I'm starting on the last room in the remodel. Looks like I'll have everything closed up before vacation.
And, for your listening pleasure, that "Limey guit-ar picker" (as Gord calls him) and his boys:
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Saturday whorage
Another chapter of Birthright is up at The Practical Press.
I'm starting on the last room in the remodel. Looks like I'll have everything closed up before vacation.
And, for your listening pleasure, that "Limey guit-ar picker" (as Gord calls him) and his boys:
I'm starting on the last room in the remodel. Looks like I'll have everything closed up before vacation.
And, for your listening pleasure, that "Limey guit-ar picker" (as Gord calls him) and his boys:
"I'm going where there's no depression"
An old Carter Family tune. I'm surprised today's elites don't tell the common folks to suck it up and let them steal all the money and power they want, that it doesn't matter, there's a better day a-comin'. When you croak, and if that happens because of money and power, it's God's will anyway so STFU peasants.
Sheryl Crow
Quote of the Day
From a commenter over at Nucks' place on the post Fixer linked to in his post just below this one:
In this country, you don't have to be all that erudite to feel like a ham sandwich sometimes.
In the land of troglodytes, the erudite man is food.
In this country, you don't have to be all that erudite to feel like a ham sandwich sometimes.
Friday, August 15, 2008
Oh look ...
Shiny shit. Our pal Nucks:
Yeah, keep watching Wolfie, reading NYT and WaPo, and you'll continue to be a low-information voter with no clue of what they're doing with your rights, your money, and your security.
...
Oh, by the way, the current flap going on with Russia?
Yeah, SHINY, ain't it?
Ask yer neighbors how they are doing.
The foreclosure rate in California,ALONE, is ONE THOUSAND, THEE HUNDRED, PER DAY.
Georgia, SHINY.
...
Yeah, keep watching Wolfie, reading NYT and WaPo, and you'll continue to be a low-information voter with no clue of what they're doing with your rights, your money, and your security.
In My Dreams
I gotta go stain/seal a bench & table deal before I assemble it, made in China outta cheap shitty-on-one-side pinewood. I got it to replace the previous 25-year-old cheapass table that got broken by ice sliding off my roof. I wanted a new one anyway and had to move it around a buncha times under the ice overhangs 'til I found the right place...
Let's kick the weekend off a little early. Watch the pretty pictures and listen to a lovely old song. Later.
Let's kick the weekend off a little early. Watch the pretty pictures and listen to a lovely old song. Later.
"Thank God And Greyhound "*
IPS
Make it a bus with duallies and chain 'em up. I'll drive.
*Apologies to Roy Clark.
As a new report forecasts that the 190,000 private contractors in Iraq and neighbouring countries will cost U.S. taxpayers more than 100 billion dollars by the end of 2008, an under-the-radar Florida court case suggests that U.S. President George W. Bush -- a staunch contractor supporter -- is preparing to throw security contractors such as Blackwater under the political bus.
Make it a bus with duallies and chain 'em up. I'll drive.
*Apologies to Roy Clark.
A Frozen Katrina
Up hyar in the mountains, us simple hill folk, well, this simple hill folk anyway, consider August to be the first month of winter even though it was 95°F yesterday.
Huh? August? 95°? Winter!!? Ya lost yer effin' mind? How come ya think like that, Clem?
The answer is in the stars. Orion, considered a 'winter' constellation, has been visible in the morning sky since around August 1st, when Betelgeuse and Bellatrix first recognizably appeared above the eastern horizon just before first light. Can Driekoningen and The Dog be far behind?
Even though there are three months of some of the best weather in California yet to come before the Dreaded First Dump, we'll start heating the joint in September, so the time is now to clean out the chimney and make plans to get out in the woods as soon as they reopen for woodcutting and make the pickup's springs groan and its headlights point at the sky with max loads of firewood if you didn't already in Spring like you should have.
Katrina vanden Heuvel is thinking about this as well. Many links.
The clarion calls follow.
Ignoring real people in favor of Big Corpora is the way the Repugs roll. People are going to die, or continue to die, because of them.
Even if we vote the bastards out on election day it will be too late for some folks.
I heated my home exclusively with wood for eighteen years, starting the day I found out that the less propane I bought, the more it cost. Wood heat is awful. They say wood heats you twice, when you carry it as well as when you burn it.
