it?

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Thanks to aztecwarrior113.

Friday, December 23, 2011

California Girls!

Havin' a little trouble gettin' enthused ta get off the couch and do that pesky last minute Xmas shopping, bunkie? These gals'll get ya going!

Manpreet & Naina representing California's Bay Area performing @ Warrior Bhangra 2011. This was an exhibition performance. Barso Re Megha Hindi Dance.

Warrior Bhangra was put on by California State University Stanislaus.

Thanks to harjothundal, Yuba City CA. Mucho Bhangra!

The 12 Lies Of Christmas

Cut to the chase:

On the twelfth day of Christmas
Republicans told me
Government takeover of health care's coming
Your guns Obama's swiping
WMD Saddam's a-keeping
Medicare they're enhancing
Wall Street's not bilking
Government Reagan was trimming
Half the people no taxes paying
Tax cuts more revenues bring
We don't torture
Thank the one percent
Gay marriage is like box turtle love and
Obama's born in another country.

The Repugs are crackin' up...

They're crackin' me up too! Fun to watch. Robert Reich says it's a bad thing. Good piece, though. I'll disagree with him later.

The underlying conflict lies deep into the nature and structure of the Republican Party. And its roots are very old.

As Michael Lind has noted, today’s Tea Party is less an ideological movement than the latest incarnation of an angry white minority – predominantly Southern, and mainly rural – that has repeatedly attacked American democracy in order to get its way.
...

America has had a long history of white Southern radicals who will stop at nothing to get their way – seceding from the Union in 1861, refusing to obey Civil Rights legislation in the 1960s, shutting the government in 1995, and risking the full faith and credit of the United States in 2010.

Newt Gingrich’s recent assertion that public officials aren’t bound to follow the decisions of federal courts derives from the same tradition.

This stop-at-nothing radicalism is dangerous for the GOP because most Americans recoil from it. Gingrich himself became an object of ridicule in the late 1990s, and many Republicans today worry that if he heads the ticket the Party will suffer large losses.

It’s also dangerous for America. We need two political parties solidly grounded in the realities of governing. Our democracy can’t work any other way.

Here's where I disagree with him: We don't have two parties solidly grounded in the realities of governing. We have one that can barely find its ass with both hands and one that's grinding itself to powder in front of our eyes. A lovely process to watch, I might add.

There's a reason to have two motorcycles too. When one of them is so badly broken it won't run, you ride the other one exclusively until the broken one gets fixed. Difference is, with political parties we have to wait until election day to get parts.

Let's hope we get the right ones. We can ride just the Democrats for a time while the Repugs are getting rebuilt and still get where we want to go until the Dems break down too. Then we're screwed.

A third "bike" maybe? Whee! Let's get an "Arrest Me Red" Italian Fastacci Sumbicci!

Well, maybe not...

Maybe what we need is some Repugs who will listen to reason. Until the day that pipe dream comes true, maybe we need a solidly Democrat Congress for a coupla years. As badly as the Teabaggers have fucked things up, how much worse could they do? Don't answer that...

Ethics? Don't need ethics!

Breaking:

Old man yells at cloud.

Heh ...

I got this from my friend Darko, Prince of Skopje:

Thursday, December 22, 2011

What Do Jews Do On Christmas?

Delightfully splained to us goyim by a lovely Hebrew maiden:

What Do Jews Do On Christmas? A Limerick Explanation
By Madeleine Begun Kane

Here’s a query that’s answered with ease:
“What do Jews do on Christmas Day, please?”
We watch movies and read.
Surf the Net. (Dull indeed!)
But mostly we munch on Chinese.

I can see through her dining room window that's some good lookin' moo goo gai pan and - oooh! my favorite! - General Tso's Chicken!

(I’ve dedicated that limerick to Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan. (This post explains why.) And here’s a fun article about Jews and Chinese Food.

Maybe it's oy goy gai pan...

Update:

I couldn't resist this one, also from Mad:

"Two Jewish ladies are talking about what they're going to do on Christmas Day.

'Let's take in a movie and then have Chinese for dinner,' suggests the first.

'I don't know about the Chinese,' says the second. 'How about Thai?'

'What are you,' the first says, 'Reform?'

Knock, knock. Who's there? Secret Service who?!

CNN

The U.S. Secret Service said Wednesday it was following up after a California man used Facebook to make a profane threat against President Barack Obama.

"Assassinate the f------ n----- and his monkey children," Jules Manson, 48, a onetime candidate for the Carson, California, City Council, wrote on Facebook Sunday, according to CNN affiliate KTLA.
...

"I was not in the right state of mind," when he made the posting, Manson told the station. "I was very angry when I made those statements." Asked what he has learned, he said, "to think before you talk. ... Never make statements unless you're in the right state of mind."

