Saturday, August 11, 2012

Romney/Ryan Logo

Stolen from my Facebook friend and homegirl Carole Ita White who played "Big Rosie" on Laverne & Shirley. Her Dad was the original Maytag repairman as well.



As well as signifying the preferred Limey shitecan mode of transportation of the 1% they are representing, the "Spirit of Ecstasy" bonnet ornament is entirely appropriate for the "Vulture/Voucher"* ticket since those clowns are on drugs. Heh.

*A tip o' the Brain to Montag. The appellation fits R/R like a glove.

Paul Ryan? Seriously?

John Nichols, dated yesterday no doubt prior to the 'document dump veep pick'.



Of course Paul Ryan wants to be Mitt Romney's vice presidential running mate.

The hyper-ambitious political careerist -- who has spent his entire adult life as a Congressional aide, think-tank hanger-on and House member -- is looking for a road up. And he is sly enough to recognize that, like Dick Cheney with George Bush, he could be more than just a vice president in the administration of so bumbling a character as Romney.

Ryan figured Romney out months ago.
...

Like Romney, Ryan is a son of privilege who has little real-world experience or understanding. He presents well on Sunday morning talk shows and in the rarified confines of Washington think tanks and dinners with his constituents -- the Masters of the Universe on Wall Street -- but his record in Congress and the policies he now promotes are political albatrosses.

Some Republicans, perhaps even Romney, do not get this.

But the Obama campaign recognized, correctly, that Ryan's positioning of himself as the point man on behalf of an austerity that would remake America as a dramatically weaker and more dysfunctional country makes him the most vulnerable of prominent Republicans.
...

But under the serious scrutiny to which he would finally be subjected, Ryan would be revealed as something worse than a fiscal fabulist.

He would be revealed as a hypocrite of the highest order. Americans can handle hard truths and bold ideas. But they're not so good with hypocrisy.

And they wouldn't be so good with Paul Ryan.

Obama and Biden will shred these clowns like taco cheese.

Quote of the Day

From Words of Power:

Naming Paul Ryan is Not Pandering to the Extreme Right; It is An Act of Brazen Confidence in the Triumph of the Will Thru Citizens United Cash & ALEC Vote Suppression

Yep. This is gonna be the acid test to see if money and dirty tricks prevail over democracy. I hope the American voter is not as stupid as they think we are.

All you need to know ...

Charlie Pierce sums up Paul Ryan well:

...

Paul Ryan is an authentically dangerous zealot. He does not want to reform entitlements. He wants to eliminate them. He wants to eliminate them because he doesn't believe they are a legitimate function of government. He is a smiling, aw-shucks murderer of opportunity, a creator of dystopias in which he never will have to live. This now is an argument not over what kind of political commonwealth we will have, but rather whether or not we will have one at all, because Paul Ryan does not believe in the most primary institution of that commonwealth: our government. The first three words of the Preamble to the Constitution make a lie out of every speech he's ever given. He looks at the country and sees its government as something alien that is holding down the individual entrepreneurial genius of 200 million people, and not as their creation, and the vehicle through which that genius can be channelled for the general welfare.

...

Party time!

Pass the popcorn.


Pic thanks to Hot Liberals.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging


Emmylou Harris - Red Dirt Girl at Stockholm Music & Arts Festival 4th august 2012
Thanks to Sektinfo, Sweden.

Friday, August 10, 2012

Heh...

Little or no Mexican food?! What good is Greece, then?

Thanks to YubaNet.

Daddy Frank on the National Circus: Harry Reid Is No Joe McCarthy

Me'n Fixer's Daddy sounds off. Many links, a trick earned by me at Daddy's knee. Or some other joint.

How likely is it that Reid's gambit is going to pay off for the Democrats?
It already is. According to the latest Times swing-state poll, about half the voters already believe that Romney must release more tax returns. The longer Romney refuses, and the more he and his surrogates whine about Reid, the longer the issue stays center stage and the more that poll number is likely to go up. And Republicans know it too — Reid seems to be driving them insane. On ABC’s This Week last Sunday, Ann Coulter was so desperate to rationalize Romney’s failure to release his tax returns that she compared him favorably to Bill Clinton, whose refusal (in 1992) to release his medical records, she said, might have been an attempt to cover up drug addiction. With Romney defenders like Coulter, the Democrats can just sit back and enjoy the show.