Bullshit.
By the time you drive way out in the woods, fall the trees, limb 'em, buck 'em, pile the slash, load the truck and unload the truck many times, split and stack the wood, only then do you get to tote it into the house bit by bit and burn it, but by then you have been warmed many, many times. Not to mention constantly cleaning detritus from around the hearth and shoveling snow off the woodpile and access to it.
When you take into account wear and tear on your truck, tires (pine forest fuelwood access roads are not kind to them), chainsaw, clothes, gloves, boots, your body, etc., the time involved, the extra soap and mayonnaise, and on and on, you save money over buying the wood, but it still costs.
If you buy your firewood, it costs nearly as much as heating with gas, which is what I have done since the gas came in. I still keep a supply of wood for the inevitable power outages when the electrically powered gas furnace won't work.
Having just said that wood heat sucks, if the price of natural gas goes up by 67% as predicted in the above article, now that I'm on a fixed income I may have to go back to it. We will see.
I'm still fit enough to lay in my own firewood and feel lucky to be so, but I don't care how physically able the folks in the oil-burning areas are, they can't pump their own heating oil. They're just pretty much screwed.
I hope they remember who's doin' the screwin' on election day.
Huh? August? 95°? Winter!!? Ya lost yer effin' mind? How come ya think like that, Clem?
The answer is in the stars. Orion, considered a 'winter' constellation, has been visible in the morning sky since around August 1st, when Betelgeuse and Bellatrix first recognizably appeared above the eastern horizon just before first light. Can Driekoningen and The Dog be far behind?
Even though there are three months of some of the best weather in California yet to come before the Dreaded First Dump, we'll start heating the joint in September, so the time is now to clean out the chimney and make plans to get out in the woods as soon as they reopen for woodcutting and make the pickup's springs groan and its headlights point at the sky with max loads of firewood if you didn't already in Spring like you should have.
Katrina vanden Heuvel is thinking about this as well. Many links.
As John McCain and the Republicans trumpet their election year boldfaced lie–drill now so we can lower prices at the pump today–they continue to ignore a looming energy disaster with lives hanging in the balance.
Currently, eight million homes rely on heating oil during the winter months, and last winter’s prices forced too many citizens to choose between heat, food, and medicine.
According to the New York Times, heating oil prices are now 36 percent higher than they were last winter and bills will be up to $1500 higher than they were last year. As for the 54 million households heating with natural gas, prices are expected to be 67 percent higher this winter. Current funding for the Low Income Heating Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) is below 1980’s levels–”a time when fuel prices were just a tiny fraction of what they are now,” The Timberjay newspapers point out. In fact, last year’s $2.5 billion in LIHEAP funding allowed just 16 percent of eligible recipients to receive aid. Congressional representatives of New England states have sought as much as $6.5 billion in additional LIHEAP funding to meet the anticipated needs of the upcoming winter. With both lower-income and middle-class people now unable to afford this basic necessity–a requirement for security in one’s own home–newspapers in the Northeast are sounding a clarion call to head-off the impending disaster.
The clarion calls follow.
Indeed, the crisis has gotten the attention of Democrats–and some Republicans–in Congress, but an effort to respond was thwarted by yet another GOP Senate filibuster. Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) tried to increase LIHEAP funding all the way back in November, while President Bush proposed cutting it by $379 million. In March, Sen. Sanders offered a budget amendment that would have rescinded the Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest three-tenths of 1 percent of taxpayers and increased LIHEAP funding by $4 billion. Last month, he was the lead sponsor of the Warm in the Winter and Cool in the Summer Act which would double LIHEAP funding, adding $2.5 billion to the program (less than one week’s funding in Iraq). Although President Bush threatened a veto (no surprise there, he has also proposed cutting the weatherization program that helps lower-income families reduce energy consumption over the long-term), there were fifty-two co-sponsors, including thirteen Republicans. Sanders called it a “tripartisan bill” with the majority of Congress, the nation’s governors, AARP and others on board.
But when it came time to vote on the legislation on July 26, there were only fifty votes to end a Republican filibuster–ten shy of the sixty needed to bring the bill to the floor for a vote. The GOP wanted “a vote on legislation that would open up the continental shelf to oil drilling.”
