Jerusalem

Here's an ol' gal I've been a fan of for almost (sob...) fifty years. She's been consistent in her outlook all this time too.

This is the second one today in Italian. Don't ask me why.

Milano 2008

Joan esegue la nota canzone di Steve Earle. Teatro Smeraldo, 11 ottobre 2008

Some of the Lyrics

I woke up this mornin' and none of the news was good
And death machines were rumblin' 'cross the ground where Jesus stood
And the man on my TV told me that it had always been that way
And there was nothin' anyone could do or say

But I believe there'll come a day when the lion and the lamb
Will lie down in peace together in Jerusalem

Not to be a smartass, but they could do that now. What matters is will they both get up. Not yet.

And there'll be no barricades then
There'll be no wire or walls
And we can wash all this blood from our hands
And all this hatred from our souls

It's a nice thought.

Joan Baez

Like fingernails on a blackboard ...

Nancy Pfotenhauer. Ick ...

Quote of the Day

Digby:

One of the most sickening things we have had to endure during this election season has been the sight of Wolf Blitzer sitting across a desk from Glenn Beck and "interviewing" him as if he weren't a cretinous, mouth-breathing, talk radio hack. So, it's good news that Beck is leaving for the far more lucrative wingnut welfare ghetto at Fox, where he belongs.

...

Amen and hallelujah! God what an asshole.

Lynn Drury

Even a blind pig finds an acorn sometimes. I was watching Emmylou videos and found The Tipsy Chicks in 'Related Videos' covering one of her songs. That led me to Lynn Drury, whom I hadn't heard of. I watched several of her vids and chose this one because I thought y'all might like it and, well, because I like sweaty girls. As in 'Don't sweat the petty stuff. Pet the sweaty stuff.'

Here's all ya need to know about her:

San Vito di Cadore Blues Festival

Cantautrice residente a New Orleans, Lynn Drury possiede uno stile e una tonalità vocale sensuale e potente che è stata accostata ad artisti quali Lucinda Williams, Bonnie Raitt, Rickie Lee Jones, Janis Joplin, e anche Norah Jones. Questa ragazza originaria del Mississippi si è affermata sulla scena musicale di New Orleans ed oltre, unendo le sonorità funky tipiche della città con le proprie radici rurali creando uno stile personale che esce da ogni facile classificazione. Lynn ha suonato al New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, al French Quarter Festival e attraverso tutto il sud degli Stati Uniti.

Her guitar picker is Roberto Luti. Enjoy.



Thanks to BonanzaJellybn.

"We're votin' for the nigger"

Sulekha.com

Here is an interesting piece on the voting preferences of western Pennsylvanians who local Congressman John Murtha described matter-of-factly as racist. An excerpt:

So a canvasser goes to a woman's door in Washington, Pennsylvania. Knocks. Woman answers. Knocker asks who she's planning to vote for. She isn't sure, has to ask her husband who she's voting for. Husband is off in another room watching some game. Canvasser hears him yell back, "We're votin' for the n***er!"

Woman turns back to canvasser, and says brightly and matter of factly: "We're voting for the n***er."

In this economy, racism is officially a luxury. How is John McCain going to win if he can't win those voters? John Murtha's "racist" western Pennsylvania district, where this story takes place, is some of the roughest turf in the nation. But Barack Obama is on the ground and making inroads due to unusually strong organizing leadership.

Voters who still call black people niggers are unlikely to be abashed about stating their true voting preferences, so perhaps this Bradley effect people talk about is not as widespread as I fear it is.

Makes ya wanta laugh and cry at the same time, but I guess they can say what they want as long as they vote for him.

I have my own theory about the 'Bradley effect' that I haven't heard anywhere else. Here it is:

California is split into two culturally distinct regions, Northern California and Southern California. I was born and raised in the latter and now live in the former, about half my life spent in each. To a greater or lesser degree, the folks in NorCal are somewhat snobbish towards SoCal and look down their noses at it as being nekulturny. The fact that there is very little basis in fact for this is immaterial.

