"My party is full of racists"

Nice of ya to say it out loud, Colonel, but we already knew it.

MSNBC

“My party, unfortunately, is the bastion of those people, not all of them, but most of them, who are still basing their decision on race,” Wilkerson said. “Let me just be candid: My party is full of racists. And the real reason a considerable portion of my party wants President Obama out of the White House has nothing to do with the content of his character, nothing to do with his competence as commander-in-chief and president, and everything to do with the color of his skin. And that’s despicable.”

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Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Magnolia Fest, Live Oak FL 10/19/2012

Thanks to chucklabelle.

It's Official

I have declared today "Fuck-It-Friday".

Electoral Map

Thanks to the L.A.Times

How the right wing lost in 2012

From E.J. Dionne's lips to God's ears. Today's 'must read'. It'll make you feel better! Also, we knew the Dead End Quarter couldn't win anything all by itself, certainly not on ideas.

The right wing has lost the election of 2012.

The evidence for this is overwhelming, yet it is the year’s best-kept secret. Mitt Romney would not be throwing virtually all of his past positions overboard if he thought the nation were ready to endorse the full-throated conservatism he embraced to win the Republican nomination.
...

The right is going along because its partisans know Romney has no other option. This, too, is an acknowledgment of defeat, a recognition that the grand ideological experiment heralded by the rise of the tea party has gained no traction. It also means that conservatives don’t believe that Romney really believes the moderate mush he’s putting forward now. Not to put too fine a point on it, but if the conservatives are forgiving Romney because they think he is lying, what should the rest of us think?

That he's lying. We've known that all along too, but what's amazing is that no matter which position comes out of his pie-hole ... he's lying. That's hard to pull off so people don't catch on, and they are.

The biggest sign that tea party thinking is dead is Romney’s straight-out deception about his past position on the rescue of the auto industry.
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“Ideas have consequences” is one of the conservative movement’s most honored slogans. That the conservatives’ standard-bearer is now trying to escape the consequences of their ideas tells us all we need to know about who is winning the philosophical battle — and, because ideas do matter, who will win the election.

That's what counts.

Battle of the Ski Hills

This is good clean local fun - which ski hill will open first. Some years, they vie to see who gets open by Thanksgiving. Or Christmas. This year ... not so much. It went from autumn to winter all in a coupla days this week.

Boreal Opening Day Announced - First Resort to "Officially" Open in California
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Boreal will operate the Castle Peak Quad chairlift offering access to one run featuring multiple terrain park features. Boreal plans to operate thru the weekend and will assess conditions on Sunday to determine a mid-week operating schedule.

One lift, one run, but it's a point of pride to get open first. Even with barely enough employees to do it.

Celebrate 3 Feet of New Snow with California's First Ski Resort Opening
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With snow still expected to fall through Wednesday, the first snow storm of the 2012-13 winter season has already delivered 28 inches to Squaw Valley and 36 inches to Alpine Meadows. Another 6-9 inches are expected by Thursday, which would bring snow totals to more than 3 feet.

None of these joints received enough snow or have enough employees yet to sustain their symbolic "openings", but it'll draw the die-hard skiers and riders and whet their appetites.

As for me, I live in the banana belt so I only got a foot of snow. My snowblower fired up on the second pull after a seven-month hiatus and tradition was served in that the first-time-out shear pin breakage occurred right on schedule after I cleared one pickup a path. Also, The Berm Fairy came and saved me a little work. Thanks, Dave.

Just another day in paradise...

Up The Donald

Neocon Trojan Horse

Right near the top of my extensive laundry list of things I don't like about Willard is his former Bush neocon foreign policy advisers like Senor and Walrus Man. 17 out of his 24 foreign policy advisers are Bush neocon warmongers. That's 17 cells at Gitmo if it was up to me.

Robert Parry at Consortiumnews:

Exclusive: Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney did all he could in Monday’s debate to calm voters’ fears that he would revert to George W. Bush’s neocon foreign policy. But there was one telling slip-up when Romney signaled that his heart remains with the neocon plan to remake the Middle East, reports Robert Parry.
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Though Romney’s goal in Monday’s foreign policy debate was to downplay his warlike neoconservative stands, his reference to the Syrian chaos as “an opportunity” suggests that his more moderate rhetoric is just another ploy to deceive voters and win the election, not a real abandonment of neocon strategies.