“I understand the games that are played in Washington, but it doesn’t make the obstruction tactics any less revolting,” Sanders said following the vote. “This is life or death. People are dying in the summer heat. People will freeze to death this winter.”
While Republicans continue to push drilling as their election year elixir, real pain, real lives, and real security are ignored.
Ignoring real people in favor of Big Corpora is the way the Repugs roll. People are going to die, or continue to die, because of them.
Even if we vote the bastards out on election day it will be too late for some folks.
I heated my home exclusively with wood for eighteen years, starting the day I found out that the less propane I bought, the more it cost. Wood heat is awful. They say wood heats you twice, when you carry it as well as when you burn it.
Bullshit.
By the time you drive way out in the woods, fall the trees, limb 'em, buck 'em, pile the slash, load the truck and unload the truck many times, split and stack the wood, only then do you get to tote it into the house bit by bit and burn it, but by then you have been warmed many, many times. Not to mention constantly cleaning detritus from around the hearth and shoveling snow off the woodpile and access to it.
When you take into account wear and tear on your truck, tires (pine forest fuelwood access roads are not kind to them), chainsaw, clothes, gloves, boots, your body, etc., the time involved, the extra soap and mayonnaise, and on and on, you save money over buying the wood, but it still costs.
If you buy your firewood, it costs nearly as much as heating with gas, which is what I have done since the gas came in. I still keep a supply of wood for the inevitable power outages when the electrically powered gas furnace won't work.
Having just said that wood heat sucks, if the price of natural gas goes up by 67% as predicted in the above article, now that I'm on a fixed income I may have to go back to it. We will see.
I'm still fit enough to lay in my own firewood and feel lucky to be so, but I don't care how physically able the folks in the oil-burning areas are, they can't pump their own heating oil. They're just pretty much screwed.
I hope they remember who's doin' the screwin' on election day.
Poke the Bear
Click for a bigger target
1. WH has started to panic over a July 9 meeting & Rove/McCain's Political Advice To Repub of Georgia
Nice going, you fucking morons. Again.
2. Crisis in the Caucasus: Ultimately, it is all about oil
Christmas came early this year for Vladimir Putin.
3. Pootie-Poot Comes Home to Roost
Truthout
In a letter written in 1648, Swedish statesman Axel Oxenstierna, chancellor to both King Gustavus Adolphus and Queen Christina, counseled, "Know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed."
No shit.
How we deal ...
Digby looks at how we deal with all of the illegal immigrants who are 'detained' by the U.S. Government. Whatever bit of the 'moral high ground' we still controlled has now slipped away:
Today's must read. I overslept again so I'll see yas tonight. Off to work. Thank fucking god it's Friday ...
...
Neiwert goes on to describe what happens to these kids. Think the worst and you would be right.
It's just as awful in its own way when they "keep the families together" --- in prison camps:
...
Today's must read. I overslept again so I'll see yas tonight. Off to work. Thank fucking god it's Friday ...
Thursday, August 14, 2008
Get us the fuck out of here ...
Maru:
US troops want America-hating Islamocommiedefeatoterristfistjabber Black Hussein Osama for President. Bonus: if not him, then Ron Paul, who isn't even running anymore.
...
Quote of the Day - Drei
Our buddy (and fellow New Yorker) Creature:
John McCain would like Americans to forget that we're already mired in two wars as he pushes for a third.
I'd like to have ...
A private conversation with Jerome Corsi. Won't take long, just about 45 seconds, and afterward we would never have to hear or read his drivel* again.
People like Corsi are lower than lawyers, real estate agents, and used car salesmen. It's one thing spinning for your candidate, it's another printing up outright lies about his opponent and trying to pass them off as truth.
... "Jerome Corsi is a discredited liar who is peddling another piece of garbage to continue the Bush-Cheney politics he helped perpetuate four years ago," ...
People like Corsi are lower than lawyers, real estate agents, and used car salesmen. It's one thing spinning for your candidate, it's another printing up outright lies about his opponent and trying to pass them off as truth.
*That's because I'd break all his fingers with a hammer and arrange it so he eats the rest of his meals through a straw.
Thai slave laborers freed in El Monte become U.S. citizens
LATimes
Holy shit. That line made me tear up a little.