I think maybe there's a parallel between New York City and Upstate New York that's similar. I also think NY and CA have more in common than either would like to admit re the cultural divide between the fast talkin' city slickers and the dumbass country fucks. I've been both, so I ain't takin' sides! But I digress.

The folks in SoCal couldn't care less, are maybe not even aware of the Northerners' attitude. They think Frisco is, like, way cool. I think that pisses the NorCalians off even more.

Tom Bradley was a SoCal man, and I think he got beat out of the governorship by a negative reaction from NorCal voters as much as, maybe more than, by his skin color, as in, "Us superior beings up here ain't votin' fer no cultural barbarian from down there, nosiree! Won't do at all, ain't happenin'."

Yes, there are racists in California, just like everywhere. And just like everywhere, most of 'em are white. We are also a Pacific Rim melting pot, many skin shades, many languages (many delicious foods too!). I think you can take your driver's license exam in Tagalog if you need to, as well as many other languages. Watch a Chinaman, say, interact with a Sikh, say, after a fenderbender sometime, ostensibly in English. Heh. I'll take a large popcorn, please!

Just my take. Please comment.

Bush's library

Click to increase toxicity

Kos

We would love to give proper attribution for this sneak preview of the Bush Library, but it arrived, like so many others circulating by e-mail, absent of any clue as to authorship. Our thanks to the unknown originator, and special thanks to Betty Layport Feher for the glorious idea we’ve rendered above -- of housing the Bush Library in a FEMA trailer.

The Library will include:

Go see.

Geiger's 'toons

Videos too! Go see!

Repug voter registration fraud

With all the Repug BS about ACORN, here's a little real voter registration fraud. LATimes.

Dozens of newly minted Republican voters say they were duped into joining the party by a GOP contractor with a trail of fraud complaints stretching across the country.

Voters contacted by The Times said they were tricked into switching parties while signing what they believed were petitions for tougher penalties against child molesters. Some said they were told that they had to become Republicans to sign the petition, contrary to California initiative law. Others had no idea their registration was being changed.

It is a bait-and-switch scheme familiar to election experts. The firm hired by the California Republican Party -- a small company called Young Political Majors, or YPM, which operates in several states -- has been accused of using the tactic across the country.

In Massachusetts, former YPM worker Angela McElroy testified at a legislative hearing in 2004that she had tricked voters into signing a ballot measure to ban gay marriage. She said she told voters they were signing in favor of a measure to allow alcoholic drinks to be sold in supermarkets.

I threw that paragraph in just because I was in a liquor store in Massachusetts once. I thought it was a supermarket. The place was effin' huge! We have nothing in California that compares. But we can get booze in our markets.

Local prosecutors are investigating the complaints, but where's the FBI in all this? Oh, that's right, they work for the Repugs. Too busy 'investigating' pretty much spurious allegations against the Democrats.

IOKIYAR.

McCarthy much?

Insane twit Michelle Bachmann thinks members of Congress should have the degree of their Americanism investigated. Haven't we been down this road? What's next; a call for Prohibition?

Great thanks to Watertiger for the vid.

Update:

Montag:

Sometimes Republicans are our best friends

And don't take my word for it, following the appearance of noted Republican scum puppy Michelle Bachmann on Hardball, her opponent Elwyn Tinklenberg received $438,346.57 in donations (probably higher now).

...

Keep talking, honey.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Emmylou Harris, Levon Helm, & Sheryl Crow - Evangeline

"Liberals haven't had so much fun in decades"

Rosa Brooks with today's recommended read.

Maybe most fun of all, we're getting to watch a steady procession of rats leaving the sinking GOP ship.

She rattles off a list of the usual suspects.

For liberals initially alarmed by McCain's brief post-convention poll bounce, this was fun. And as conservative disdain spread to the whole GOP ticket, the fun got even funner.

But enjoyable as it's been to watch conservatives flee from the GOP, something about all this leaves me feeling a little down. Because as the more respectable, literate conservatives distance themselves from the GOP, increasingly, the only ones left on the right are paranoid, rage-driven, xenophobic nuts. Bitter? You betcha! Twisted too! (my em)

Even for a liberal, it's painful to watch. Once, the GOP proudly claimed to be the "party of ideas." They weren't generally good ideas, it's true -- but they were ideas eloquently defended by men and women who believed it was their duty to study history, philosophy, science, economics and international relations and to do the intellectual heavy lifting needed to try to persuade smart people with different views to come around to their way of thinking. That was the GOP nurtured by conservative intellectuals such as William Buckley. Buckley was many things liberals didn't admire, but he wasn't ignorant, savage or stupid by choice.

