Alternate Brain

Tsunami Debris Is Arriving

2012-05-27T13:10:00.004-04:00

Fishing floats, soccer balls, fuel tanks and crewless fishing vessels set adrift by the tsunami and pushed thousands of miles across the ocean by currents and winds are already arriving on American shores.
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So as scientists track the debris, the government prepares for its arrival and expeditions sail to the middle of the ocean to meet it, Larson will patrol his adopted beach with a five-gallon bucket and a grab stick, the tsunami on his mind.

"I'll be looking for any signs of foreign material," the volunteer with beach cleanup group Save Our Shores said, "and reporting it to anyone who cares."

A corroded Harley-Davidson motorcycle packed in a container washed up on a Canadian island. The owner, located through the bike's license plate number, had lost three family members in the tsunami, Japanese media reported. [...]

Reminds me of a line from a bluegrass tune - "Let me be your salty Hog...". Heh.

Ebbesmeyer, who compiles reports from West Coast beachcombers on his blog, has tallied at least 500 foam and plastic floats and fuel cans that have shown up from Japan since October. He said that's roughly 167 times the normal rate.

"They all started arriving at once from Kodiak, Alaska, to Northern California, and that's very indicative of a disaster," he said.

Ebbesmeyer expects the amount of debris to increase dramatically this fall with the arrival of floating refrigerators, car wheels, bath toys and shoes — items with a remarkable ability to float long distances.

With that possibility in mind, the state of Washington has distributed fliers with instructions on how to handle everything from canisters of insecticide to personal possessions.

Much more. Interesting. It's a slow day.

Update:

CNN

Iowa Exits Golden Gate

2012-05-27T12:48:00.004-04:00

A beautiful picture. Article at LATimes.

On May 26, 2012, the 79-year-old battleship Iowa is towed just beyond the Golden Gate Bridge and out into the ocean on its final voyage to Southern California and its permanent home as a floating museum on the San Pedro waterfront. (Don Bartletti, Los Angeles Times / May 26, 2012)

Update:

Two pretty good videos.

Somehow it seems kind of sad that this once great battleship leaves on her final voyage alone. It was less than a week ago that she was to leave as part of a parade of ships under the Golden Gate Bridge, but because of a little rough weather that she would have in her prime handled with ease had to have her good-bye party docked at her temporary home in the Port of Richmond. See: "Iowa to sail for new home" Vivian Ho, San Francisco Chronicle (Close enough - G). You can track the IOWA on her way to LA at www.pacificbattleship.com.

Thanks to roblewis56.

Thanks to Jim Brown.

Conversations ...

2012-05-27T07:33:00.003-04:00

How it goes in Chez Fixer:

The Mrs. and I are sitting in my office. She's doing something on the computer, I'm in the easy chair, playing with the dogs and watching TV. A commercial for Compound W "wart-freezer-offer" comes on.

Me: "Does that shit really work?"

Mrs. F: "It would seem so."

Me: "I wonder what would happen if I put it on my dick?"

Mrs. F: "Only you ..."

Heh ...

Just a reminder ...

2012-05-27T06:25:00.002-04:00

"Big Willie" Robinson, 1942 - 2012

2012-05-26T12:52:00.003-04:00

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

2012-05-26T00:01:00.000-04:00

Written by Patty Griffin. Harmony vocals by Emmylou Harris.

Little Fire ~ Patty Griffin with Emmylou Harris Live 2010

Thanks to pennstatefan1

Puffin' it up ...

2012-05-25T15:35:00.000-04:00

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...

2012-05-25T14:15:00.002-04:00

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

2012-05-25T13:51:00.004-04:00

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"

2012-05-25T13:19:00.001-04:00

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

Well played, sir!

Who says ...

2012-05-25T10:04:00.000-04:00

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

2012-05-25T06:45:00.000-04:00

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

2012-05-24T14:31:00.003-04:00

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

2012-05-24T14:05:00.004-04:00

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

2012-05-24T13:50:00.000-04:00

I Can Haz Cheezburger Can Haz Anti-Lamar Smith Billboard

Heh.

Stupid is as ...

2012-05-24T07:14:00.000-04:00

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.

...

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...

2012-05-23T13:44:00.002-04:00

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

The Patriot Act

2012-05-23T13:30:00.003-04:00

Thanks to YubaNet.

Beaver State Gnaws Away At The War On Some Drugs

2012-05-23T12:57:00.002-04:00

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

2012-05-23T12:49:00.003-04:00

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

2012-05-23T12:31:00.003-04:00

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 ...

2012-05-23T10:31:00.000-04:00

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!

2012-05-23T08:41:00.000-04:00

Stolen from the Life With Dogs FB page.

See yas!

2012-05-23T07:21:00.000-04:00

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!"

2012-05-22T14:51:00.002-04:00

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!