Nuked twice ...

And lived for 60-odd years to tell about it. Amazing. Bet he doesn't have to turn on the light when he goes to the can at night. Heh ...

Do not try this at home! But if you do, FILM IT!

I think this is course material from Fixer & Gordon's School Of Happy Motoring! Smoke 'em if ya got 'em! Tires, that is...

Mountain ~ Mississippi Queen

Thanks to TipTucker01. Sounds like a guy who enjoys lap dances, huh?

Saturday Woody Guthrie Skiffle Music Blogging

Skiffle King Lonnie Donegan and his group play the Woody Guthrie song Grand Coulee Dam in 1957. Who said that folk-rock began in the late-1960s? (With Jimmy Currie, lead guitar; Mickey Ashman, bass...

I think Mr. Donegan is mostly remembered in the U.S. by us olde phartes for 'Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour On The Bedpost Overnight?'.

Thanks to lupine22(UK).

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Emmylou Harris, Mary Chapin Carpenter, & Sheryl Crow, with Marty Stuart ~ Flesh and Blood

Thanks to hansenlucia, Netherlands

A romp through the Republican ... budget?

P.M. Carpenter

They took the bait. Assorted commentators, Democratic pols of varying convictions and no less than the faux-appalled president himself kept taunting the GOP to commit the exceptionally stupid, and they -- the now-hapless remnants of the once-powerfully propagandistic House Republicans, anyway -- stepped right up and did it.

Yeah, man! They bent over to pick up that shiny nickel and BOO-YAH! Up their own wazoo...

What difference would numbers have made? I mean, just how does one quantify, "We haven't a bloody clue"? How does one numerically characterize, "Jesus, this just dawned on us -- We can't believe we fell for this trick"? Just how, in heaven's name, can one slap a cold, impersonal figure on the red-faced human realization, "Oops, we're more stunningly hapless than we -- even you -- thought"?

I'll also offer Republicans a little sincere advice: Go away. Just go away for a long, long while. Grab whatever cash you have in the RNC account and hasten thee to a faraway exotic spa, or go on a year-long drunk, or simply hide yourselves at home, shutter the blinds, and shut the f*ck up.

It's not your critics doing you harm. It's you and your non-budgeting budgets which advocate spending freezes during a deep freeze. It's Dick Cheney running around defending torture and denouncing social progress. It's Sarah Palin babbling about deficiently prayerful McCainites. It's your Cantors and Pences and Boehners looking and sounding so insufferably goofy. It's Michael Steele strategizing with God but genuflecting before Rush. For those fond of reifying brevity, it can even be just two words: Michele Bachmann.

Come on, boys. Give it a merciful rest.

I like to read Carpenter, but this time I must disagree with him.

You Repugs must not 'give it a rest'! Please, oh please keep dope-slappin' yerselves stupid, bitchez! I haven't had this much fun in years and I deserve every last laugh I can get outta you irrelevant clowns.

HEIDI, A Modern rendition of the classic Tale....

I got this from my old school pal Steve:

[Heidi is the proprietor of a bar in Berlin. In order to increase sales, she decides to allow her loyal customers - most of whom are unemployed alcoholics - to drink now but pay later. She keeps track of the drinks consumed on a ledger (thereby granting the customers loans).

Word gets around and as a result increasing numbers of customers flood into Heidi's bar.

Taking advantage of her customers' freedom from immediate payment constraints, Heidi increases her prices for wine and beer, the most-consumed beverages. Her sales volume increases massively.

A young and dynamic customer service consultant at the local bank recognizes these customer debts as valuable future assets and increases Heidi's borrowing limit.

He sees no reason for undue concern because he has the promissory notes of Heidi's customers as collateral.

At the bank's corporate headquarters, expert bankers transform these customer assets into DRINKBONDS, ALKBONDS and PUKEBONDS. These securities are then sold and traded on markets worldwide. No one really understands what these abbreviations mean and how the securities are guaranteed. Nevertheless, as their prices continuously climb, the securities become top-selling items.

One day, although the prices are still climbing, a risk manager of the bank, (subsequently fired due his negativity), decided that the time has come to start demanding payment from Heidi for the debts incurred by the drinkers at Heidi's bar.

Unfortunately Heidi's customers cannot pay back any of their debts to Heidi.

Heidi cannot fulfill her loan obligations to the bank and claims bankruptcy.

DRINKBOND and ALKBOND drop in price by 95 %. PUKEBOND performs better, stabilizing in price after dropping by only 80%.