But today, as the last few sober grown-ups leave the party, the visible face of the GOP increasingly looks like that of the people who shout "kill him!" when Obama's name comes up, who speak of black men they don't like as "uppity" or as "boys," who think you can't trust a Muslim or an Arab, who think talking about "Barack Hussein Osama" is witty and (I'm talking to you, Sarah Palin and John McCain) who claim Obama "pals around with terrorists."

This isn't really that funny anymore.

Watching it happen isn't really funny, well, OK, sometimes it is, but it's fun and we've got it coming after however many years of Repug mis-rule.

What's painful and disturbing is the low caliber of those the Repugs have left. With any luck they'll crawl back under their rocks 'til I'm past caring.

GOP acuses ACORN of stealing their ideas

CLG

WASHINGTON -- (PTSD News) -- The Republican party has launched a major attack against ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, charging them with trying to steal the election for Barack Obama. “Their conduct is outrageous,” said Steve Schmidt of the McCain campaign, “we have worked so hard to steal this election fair and square that to have this group of pipsqueak upstarts trying to steal it back is beyond the pale.”

Senator John McCain, the Republican presidential candidate, said, “if I lose this election, it will be because ACORN stole the election for that one.”

“The most amazing aspect about ACORN is all the press this is generating,” said Miriam Montana of the media watchdog group, Sterling Consulting. “There has not been one provable case of an actual fraudulent vote caused by ACORN," Montana said, "yet there was practically no press when there was credible evidence that the last two presidential elections were stolen by the Republicans with voter caging, black box voting irregularities and other voter suppression tactics that stole millions of votes. "I guess these days it is OK if you steal big,” Montana continued. "Just look at the financial crisis and the bank bailout. If you steal a loaf of bread and get caught, you go to jail. If you steal the bakery, you get more dough.”

When asked about the voter fraud charges against ACORN, Karl Rove said, “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”

Satire, yes, but exactly the reason we need an overwhelming voter turnout to give Obama a big enough margin of victory that they can't steal it. Stealing 1% of the votes was easy when a 1% margin was all they were trying for and all that mattered. Stealing 6%, maybe even 3%, is beyond their abilities, even as considerable in that regard as they are .

40 Years Ago Today: Why the Smith and Carlos Legacy Lingers

Racism is, sadly, alive and well in this country, and has even raised its ugly head in the Brain today, let alone at McKlan moron rallies. Read this by Dave Zirin.

It lasted for only as long as it took to play the National Anthem, and yet it's lasted for four decades. The image of Tommie Smith and John Carlos, their black-gloved fists raised to the heavens on October 16th, 1968 at the Mexico City Olympics, has somehow grown in power over the last 40 years. Unlike other iconography from the 1960s – Woodstock, Abbie Hoffman, Dick Nixon – the moment isn't musty. It has retains its ability to pack a punch. Go up to Harlem and street merchants still sell t-shirts of the medal stand moment on the corner stands. [...]

There are several reasons I believe this moment has retained its power. The most obvious is that people love a good redemption song. Smith and Carlos were standing up against racism in both sport and society. They wanted South Africa and Rhodesia banned from the games for their apartheid politics. They wanted more black coaches. They wanted International Olympic Committee President Avery Brundage held accountable for his open and virulent racism. They wanted Muhammad Ali – "the warrior saint of the black athlete's revolt" – to have his title restored. And they were reviled for taking their stand and using the Olympic podium to do it. But these "radical" demands have since been proven prescient and Smith and Carlos have made the journey over four decades from receiving countless death threats and being athletic pariahs to having statues unveiled in their honor. Quite an adventure: one that says more about our collective journey than theirs.

