Quote of the Day

Larisa:

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Yes, that pesky thing called the Constitution, which calls for a separation of church and state is a left-wing propaganda rag.

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Fixer is qualified to be Leader Of The World!

From Rutabaga Ridgepole at TPM:

Anybody who ever reflected on the evidence for as much as a minute knows that Barack Obama, Bill Clinton, and George W. Bush all smoked pot. Obama admitted it, Bush never really denied it, and Clinton (ha ha!) "didn't inhale."

So if smoking pot doesn't mess you up too much to be President, then what's the problem with pot?

The problem is shameles and hypocritical politicians sucking up to tight-assed low-IQ no-info hoodoos in Alabama and South Dakota, who fear that their little Barbies and Kens will end up in the gutter if they sample the demon weed, although...

Since 1992, your chance of getting elected President without a whole lotta preliminary tokin' has been zero.

After a little initial turmoil upon Fixer's ascension, the world will be a better place! Can't wait...

In honor of the author of the above's slightly unusual name I offer this:

A Touch Of Grass ~ Rutabaga Boogie

Thanks to papercut14.

Church Marquee of the Day

From Think Progress


The top line of "Sorry Mr Beck" is a lot nicer than mine would have been. Mine would begin with the letter 'F'.

So tell me again ...

Why religious cults institutions are our moral arbiters?

BERLIN — A widening child sexual abuse inquiry in Europe has landed at the doorstep of Pope Benedict XVI, as a senior church official acknowledged Friday that a German archdiocese made “serious mistakes” in handling an abuse case while the pope served as its archbishop.

The archdiocese said that a priest accused of molesting boys was given therapy in 1980 and later allowed to resume pastoral duties, before committing further abuses and being prosecuted. Pope Benedict, who at the time headed the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising, approved the priest’s transfer for therapy. A subordinate took full responsibility for allowing the priest to later resume pastoral work, the archdiocese said in a statement.

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If I had kids, I wouldn't let them walk past a Church, Synagogue, or Mosque, let alone go inside one. Personally, if I was the God these people are supposed to represent, I'd smite every one of the motherfuckers.

Great thanks to Mr. Urban Hellhole for the link.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Emmylou and Linda on a promotional appearance for their CD 'Western Wall' From 1999

Emmylou Harris & Linda Ronstadt ~ He Was Mine / Sweet Spot + Interview w/Meredith Vieira

Thanks to 1000Magicians, UK.

I wonder how much vaseline it took...

She's sleek, she's stylish and she's designed with you in mind...She's Celebrity Eclipse and just made her grand voyage to sea! The third in Celebrity Cruises' stylish, $3.7-billion Solstice Class fleet, Celebrity Eclipse says, "auf wiedersehen" to the Meyer Werft shipyard in Papenburg, Germany, down the River Ems in preparation to stamp her passport upon arrival in the Netherlands.

Celebrity Eclipse Float out - March 11, 2010

Thanks to CELEBRITYCRUISES (website).

Conservative nutzoids and Muslim radicals

First and last ¶ from The Rude Pundit:

Hey, what does the Tea Party and the Republican National Committee have in common with Muslim students in Indonesia? The ability to photoshop Barack Obama's face into the face of a villain from The Dark Knight. Oh, that and hatred of President Obama. Yep, Glenn Beck and Fikri Ahmad Irhamul are like rancid peas in a filthy pod.
...

Of course, the crazed teabaggers and their GOP and media enablers will merely say that this proves Obama has failed in uniting the world. And we should point out that at least he's brought together conservative nutzoids and Muslim radicals, who, indeed, are two sides of the same coin.

No comment needed.

Google Me Up, Scotty!

Since I have absolutely no problem with self discipline and will power, I couldn't resist this:

The Mountain Messenger via YubaNet

NEVADA CITY Mar. 12, 2010 - We just got through with Superbowl Sunday and now here comes Superhype Sunday.

This little town is trying hard to put together a presentation that will convince Google, the biggest and most successful company in history, to pick Nevada City as the installation site of fiber optic Internet service. A rally downtown Sunday, March 14 at 1 p.m. will be video recorded along with a march of eager citizens up Broad Street, ending with music, dancing, food and drink at Miners Foundry. The event will be melted down and submitted to the big G.