I was gonna make some partisan point about Ms. Clinton taking the name of the President under whom she was freed after the labor laws against slavery went unenforced during Bush I's reign, but I think it's just her married name so I can't do that. Drat!
Welcome to American citizenship, ladies. You sure as shit paid for it.
Maliwan Clinton recalls her first taste of America with a shudder. In this fabled land of the free, she was enslaved behind razor wire and around-the-clock guards in an El Monte sweatshop, where she and more than 70 other Thai laborers were forced to work 18-hour days for what amounted to less than a dollar an hour.
The El Monte case drew international attention, blazed new paths in immigration and labor law, led to legislation offering visas for victims of human trafficking and became the subject of an exhibit in the Smithsonian Institution.
The case marked the first time in federal court that garment workers successfully held manufacturers and retailers responsible for the actions of their labor contractor.
It was the shocking nature of modern-day slavery in such a nondescript American neighborhood that so riveted the nation, Su said.
Ultimately, law enforcement officers arrested eight operators of a Chinese Thai garment sweatshop in an early morning raid in August 1995 and freed 72 Thai immigrants, some of whom had been held captive for at least four years.
Clinton and the Chuai Ngans said that whatever travails they endured here, their American journeys have been well worth taking.
Holy shit. That line made me tear up a little.
I was gonna make some partisan point about Ms. Clinton taking the name of the President under whom she was freed after the labor laws against slavery went unenforced during Bush I's reign, but I think it's just her married name so I can't do that. Drat!
Welcome to American citizenship, ladies. You sure as shit paid for it.
McCain sends Lieberman and Graham to Georgia
Click to McBiggen
The Lonesome Mongoose, link from this headline at BuzzFlash:
Is it just us or are Graham and Lieberman the Larry and Curly to McCain's Moe?
Not a fair comparison - The Three Stooges had more socially redeeming qualities.
But considering that one of the main lines of attack Republicans are pushing against Obama these days is that he’s presumptuously declared himself president before Election Day, it’s a little curious that the GOP nominee thinks sending campaign surrogates to visit the war is a good idea.
This has nothing to do with that. They're going there to clean up after Scheunemann's promises to Georgia that the U.S. would have their back if they put down the separatists in S. Ossetia fell through. Or maybe Georgia stopped payment on the check.
McCain: Obama Is Too Smart To Be President
IWR
No shit, but that'll happen about the time we're dodgin' falling excreta from aviating porcines.
Click McConehead
John McCain today said that his opponent Barack Obama is "too smart to be president".
"We don't need another wise guy like Bill Clinton to balance the budget and make the economy grow.
What America really needs is four more years with a backslapping clown like me winking and schmoozing with all my Washington insider pals like David Broder, Cokey Roberts and Wolf Blitzer.
My reporter buddies don't give a rats ass about my connections to the oil industry, my nine mansions or my $800 pair of Bruno Magli shoes with the solid gold taps.
All they care about is being invited to those exclusive cocktail parties with all the powerbrokers.
If the Washington insider press was really on the ball they might figure out who the real elitists are," said McCain to a standing ovation by the Washington Press Corps.
No shit, but that'll happen about the time we're dodgin' falling excreta from aviating porcines.
I'm Sigmund Freud, and I Approve This Message
Paul Waldman
A fat lot McCain knows! I'm for Obama and it takes two hands to lift my, er, tire gauge...
Meanwhile, McCain himself was sent out to pose in front of working oil rigs, to testify to his thirst for pulling more black gold from the earth. The message couldn't be plainer: See that itty-bitty, little tire gauge? If you vote for Obama, that's how big your penis is. If you vote for McCain, on the other hand, your penis is as big as this rig, thrusting its gigantic shaft in and out of the ground! Real men think keeping your tires inflated is for weenies.
A fat lot McCain knows! I'm for Obama and it takes two hands to lift my, er, tire gauge...
Dualquote of the Day
Both from The Rude One:
And:
Damn, he's good!
Goddamn, Attorney General Michael Mukasey is such a cunt. [...]
And:
If the Rude Pundit had been asked, as Goodling did, "What is it about George W. Bush that makes you want to serve him?" he'd have answered, "He smells like lime and coca leaves."
Damn, he's good!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)