But there are other less backward-looking reason the black gloves have retained their power: Smith and Carlos sacrificed privilege and glory for a larger purpose. They left fame and money on the table because of a higher calling. As John Carlos said to me, "A lot of the athletes thought that winning medals would supercede or protect them from racism. But even if you won the medal it ain't going to save your momma. It ain't going to save your sister or children. It might give you 15 minutes of fame, but what about the rest of your life?"

This resonates because we still live in a world where racism is still very real. If hurricane Katrina taught us nothing else, it's that for every Barack Obama and Condi Rice, there remain countless communities where poverty and institutional racism create graveyards of agony.

Much more.

I could swear I heard somebody say the other day that 1968 doesn't matter any more. Well, it does to those of us who remember it.

Here's the dirty little secret about racism that nobody talks about: it will flourish until people stop teaching their children to hate.

The Great Republican Crack-up of 2008

Brent Budowsky

I am pretty partial to Hemingway, but this campaign is very F. Scott Fitzgerald. It is the great Republican crack-up of 2008, and in this drama, the great truth is this: McCain is Boris Karloff, from the horror movies of old, Obama is Tony Bennett, the wonderful crooner of smooth, with one of the great presidential temperaments of our times. This election will be won by a man of great presidential temperament, against a man of great and uncontrollable temper he cannot even attempt to hide.

It is the great Republican crack-up of 2008. Republican economics brings the nation to the brink. Republican fearmongering erodes the very confidence essential to the markets while turning off whole swaths of independent voters. A Republican president, whom McCain supported 90 percent of the time, disappears during an economic crisis, sneaking into fundraisers through the back door to hide his support of his anointed heir from voters who demand powerful change.

While McCain looks like Boris Karloff in the movies, dishing sludge in all directions, we now see endangered Republicans trying to distance from the disaster, even saying friendly words about Obama while the sludge dump continues from the top of the ticket, and the ridiculously unqualified power abuser from Alaska, having finally ended her lie to nowhere about the Bridge to Nowhere, continues to inflame the angry rightist base of the Republican Party that is so radically out of touch with the heart and soul of Middle America.

McCain even uses the debate to attack and demean the concerns of women for their very health on the matter of abortion. What kind of angry, out-of-touch, strange kind of attack is this? Trivializing, demeaning, ridiculing and insulting women concerned about their health on the most important decision of their lives?

It is conservative Chris Buckley who gets to the heart of the matter: Obama has a truly presidential temperament, while McCain has a truly extreme temper, and after eight years of Bush, the nation prefers the smooth and urbane crooner who talks of serious things in serious ways, to the angry face that is all that remains of Republican rule in a nation that yearns to turn the page and leave this past behind.

Please read the rest. It is music to the ears.

Leave us not forget, however, this thing ain't over yet. Complacency kills.

Nine perfect ways to prepare for the End of Bush

Mark Morford

It is the thing That Can Barely Be Named, the Great Unspoken, the impossible truth that feels too good to be true and hence few dare actually mention it aloud lest it somehow vanish and time reverses itself and the devil snorts and chuckles and reveals his grand, horrible joke, and suddenly it's 2001 all over again. Please, no screaming.

Can you sense it? Do you feel the deep tingle? Because amid the fiscal meltdown and Obama's stunning poll numbers and the stress of the election, this staggering fact: George W. Bush is nearly done. He will soon be gone forever, America's most spectacularly incompetent footnote, the oily residue left on the pavement after his administration's giant Hummer of ineptitude is finally hauled to the crusher.

It is, to put it mildly, a bizarre feeling. Surreal. Disorienting. After all, the nightmare has lasted so long. This wound has been raw and open for years.

So then, I have made a quick inventory, a short preparatory checklist of things you can do, right now, to get ready for the magnificent shift, the massive exhale of thanksitude. Because no matter how bleak and tense it all seems right now, just remember: He can never be president again. God, my fingertips quiver just writing that.

1) Make new travel plans. Yes, the dollar has been gutted. Yes, a small espresso and a day-old sourdough baguette on the rue du Cherche-Midi will cost you 97 dollars. But if you can afford it, now is the time to plan a new European jaunt.