Nevada City is my county seat and quite a historical place from Gold Rush days.

Competition, as you might guess, is furious. One city has renamed itself. Topeka, Kansas is now Google, Kansas...at least until they lose the competition. Remember when the little town of Clark Texas got free satellite television service for all of its 125 residents by changing the name of the place to Dish, Texas?

In other news, the Postal Service (sic) has announced that its business plan, formulated right after the Pony Express stopped running, isn't working any more. With the clear insight of a buggy whip manufacturer a few years after Henry Ford started making affordable automobiles, the Postal Service is raising the price of buggy whips.
...

Another dinosaur business model is phone book publishing. Who needs three Nevada County phone books? Who uses a phone book anymore? There are a bunch of web sites where you can find a phone number fast, and get it with a map and driving directions.

See you here in Google City at the renaming ceremony.

Editor's note: The Mountain Messenger, California's oldest weekly newspaper since 1853, is published on Thursdays from Downieville, California.

The Mountain Messenger can be purchased for half a buck at the National Hotel (sidewalk), Nevada City Post Office (sidewalk), Nevada City SPD (outside), Nevada City Express Mart (outside) and in front of Safeway, Brunswick area.

I get my copy for free from a stack on the counter at our local post office.

The Mountain Messenger used to be airdropped to the more rural general stores in a coupla counties by its 90-year-old publisher from his '40s Aeronca until the FAA found out about it and yanked his license in panic that he would have The Big One in the air!

Big whoop. Around here, he'da probly just ended up in the top of a tree.

Beck: Springsteen’s ‘Born in the USA’ is ‘anti-American,’ ‘propaganda’

Raw Story

A song that's been played over speakers at hundreds of campaign rallies, vibrated in the space between drinks at everyone's favorite bar and set millions of heads nodding from radio stations coast to coast -- a piece of music that is literally stitched into the fabric of American blue-collar culture, Bruce Springsteen's "Born in the USA" -- is, according to right-wing pundit Glenn Beck, "anti-American" and "propaganda" that people must "wake up" from.

If you're unfamiliar, need a refresher or simply like good music, give it a listen:

The likely reason Beck is attacking someone far more talented than himself is because Springsteen has endorsed a number of Democrats, including President Obama. Springsteen even put on a show at the 2008 Democratic National Convention. He did the same for Sen. John Kerry (D-MA) near the end of the 2004 presidential campaign.

Much more.

Well, Crazy Becky, you've done it this time. Don't be fuckin' with The Boss, asshole. He's a better American than you could be in your wildest wet dreams. You ain't a pimple on his ass.

My main worry is that Becky and Rushole and their pathetic ilk are going to run out of sharks to jump. See the post a few below this one. My hope is that the intellectual moped they're doing it with runs outta gas in mid-air and deposits them right in front of a pissed-off shark.

"...way out on the fringe of who the hell cares"

Mark Morford

Some days it's just so very difficult to choose. The toxic tales come so fast, slippery and weird, you don't know which way to flip your personal drunkmonkey of wary perspective, just how hard you're supposed to laugh and sigh before you strip naked and run screaming into the woods.

Damn, Mark, right on the money! I know exactly how you feel. I actually have woods here, unlike EssEff, but I have learned to simply alert the neighbors to don their hollywoods so the glare won't blind them...

Which will it be, fine citizen? The twee tale of the whiny outcry endured by the unwitting Washington Post after it ran an innocuous photo on its front page, a shot of two sweet, skinny guys lightly smooching on the courthouse steps, the very day that gay marriages were finally legal in D.C.?

You can guess what happened next. The tiny-brained homophobes of D.C. came out in force, threatening everything from canceled subscriptions (oh no!) to the death of every human soul for all eternity. Confused macho lugnuts and little old ladies alike began accusing the paper of promoting "the faggot lifestyle" and destroying all morality by, you know, showing two people in love. The horror.