Fuckin' A! Mas popcorn! Extra butter!

Other good stuff in the article as well.

Headline of the Day

Alleged Chinese-Mexican Meth Lord Is Causing A Headache For Sheldon Adelson

Good. So are the bribery and prostitution scandals the GOP's biggest neocon* donor is involved in, although it is heartwarming to know that the "corned beef mafia" aka "Kosher Nostra" is still in business.

*Sorry 'bout that. So sue me like Sheldon did! Heh.

Update:

From The Tennessean via Ethical Reporters Against Faux News FB page:

The tea party claims they're the voice of fiscal responsibility, and that the left doesn't understand business. But a judge just ordered the Tea Party Nation to pay almost three quarters of a million dollars for skipping out on a hotel bill. Bonus: the money is owed to the Venetian owned by Sheldon Adelson, Mitt Romney's SuperPAC backer. (Note headline is in error: its not the attorney, but the organization, that is on the hook)

Bwahahahaha! Ain't nobody skips out on a debt to Kosher Nostra capo di tutti capo Adelson!

"Hyperthyroid Harpie" tears the mask off FAUXNews

A 'schadenfreude must read' at Kos! Treat yourself and click on the link.

Oh Ann, now look what you've done. Not only have you given away the store, you got Sean to help. True, he did it unwittingly, but what did you expect? We all know he's not as bright as you are.

Heh. The difference between luminescent swamp moss and a 25-watt bug bulb with a broken filament?

Now, anyone who has been paying attention for the last 15 years or so will not be surprised to learn that FOX is nothing but the propaganda wing of the Republican Party. Yes, I know. Shocking, isn't it?

But that is something they have STRENUOUSLY denied over the years. Everyone from Roger Ailes to Hannity to O'Reilly to Wallace to the FOX and Friends on the couch crowd have ALL, at various times, denied they were really mere partisan Republicans. They knew that was a damaged and discredited brand. They knew letting folks in on the joke would crush their ratings among the masses of low-information voters. No, they were better than that. They were CONSERVATIVES. That was the all-important identifier. Everyone else was that ignominious thing known as "liberal."

How ironic this happens at the hands of She Who Foams at the Mouth. In her moment of rage, Ann has summarily stripped Hannity of that fig leaf. AND HE AGREED WITH HER. Listen to the exchange again. When she says:

Gee, thanks a great steaming pile for the visual of Hannity without his fig leaf...

Back from a fresh megabrainbleach job, we roll on. The writer goes into what would happen if that kind of sputtering, head-exploding rant would have occurred on Olbermann or O'Donnell's shows or Press The Meat and then concludes:

This is one of those rare times when I think Ann is right. This is a turning point. But not the way she thinks. This is a real turning point for FOX on par with the famous Seinfeld episode where Jerry and George let everyone in on the joke behind their show. The difference here is that unlike Seinfeld, which really was about nothing, little miss panicked partisan and block head just told the world what FOX is really about. Spoiler alert: It's not about "fair and balanced" news reporting.

Like Seinfeld, I think it is going to be all down hill from here. How is the corporate media going to continue pretending FOX is a legitimate news operation? What will happen to their seat at the White House Press Briefing Room? Will they have to give that seat up to a more reputable and even-handed operation like The Onion?

This is a point worth noting. When people look back, this may be remembered as the moment when The Great Wizard was revealed by the yapping dog to be nothing but a carnival barker. Sure, they will try and distract people, shouting "Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!" in unison. But it will do no good. Like The Wizard of Oz, there isn't much more you can do with the plot but send everyone home.

As Romney goes down in flames, maybe some of the credulous followers will gaze into the bonfire of their inanities and wake to the realization "these fuckers have been lying to us for YEARS."

Well done, Ann. Bless your heart. If it makes you feel any better, Romney's fate was probably sealed long before his spokesman tied Romneycare around his neck like an albatross. As you can see, history is just not on Romney's side.

Nope. The only ones on Willard's side, rich donor and tiny-brained sucker alike, are LOSERS.