Why? Easy: No more foreigners scowling at you. No more shameful hiding of your nationality. No more telling that hot barista you're from Canada and instead confessing, with even a tiny hint of Obama-infused national pride, "I'm American," and then not apologizing and feeling that sickly sense of mortification. Incredible.

5) Get ready to pray. To Shiva, to Shakti, to Astarte and Allah and Buddha and Jesus and the Great Mother and whatever divine energy you like that the Dems don't completely botch it, get just as power-drunk and monomaniacal as their GOP counterparts, and squander what's shaping up to be an astonishing opportunity to reshape the American experiment.

Fact: the neocons and the evangelicals had a stranglehold on the U.S. government for six solid years, and they very nearly destroyed the country. The good news is, there is nowhere for the Dems to go but up. They can't possibly do worse. The bad news is, even with a brilliant, steady, unflappable President Obama at the helm, they could sure as hell try.

6) God is dead. Or rather, the Repub's particularly cruel version, a gloomy, tyrannical, guilt-slingin' God from Colorado Springs who loved war and smacked up women's rights and pretended to tolerate gay people even while hating "what they do," a God who snorted the Republican agenda like it was cheap meth in a Denver motel room, has proven to be a complete failure, an abomination of divine connection. Translation: God is not what they say, and She never was.

I have no suggestion here. Please feel free to invent your own.

8) Gratitude. Cultivate it. Celebrate it. You survived. Check that: You survived, barely. To be sure, the accident was awful. The crash was bloody and hellish, far worse than anyone expected. Tens of thousands dead. Hotbeds of terrorism now even hotter. Fewer jobs, more homelessness, more fear, prisons overflowing, banks failing.

So then. Is it not time to feel thankful? That you're still here? That we made it all the way to rock bottom, and we're still breathing? How about that you're still reading these words, right now, and I'm still here to write them, and we still have this connection, this tenuous lifeline of thought and discourse and humor, even as the imps of dread and conservative numbness tried for years to block it, derail it, shut it all down?

9) See them there, receding, sliding back into the Void with a wail and a whimper. Prepare, at long last, to wave goodbye.

More, and since the title of his column is "Sodomy and Gratitude", I'll leave you, dear reader, to find out for yourself. Heh.

Since I'm not exactly the sensitive, caring type that Mr. Morford is, my idea of 'waving goodbye' to Bush would be to do so in a spirit of vengeful justice just as his feet disappear through the trapdoor on a short final trip to Hell.

It's personal ...

So last night, we got a very special troll here at the Brain. An idiot who knows me personally. Or should I say, a coward who knows me personally.

Now, I give a shit what people say about me and lord knows, people have said shit about me here. That's fine, but I do take exception with posting my friend's address here while calling Gordon out.

Gordan/moron/ meet me at [address removed - F] ASK FIXER HE KNOWS WHERE IT IS!ANYTIME IS FINE!!!

My old boss Harry does not need the hassle and whatever you have to say about me, clown, does not involve Harry. If I let Harry know about it, he'll hand you your ass.

Being that you know me, how come you've never said anything to my face? Now that you ran your mouth, how come you didn't stop where I work now (you can see it from Harry's) and repeat your bullshit in person? You are a coward, worse because you involved someone who has no reason to be. It's horseshit.

In your comments you impugn my integrity as well:

You should burn in hell for turning on the friends that helped and paid you way to where you are now,half breed!

Let me just say that no one pays my way for anything. Anything Harry gave me in compensation was well earned (and an aside, what I made at Harry's wouldn't allow me to live). Anything I have I bought myself.

Secondly, I don't turn on my friends, otherwise I would have left Harry's a year ago, when our lives got really hectic. I would have told Nunzio thanks but no thanks when he called me a couple weeks ago. Harry is a stand up guy who would have told me (to my face) if he felt I was screwing him in some way. You know nothing.

You know me well enough to call me 'half-breed' and worse.

you are a ni----- and we know it and where you are,and will take you when we want know how does it feel 666 you are mine

Is that supposed to be an insult? Is that supposed to humiliate me in front of my readers? It certainly doesn't scare me. I've been called worse by better.

