"Another senseless tragedy"

Our pal pygalgia:

It started out a fairly typical local crime story. There was a car-jacking at the Grand Canyon. Later it was learned that this was on the heels of an apparent failed suicide attempt by driving into the Canyon. Two days and a cross state police chase later two men were dead.

...

One of them was a four-tour Iraq vet. His widow:

...

"All this violent behavior, him killing his brother, that was not my husband. If the PTSD would have been handled in a correct manner, none of this would have happened," she said in a telephone interview from Stafford, Va.

...

War on the cheap, like everything else Bush has done. And McCain wants another hundred years of this?

I can't wait ...

If (when) Barry gets the nod, I can't wait for the debates between him and McSame:

If John McCain goes ballistic every time he's mildly criticized by Barack Obama, this is going to be a much more interesting campaign than I thought ...

You betcha. I'm buying stock in Orville Redenbacher's.

Quote of the Day

The Rude One:

Bush's gallantry is to give [Sgt. Benjamin] Sebban's mom a hug. It's kind of like a boa constrictor thanking a rabbit after devouring her children.

Not this veteran's issues ...

McBush doesn't want to talk about his non-vote on the GI Bill he tried to undermine.

"I believe that I have earned the right to speak out on veterans’ issues," McCain said. "As a matter of fact I received the highest award from literally every veteran’s organization in America. I don’t know if the American people will judge Senator Obama as to whether he has military experience or not, but I think they may judge him as to whether he has experience and knowledge to make the judgment necessary to care for the veterans."

Listen, you old fool. I'd walk into Hell and back with Barry or Hil long before I'd consider going around the block with your senile, deluded ass.

And something completely different ...

Felix Mendelssohn - Piano Trio in D Minor

This was performed by three very talented young people from the Junior Chamber Music Series.

"I pray for revolution ..."

4 Non Blondes - What's Up!

Headin' out...

No blogging for a coupla days. Me'n Mrs. G are making a whirlwind trip to L.A. to pick up my new motorbike. There today, home tomorrow. A real highway thrash, but we get to visit a little with a coupla old friends.

Everybody have a nice weekend, and please take a moment to remember what Memorial Day is all about. Later.

Saturday whorage

Another chapter of Thirty Days at Zeta is up at The Practical Press.

Whore your own links in comments.

Dead Kennedys singer responds to Savage: How the hell does he get away with stuff like this?

Here's a little more in the vein of Fixer's post on the same subject.

Think Progress, lotsa comments.

Earlier this week, after Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) was diagnosed with a brain tumor, right-wing talker Michael Savage offensively mocked Kennedy’s condition by playing the Dead Kennedys song “California Über Alles” and reading aloud its lyrics on his radio show. In an expletive-laden interview with the Boston Phoenix, Dead Kennedys lead singer Jello Biafra responded to Savage’s use of his song, saying he took the “song way the hell out of context and did it deliberately.” From the interview:

But the bigger issue is Savage himself and how the hell he gets away with stuff like saying this, and saying that people with AIDS should be put in concentration camps. And then when people protest at the station, he calls on his own listeners to come down and beat them up.

Good for you, Jello Man.

It makes me want to go to a protest at his station. No class fuckin' Weiner can call anybody he wants to. We'll see who gets beat up.

Dear Haloscan ...

WTF??? Over ...

Yeah ...

What Jello said:

...

But like it or not, [conservative talk show host Michael] Savage is the third-most popular radio-talk show host in this country behind Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Nobody from the other side is represented or promoted well enough by the big right-wing-owned radio networks to compete. That's one of the ways they mindfuck the country into being so dumb they vote for people like George Bush, Mitt Romney and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The real issue here is why aren't the big candidates calling for media reform? Once upon a time there was a law on the books called the Fairness Doctrine, and it said that if somebody like Savage or Limbaugh or that skull woman Ann Coulter said something completely fucked up and dishonest on the air, somebody else was allowed to come on the air and reply to them without being told to shut up every 15 seconds by a power clown like Bill O'Reilly. That law was on the books for 50 years but was allowed to expire in the late '80s when a Democratic-controlled congress failed to override President Reagan's veto of the law.

...

Everclear to Gitmo

I never heard of 'em, but when I read the headline, I thought we were sending Gitmo some white lightning to put in the punch bowl. I was down wit dat. If I were stationed there, I'd want the strongest booze I could get aholt of! Then when I found out they're a band I wondered what the hell they did. Lefty lyrics? Go read if yer interested.

"[...} I’ve got a song I’m thinking about playing there for the first time, called “Jesus Was a Democrat.”
...

"[...] There’s a line in it that goes, “Jesus would be locked up in Guantanamo Bay if he were alive today.” I consider myself Christian but not in any traditional sense. I was brought up in a serious evangelical home, and always had problems with Christianity, like there was something great there, but that I wasn’t seeing it. I see why most people, especially young people, are afraid of Christians. There’s a line in the song that says, “I wonder if Jesus is as afraid of Christians as I am?” They’re scary!"

Yep, some of 'em.

Mythmaking for the next war

Chicago Tribune

At the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union had some 45,000 nuclear warheads. At the moment, Iran has none. But when Barack Obama said the obvious—that Iran does not pose the sort of threat the Soviet Union did— John McCain reacted as though his rival had offered to trade Ft. Knox for a sack of magic beans.

Even if the Iranians would like to destroy Israel, they face a powerful disincentive: the prospect of radioactive incineration. The Tehran government has been intimidated by less. Israeli historian Gershom Gorenberg writes in the May/June issue of Foreign Policy magazine: "Iran agreed to a cease-fire in the war with Iraq once Iraqi missiles began falling on Tehran. The ayatollahs were willing to sacrifice soldiers—but not to pay a higher price." Even fanatics have their limits.