The suppliers of Heidi's bar, having granted her generous payment terms and also having invested in the securities are faced with a new and desperate situation. Her wine supplier claims bankruptcy and her beer supplier is taken over by a competitor.

The bank is saved by the Government following dramatic round-the-clock consultations by leaders from the governing political parties. They came up with a miraculous rescue plan that saved the bank.

The funds required for this massive rescue are obtained by levying a new tax on all the non-drinkers.

We all all soo happy that this is just a Fairy Tale...]

Aren't we though...

Historic water. And I was there...grrrr

The Yew-nited States Marine Corps did something yesterday that they haven't done for over forty years: they pissed me off. Not the frustrated, disappointed, goddammit-who's-runnin'-this-chickenshit-outfit kind of pissed off that ya couldn't do nothin' about back then anyway because they owned your young ass, but the smoldering, fuming kind ya can't do nothin' about either.

I was reading my dead tree copy of Time magazine and ran across an ad with a Marine Corps emblem. I'm still brainwashed, so I read it. It was colorful, but I couldn't find it to reproduce it for you. Here's the money shot:

Live or work at Camp Lejeune before 1987?

Well, hell yeah I did! Way before 1987. 1965-'66, when men were men and rifles had wood in 'em!

You may have been exposed to contaminated drinking water.

Register with the Marine Corps by calling (877) 261-9782 Mon-Fri 8:30 am to 5:00 or by going online to www.marines.mil/clsurvey.

Well, I'm a little leery about 'registering with the Marine Corps'. Been there, done that, got the scars to prove it, but I figured what could possibly go wrong? Hell, I was probably there before water contamination was invented. So I went and 'registered'. Hit the link and go see.

Turns out the time period involved is from 1957-1987, so I was there. I'm not too worried - I didn't drink much water in those days. Beer was cheap and legal for 18-year-olds. I drank the bug juice in the mess hall, but GI koolaid would kill anything, drank water in the field but if the iodine pills didn't kill the bad stuff, the godawful water buffaloes and plastic canteens sure would have, to judge by the taste of the stuff.

So, the Marine Corps is trying to keep me apprised of something that may or may not have happened over forty years ago. That's nice of them. So why am I pissed off to the spring-loaded position?

The effort is called the "Camp Lejeune Historic Drinking Water" project.

Now, around the Brain here, Fixer kids me all the time about my age, calls me 'old man' and stuff like that. While I must admit that when God said 'let there be light!' I was the Duty NCO who threw the switch, I can kid him back with stuff like him not being old enough to have had any nookie with his pants all the way off yet. It goes back and forth, tit for tat. We're both smartass smokers 'n jokers who like one another, and it's all very good-natured. Builds unit cohesion and hopefully entertains people. I like it. It's fun.

But whaddya do when an outfit you revere and gave some of your best years to and came of age in lumps ya in with Old Ironsides (pretty good duty station, btw) by calling the water they gave you to drink 'historic'?

I got this chair I'm sittin' in rockin' so fast in frustration it's startin' ta clank and smoke a little...

Please consider this geezer rant a PSA for those similarly afflicted affected by duty at Lejeune.

In a nutshell ...

Evolution vs. Creation, our buddy 'Nucks makes it real simple. It all comes down to two trees.

Off to work ...

Don't come here ...

Or I'll run you off personally. The reason I give this warning is Fred "The Rotting Cryptkeeper" Phelps and his band of fucked up zombies now seem to have a problem with Walt Whitman:

A church based in Topeka, Kansas, is scheduled to demonstrate next month outside Walt Whitman High School in Bethesda because the school, which opened in 1962, is named for a man who may have been homosexual.

Westboro Baptist Church has been drawing national attention for staging anti-homosexuality demonstrations at military funerals, on the theory that fallen troops are God's punishment for a country tolerant of homosexuals.

...

I hope Marylanders give them a proper 'welcome'.

Now, Walt Whitman's home is about 3 miles from mine. Whitman is a Long Island icon in league with Teddy Roosevelt and we treat his home with the same deference we show at Sagamore Hill.

If Fred wants to show up here to take up an issue with a man dead over a century, I can assure you his reception will not be friendly. His shit might play in Kansas, but Long Island is a long way from home.

Great thanks to Oliver Willis for the WaPo link.

Thought ...

If MSNBC dim bulb Contessa Brewer owns your ass, you know you got nothin':

...

