"...all you scary women to please stop it with your needy n' terrifying vaginas"

Mark Morford on what a pathetic WATB we've become as a nation.

These are, from what I can glean, the most important questions of the day, of the month, of modern life itself. Hell, what with the economy and job situation, the housing market and the overall feel and texture of the nation right now, it's no wonder Americans are, by and large, a goddamn miserable bunch. We don't like anything right now. No politician, no decision, no situation, no inhale, no exhale. We are sick to death of all of it, including ourselves.

My God, did you hear that pathetic State of the Union? That guy, that President Obama? Disappointing times a thousand, am I right? What the hell happened to him? Why is he so weak and ineffectual? Why the hell can't he step up and fix the entire planet in under 400 days like he promised he would, in my dreams and fantasies and impossible liberal grass-fed organic tofu greengasms? Doesn't he know I put a goddamn bumper sticker on my Subaru for him? I've never done that for anyone. Bastard.

He's only accomplished what, about 100 of the things I expected him to accomplish by now? Big deal. I have, like, 5,000 more. Health care reform has failed. Guantanamo is still open. Wars are still warring. Jobs are still sucking. Gays are still unhappy because the entire human understanding of love and gender in this nation has not completely transformed within a year. Infuriating!

Shall we recall just how violently disappointed those fundamentalists were when Bush bumbled off the stage, the single greatest disaster as president we will ever know? They were, of course, mostly disappointed Bush wasn't able to do far more repellant damage than he did. They wanted nothing less than full-scale war on Islam, death to all abortion doctors, creationism in schools, homosexuality banned outright, all you scary women to please stop it with your needy n' terrifying vaginas. You know, the usual.

Maybe this, then, is the ultimate upshot of our endless, self-wrought swirl of sour disappointment, of never having our impossible needs fully met, of constantly being thwarted in our desire to have the world revolve around our exact set of specifications and desires.

Much more.

Re 'disappointment', I think it helps to have been in the service as a youngster. Disappointment, synergistically (1 + 1 = 11) coupled with neck-deep chickenshit, is a daily - nay, hourly - occurence and you whine, moan, bitch, snivel, and complain to no effect whatsoever because it makes you feel better and the Bigs don't give a shit what you think and you learn to just play through it.

It also helps to get old. Perhaps 'wisdom' isn't exactly the right word for what should but doesn't always come with age. Maybe 'acceptance' and the took-a-long-time-to-dawn concept that very little is as black and white as we'd like it to be and a lot of people get it wrong. Some is but an awful lot ain't and ya gotta know the difference. Frustration sucks.

As far as "needy n' terrifying vaginas", a lot of us Olde Phartes can recall needing tire chains for traction in those and don't scare easy. Ladies, we're here to help. Heh.

Update:

As serendipity would have it, I was listening to a Jimmy Buffett CD I picked up yesterday (at W**M***, shame on me...) and this song came on right after I hit 'publish yer tripe'. It kinda fits, so I went and found it for you. Enjoy.

"Better a bottle in fronta me than a frontal lobotomy"

Jimmy Buffett and The Coral Reefer Band ~ A Lot To Drink About

Thanks to Parrotisla.

Americans trust DarthNews

A 'recommended read' in the Guardian UK:

In a development believed to have caused Thursday's international run on duct tape and tinned goods, an opinion poll this week suggested Fox News is the most trusted news operation in America. Dig into the data and it's a little more nuanced and complex than "flood's a comin'", but what it shakes down to is that 49% of Americans trust Fox. The survey of 1,151 registered voters was greeted by much wailing and gnashing of teeth – making it in many ways resemble a broadcast by Fox's most eye-catching lab experiment, Glenn Beck.

If the wailers and gnashers weren't such godless liberals, of course, they'd be thumbing their way to the bit in the Book of Revelation that predicts exactly this occurrence, but instead they have been plunged into shock. Yet is it all that surprising? Whether Rupert Murdoch's news network is to your taste or not, you have to concede that it is an awesomely effective product, and the news-as-telenovela concept has revolutionised the marketplace.

On the plus side, this week also saw Forbes magazine reveal the results of its poll to find America's 10 most trusted celebrities. And the Forbes poll doesn't so much put the Fox stuff into perspective as put the whole idea of trust into perspective.