In that sense, the new “moderate Mitt” is less a sign of a neocon retreat from his earlier bellicosity than a Trojan Horse to be wheeled onto the White House grounds on Jan. 20, 2013, so the neocons can pour forth from its hollowed-out belly and regain full control of U.S. foreign policy.

So, the neocons don’t really mind that Romney has suddenly abandoned many of their cherished positions, such as extending the Afghan War beyond 2014 and returning U.S. troops to Iraq. The neocons understand the political need for Romney to calm independent voters who fear that he may be another George W. Bush.

Just more Romney lies.

The first key political obstacle was removed when the neocons helped engineer George W. Bush’s ascension to the presidency in Election 2000. However, the path was not fully cleared until al-Qaeda terrorists attacked New York and Washington on Sept. 11, 2001, leaving behind a political climate across America for war and revenge.
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But the dream hasn’t died. It just had to wait out four years of Barack Obama. In Campaign 2012, the neocons have returned to surround Mitt Romney, who like George W. Bush a decade ago has only a vague understanding of the world and is more than happy to cede the direction of U.S. foreign policy to the smart, confident and well-connected neocons.

The neocons also understand the need to manipulate the American people. In the 1980s, when I was covering Ronald Reagan’s Central American policies, I dealt with the neocons often and came to view them as expert manipulators whose view of democracy was that it was okay to trick the common folk into doing what was deemed necessary.
...

But the real opportunity for the neocons would come if the American voters, satisfied that Romney no longer appears to be the crazy war hawk of the Republican primaries, elect him on Nov. 6 and then celebrate his arrival next Jan. 20 by pushing a crude wooden horse through the gates of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

The neocons just about shot their wad with Bush and it was (and is) a disaster. They have one more chance with the skinwalker Romney. They better not get it or we're in even worse trouble.

Armed forces overwhelmingly support Obama in donations

Kos

Ahead of the foreign policy debate, Open Secrets shows that those with real skin in the game, members of the military and civilian employees of the military, are overwhelmingly supporting President Obama.
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Military personnel overwhelmingly support Obama over Romney despite the pending cuts to defense. That could be because Obama has kept his promise to bring the wars to an end and because to Mitt Romney, the troops aren't anything more than an item on a laundry list.

When Romney talks about the military, he talks about how much money he wants the government to spend to line the pockets of defense contractors. When Obama talks about the military, he talks about the men and women who have sacrificed so much in the last decade. That's what makes a commander in chief.

That's "Semper Fidelis", folks.

Frightened men love Mitt Romney

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford on frightened old white men.

Not even close. Here is your brutal nutshell takeaway: If only women voted, Obama wins in a landslide. If only men voted, Romney wins in a landslide. (Taken further: if only Latinos, blacks, celebrities, college grads, professors, scientists, poets, Burning Man attendees, book readers, trees, oceans, major cities or college towns of America voted, Obama nails it wholly and true. If only rich CEOs, gun owners, upper managers, oil companies, rednecks, shut-ins and guys who think Muslims are terrorists, Mexicans are lazy house painters and feminazis are ruining porn voted, Romney is a mutant and faraway god).

All of which leads to the most depressing conclusion of all: older white males remain the most terrified, lopsided, confused demographic in all of America, perhaps even more acutely – and more embarrassingly – in this election than any other in modern history.

Well, Marko me boy, not all of us older white men are terrified or confused. I'll cop to being lopsided once in a while...

Upshot: confused middle-aged white guys of every height and state are looking around in increasing terror/desperation for some hint of stability, someone to validate – however wrongly, however dishonestly – their waning powers, and finding only charlatan mushball Mitt Romney and the sneering misogyny of the GOP. Hey, better than nothing, right? Here you go, bro, have a beer and a layoff and some Glenn Beck jeans to go with your sexist binder full of women, courtesy the Bush worldview and Romney’s promise of more of same. Hey, at least he hates the gays!
...

Nevertheless, the gap is as wide as ever, and the weird knot remains, as petrified and impossible to untie as ever. The good news is, the roles are changing rapidly, the next generation is coming fast, terrified old white guys are a dying breed. The bad news is, with so much at stake this time out (Supreme Court nominees, gay marriage, energy, health care, et al) the evolution of the species can’t come fast enough.

Evolution proceeds at its own pace, young man. Right now in the demographic you mention, it's stuck on stupid.

Horses and Bayonets

Obama's "horses and bayonets" comment made me feel old. Was he sayin' there's no more "Giddyap, Fleabiscuit!" with yer pigsticker attached to yer shootin' arn like when I was in the service? Sigh...