This clown lives in a trailer. Musta been the meth fumes off the stove put him in "not the right state of mind".

Also, Carson ain't too far from Compton and maybe claiming he ain't a racist won't be enough to prevent a few drive-bys. Try esplainin' yourself to those guys while they're installing your new air-conditioning one bullet hole (or thirty) at a time. Heh.

Me'n Fixer have called for the demise of many, many neocons, war criminals, one particular POTUS, various and sundry miscreants, etc., many, many times. We're good Americans who believe in rule of law and always, always qualified it by insisting it only be after due process, as in "we'll give him a fair trial and then hang him and then we'll do lunch". Anything else is stupid and just asking for a knock on the door.

One Man in Iowa Speaks for a Tired Nation Regarding Newt Gingrich

El Rude-o

[...] None of that matters for just this instance. In one moment, that man actually looked into the corrupt, vile, evil eyes of presidential candidate Newt Gingrich and said, "You're a fucking asshole."

And for that brief moment, Tom Sorensen is America's greatest hero.

Thank you, Mr. Sorenson. For just that one brief moment, you spoke for an awful lot of us who wish they had the chance to say that. To more assholes than just Neutie.

I'm in a Xmas-y mood today!

Fixer posted so much good stuff today that I feel like just screwin' around. Thanks, boss.

See 'comments' on this post. I can't fault the cartoonist for getting the color of the shitballs wrong. Heh.



This one's fucking perfect:

Thanks to YubaNet for always having the best 'toons!

Mutiny!


... 
McConnell, almost immediately after Boehner wrapped up his remarks, cut the legs out from underneath the House GOP leadership and sided with Harry Reid’s proposed solution.
...

Big bucket, extra butter ...

Good ...

Our troops don't have to live a lie in order to serve anymore:

Step away, Michael ...

Our pal Michael Stickings is trying to make himself as nutty as a conservative by trying to figure out the Republican presidential field:

...

It'll be Romney. Republicans like establishment types, he's got money and organization, and he's next in line for a party that likes clean succession.

Wait. Bachmann is crazy, but maybe the right sort of crazy for today's crazy GOP.

No, she's insane. And Perry is much more appealing. He sounds a bit too much like Bush, but he certainly looks the part, more down-home and authentic than stuffed-shirt Romney.

But Perry's such a dolt. Check out his embarrassing debate performances. Can he string a coherent sentence together? And why does he keep sticking his foot in his mouth?

...

Heh ...

I stole this ...

From the one, and only, Sen. Bernie Sanders:


Click to embiggen.

Die, bitch ...

Things are looking up:

Poor health isn’t slowing down Dick Cheney during the holiday season. The bullish ex-vice president, who suffered five heart attacks, attended a party to welcome Northrop Grumman CEO Wes Bush to DC at former George W. Bush adviser Bobbie Kilberg’s home in McLean, Va., where sources say he seemed “enfeebled.” Cheney sat while others stood at the party, also attended by Virginia Sen. Mark Warner. We’re told he was seen using an oxygen mask to aid his breathing. But Kilberg denied Cheney wore a mask. A Cheney rep added, “Not true. He’s doing fine. He’s celebrating Christmas in Jackson Hole with his family.”

My Christmas wish is that he sheds his mortal coil in the slowest, most painful way possible.

Great thanks to our friend Montag for the link.

I like it ...

Thers:

...

Crackers ran the economy, and fucked it up.

Rich white people shouldn't be in charge of capitalism.

Fortunately this is a testable premise. I propose that for a two year period, poor people who are not white should be put in charge of major corporations as well as most major governments.

If they fuck shit up even worse than the current nitwits, then we, the Left, promise to never ever complain again.

...

I'm down wid it. They certainly couldn't do any worse. Poor folks don't go spending money like drunk squids in Olongapo and generally have more common sense than most of the rich folks I know (it's just that rich folks have the money and juice to fix the fuckups caused by their lack of common sense). I think we'd do pretty well.

You can run ...

But you can't hide. Not only are the GOP congress weasels feeling the heat in Washington, it's waiting for them when they get home:

Everyone knows House Republicans endured tremendous punishment all day Wednesday, making it clear to most observers that in the standoff over renewing this year’s payroll tax cut, they’ll have to blink.

But an even more important story, which escaped notice inside the Beltway, is that the lashings followed GOP members of Congress back to their states and districts.

Here’s a roundup.

...

Like I said the other day. they've gotten too obvious in their obstruction. Even the most ignorant among us (those who the GOP counts on for votes) are getting it.

Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Boner puts House doings back under the rock

Speaker Boner is afraid of the light of day. Rightly so. Heh.

Raw Story, with video.