Top Ten differences between White Terrorists and Others

Juan Cole

1. White terrorists are called “gunmen.” What does that even mean? A person with a gun? Wouldn’t that be, like, everyone in the US? Other terrorists are called, like, “terrorists.”

2. White terrorists are “troubled loners.” Other terrorists are always suspected of being part of a global plot, even when they are obviously troubled loners.

3. Doing a study on the danger of white terrorists at the Department of Homeland Security will get you sidelined by angry white Congressmen. Doing studies on other kinds of terrorists is a guaranteed promotion.

4. The family of a white terrorist is interviewed, weeping as they wonder where he went wrong. The families of other terrorists are almost never interviewed.

5. White terrorists are part of a “fringe.” Other terrorists are apparently mainstream.

6. White terrorists are random events, like tornadoes. Other terrorists are long-running conspiracies.

7. White terrorists are never called “white.” But other terrorists are given ethnic affiliations.

8. Nobody thinks white terrorists are typical of white people. But other terrorists are considered paragons of their societies.

9. White terrorists are alcoholics, addicts or mentally ill. Other terrorists are apparently clean-living and perfectly sane.

10. There is nothing you can do about white terrorists. Gun control won’t stop them. No policy you could make, no government program, could possibly have an impact on them. But hundreds of billions of dollars must be spent on police and on the Department of Defense, and on TSA, which must virtually strip search 60 million people a year, to deal with other terrorists.

Shorter: even though they're usually right-wing extremists like The Other terrorists, they're WHITE.
A tip o' the Brain to WKMaier.

Hostage taking ...

This is how it works:


Pic thanks to The Hippies Were Right.

You know ...

Because Obama won't keep his campaign promises:


Stolen from the Pragmatic Progressive.

Thursday, August 9, 2012

Why Romney doesn't want us to see his tax returns

Not too far from the truth, I think.

Click to embiggen
Via Kos.

"The Worst Possible Candidate!"

Please pardon me if it seems I have a one-track mind today, well, 'til November 6. I'm just pure-dee enjoying the shit outta all this!

Whenever a Republican tells the truth it's like an IED going off! The biggest threat to the biggest liars on earth is the truth accidentally coming from one of their own.
...

Rick Santorum was right - Mitt Romney is the worst possible candidate the Republicans could run. He's kicking his own ass! No wonder voter suppression is the only shot they have to win the November elections! If they weren't such a danger to America and democracy itself, they'd be funny!

Thanks to oldfartrants, Hollywoodland USA.

Get some, Rude!

Good read!

The Real Reason Mitt Romney Is Losing and Will Lose

Last ¶:

No, this isn't the most sophisticated analysis. But why bother when the conclusion is so obvious? The fact is that most of you reading this, on the left or right, are coming up with another dozen ways that demonstrate Romney is an unbelievable putz. If nothing else, Romney's pricktastic ego and endless supply of money will make the next few months amusing, as he degrades himself and his party further and further with such unsubtle, obvious lies that at some point the word "liar" sticks even more than "dick."

The Repug establishment, by which I mean the money boys, ran Willard because they control who runs, not the primaries, and he was the least worst candidate compared to the TeaTards. They never liked him and they knew from the gate that he'd lose, mostly because despite their lies it's clear that Obama was doing a fair job in the face of everything they've been able to throw at him. Also, Romney's just basically an unlikeable arrogant privileged jerk like Bush but they didn't have anyone else show up to run that was any better so they were kinda stuck with him. It was a good way for them to get him out of their hair and out of politics so they can work on finding a less-than-TeaTard to run in '16.

Note to the Repugs: better to work on '24. There's still Hillary. :-)

Brigham Young’s Great-Great-Granddaughter on Mormonism and Mitt Romney

The Daily Beast, with video.

A direct descendant of Brigham Young, Sue Emmett left the church because of the very values she says would make Romney a frightening president.

Emmett says Romney was a bishop, “a position where everyone defers to you. What a bishop says goes. People come to them to receive blessings.” He then became a stake president, she says, which means he presided over several congregations, and at that point bishops deferred to him.

“Mitt has had people defer to him and not challenge him his entire life,” says Emmett. “In the Mormon church if you challenge your priesthood leaders it’s a very bad thing to do, especially for women. As the world can now see, Mitt has a very hard time with being questioned and criticized; he’s had so little of this in his life."
...