This is an oil painting of The Battle of Belleau Wood in 1918 depicting the use of the bayonet. The Jarheads had already eaten the horses. In this 3-week battle, the Marines took 10,000 casualties but they stopped the German advance on Paris. Nothing could stop Romney's advance on Paris however, as opposed to, say, Khe Sanh or Hue.

Wars aren't fought this way any more, and more's the pity. Marines loves us some bayonets and K-Bars. Up close and personal! In your face and in your belly.

Quote of the Day

From a piece at Kos:

I have 52 employees in my company. Thanks to Obamacare, I'll have to pay $100,000 extra for health insurance if I have over 45 employees. So what am I going to do? I have to fire 7 people. All of my employees are great and I can't decide who to get rid of so I'm going to fire all of the employees who have Obama stickers on their car.

Yeah, that hundred grand'll keep his yacht running for a month. Typical rich Repug asshole.

Debate Ends Abruptly as Obama Punches Romney in Face

Borowitz

Minutes after Mr. Romney was carried out on a stretcher, the debate was declared a victory for Mr. Obama by all the major networks except Fox News, who called it a draw.

Heh.

Random Observations on Last Night's "Foreign Policy" Debate

The Rude One

It made no sense. Why bother saying these things in the letter if the main point was that people shouldn't park their cars even a couple of inches across the line that was painted near his driveway? Is that not wrong enough? Why did he have to create some fiction in order for the situation to seem worse and for him to seem tougher?

Then the Rude Pundit glanced at the house and noticed the sign in the window: "Romney/Ryan." Ah, of course. If one has very little to say, then all one can do is make up things that, whether they make sense or not, sound like things that make you a badass.

That's pretty much all one needs to say about Mitt Romney in last night's debate with Barack Obama.

2. Oh, fuck Israel. Fuck it, fuck it, fuck it, fuck Israel. [...]
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(Note: This part could have also started with "Oh, fuck al-Qaeda.")
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4. On substance, then, it was a fairly useless debate, as have all the debates. On style, though? If Obama had been as clueless, pandering, and flop-sweaty as Romney, pundits around the country would have said that they're getting ready to cover a Mitt administration. However, since it was the Democrat who won, most will say that Romney didn't do too badly. That's bullshit. Romney lost big time. [...]
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[...] As for any alternative to anything Obama was doing, Romney's sole plan seems to be that he'll be there and not Obama, and somehow, through Mormon magic involving the castrated balls of the eunuchs in the Tabernacle Choir, no doubt, America will seem stronger with a man named Willard in charge.

Call the Rude Pundit wrong, but this seems less like a plan and more like an insane ego trip.

1a. Oh, as for the note? Like the way we should react to Mitt Romney after this final meeting with Obama, the Rude Pundit crumpled it up and tossed it on the guy's lawn, like throwing a fish back into the lake.

I cannot add to that very much except that the lake Willard came out of needs to be rotenoned.

What Obama Should Say 2012, Part 3 (Rude Version)

Perhaps uberRude...just go.

Weed beat the recession in Denver

In case you missed it on 60 Minutes last night.

Via Raw Story.

Colorado is one of three states voting this November on full legalization of marijuana for recreational use, and polls show it could be a close vote. A recent poll by The Denver Post found that 48 percent of likely voters support Amendment 64, which would regulate marijuana like alcohol, while just 43 percent oppose the measure.

Remember: Cheeb ain't just for breakfast any more!

Headline of the Day

GOP controlled Virginia Board Of Elections refuses to prosecute GOP voter fraud

Whatever it takes to win IOKIYAR.

Oh, the irony

Ironic Times

Newly Declassified Docs Reveal CIA Never Had Any Reason to Believe Iraq Had WMDs
Just the vice president's good word.

We knew that. Why isn't he in prison?

Astronomers Believe Habitable Planet Could Orbit Closest Star
But it would still take nearly 4.4 years, traveling at the speed of light, before we could conquer it, steal its valuable assets and enslave its inhabitants.

NFL: League Mulls Narrowing Goal Posts as Field Goal Success Rate Nearly 88%
Other remedies: blindfolding kickers; using lead ball; English-only requirement.

Romney Pays Surprise Visit to Chipotle
Scares the dickens out of employees.

Note to Willard: Hollering "Migra!" is not a traditional greeting when entering a restaurant kitchen.

Bumpersticker of the Day

A tip o' the Brain to Bulldog, whose blog appears to have been taken over by the Japanese and is therefore not linked to, and deuddersun's brudder.