Yes, I am of mixed race. My father was a British subject of Jamaican ancestry, and it is irrelevant. Look at me. I'm a white guy. I have never had the 'black experience', never been judged for my skin color before I opened my mouth and I am singularly unqualified to speak on that subject. True, I've never mentioned it before here because it is irrelevant.

I'm proud of my heitage and do not deny it. My grandfather was the law magistrate for St. Catherine's Parish and I am the great grandnephew of Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning. My grandmother's name was Alice Barrett. I am also descended from the first Earl of Knutson, but all that is irrelevant as well.

So, fool, instead of subjecting my readers to your insane drivel, why don't you stop up at Nunzio's on Monday and we'll straghten this all out, man to coward? Or maybe I should stop by your house? When you're sleeping at 2 in the morning? Sit next to you on your bed? Should I wake you up before I cut your balls off (if someone hasn't done it already) or should I surprise you?

You see, dumbass that you are, all visits here are recorded, along with the GPS coordinates of where you posted from (along with a lot of other information). I know who you are. I know where you live. And when you least expect it, I'm gonna come down on your ass. How smart do you feel now, dickhead? See me Monday or you'll never have another good night's sleep again.

Todd Palin's Past Political Associations A Likely Security Clearance Disqualifier

Frank Naif

Although Sarah Palin smack talks Barack Obama for "palling around with terrorists," it turns out that the Palin family has its own history of palling around with Alaska's own unique brand of America-haters. Palin's husband Todd was once an actual member of the secessionist Alaskan Independence Party (AIP). Palin herself was not a member of AIP -- but many AIP luminaries claim her as a kindred spirit and "one of their own."

Which gets us back to Todd Palin. From the security officer's perspective, Todd Palin the hypothetical applicant should be truthful and disclose his former association with AIP on the SF 86 in Section 29, Association Record. And because AIP has been associated with the Revolutionary Government of Iran, he probably should also disclose his AIP membership on Section 20, Foreign Activities.

How would government security officials who administer the security clearance process view the facts of Todd Palin's association with AIP? The answer is not clear cut, but his involvement in a secessionist party with foreign and violent connections would inject serious doubts about his security suitability. At best, the AIP association would raise questions that might be resolved favorably with further investigative work. However, many security officials would likely view the AIP association negatively -- especially the Iranian connection -- and deny Todd Palin a clearance.

So the Palin family is associated with a political party hostile to America in word and deed. That's a matter of record that has real impact on established norms in the national security community. According to the laws and processes that help protect national security, actually joining a fringe, gun-toting, anti-government party indicates a potential risk of disloyalty, or worse.

So, let me see if I get this - we got a potential veep who is the most likely one to ascend to the presidency in our lifetime who may not be qualified from a security clearance standpoint to know what's going on? That about it?

An airhead in charge who's not allowed to know what's going on. Except for a few details, it sounds like the preznit we got now. More of the same.

Bwahahahaha!

Update:

David Neiwert weighs in on this as well:

But "guilt by association," by definition, involves an entirely irrelevant association (which describes the William Ayers "connection" to a T). Palin's associations with the "Patriot" right, however, are entirely relevant, because they reflect directly on her conduct as a public official and her judgment. They also, I should add, reflect on a deeper level the kind of right-wing populism she's been indulging in recent weeks.

Recession ...

Not all of us are hurting ...

Thank you, Mr. Bush.

Class warfare ...

Maybe it is time for torches and pitchforks:

Whenever anyone points out that what the Republicans are doing is hurting the non-rich classes, they accuse us of class warfare. And it would be, if we were storming their castles with torches and pitchforks. But that usually only happens after the rich have so successfully won their own side of the class war that the peasants feel they have no other choice than to take back what's been stolen from them. Rich conservatives have been waging vicious and devastating class warfare against Americans for 30 years, and it's long past time they were called on it.

...

They've taken a lot from us over the past decade.

Blow his doors off, Daddy!

Much better making your daughter squeal with delight in bumper cars with silly fun driving than driving the country off a cliff from the Oval Office like Bush or McCain.

Click to embiggen

The Obamas are a very nice looking all-American family. Go see the rest of the slide show.