"Big Willie" Robinson, 1942 - 2012

This gent was famous in L.A. He was a big man in more ways than one. I met him once an awfully long time ago.

LATimes

"Big Willie" Robinson was a 6-foot-6, 300-pound former Los Angeles street racer, a gentle giant who promoted organized drag racing as a way to unite people of all races and classes and ease racial tensions.

"When you get around cars, man, there ain't no colors, just engines," he told The Times in 1981.

Willie Andrew Robinson III, 69, the founding president of the National and International Brotherhood of Street Racers that ran a drag strip on Terminal Island for many years, died Saturday of an infection that led to heart failure at Sharon Care Center in Los Angeles, said Bill Chaffin, a close friend.
...

"Every time that track was open, crime went down," Chaffin said. "Pretty much all the cops knew [that] when Willie's track is open, it definitely makes a difference." And, he said, "virtually all the street racing stopped because now they had a place to go."

Here's a video from the Street Racers' website linked to above:


Willie took his checkered flag. Burn rubber through them Pearly Gates, bud!

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Written by Patty Griffin. Harmony vocals by Emmylou Harris.

Little Fire ~ Patty Griffin with Emmylou Harris Live 2010

Thanks to pennstatefan1

Puffin' it up ...

With Barry:

A User's Guide To Smoking Pot With Barack Obama

Barry was quite the accomplished marijuana enthusiast back in high school and college. Excerpts from David Maraniss' Barack Obama: The Story dealing with the elaborate drug culture surrounding the president when he attended Punahou School in Honolulu and Occidental College in Los Angeles. He inhaled. A lot.

...

Heh ... Now legalize it, Hawaii boy.

Funny looking goose...

Congress Should Ban Armed Drones Before Cops in Texas Deploy One

I wanta see what happens the first time some waterfowl hunter bags one with his 12-bore.

"I blew my goose call and this showed up. Got any good recipes?"

Heh.

Egos and Immortality

A good read from Paul Krugman:

Wall Street has responded — predictably, I suppose — by whining and throwing temper tantrums. And it has, in a way, been funny to see how childish and thin-skinned the Masters of the Universe turn out to be. Remember when Stephen Schwarzman of the Blackstone Group compared a proposal to limit his tax breaks to Hitler’s invasion of Poland? Remember when Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase characterized any discussion of income inequality as an attack on the very notion of success?

But here’s the thing: If Wall Streeters are spoiled brats, they are spoiled brats with immense power and wealth at their disposal. And what they’re trying to do with that power and wealth right now is buy themselves not just policies that serve their interests, but immunity from criticism.

Fat fuckin' chance.

So, no, financial wheeling and dealing did not do wonders for the American economy, and there are real questions about why, exactly, the wheeler-dealers have made so much money while generating such dubious results.

Those are, however, questions that the wheeler-dealers don’t want asked — and not, I think, just because they want to defend their tax breaks and other privileges. It’s also an ego thing. Vast wealth isn’t enough; they want deference, too, and they’re doing their best to buy it. It has been amazing to read about erstwhile Democrats on Wall Street going all in for Mitt Romney, not because they believe that he has good policy ideas, but because they’re taking President Obama’s very mild criticism of financial excesses as a personal insult.

And it has been especially sad to see some Democratic politicians with ties to Wall Street, like Newark’s mayor, Cory Booker, dutifully rise to the defense of their friends’ surprisingly fragile egos.
...

And in the midst of this national nightmare, all too many members of the economic elite seem mainly concerned with the way the president apparently hurt their feelings. That isn’t funny. It’s shameful.

They fucked over the whole country and then the whiny pussy bastards throw a hissy fit when they get called on it even a little bit instead of getting the ticker tape parade and the admiration of the nation they think they're entitled to. Yeesh. The Vampire Capitalists better realize they've got their "deference" by not being in jail. For now.

How to call "bullshit!" without saying "bullshit"

Obama: Romney's 'prairie fire of debt' a 'cow pie of distortion'

Well played, sir!

Who says ...

Republicans can't do comedy?

Billionaire mogul Donald Trump says he has found the "best choice of all" to be presumptive Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney's vice presidential running mate: Donald Trump.

...

Quote of the Day

Meteor Blades:

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There are a few terrific diggers and verifiers and debunkers on the cable news shows. Chris Matthews ain't one of them.