See, we here in sinful, hellhole Sodom-iffic San Francisco see such piffling outcry, and laugh. We've been shrugging off Bible Belt ignorance and fundamentalist accusations of our being the perverted nail sticking out of God's virtuous park bench since Harvey Milk opened a camera shop, Berkeley decided to light some U.S. flags on fire and the Haight burned Vietnam draft notices -- all right before we became one of the world's foremost centers of intellectualism, culture, art, food, education, experimentation, leather, enlightenment, love and joy and fine lubricants for all. Welcome to hell, WaPo! Come on in, the water's blasphemous.

Please, please, please go read the rest. He gets to the Catlick Choich's thing for gay prostitutes, the GOP, and a coupla pols in the news of late.

Headline of the Day

Israel To Build New Settlements, in the West WING!

Oy...

Hey, fishermen, feel sumthin' tuggin' atcher lip?

From the Charlotte Fishing Examiner's Articles section (?!) of the EssEffZam:

In what may be the worst example of outdoor sports reporting in the history of America, ESPN has claimed that President Barack Obama is on the verge of banning recreational fishing.

ESPNOutdoors.com writer Robert Montgomery posted an article today claiming that the administration's decision to end the public comment phase of the Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force means that Obama is likely preparing to issue an executive order outlawing recreational fishing in America.

This has to do with fishery abuses by commercial fishermen, not sportfishing. Extensive article.

The wingers have finally jumped the shark (heh) in Project Obama Fail.

President Obama may not be about to ban fishing but there are more difficult times for fishermen ahead. Before we start pointing fingers at environmentalists and believing wild conspiracies we need to look at fisheries management history and put the blame for this all where it really belongs.

UPDATE: You can read my current commentary on this here: Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh need to shut up about Obama fishing ban.

The truth of the matter, as I have repeatedly stated since ESPN started the Obama fishing ban myth earlier this week, is that the administration Interagency Ocean Policy Task Force is likely to recommend broad potential regulations on some ocean fishing which will not affect average recreational fishermen at all.

However, both Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh as well as the National Review and other right-wing bloggers are now reporting ESPN's false rumor that Obama wants to ban recreational fishing as essentially fact and trying to make themselves spokesmen for American anglers.

Meanwhile, some average fishermen are so confused by this they have turned fishing in America into yet another conservative versus liberal firestorm and are on the verge of tactually making recreational fishing into a Tea Party issue.

I and others like me have actually been accused across the internet of promoting an Obama administration plan to ban recreational fishing!

Well of course you have. The bastards are desperate and will grab at any straw to discredit Libruls and Obama, even a ridiculous thing like this.

If you're interested in this subject, there's a plethora of articles at the links. I bet we don't hear about it in the MSM.

I hear tell there's some pretty good fishin' inside the reef at Maheanuu's place. Do I gotta bring my own dynamite?

More "no" ...

If you think the Republican stonewall is just about health care, you'd be wrong:

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Dodd got nowhere with GOP dinosaur Richard Shelby and felt he could do business instead with Tennessee GOP senator Bob Corker, only to find that Corker was giving on small stuff but stalling on the big piece, which was to establish a new agency to protect Main Street from Wall Street. With the legislative clock running out, Dodd finally took back control of the bill today and will go forward with a Democratic bill that will have the consumer protections in it that Wall Street and their GOP sluts have fought since Day One, as if the meltdown never happened. The GOP and Wall Street want the status quo, and yet for some reason Democrats have been afraid to make the GOP filibuster this bill, which is a perfect defining issue for the 2010 midterms.

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I hope everyone out there has disabused themselves of the notion that Republicans actually care about the country or their constituents. It's all about assuring Democratic failure, the consequences be damned.

The Three Stages Of Health Insurance

This is pretty much right on. I don't have most of the troubles of the center stage but I'm about seven months from throwing my cane away and it still hurts.

Thanks to YubaNet.

Sour Gropes

Despite being an utter meatgazin' douchebag, Rep. Massa is my hero today. Heh.

Glenn Beck's interview with Eric Massa wasn't a total waste of time -- he got a new sign-off phrase.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
Sour Gropes
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform

The visual of Rahm Emanuel and a shower room full of naked congressmen is still disturbing, and the bleach doesn't seem to be working. Oh, the horror...