Nor would Iran be so irrational as to give nukes to a terrorist group. That would be the worst of both worlds—giving up control of those weapons, while inviting annihilation the moment they are put to use.

But there is no reasoning with McCain and his allies, who yearn for the simple clarity of the Cold War. If we don't have an enemy on the mammoth scale of the Soviet Union, they will take a pint-sized one, inflate it beyond recognition and pretend that military confrontation is the only way to deal with it.

That was how we got into the war in Iraq and how, under a McCain presidency, we are liable to end up in a war in Iran. If he's looking for reckless judgment, he should look in the mirror.

There's that 'judgment' word again. Nothing much to add, just go read the rest.

Another neocon bunch bites the dust

Fixer posted about PNAC goin' tits up in the tall weeds. Policy Forum has joined them.

Another hard-line neo-conservative group — and one that received a nearly $80,000 grant from the Pentagon just last September — may also have died. In fact, its effective demise may actually have preceded the the grant’s approval by the office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, Eric Edelman.

Yeah, don't tell 'em yer dead until they cough up the taxpayers' money. Typical Repug shit. WTF are we doing giving our money to those bastards anyway? Oh, I forgot - the Pentagon's propaganda effort AKA the Ministry of Truth is 'government' funded.

This is just getting ridiculous

So far today, it looks like we have a theme of sorts: batshit crazy hateful ideologues.

Think Progress

Anti-gay group compares marrying same-sex couples to helping the Nazis.

Reacting to the California Supreme Court’s decision overturing a same-sex marriage ban, the far right group Campaign for Children and Families compares county clerks issuing same-sex marriage licenses to Nazis gassing Jews during the Holocaust. Here’s what they say on their website, SaveCalifornia.com:

Ask your county clerk if they were a Nazi officer during WWII and had been ordered to gas the Jews, would they? At the Nuremberg trials, they would have been convicted of murder for following this immoral order.

(HT: Andrew Sullivan) (Andy's piece is titled "Malkin Award Nominees". Heh - G)

And if that wasn't enough, in the post just below that one:

Santorum Mocks Gay Marriage: ‘I Love My Brother. Should We Call This Relationship Marriage Too?’

Note to ol' 'Man on Dog': if you really love him, it's OK with me. I don't understand why you would want to, but then I'm not a Repuglican.

Tricky Ricky then goes on about how permitting gay marriage has totally fucked up heterosexual marriage and contributed to an increase in out-of-wedlock births in Norway of all places. I don't see how same-sex marriage affects birth rates, but he mostly made it all up anyway.

I was enjoying thinking we'd heard the last from that ying-yang, but I guess these truly important matters bring him out of the closet from under his rock.

I watched a guy named Garry Wills on Charlie Rose last night. He was talking about a book he's flogging about the Gospels. It was interesting, but the talk turned to the separation of church and state and then to gay marriage. He said that government should not be in the business of telling folks how they can formalize their love with another person, and that government should permit civil unions and stay the fuck out of the religious concept of marriage that should be left to the discretion of individual churches. Government should concern itself with equity, justice, and humanity, to which I would add screw the phony moral values of the fundie dipshits. I tend to agree with him. Well worth watching.

So much for Parsley...

Looks like Fixer'n me gangin' up on McCain's ass over his other nutjob 'pastor' worked.

In February, Ohio televangelist Rev. Rod Parsley endorsed Sen. John McCain (R-AZ). McCain called Parsley — who once said Allah was a “demon spirit” — his “spiritual guide.” In an interview with the AP today, McCain finally said that he rejected Parsley’s support:

McCain’s statement on Parsley came after the senator earlier in the day rejected the endorsement of radical pastor John Hagee.

There's more, including a video and comments, but who needs it?

There's three religions descended from Abraham, and McCain chose to seek endorsements from two batshit 'spiritual guides' who between them called for the destruction of two of them. I'm not a religionist and I don't have much use for any of 'em, but the 'better angels' of religion can do good. Trouble is, the 'worst angels' that have caused so much trouble for thousands of years and continue to do so are much louder.

You'd think McCain would have gotten better advice from his advisors, but I guess they were too busy rakin' in the dough from the despots of various dictatorships around the world.

I actually kinda wish he'da hung on to these dark clowns until the election campaign had gotten into full sway. This was yet another indicator of the kind of poor judgment we already have in the White House and don't need any more of.

Quote of the Day

Avedon:

American healthcare is like one big Tuskegee experiment, where everyone else gets actual healthcare and the United States just gets maintained on the commercial medical industry disease.

Now I'm outta here ...

"Now for Parsley..."

Expanding on Gord's Hagee post last evening, it's time to shame McSame into throwing the other nut under the bus too. Mr. Aravosis:

... This is McCain's other pastor buddy, Rod Parsley. He's a real piece of work. Check out the video below put together by PFAW. We wrote about Parsley's offensive rhetoric earlier today (Mohammed as "the mouthpiece of a conspiracy of spiritual evil.") ...

Off to work. TGIF!

Incoming ...

This can't be good:

BAGHDAD - Iraq's most influential Shiite cleric has been quietly issuing religious edicts declaring that armed resistance against U.S.-led foreign troops is permissible — a potentially significant shift by a key supporter of the Washington-backed government in Baghdad.

...

Bad enough that this week our guys are being targeted by people who were on our payroll last week, now the big cheese has given his blessing to it. When I think about our troops having to operate in that kind of environment, where friends are 'allies of convenience' and could turn into enemies tomorrow, where the guy fighting next to you today will try to kill you tonight, it is surprising more GIs haven't gone over the edge.

It's time to go; not in a hundred years, not in 2013, yesterday.

Great thanks to Robert Farley for the link.

Heh ...

Stolen from our pal UL. Click to enolden.