Post-Racial Farce

Daddy Frank seamlessly blends his dual expertise as drama critic and political commentator. Good read. Links at site.

There has been change on the American playing field of race since Inauguration Day 2009—not so much for the better or the worse, but a shift into a kind of twilight zone where the nation’s racial conversation has moved from its usual gears of intractability, obfuscation, angry debate, and platitudinous sentimentality to the truly unhinged. It’s as if everyone can now say, well, that’s that, we’ve elected our first African-American president, we can pat ourselves on the back for doing so, and, with that noble and historic accomplishment in the bank, we will sign on to sideshows ranging from a Herman Cain stunt presidential run to a malicious jihad mounted by a right-wing hit man in Los Angeles, Andrew Breitbart, to destroy Sherrod, an obscure federal worker in Georgia. You’d think Obama’s victory gave the entire country permission to act out like the racial brawlers of Clybourne Park.

It has certainly encouraged the GOP to unleash its id and wax with unapologetic nostalgia about the good ole days of the Jim Crow South. Governor Bob McDonnell of Virginia issued a proclamation declaring Confederate History Month with no mention of slavery. Rand Paul, when running successfully for senator of Kentucky, disparaged the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Haley Barbour, the former GOP chairman and Mississippi governor and almost presidential candidate, reminisced about how things were not “that bad” back when the segregationist White Citizens’ Councils were in charge of Yazoo City during his halcyon youth. Toss in such other uninhibited party leaders as Newt Gingrich, branding Obama “the best food-stamp president in American history,” and Karl Rove, who labeled the public-spirited rapper Common “a thug” when Obama invited him to a poetry evening at the White House, and you see why some white voters in Steubenville, Ohio, were happy to confide to a Times reporter this month that they wouldn’t be casting ballots for a black man.

Go.

The Armor Of Ignorance

A device to stick your head up your ass to willfully avoid facts, possibly even the truth, is a highly popular available option.

Thanks once again to YubaNet.

Headline of the Day

I Can Haz Cheezburger Can Haz Anti-Lamar Smith Billboard

Heh.

Stupid is as ...

You know what I mean. Via Fez, more backup to the previous report that said Fox 'News' viewers are the least informed in the world:

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People who watch MSNBC and CNN exclusively can answer more questions about domestic events than people who watch no news at all. People who only watch Fox did much worse. NPR listeners answered more questions correctly than people in any other category.

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So, if you want to be informed, you would do better watching no news at all than watching Fox. If you think this is a bug, rather than a feature of Fox 'News' programming, you would be wrong.

The Rude Pundit's on fire...

...the last coupla days, so just go read him 'til yer eyeballs won't eyeball any more.

The Patriot Act

Thanks to YubaNet.

Beaver State Gnaws Away At The War On Some Drugs

Truthout

As we’ve covered before at Republic Report, one of the reasons why marijuana remains illegal and the drug war continues to rage is because special interest groups like police unions and the alcohol industry spend a lot of money to lobby for the drug war.

In Oregon, advocates of medical marijuana and other anti-drug war activists decided that they’d use a similar tactic to fight the crackdown on state medical marijuana laws.

The pro-reform Drug Policy Alliance’s Drug Policy Action, along with other anti-drug war activists, donated big to Democratic attorney general primary candidate Ellen Rosenblum, who wanted to de-prioritize cracking down on pot. The Washington Post reports that anti-drug war cash made up a quarter of the campaign donations to her campaign. Drug Policy Action donated $80,000, and $70,000 more came from marijuana reform supporter John Sperling, head of the parent company of the for-profit University of Phoenix. Oregon law allows unlimited donations to state election campaigns. Citizens for Sensible Law Enforcement, an independent group, spent $40,000 to advocate for Rosenblum and attack the marijuana policy record of her opponent, interim U.S. attorney Dwight Holton.

Rosenblum defeated Holton, who had been leading the federal crackdown on medical marijuana in the state, and had called Oregon’s liberal medical marijuana law a “trainwreck.”

Altogether, anti-drug war groups spent nearly $200,000 to unseat Holton and to back Rosenblum. “As attorney general, I will make marijuana enforcement a low priority, and protect the rights of medical marijuana patients,” she promised.

I am proud of my neighbors to the north!

If I were AG, I'd arrest, try, convict, and lock up in private prisons federal agents who tried to subvert laws enacted by the people. No state has the balls to do that. Yet.