When Contessa Brewer is [mad] at you for not being sufficiently serious, you really have a problem. This got so comical that John Boehner had to admit that he'd get back to everyone with an actual budget sometime later on.

...

As Dday says:

...

Maybe there's a real opportunity for the Green Party once the Republicans truly sink into utter irrelevance?

...

Quote of the Day

Comrade Misfit:

If we are so stupid as a species that we are going to start making terminator robots, then we will richly deserve the consequences.

For Bourdainophiles

I dig the shit outta Tony Bourdain (site). The quintessential Noo Yawk/Joisey smartass, and he knows his shit. I never miss No Reservations.

Q&A: Anthony Bourdain
The bad boy of cooking serves up some straight talk

What is the biggest mistake people make going into the restaurant business?

When you rely entirely on market research, you end up with a three-headed, fur-bearing trout. [...]

No recipes for those, dammit...

What's special about L.A.'s cuisine to you?

I generally love the funky strip mall joints. I love Koreatown. I don't even know the names of the places because I was so drunk when I went. What L.A. does so well, better than anyone else, is the low end.

THAT is no shit! I don't know jack shit about Korean food other than kim chee stinks, but I do know Mexican and L.A.'s got plenty of great out-of-the-way and unpretentious Mexican eatin' places. Anyone who's been to the walk-up window joints Tito's Tacos or El Mexicano, or many, if not most, of the thousands of mama y papa taquerias, will attest to that as well. Not much to look at or write home about, but awfully good food for not havin' wheels under 'em!

Enjoy.

Repug karma has run over their dogma

Gleefully gleeped from YubaNet.

From a Recon Marine in Afghanistan

I have no attribution or provenance for this other than I got it from our pal Bustednuckles, and that's good enough for me.

[It's freezing here. I'm sitting on hard, cold dirt between rocks and shrubs at the base of the Hindu Kush Mountains along the Dar 'yoi Pomir River watching a hole that leads to a tunnel that leads to a cave. Stakeout, my friend, and no pizza delivery for thousands of miles.

I also glance at the area around my butt every ten to fifteen seconds to avoid another scorpion sting. I've actually given up battling the chiggers and sand fleas, but the scorpions give a jolt like a cattle prod. Hurts like a bastard. The antidote tastes like transmission fluid but God bless the Marine Corps for the five vials of it in my pack.

The one truth the Taliban cannot escape is that they are human beings, which means they have to eat food and drink water. That requires couriers and that's where an old bounty hunter like me comes in handy. I track the couriers, locate the tunnel entrances and storage facilities, type the info into the handheld, shoot the coordinates up to the satellite link that tells the air commanders where to drop the hardware, we bash some heads for a while, then I track and record the new movement.

It's all about intelligence. We haven't even brought in the snipers yet. These scurrying rats have no idea what they're in for. We are but days away from cutting off supply lines and allowing the eradication to begin.

I dream of bin Laden waking up to find me standing over him with my boot on his throat as I spit into his face and plunge my nickel plated Bowie knife through his frontal lobe. I've said it before and I'll say it again: This country blows. It's not even a country. There are no roads, there's no infrastructure, there's no government. This is an inhospitable, rock pit shit hole ruled by eleventh century warring tribes. There are no jobs here like we know jobs.

Afghanistan offers two ways for a man to support his family: join the opium trade or join the army. That's it. Those are your options. Oh, I forgot, you can also live in a refugee camp and eat plum-sweetened, crushed beetle paste and squirt mud like a goose with stomach flu if that's your idea of a party. But the smell alone of those 'tent cities of the walking dead' is enough to hurl you into the poppy fields to cheerfully scrape bulbs for eighteen hours a day.

I've been living with these Tajiks and Uzbeks and Turkmen and even a couple of Pushtins for over a month and a half now and this much I can say for sure: These guys, all of 'em, are Huns Actual, living Huns They LIVE to fight. It's what they do. It's ALL they do. They have no respect for anything, not for their families or for each other or for themselves. They claw at one another as a way of life. They play polo with dead calves and force their five-year-old sons into human cockfights to defend the family honor. Huns, roaming packs of savages, heartless beasts who feed on each other's barbarism. Cavemen with AK47's. Then again, maybe I'm just cranky.

I'm freezing my ass off on this stupid hill because my lap warmer is running out of juice and I can't recharge it until the sun comes up in a few hours.