Headline of the Day

From BuzzFlash:

Telegraph: Woman tries to shut down Large Hadron Collider over apocalypse fears. Sadly, this tactic may have actually worked if the collider were located in our own religion-obsessed country.

The fundies are batcrap crazy. I rest my case.

Worth a helluva lot more than 2¢

I posted yesterday about fundies and their twisted view of "religious freedom".

We got a comment from our friend Maheanuu that was so good I wanted to share it with you:

I am totally amazed at what is going on back there. When I see the fundies all out spraying like skunks on everything and calling it perfume, I really feel concern on what is happening in the country of my birth. Gordon you and I are from the old school, we believed (or at least I did), that when push came to shove the people would see what the religious fundies were doing and crush it in the bud. I saw it first hand in the Navy back in the mid 70's when I walked into the ECM room and found deck apes, snipes, and others who did not have any clearance at all in a Secret space holding a religious meeting. I busted the whole damn lot, and in turn ended my career in the Navy as "God's Army" was trying to have me busted for being an atheist and a non believer. I was told after I retired, that senior officers at Cinc Pac wanted a piece of me and had I not retired they would have seen to it that I wouldn't have retired as a Chief... This was at the beginning of this crap, and now they hold prayer meetings in the Pentagon among the Generals and the Admirals... Nah, I am really afraid that you are really very close to being a Christo Fascist State... It scares the hell out of me, My blood family are part of that fundie crap and I could care less if they end up in one, they are part of the group that wants to control everyone.. But it is the liberals and the people who practice their religion without throwing it in your face are going be the real losers in the coming decade...

Just my 2¢

THank you, Chief.

I think the fundies' time has come and gone. Folks are wising up that they're just a bunch of holier-than-thou haters that have little or nothing to do with the teachings of Jesus and the Bible, if there are any, and are all about power over others in this life with little thought of the next one. The good Christians are being made to look bad by association, and need to run outta cheeks to turn and smite them hip and thigh until they crawl back under their rocks and STFU. Good luck with that.

Note to the real Christians: Try their own dumbass shit back at 'em - kinda screw up your face and point your quivering finger at 'em and holler "JESUS REBUKE YOU!". If that don't scare the crap out of 'em, maybe waving a couple of the rattlesnakes from around your shoulders in their face will. Go crazy. Out-fundie the daylights out of 'em and show 'em how stupid and hateful they look to the rest of us.

Speaking just as a dumbass ol' Jarhead, what the ol' squid said may come to pass, but as far as I'm concerned those phony Xtians will know they've been in a fight. Practice your sky monster shit if you wish to with my blessings, but keep it the fuck outta my face. And for damn sure, keep get it the fuck outta our government.

Freedom of religion by extension is also freedom from religion and those bastards better not forget that a lot of us do not confuse mindless religiosity with real spirituality and do not buy into their phony crap and will work for separation of church from state past the grave if we have to.

And if I have to return from beyond the grave and read those fuckers the riot act, aka 'a moment of prayer', they will have a religious experience like they never thought possible! I'm almost looking forward to it. Heh.

"Tough shit ..."

The airlines want more of our money:

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I don't recall reading about the airlines seeking or getting government help fifty years ago when they had to phase out their fleets of nearly-new DC-6s, DC-7s and Stratocruisers in order to operate 707s and DC-8s. That was hellaciously expensive, compared to the cost of installing some new boxes. And frankly, given that the airlines now charge for every amenity (other than toilet paper in their lavatories) and given that a significant fraction of airline employees have adopted the interpersonal skills of concentration camp guards, it is hard to feel very sympathetic to the complaints of the airlines that "it costs money to keep up with technology."

...

I'll go the Misfit one better and say "fuck them". They took billions from us after 9/11 and have treated us like shit ever since. As most regulars here know, the Mrs. travels on business a lot and flying has gotten worse by degree every year since. There's a reason I try to arrange our vacations so we only fly one way.

You know, it's amazing. All these capitalists yelling and screaming about government regulation and oversight hurting their business model, yet when they run their companies down the tubes, they're the first ones with their hands out looking for public money to help them through. Fuck them all; the banks, the airlines, and the car companies.