Put it this way: top of the list was James Earl Jones. Now, you can tell me all you like that when people trust James, they're trusting His Majesty King Jaffe Joffer in Coming to America. You can tell me that they feel comforted by his regal vocal presence in the Lion King. But you know in your heart that subconsciously, what they're trusting is Vader. People trust Darth Vader. And that's because people are stupid, and quite frightened, and it's quite easy to lie to them. Still, as no Fox News ­presenter has ever said while shrugging their shoulders, whaddayougonnadoaboutit?

As with Hollywood, so with this golden age of news-o-tainment. People will trust any old nutjob if they somehow inhabit the role, and then they're hooked. There was a long-running series of US pharmaceutical ads that would feature doctors from daytime soaps, who'd begin with the words "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV …" And viewers would flock to buy the medicine. The guys on Fox News aren't ­newscasters, but they do play them on TV – so we can't be all that surprised when people buy those drugs too.

Why do ya think they call it 'dope'?

Yay!

Raw Story

Voters in California will likely decide this November whether or not to legalize marijuana, after legalization activists handed in far more than the necessary number of petition signatures to get the measure onto the ballot.

Organizers of the Regulate, Control and Tax Cannabis Act of 2010 filed some 700,000 petition signatures with county clerks around the state. The amount of signatures needed to get the measure on the ballot is about 433,000, reports the San Francisco Chronicle, so the measure is all but certain to be on the ballot in November.

They's some sorry-ass lions in the Repug den today...

Following up on Fixer's post:

HuffPo, links and videos:

President Obama traveled to a House Republican retreat in Baltimore on Friday and delivered a performance that was at once defiant, substantive and engaging. For roughly an hour and a half, Obama lectured GOP leaders and, in a protracted, nationally-televised question-and-answer session, deflected their policy critiques, corrected their misstatements and scolded them for playing petty politics. (Full video and transcript available HERE.)

White House officials told the Huffington Post they were absolutely ecstatic. MSNBC's Luke Russert, who was on the scene in Baltimore, relayed that a Republican official and other GOP aides had confided to him that allowing the "cameras to roll like that" was a "mistake."

Indeed, sunshine on a turned-over rock is harmful to the vermin.

So effective was the president that Fox News cut away from the broadcast 20 minutes before it ended.

F** turned away because truth occurred and they felt they needed to shelter their audience from it! I think I just came...

Politico

Obama urged Republicans to come to the table and work with him on policy compromises, saying Americans "didn't send us to Washington to fight each other in some political steel-cage match."

Oh yeah? Sez you, Barry! As long as there's meds to counteract the visual of all that flabby old fish-belly white skin in speedos...

Saturday Crazy Redneck Music Blogging

Slightly 'R' rated.

David Allen Coe ~ Jimmy Buffett

Thanks to collinswayne1, Canuckistan.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Mark Knopfler & Emmylou Harris ~ Born to Run

Thanks to DogSwede1, Sweden.,/h6>

Others will do ...

What we refuse to:

International arrest warrants have been requested for George W. Bush, Richard (Dick) Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, George Tenet, Condoleeza Rice and Alberto Gonzales at the International Criminal Court, The Hague, Netherlands.

Professor of Law Francis A. Boyle of the University of Illinois College of Law in Champain, United States of America, has issued a Complaint with the Prosecutor for the International Criminal Court against the above-mentioned for their practice of “extraordinary rendition” (forced disappearance of persons and subsequent torture) in Iraq and for criminal policy which constitutes Crimes against Humanity in violation of the Rome Statute which set up the ICC.

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It would be nice if we took out our own trash.

Thanks to Maru for the link.

A battle of wits ...

Against unarmed opponents. Barry's visit to the Republicans' den was the most leadership he's shown in a year. He owned the room and showed them for what they really are. Good on him!

Corporation to run for Congress

It had to happen, didn't it? It's a shopping day today, so I'll just leave ya with this video. A tip o' the Brain to Think Progress. There's an article and another video there about this as well.

Thanks to murrayhillcongress.

Just a reminder ...

Since Gord's been taking ... liberties with her lately. Heh ...

Taken aboard Holland America Line's MS Noordam outbound from Manhattan. Click to make big.

Hello, sailor...