Boehner’s office cuts off C-SPAN cameras as GOP takes beating

As Rep. Stenny Hoyer (D-MD) attempted to call for a vote to extend a payroll tax cut to middle class and working Americans, his Republican colleagues adjourned the House and walked out of the chamber. And if that weren’t odd enough, it got even stranger: As Hoyer railed against them for failing to help working Americans, footage from C-SPAN went silent, then cut away.

Moments later, C-SPAN took to the Internet to explain that it wasn’t their doing, but someone working for House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH).

Heh.

Godless Commie Headline of the Day

Me'n Fixer have been saying this for years.

How We All Pay For the Huge Tax Privileges Granted to Religion -- It's Time to Tax the Church

Fuckin' A.

Dead men sell no heretical iPhones

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford on the passing of some notables and what happens next.

We cry out, mostly seriously and only semi drunkenly, "Who is the next Steve Jobs? Where will we find another of the notorious intellectual fire of Chris Hitchens? What of someone precious and rare like the humble revolutionary Vaclav Havel?" On it goes.

Hitchens, for one, was a wicked and sly hybrid, one part cruel contrarian jackass, one part brilliant social commentator, one part chain-smoking bourgeois atheist, one part insufferable Iraq war-supporting hawk, all parts rare in literary kind and intellectual breed.

Add to this the fact that the GOP as a whole and the Tea Party in particular have seen to it that science, intellectualism, books, sex, spirituality, independent thought, higher education and decent taste in footwear are all considered elitist boogymen to be eradicated from the dumbed down American mind like fleas from a mangy dog. Not exactly fertile ground for radicals and revolutionaries to take root.

It actually is. Just in the wrong direction. More like potatoes or turnips than brilliant flowers springing into the sunshine.

The lad manages to end on a hopeful note. Ah, youth...

Dear 1%ers ...

I am a self-made man. You are not:

David Dayen does a lovely job of dissecting this wretchedly dishonest exercise in Galtian self-pity by Jamie Dimon and his fellow one-percenter elites, but I can’t help taking a swing at that fastball they parked right over the plate.

So anyway, how many of these self-alleged “job creators” are totally self-made superior beings? Hmmm, not many:

...

These fucking assholes have a lot of gall calling themselves men, let alone "self-made rugged individualists". They're greedy, whiny, pampered little shits.

Another bunch ...

Who should be put up against the wall forthwith:

Each year millions in government funds intended to help veterans get back to work go to firms where owners have lied about being disabled vets, according to government watchdogs.
...

I can give them a "disability" that would bring them into compliance.

Fox 'News' viewers ...

Explanations ...

Or, how the GOP made a mess of the payroll tax cut:


The fight over renewing the payroll tax cut into next year has escalated into a multi-front political war, both between Republicans and Democrats, and within the Republican party itself. 
But lost in the gamesmanship and the arguments about process, hypocrisy, and leadership are the issues at stake. 
So let’s review.
...
These idiots play games while people starve.  Go Google "Emperor Nero".

Christ ...

The 2011 White House Christmas card features a content looking First Pup Bo Obama sitting by a roaring fireplace, flanked by Christmas presents and festive Christmasy ribbons and pine wreaths and bulbs. If you listen hard, you can almost hear sleigh bells.
...
You know what's coming, right?.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Any comment would be just wrong. Heh.

[A big welcome to Crooks and Liars readers; thanks Tengrain! - F]


Stolen from The Christian Left.

Iraq Bookends

Thanks to YubaNet.

Chasing the Dragon

Raw Story with video. Hint: puke before viewing.

On Monday, Imus told Mary Matalin, a former advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, that she must be “smoking meth” if she thought Gingrich had shot a beating the current president.

“Can Newt Gingrich beat President Obama?” Imus asked Matalin.

“Yes, he can,” Matalin stated without hesitation.

“Oh, well you’re smoking meth or something,” Imus declared. “You’re insane.”

She musta been breathing extra deep in a cloud of smoke from a burning crank warehouse! Her teeth look brand new in the photo. Heh.

Oligarchic perversion of our legal system continues apace...

Expanding on Fixer's post about bought justices.

BradBlog

The day the Supreme Court gathered behind closed doors to consider the politically divisive question of whether it would hear a challenge to President Obama’s healthcare law, two of its justices, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, were feted at a dinner sponsored by the law firm that will argue the case before the high court.

Apparently not the "radical judicial activists" Neutie would have arrested. He would reserve that for judges who interpret the Constitution in favor of the people.

Last ¶ after a little history of the Federalist Society:

Unfortunately, Bork's views are not unique. They are the views held by the Federalist Society-funding billionaire oligarchs, like the Koch brothers, who would mask their authoritarian corporate capitalism under an Orwellian concept of "liberty" as the two-tiered system of "justice" entailing elite impunity is assured by a "bought-and-paid-for" judiciary.

They aren't even trying to hide it any more.

Headline of the Day

Party elite executed to clear path for Kim Jong-un

What the North Koreans call "election day". Heh.