Emmett says she doesn’t think Romney has the ability to separate what leaders of the church want from what the country needs.

“Mitt has been groomed to become president from a very young age,” says Emmett. “The thing is, I think his father [George Romney, who ran for president in 1968] would have made a much better president. In many ways the church was more benign then than it is now.”
...

Emmett says she thinks Romney’s biggest fault is that he has a “serious problem telling the truth. There is flip-flopping, which he has done more than any politician in modern history, and then there is out and out lying,” she says. “This kind of thing has sadly been a part of the church from the very beginning. Some modern apostles actually taught that it is not always the best thing to tell the truth if it interferes with preaching gospel.”

Emmett says the notion of “Lying for the Lord,” as it has been called, implies that teaching the whole truth about the church should be avoided. At a presentation on Lying for the Lord at the 2008 Exmormon Foundation conference, Ken Clark addressed the issue. Clark, who worked as a teacher for the LDS Church Education System (CES) for 27 years and also served as a bishop before leaving the church in 2003, tells The Daily Beast, “Lying has become an institutionalized method of administrative control with the church.”

Hey, lady, "lying has become an institutionalized method of administrative control" eveywhere. Cheney/Bush may have been the biggest political liars in my lifetime and they're not Mormons.

We don't need another privileged son with no ideas of his own rubber-stamping neocon, 1%, and religious shit in the Oval Office.

Word ...


Thanks to Citizens UnTied for the pic.

Wednesday, August 8, 2012

A Life Unenvied: The Obsessive Desperation Of Willard Mitt Romney

Subtitled (by me): "It must suck to be him". A 'recommended read' at Kos.

Don't you just hate it when a prophecy doesn't come true? All his life, Mitt's been on quest for the presidency, a role for which he was preordained. The GOP convention is just days away, and the nomination is all but final. Everything's falling into place. All he has to do is pick a vice president who can add a touch of humanity and street cred to the ticket, get through the debates unscathed, spend Sheldon Adelson's money on some more factually bereft attack ads, and step across the finish line to get his reward. What could possibly go wrong?

...go wrong...go wrong...

Interestingly, Mitt's sons expressed reluctance about another run for the White House. Didn't they get the memo? What part of dynastic inevitability don't they understand? [...]

Probably the "inevitability" part.

Filled with umbrage and indignity, Mitt is pulling out all the stops. There is no lie or misrepresentation too egregious, no back-room deal too sleazy, no previous position immune to the possibility of retroactive revision.
...

Stripping away every last vestige of his supposedly self-made-man success, he stands before us like the emporer, naked, and holding a small hand-lettered sign professing:

"I'm not Obama"

and wondering what in the world he has to do to make this gosh-darn prophecy come true. How much more must he endure? When will this persecution ever end?

The hell-hound, growing impatient, snarls:

"Keep moving, jackass."

and a cold wind rustles the trees that no longer seem anywhere close to being the right height.

I get an image of Willard as a man treading water, barely able to keep his head above water and not quite understanding that each additional pebble from his past or his mouth that he's putting in his pockets has a connection to why it's getting harder to breathe.

Heh...

More Mars/political 'toons at YubaNet.

14 Wacky "Facts" Kids Will Learn in Louisiana's Voucher Schools

Mother Jones, with many links and some good graphics.

Thanks to a new law privatizing public education in Louisiana, Bible-based curriculum can now indoctrinate young, pliant minds with the good news of the Lord—all on the state taxpayers' dime.
...

Many of these schools, Kopplin notes, rely on Pensacola-based A Beka Book curriculum or Bob Jones University Press textbooks to teach their pupils Bible-based "facts," such as the existence of Nessie the Loch Ness Monster and all sorts of pseudoscience that researcher Rachel Tabachnick and writer Thomas Vinciguerra have thankfully pored over so the rest of world doesn't have to.