Headline of the Day

Grover Norquist: Trying To Stop Billionaires From Dodging Taxes Makes You A Nazi

I long for the day when the 1% and their symps like Gruber will be required to wear patches on their clothes with "enemy of the people" on them.

And then the camps. This time, "Never Again" will be our motto.

All the states that hate you

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford offering advice on lettin' yer freak flag fly in red states.

Perhaps "hate" is too strong a word.

Perhaps it is too strong a word because, let's admit, a great many people living within the confines of the nation's sort of sour, sort of aggressively uptight, anti-everything flyover states -- AKA Kansas, Arizona, Minnesota, Mississippi, Indiana, Louisiana, Kentucky, South Carolina, South and apparently most of North Carolina, not to mention swaths of Texas the size of Texas -- they do not actually hate you, per se.

Let's just say I'm glad I live in California.

What's more, in most red/welfare states, it's not as though intolerance floats thick in the air like smoke. I'm sure it's possible to live a very fine life indeed as a gleaming, liberal feminist in, say, Phoenix. You can cruise along just fine in rural Idaho as a gay wine-loving architect, just so long as you don't fly your freak flag too high, near any redneck bars, at night, ever.

Mr. Morford is a gentler soul than I am. Establish yourself indelibly as the most badass liberal redneck the yokels have never imagined and fly your freak flag as high as it will go. One thing redneck wingnuts do NOT want to ever tell their friends is that they have all those lumps and bumps and bruises because a liberal pussy kicked their ass.

Perhaps this, then, is the larger message to the open- hearted living in various backwards states across the land: Stay where you are. Keep undermining the panic, changing the mix, diffusing the right-wing bomb of fear. As to what make of all the anti-women, anti-gay legislation currently vomiting out of the GOP's mouth like a hysterical infant in tantrum? It's painful to be sure. It's also obnoxious, hurtful and often shockingly cruel.

But in truth, it's all nothing more than hollow, widespread panic. It's just the last, frightful gasps of a dying ideology that really won't be around in this form all that much longer. Just ask the married gay couple next door -- in any state in the union -- in about 2032.

Maybe. I hope so. I'm not sure how long it actually took the dinosaurs to die out after the meteor hit but I bet it was longer than twenty years.

There is a club ...

You ain't in it:

Residents who live near the busy heliport on East 34th Street fought hard to get a curfew imposed in 1998, prohibiting landing and taking off on nights and weekends. Of course, such trivial things as noise and air pollution shouldn't stop important plutocrats from going about their business. In the last six months, nearby resident Ron Sticco and his wife have caught the mayor's helicopter breaking curfew sixteen times.

And those are just the instances the Sticcos happened to be around to witness. During this past weekend alone, Bloomberg's helicopter was in and out of the heliport eight times. According to press releases from the mayor's office, Bloomberg had no public events planned this weekend, aside from a routine radio address on Sunday. Nevertheless, the Sticcos caught him on video landing the helicopter again and again, including one instance with his lady friend and her dogs. Hey, she's got to get them to the dog run somehow!

...

Hey, I guess when you can buy a 3rd term as mayor, you pretty much figure you can do what you want and fuck the rest of us. It's how it'll work under President Romney too.

Welcome home!

Stolen from the Life With Dogs FB page.

See yas!

Nice to see him getting the appropriate "reward":

A white supremacist likely will spend the rest of his life behind bars after a federal judge sentenced him to 40 years in prison Tuesday for a 2004 bombing that wounded a black city official in suburban Phoenix.

Jurors in February convicted Dennis Mahon, 61, of three federal charges stemming from a package bomb that injured Don Logan — Scottsdale's diversity director at the time — and a secretary.

...

I hope the cracker asshole gets reamed constantly by a big (you know what I mean) brotha until he expires.

"Fuck you, ya birther moron!"

This is fuckin' great! First the backstory:

TPM

Sheriff Joe Arpaio Sends ‘Threats Unit’ Investigator To Hawaii To Escalate Birther Probe
...

The Star-Advertiser reported that Zullo and Mackiewcz flashed badges on Monday when they showed up at the Hawaii Department of Health. Mackiewcz apparently also handed over a business card showing he is part of the Arizona sheriff’s “Threats Management Unit.”

I'm sure that flashing Arizona tin just impressed the shit outta them Hawai'ian folks. Heh.