Oh yeah! You like to write letters, right? Do me a favor, Bizarre. Write a letter to CNN and tell Wolf and Anderson and that awful, sneering, pompous Aaron Brown to stop calling the Taliban 'smart.' They are not smart. I suggest CNN invest in a dictionary because the word they are looking for is 'cunning.' The Taliban are cunning, like jackals and hyenas and wolverines. They are sneaky and ruthless and, when confronted, cowardly. They are hateful, malevolent parasites who create nothing and destroy everything else. Smart. Pfft. Yeah, they're real smart.

They've spent their entire lives reading only one book (and not a very good one, as books go) and consider hygiene and indoor plumbing to be products of the devil. They're still figuring out how to work a Bic lighter. Talking to a Taliban warrior about improving his quality of life is like trying to teach an ape how to hold a pen; eventually he just gets frustrated and sticks you in the eye with it.

OK, enough. Snuffie will be up soon so I have to get back to my hole. Covering my tracks in the snow takes a lot of practice but I'm good at it. Please, I tell you and my fellow Americans to turn off the TV sets and move on with your lives.

The story line you are getting from CNN and other news agencies is utter bullshit and designed not to deliver truth but rather to keep you glued to the screen through the commercials. We've got this one under control The worst thing you guys can do right now is sit around analyzing what we're doing over here because you have no idea what we're doing and, really, you don't want to know. We are your military and we are doing what you sent us here to do.

Jack

Recon Marine in Afghanistan
Semper Fi]

Keeping in mind that the only qualifications to be a Recon Marine are the ability to clap your hands, count to four, and run long distances, I will not swear to the authenticity or truth of that, but it's a good story.

Prosecute or Perish

BradBlog with today's 'must read'. Links at site:

Why the survival of our Constitutional Democracy may hinge on factually justified criminal prosecutions of the Bush/Cheney cabal...

"It will remain one of democracy's best jokes that it provided its deadly enemies with the means by which it was destroyed." - Joseph Goebbels

Gradually, as the veil of secrecy lifts, a growing number of Americans are beginning to comprehend the lawlessness of the cabal which seized control of the White House in 2000 in what amounted to a judicially-aided coup d'etat.[i] This lawlessness extended across the board. It included the packing of federal agencies with lobbyists from industries they were designed to regulate, deception to take this nation into a war of choice, fraudulent no-bid contracts, torture, extraordinary rendition, warrantless NSA eavesdropping on the entire stream of domestic electronic communications, and, if Seymour Hersh's recent allegations are accurate, the creation of a highly secretive "executive assassination ring" which reported only to Dick Cheney's office and which had "been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people and executing them and leaving."[ii]

The reaction of leading Democratic politicians to these unprecedented high crimes has been ambivalent, at best. [...]

I believe that sentence to be a masterpiece of understatement. 'Ambivalence' is kinda what the Dems do, though. This time, they gotta sack up and do what must be done.

There are fundamental deficiencies in the President's formulation. First, it is impossible to observe the rule of law without looking back. It would make no sense, for example, for a man charged with armed robbery to come before a judge and say, "Well, the robbery was in the past. You've got to look forward. I have every intention of abiding by the law in the future. So why prosecute me?" Second, looking forward does not mean handling current events at the expense of the rule of law. The point is to look far enough into the future to appreciate that the same people who brought us the last eight years of executive lawlessness could one day return to power...

There's been plenty of times I wish I coulda told a judge that! Wish in one hand...

It's an old motorcyclist's adage that 'the time ya get in trouble is when ya think yer safe'. It's absolutely true and it applies across the board. We thought we were safe after Clinton and let criminals take control of the country. Blatant criminals who barely tried to hide their crimes.

Setting aside the exigencies of having to clean up the disasters the cabal left them, I believe the principle reason stems from a failure to comprehend the true nature of the American hard-right --- a billionaire-funded, well-organized group of anti-egalitarian ideologues. It is a "revolutionary power"[iii] whose agenda is aimed at nothing less than smashing the framework of the American constitutional order. Any doubts as to their radically subversive aims ended with the recent release of a series of Justice Department memos...

The loss of democracy was averted, but only because a right-wing project to remake the federal judiciary had not been completed. [...]

Other set-backs --- Nixon's forced resignation; Iran-Contra convictions --- were followed by Ford's pardon of Nixon and G.H.W. Bush's pardoning of his Iran-Contra co-conspirators. These pardons set a dangerous precedent-impunity-which emboldened the hard-right to return with a vengeance during the Bush/Cheney reign.