And Bob Jones U too, motherbobjoneser. That's the ticket to catch back up to the rest of the world in education. Yeesh. Hold your nose:

6. The KKK was A-OK: "[The Ku Klux] Klan in some areas of the country tried to be a means of reform, fighting the decline in morality and using the symbol of the cross. Klan targets were bootleggers, wife-beaters, and immoral movies. In some communities it achieved a certain respectability as it worked with politicians."—United States History for Christian Schools, 3rd ed., Bob Jones University Press, 2001

7. The Great Depression wasn't as bad as the liberals made it sound: "Perhaps the best known work of propaganda to come from the Depression was John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath…Other forms of propaganda included rumors of mortgage foreclosures, mass evictions, and hunger riots and exaggerated statistics representing the number of unemployed and homeless people in America."—United States History: Heritage of Freedom, 2nd ed., A Beka Book, 1996


The Rude Pundit, a native of Louisiana, weighs in on this horseshit:

Yes, education in Louisiana is fucked beyond fucked. There's Delhi Charter School, which is finally getting sued for its seven year-old policy of forcing female students to take pregnancy tests and then making pregnant students receive schooling at home. There's the insanity that's being taught at the many evangelical schools that have received state money. So your child can learn such useful information as "But instead of this world unification ushering in an age of prosperity and peace, as most globalists believe it will, it will be a time of unimaginable human suffering as recorded in God's Word. The Anti-christ will tightly regulate who may buy and sell."
...

A couple of weeks ago, Mitt Romney praised Jindal's edumacation policies; he has said they are models for the rest of the nation. When the Rude Pundit was home in Louisiana, he mentioned that he thought that Jindal would be Romney's vice-president nominee. "Romney can have him," said a Republican relative, who had voted twice for Jindal. "He's ruining this state."

I like Louisiana. I like its music, its food, its folks (mostly), and its culture. I even watch Cajun Justice which is very good-natured for a cop show and fuckin' hilarious! Especially when they're chasing down a rougarou or finding an obeah woman to remove a voodoo curse put on 'em by some drunk they arrested. Heh.

Louisiana has been taking it in the shorts for years. Goobernor Bobby "Little Creep" Jindal, following the Louisiana tradition of horrendously corrupt and inept governance, is leading the charge in the state-by-state Repug "Wreck America For The 1%" program by dumbing down education so Americans will be grateful to their Masters for menial jobs at Chinese wages.

One state down, 49 to go.

Bumperstickers of the Day

Available along with many others from Veracity Stew.


Well-armed gay chickens for Jesus

After that title, you may shoot me. There is nothing more to see. Heh. If it's Wednesday it must be Morford on, well, well-armed gay chickens for Jesus. And climate change deniers. He's pissed and rightly so.

Welcome to the bizarre, reverso-world lessons of the NRA, the Christian right, Fox News, the God-fearing and the wildly paranoid. Behold, those who somehow believe, despite all evidence, history and common sense, that only guns prevent more guns. Only hate prevents hate. And only the latent, ongoing threat of violence prevents more violence. Call it “Jesus’ lost teaching.”
...

This is the way of the GOP and the Tea Party alike: Nothing short of comprehensive denial will work in the face of overwhelming facts pointing that global warming is here, is quite furious, is largely our fault.
...

Therefore, when teams of UN scientists march into U.S. congressional chambers with their elitist “PhDs” and their snobby “knowledge,” their “years of intense study” and their fancy “climate models” and plead that something must be done to help stave off the worst that’s heading our way, you have but one response: You spit on them and laugh.

Not a joke. Just happened. If you’re a dishwater-dumb GOP senator, if you’re a Tea Party ignoramus, you mock the intelligence of science and shoo the little PhD’s out of your committee, right past the millions of dead fish currently clogging our overheated rivers, past the scorched pastures and farmlands, over the amazing news that more than half of all U.S. counties nationwide have been declared natural disaster areas by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
...

Perhaps it’s all a bit much? Perhaps you are in need of a bit of healing balm right about now, a small bite of irony to make it all better? Here you go:

Some of Chick-fil-A’s chickens are gay.

Much more. Go read.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012

Me'n Fixer go downtown...



The 'Share' button's broken too. Heh.

Quote of the Day

Stolen from various Facebook pages until I could steal it from mine:

Seen on Twitter:
Dear Religion, while you were figuring out which chicken sandwich is ok to eat, I just landed on Mars. Sincerely, your pal Science

Heh.