Arpaio declined to explain to the Arizona Republic why the threats unit was involved in the birth certificate investigation, instead making only a vague reference to “security issues…that I can’t got into.”

A threat to your job, Joey boy? Your life outside prison? I think you'd look a treat in pink underwear!

Now the other shoe drops! Right on Arpaio's weenies. Don't miss this! Too much to quote so it makes sense. Just go. Heh.

Raw Story

Hawaiian officials have apparently had enough of your requests for President Barack Obama’s birth certificate and they’re not afraid to tell you where to get off, even if you are Arizona’s Secretary of State Ken Bennett or a special delegation sent by Maricopa County’s controversial “Sheriff Joe.”

The Hawai'ians' basic response is the title of this post.

Shewiff Joey's assholes go from a state where they are entirely used to abusing their power by dumping on Mexican-Americans to a state full of Japanese-Americans, who know a little about getting dumped on, and think they can throw their weight around the same way. One no doubt tiny Japanese-American Hawai'ian lady bureaucrat disabused 'em of that notion right fuckin' now! Kudos, Mrs. Nagamine, and well played!

One final blast o' crazy in this desperate attempt at distraction by AZ and the wacko birther groupthink and circle jerk:

The sheriff, who has recently been charged by the Justice Department of waging a systematic campaign of civil rights abuses against Latino citizens, confirmed that the two-man posse traveled to Hawaii and stayed there on taxpayer funds. He said that he hopes that the costs will be covered by donations to the sheriff’s department, which are being collected through the birther website, WorldNetDaily.

I pray (yes, pray) that we get all these mouth-breathers with terminal Obama Derangement Syndrome in one spot. We could put a significant dent in the shallow end of the gene pool with one round! I'm sure Fixer could recall his old chops and would be glad to call it in - "Fire mission, over..."

Some days, it is worth chewing through the restraints!

We knew that...

AlterNet

Today's GOP: Worst Political Party Since the Civil War

Nothing new, but tamped into a nice brick of Repug shit. The way they're going, we'll be able to build a really stinky adobe pretty soon.

Karma ...

Thy name is "Internet". Maybe the stupid cracker asshole (George Tierney Jr. of Greenville South Carolina) should learn how the intarwebs work before calling people names:

...

Misunderstanding how the Twitter works, George Tierney of Greenville South Carolina seemed to think he was using his “inside voice” when speaking (twatting) to Ms. Fluke on Twitter only to find out, in a very round-about way, that she elected to retweet to her 36,000 followers what George Tierney of Greenville South Carolina had to say to her and she only did this because she is obviously racist against douchebags who like to shout stuff at ladies on the internet because, as we like to say: virtual manhood is better than no manhood at all.

Anyway, that is where I came in when I screen-capped the whole exchange and made a post out of it, which brings us to last week when George Tierney of Greenville South Carolina decided to google himself on the internet and OH HOLY SHIT! he is now kind of semi-famous for Doing Internet Swears At Ladies and now all that money he spent on eHarmony is just fucking wasted because ladies will not want to go on a date with him ever ever again besides the fact that all he ever wants to talk about is golf which is like the third gayest sport ever. Besides, also: boring.

...

And just like a good "personal responsibility" Republican, he's trying to sue TBogg. Ha-ha-ha-ha-ha!

Just a note: People have threatened to sue us here at the Brain several times over the past 8 years. Believe me, if there is anything I know about it's our First Amendment rights and the ins and outs of the Fair Use laws. This idiot can try, wasting a lot of money in the process, but he won't get anywhere. If, at this point in time, you are not aware the Internet is nothing more than a big public tape recorder, you might want to stay off your computer.

Update:

Heh ... Google it.

Update Zwei:

Drifty:

...

This whole thing is really really funny in an obnoxious-clown-being-hit-by-a-pie-shaped-meteor kind of way, but to me the most delectable detail is Mr. George Tierney, Jr. of Greenville South Carolina's instant and absolutely predictable litigiousness.

...

Heh ...

Stolen from Cousin Art (Encino Man).

Oh, the irony ...

Stealiing Gordon's line for this one. Heh ...

Pic stolen from the Sexy Atheists FB page.

Green Rush

From Rock Center, text and more videos, or just watch and wait for them to come up.

New word: "Cannasseur". Heh.

Marijuana grows openly in California towns as traffickers hide behind laws, police say

Gee, they say that like it's a bad thing...