I've already ruined Fixer's favorite sight when he comes into New York once. He's gonna get me for this...

Thanks to Slate.

SOTU We'd Like To See

Fiore

The Walmart of Weed

EssEffChron

In a 15,000-square-foot warehouse just down the road from the Oakland Airport, an entrepreneur is opening a one-stop shop for medicinal marijuana cultivation that's believed to be the largest in the state.

This is hardly a fringe business. When iGrow opens today, at least three City Council members will attend. So will most of the leaders of the cannabis industry in Oakland, a city long at the vanguard of medicinal marijuana.

Today's opening also comes on a key day for proponents of a statewide ballot measure to allow recreational marijuana. They plan to turn in about twice as many signatures as needed to qualify the measure for the November ballot.

But, he believes, the issue is a moral one.

"It's not fair to medical patients to put them in a gray area where they have to be involved in criminal activity to stay healthy," he said. "That's like not having health insurance."

At a dispensary, a patient might spend $120 a week for a quarter-ounce of marijuana.

However, it might cost $1,000 to set up an eight-plant system, said Zeta Ceti, one of iGrow's "indoor growing technicians." But in the course of a year, they might only use half of their harvest and be able to sell the remaining 3 pounds for $12,000 to a dispensary.

This is getting better and better!

Army uses mothballed super ferries to speed troops, supplies to Haiti

This is just way cool. Article here or here.

 

Headline of the Day Zwei

Landrieu phone plot: Men arrested have links to intelligence community

Headline of the Day

Oregonians Raise Taxes On Rich, Big Corporations to Fund Critical Services

Oregon's voters did this. Good on ya, Beavers!

It will rain blood and tea...

Bill Berkowitz on what he feels is a flawed Field poll:

California’s Field Poll finds that three in ten registered voters ‘identified’ with the Tea Party movement and three in ten don’t believe Barack Obama is a U.S. citizen.

According to Field, The poll was “conducted among a statewide sample of 1,232 registered voters in six languages – English, Spanish, Cantonese, Mandarin, Korean and Vietnamese,” and it showed “that about 61% of this state’s voters say they are aware of the movement, and 28% say they identify with it either a lot (12%) or some (16%).”

28% is within the margin of error for the Dead End Quarter.

[...] "The world is run by those who show up,” Nehring said. “Tea party activists show up and that's important."

That's good! If they all show up at once, we can get 'em all with one round!

Charlie Battery, fire mission, over...

Gunning for the First Amendment

Mikey Weinstein, founder and president, Military Religious Freedom Foundation. A 'must read' on the subject:

The Constitution won a battle last week, and Lady Liberty is smiling. But will that duo be able to fully triumph in the war against other threats to U.S. security - the war that's every bit as critically important as the one against Al Qaeda and the Taliban? That "other war," heretofore rarely seen in the mainstream media, is against the unbridled fundamentalist Christianity that has nefariously infected the U.S. armed forces.

Let me make one thing clear: Our problem is not with evangelical Christians whose beliefs say they must witness to as many people as possible but respect the law and the Constitution. Indeed not. Our problem is with what is called "dominionists/fundamentalists," who think they can do whatever they want to, irrespective of time, place and manner, in the name of their personal Christian faith, including heinously violating the First Amendment while serving in uniform. In the eyes of American law, their weaponized gospel of Christianity has absolutely no favored position of special recognition superior to the myriad of the other existing faith groups or even to the many no faith groups. The Constitution grants level playing field status for all to comprehensively celebrate their faith, or no faith, without the fear of "favored status" to only one. Believing otherwise is patently absurd. And as Voltaire said, "He who can lead you to believe an absurdity can lead you to commit an atrocity."

Our honorable armed forces don't swear an oath to serve the Torah, the Qur'an, the New Testament or any other religious book. They swear to protect and defend the Constitution and the United States of America. Period.

Period.

Quote of the Day

Ol' Fez:

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[Supreme Court Justice Samuel] Alito has now spoken more in the House Chamber than Clarence Thomas has in the Supreme Court.

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He's Black??? Holy shit!!!!!

There's a reason I call Chris Matthews an idiot. He is an idiot:

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If only Tweety's brain was post-racial. I'm gonna go out on a limb and guess that MSNBC is going to do some apologizing tomorrow.

Big dumbass ...