Suck it, bitchez

The Rude Pundit weighs in on Harry Reid finally & thankfully growing a pair and stirring the punchbowl with an outboard motor about Willard's tax dodges returns:

Politics is not an ethical game. Governing should be, but isn't. However, politics is a wallow in filth that'd make farm hogs say, "Whoa, save some shit-filled mud for the rest of us." For years, we on the left have had to sputter and suffer as Republican after Republican has lied willfully and consciously about the records and lives of Democrats. We have tut-tutted and demanded retractions and corrections. We have slapped our foreheads bloody as we've seen the lies become what many, many people believe is the truth, whether it's Dukakis being soft on crime or Clinton having Vince Foster killed or Gore saying things he simply never said or Swift-boating or birthering. Outrageous, easily proven lies, and we have been told to suck on them like they're a candy cane sticking out of the pants of Uncle Sam.

So you know what? What's good for the motherfuckin' goose is good for the motherfuckin' gander. How's it feel, conservatives, to be helpless in the face of both the allegation about Romney's taxes and your candidate's smug refusal to release any information that would disprove the allegation? Pretty sickening, isn't it? Hey, that candy cane actually tastes like cock when you have to put it in your own mouth.

And the pounding on your heads will stop when you take your teeth out. I thought their corporate masters would have already told them that.

Hey Mitt ...

My girls have a message for you.

Heh ...


Pic thanks to Liberal Minds And Opinions.

The stupid ...

It burns:

Wheaton College, a private Christian school in Illinois, wishes to be exempt from the Obama administration's newly-enacted birth control insurance mandate, like other religious-run schools and hospitals. But there's one problem: Wheaton doesn't qualify for the exemption, despite the fact that they're adamantly against emergency contraception and birth control and all the unbridled harlotry that proliferates in the presence of the two evil medicines. The reason they don't qualify? Turns out that before all this Obamacare business, the school was already covering emergency contraception. I believe the technical word for what just happened is "Derp."

...

I gather reading isn't in the curriculum?

Monday, August 6, 2012

Deuddersun's ride

Here's our pal deuddersun's first video with his new Pivothead recording glasses. Very good for the first time out. What I noticed was BRICKS! Tons and tons of BRICKS! We don't do bricks out west here except for chimneys, and those that do replace them with something else after even a small earthquake. After picking up all the bricks off the ground. Also, he lives in a very pretty area.

I've got the Active-i video glasses. I think d's are better. I haven't done any riding vids other than this one because they wouldn't fit under my helmet until I got the Bell Shorty. D has inspired me!

Ok, so I have a lot to learn. Since the camera is located between my eyes, what you see is what I am looking at. I will have to learn to keep my head somewhat still or make smoother moves. It looks like I am about to crash at any moment and I can assure you, that is far from the truth. Also, I need to do something about wind noise. I think a small piece of scotch tape over the microphone may do the trick. It should cut out the wind while still allowing the mic to pick up engines sounds and my voice. I'm going to have to do a little experimentation to get it right, so please bear with me. Thanks!

Thanks to deuddersun.

Ya done good, pal!

Quote of the Day

Maddowblog on another Romney whopper:

It's as if words no longer have any meaning, and Americans politics has become so blisteringly stupid, candidates believe they can say literally anything and get away with it.

Rmoney and the Repugs count on it.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Global Warming Skeptic Paid Millions by Kochs Publicly Reverses Position
After hiding his millions offshore.

Top Wall Street CEOs Contribute to Romney by 4-To-1 Margin Over Obama
Figure so disproportionate White House says it just might stop doing everything they say.

Oh suuuuure...

Poll: Romney Has 20-Point Advantage Among White Voters
“I just like the color of his skin,” says one.

Cheetah Sets World Record for Fastest 100-Meter Dash
Timed in 5.95 seconds by one of the uneaten officials.

Heh.

Heh ...


Pic thanks to 1,000,000 Strong to Help Improve Tea Party Patriots' Spelling and Grammar.

Sunday, August 5, 2012

Sacramento Hempfest 2012

This is going on right now. I couldn't snag the KCRA News video but you can see it here. Let's just say that many "215 cards" were issued. After careful evaluation, of course.

Here's some'a de entertainment, mon:

89.5fm OZCAT Radio at Sacramento Hempfest 2012
Sensi Dread & The Ganja Trees stopped by for a few Songs before his set on the Stage.

Thanks to Sensidreadband.