For those who don't understand, capitalism is, or should be, Darwinism in its purest form. If you don't make it, you die and someone else fills the vacuum you left; no handouts, no bailouts, no "too big to fail". Fuck them all; we'll survive without them.

And just a thought before I leave for work:

I've been flying since I was 4 years old, when my parents would put me on a plane (Lufthansa or IcelandAir 707) in the summer and send me to Germany to stay with the family until September. It used to be an event. Men would dress (I gotta dig up a pic of me in my little suit with a bow tie) for the occasion and customer service was Job One.

The flying experience was something to be enjoyed; gate agents and crew doing their best to make you feel at ease and rested by the time you got where you were going. In 30 years, it's turned into a nightmare; something to be avoided at all costs in my book.

After Congress gets done reforming health care (I'll believe it when I see it) they should turn their attention to the airline industry. If there is any sector in need of improvement, it's them. It's time for businesses to learn that if they require taxpayer funds to stay afloat they'll have to abide by a set of conditions. I'm tired of footing the bill to save these assholes and then get shit on shortly after.

Off with their heads!

I saw this in BuzzFlash:

The Real Reason Our Ancestors Came Here Was to Get Away From People Like Sarah Palin and Bart Stupak

A reasonably thoughtful anti-conservative rant, but my mind kinda flipped to Au contraire!. My reply, among others:

It's true that our Puritan forebears came here to freely practice their religion, but they were religious regressives even at the time and the CofE (link added for here - G) was glad to be rid of them.

They were exactly like Palin and Stupak: my way or the highway. The last thing in the world they wanted was religious freedom for anybody besides themselves, and they made it so their religion was the only one tolerated. It took the Constitution to fix that.

We need to get all religionists, and especially the hypocritical fundies, out of our political discourse.

All right-wing religious extremists, Christian, Muslim, Jew or whatever, no matter their nationality, are exactly the same - convinced their way is the way and we all better fall in line or else.

They've all sure caused a helluva lot of trouble over the years over something that was made up in the first place to answer the question "why?" in such a way as to scare people into following an agenda. Just like Republicans.

Con the gullible to defeat reality and make the few rich and powerful. 'Twas ever thus.

This country would be better off if the King, titular head of the CofE, had taken them all to the Tower and shortened 'em. I'm sure somebody more reasonable would have founded this nation. Mighta been a province of Canada. Heh.

Trained Seals

Digby

I continue to be somewhat surprised at the attitude I find among the cognoscenti about what is expected from the activist wing of the party. From what I gather, the base is assumed to be trained seals who will clap and do tricks on command but placidly accept the blame when things go wrong. And it upsets the serious people greatly when it fails to do that. In other words, the base is the party's doormat.

The problem is that in a polarized political world, intensity matters. And I hate to tell the Democrats, but the Republican base has it and theirs doesn't. You can browbeat the rank and file all you want, you can exhort them to support things because it's "the best you can do" but I think that most people who study human behavior would say that this is not a very good way to motivate large numbers of people to do something. If what you need is a bunch of energetic, engaged citizens, hectoring and nagging them about their "duty" or patronizingly explaining to them like a bunch of children why they should be cheerleading something they don't feel invested in, probably isn't going to get the job done. I'm sure that's very frustrating, but it's a grievous mistake to believe the only people you have to patiently and consistently persuade to donate, work and vote for you are elites ans swing voters because the rubes are locked down with nowhere else to go.

More importantly, the best and the brightest saying that everyone should just trust them is about the worst message I can imagine right now. As a progressive type who respects expertise, I even used to buy that to a certain extent. But since I have now been alive long enough to see these so-called experts delude, double deal and disillusion more times than I can count, I'm not willing to suspend my own judgment anymore. And I would guess that in this economic environment the Democratic base has gone beyond the "trust but verify" stage to the "I'll believe it when I see it" stage as well.

It is clear that they believe that a nice Barack Obama speech and a lively messaging campaign will do the trick , but they'd better wake up. The trained seals are not responding to that anymore. In fact, they are looking a lot more like killer whales at the moment and some respect for their power should probably be paid.

Winston Churchill said something about Americans that may apply exactly to the Democrats: "They always do the right thing after they've tried everything else".

"I'll believe it when I see it."