Unless the rule of law is restored and applied to the Bush/Cheney cabal, the next time around our constitutional democracy could be lost, forever. The survival of the republic mandates nothing less than criminal investigations and prosecutions not only of war crimes and financial crimes but "crimes against democracy," an apt phrase that should be applied to voter suppression, illegal manipulation of election results and the attempted misuse of the Justice Department to gain partisan advantage.

Note: For those so inclined, they can petition Attorney General Eric Holder to appoint a special prosecutor right here.

Done. You know what to do.

We have to keep this out front and keep pressure on this administration until they realize that the American people know the score and will stand for nothing less than - gasp! - JUSTICE.

And maybe a little vengeance, but that's just me.

"A man of extraordinary vision ...

... and brilliance approaching to genius."

Just in case you've gotten used to Barry, Maru has a list of the vision and brilliance we were subjected to over the past 8 years.

Off to work ...

Get out ...

I agree with Jill. there are a lot of good Texans out there (I just get on Texas because I lived there for a couple years and it seems they have a higher stupid quotient than most states) but there's something in the water that breeds dumbassery.

I know Amanda Marcotte is from Texas. I know there are many fine people in Texas. But this is, after all, the state that gave us not one but TWO Bush presidents, and there are plenty of other states that have barbecue. So I say that if Texas wants to secede and make Chuck Norris its king, please be my guest, especially if you're going to become a breeding ground for willful idiocy ...

The evolution-deniers are at it again. With these people in control of the school board, it's no wonder they are saturated with idiots.

Not a big fan ...

Of Steny Hoyer, but it's nice to see him actually call out the Rethugs' hypocrisy:

Steny Hoyer (D-MD), the number two Democrat in the House has put out a fairly suggestive flyer hammering Republicans in both bodies for their sudden and hypocritical aversion to passing controversial legislation via budget reconciliation ...

It's about time the Dems stand up and tell the American people that the reason substantive legislation can't be passed is not because the Dems can't come up with any, but the Republicans obstructing everything that comes down the pike.

Thanks to Dr. Fez-head for the link.

Stop ...

Yer killin' me. Part 2.

Update:

And a follow-up.

Beware the vegans!

Mark Morford

The evil gay agenda is nearly complete. Who poses the next horrible, godless threat?

This much we know: We gotta have an enemy.

It's just a basic, nation-defining requirement. We must, as a culture, as a people, always find some sort of scapegoat upon which to blame all our ills. It's just how we roll.

Communists had their turn. Feminists. Hippies. Then came the evil homosexual people, with their famous, much-lauded agenda to destroy the holy sanctimony of Christian marriage via encouraging girls to smoke and listen to punk rock, teaching interior decorating to straight boys and convincing innocent church pastors and Republican senators to fellate them in cheap motel rooms. The horror!

Will it be, say, the polyamorists? Vegetarians? Yoga teachers? Polyamorist vegetarian yoga teachers who like anal sex and Ecstasy and really strong coffee? We must ponder. We must find out.

Some possibilities:

There are many, but this one is mine. Heh.

Old people. Oh my God, of course! Generation Boomer is just about to swarm into retirement, destroy Social Security, ruin Medicare and collectively forget where they parked their golf cart. Their nefarious agenda: black socks with sandals, "Mama's Family" reruns on prime-time, and turning the entire country into south Florida. Watch in horror as grandma lures your children into compliance with stories about long-play records and Pontiac Trans Ams and giving blowjobs to the Grateful Dead. Our country's fallen and it can't get up!

Smart people. And now, the most sinister threat of all. Is there a darker menace to the American way of life, to Christian panic and Republican clenchiness and widespread hysteria, than lots and lots of calm intelligence? After all, knowledge is power. Knowledge is the ability to see past the knee-jerk reactionaries, the sexual panic, the shrill, God-thumping nonsense. Knowledge is, therefore, evil like candy.

It might be too late. The disturbing agenda of President Obama, already one of the most calmly intelligent humans in U.S. political history, is beginning to have a truly nightmarish effect, as he inspires millions to take more responsibility, not merely for their lives, but for their choices, for their kids' future, for the health of their very own brains.

He is, in short, well on his way to destroying the very ideas that made this country great: insularity, fear of the Other, gluttony, lousy grammar and generally not knowin' much 'bout nuthin'. Hide the children.

If we leave it to the wingtards, we'll lose the secrets of fire and the wheel. Enjoy the rest of the article.