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

I've been for decriminalization or legalization for almost fifty years. It's closer now than ever, but "we're getting so much resistance from behind" to quote an old song. It will come, and I hope I'm here to see the day. If all it changes is no longer making criminals out of citizens over their choice of buzz, it will have been worth the fight.

Smoke 'em if ya got 'em!

The Commencement Address That Won't Be Given

By: Robert Reich

May 18, 2012 - Members of the Class of 2012,

As a former secretary of labor and current professor, I feel I owe it to you to tell you the truth about the pieces of parchment you're picking up today.

You're f*cked.
...

You see, a college education isn't just a private investment. It's also a public good. This nation can't be competitive globally, nor can we have a vibrant and responsible democracy, without a large number of well-educated people.

So it's not just you who are burdened by these trends. If they continue, we're all f*cked.

Vote Repug and ensure it!

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

WIDELY SEEN SOLAR ECLIPSE FRIGHTENS MILLIONS OF REMOTE TRIBESPEOPLE
Who tweet about it.

I saw it plain as day through my welder's mask. A perfect circle-within-a-circle. Fuckin' awesome. I tried to take a video of it but all it did was show the difference between our eyes and camera optics. I got some nice shots of Mrs. G and the neighbors with the welder's mask on going "ooh!" and "ahhh!" though. See it here. Didn't tweet about it though. I'm too remote, I guess.

Mexican Cartels Blamed for Dozens of Dead Bodies
Be patient, we're only in year 41 of the War on Drugs.

Most of us in the Resistance have found ways around the long arm of the Gestapo.

House Passes Ryan's Budget, Which Cuts School Lunches, Food Stamps Because They're “Ineffective”
They prevent people likely to vote for Democrats from starving to death.

Romney : “The $2 Billion JPMorgan Lost, Somebody Else Gained”
Same goes for those who've lost jobs, homes, life savings.

Basically a giant stickup.

I'd say ...

The Squids have better things to do, and spend money on, but that's just me.

The Navy is planning to conduct breathanalyis tests on everyone reporting aboard ship for duty. Each and every frakking duty day.

...

I wonder what they're gonna do when the Captain or XO crawl aboard shitfaced*?

*Glad they don't do this on cruise ships. They'd never let me back aboard. Heh ...

Are you surprised?

Pic stolen from Tengrain.

It makes sense when you look at the page address. He's nothing but a useless orange boner.

Hey, Gordon,

I hope you had insurance on that shipment. Heh ...

The United States Coast Guard and border patrol agents recovered nearly 8,000 pounds of marijuana Sunday evening off the coast of Dana Point, California.

According to CBS Los Angeles, the units used several boats to pick up the shockingly high volume of marijuana in the Pacific Ocean, which is street valued at $3.6 million.

...

My good friend Harry did a lot of scuba diving when he was younger. About 20 years ago, he found 3 bales of hashish while diving a wreck off Montauk. He only brought one of them back because he couldn't hide them all in the back of his pickup for the 50 mile drive back home. We smoked on that shit for nearly a year.

Logistics ...

Or, "Yeah, how are we gonna get our shit out of there anyway?"

A row between the US and Pakistan over supply routes to Afghanistan is threatening to overshadow the summit of Nato leaders in Chicago.

The two sides have been unable to reach agreement on Pakistan's conditions for reopening the routes, closed after a US air strike killed several troops.

...

Well, they shouldn'ta been in the way when we were chasing terrists posing as a wedding party, right?

...

The summit is expected to endorse plans to hand over combat command to Afghan forces by mid-2013 and seek progress in opening routes for troop withdrawals.

...

In other words, the Paks want us to leave all our shit behind and airlift the troops out. Why? Because, probably, they made a deal with the Talibans for the time after NATO (us) leaves. They know the Afghan Army will stand only as long as American troops are there to back them up and the Paks will have to deal with the Taliban soon enough. A couple billion in military equipment that we don't deem critical enough to blow up before we leave (if it's too prohibitive - one way or the other - to truck it out) might just be a good payoff. Either way, as it always does in that part of the world, it comes down to money. We'll either pay the Paks enough to open the routes though the passes or they'll take the spoils when we leave.

Jesus ...

Word. I'd even go so far as to say that if Jesus showed up in America today, he'd be labeled as decidedly un-Christian and probably be sent to Gitmo ... or pepper-sprayed.

Pic stolen from Americans Against The Tea Party.