8 crazy nights ...

We wish all our Jewish friends a Happy Hanukkah!

Gaming the refs ...

Knowing the GOP like we do, does this surprise anybody?


Madison - State Supreme Court Justice Michael Gableman in two cases cast the deciding vote in favor of parties represented by a law firm that gave him tens of thousands of dollars of free legal services, a review of state records shows.
One of those was a high-stakes case this June that allowed Gov. Scott Walker to implement a law that all but eliminates collective bargaining for most public workers. Gableman was in the 4-3 majority that allowed Walker to prevail. Michael Best & Friedrich - the firm that defended Gableman for free in an ethics case - worked for the state and Walker's administration in the collective bargaining case.
...
Easier to win when the referee is in your pocket.

Great thanks to Scout Prime for the link.

The GOP way ...

Change the rules:

After a much-longer-than-anticipated caucus meeting Monday night, House Republican leaders announced a plan to vote Tuesday to nix a broadly bipartisan Senate stopgap bill to extend the current payroll tax cut for two months. But they won’t be doing this with a standard up or down vote.
...

What, they think people will forget all their bullshit by next November?  After 3 years of their obstructionist, protect the rich at all costs policies, people already take it as a given that the GOP is the Party of the Wealthy.  Since Obama was elected, they've given up caring whether they are obvious or not and I'm hoping even the most dense of us are finally getting it.

Monday, December 19, 2011

Shark Week at the SEC

Thanks to YubaNet.

Iraq War Timeline

Opinions You Should Have. Probably closer to the truth than the official one.

March 14, 2003 - Bush Makes Last Ditch Attempt to Avoid Diplomatic Solution.
...

May 2, 2003 - Cheney Suggests Bush Make Absurdly Dangerous Landing On Aircraft Carrier.

(Bush Takes Opportunity to Wear Largest-Ever Presidential Codpiece.)
...

June 11, 2003 - Claimed Iraqi Bioweapons Trailers Revealed To be Winnebagos.
...

April 18, 2004 - Bush To Return Iraq For Credit Or Refund.
...

July 9, 2004 - Sinking Bush Poll Numbers Increase Likelihood of Terrorist Attack, Says Ridge.

You get the idea. Much more.

Operation Iraqi Horror 2.0

CSM

As US troops exit Iraq, Maliki moves against Sunni rivals

Gee, thanks for the decent interval after our troops escaped came out. Wouldn't want them to think they were used for nothing. Yeesh.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

PANETTA TELLS TROOPS WE'RE WINNING WAR IN AFGHANISTAN
Like we won in Iraq.

Last American Troops Leave Iraq
Last American contractors to leave in 2034.

Maybe earlier if they're in boxes.

NTSB Urges Nationwide Cellphone Ban for Drivers
Better call your congressman as soon as you pass this idiot driving the speed limit in the left lane.

Good News: Fewer Teenagers Getting Driver's Licenses
Bad news: more seniors hanging on to theirs.

Less whippersnappers to piss off by obeying the law!

One sentence ...

Sean Paul Kelley:

Army Spec. David E. Hickman is apparently the last American soldier to die for the mistake that was the Iraq War. He was thirteen years-old when the war began.

And you get coal ...

In your stocking. The Republicans give a big "fuck you" to working people at Christmas:

The Senate’s two-month payroll tax extension is dead on arrival in the House. House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, made that perfectly clear Sunday morning as he said that Congress will have to negotiate a deal closer to the House-passed one-year extension before members leave for the holidays.

“Well, it’s pretty clear that I and our members oppose the Senate bill – it’s only for two months,” Boehner said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “If you talk to employers, they talk about the uncertainty. How can you do tax policy for two months?”

...

But the tax breaks for rich folks get to go on and on forever ...

No shit ...

Quote of the Day

Retiring Congressman Barney Frank:

...

"It's a great embarrassment to the conservatives," Frank pointed out. "They want to tell people who they can have sex with. Come on, all this is big government! Who can I have sex with? Who can I marry? What can I read? What can I smoke? You guys, on the whole -- not all of you -- but the conservatives are the ones who intrude on personal liberty there."

...


Remember, the conservatives only believe in small government when it comes to regulating shit they support.

See you in Hell ...

The insane midget in North Korea has died. Good. Unfortunately, it won't do much for the poor people of North Korea who still have to live in Earth's Asshole:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has died of a heart attack at the age of 69, state media has announced.

Millions of North Koreans had been "engulfed in indescribable sadness", the KCNA news agency said. People were seen weeping in the capital Pyongyang.

His son Kim Jong-un was described by KCNA as the "great successor" who North Koreans should unite behind.

...


We'll see soon enough whether the military will want to continue with a figurehead in charge or if they want to come out of the shadows. The "Great Successor" will live only so long as the generals allow it.