Saturday Limey Ukelele Delta Blues Blogging

My life-long obsession with left-handed ukelele pickers playing delta blues has finally been fulfilled! Tell YouTube what you want, they deliver!

Ukulele All Stars with George Welch on lead vocal at Clennell Hall Folk Festival - May2010

Ukelele All Stars ~ My Creole Belle

Thanks to banjostead, UK.

Rand Paul the Tea Party-Pooper

Andy Ostroy

Rand's bizarre civil rights stand this week illustrates just how loony this movement is and how politically dangerous its candidates will be. McConnell, Kyl and others have good reason to be afraid. They've allowed the smallest faction of their party--led by rabble-rousing blabbermouths like Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and Sarah Palin--to become the loudest, most influential voice in the room. This renegade band of populist impostors have hijacked the party and redefined it, purging its roster of anyone not of the extreme right wing fringe. You know the GOP's in some serious trouble when the likes of McConnell, Kyl and John McCain appear like the party's moderates.

As I wrote earlier this week, all Paul's victory showed is that the squeaky Tea Bag wheel got the Republican oil. He was victorious only in a Republican-on-Republican feeding frenzy. And in just two days he's demonstrated what an absolute joke his candidacy can and will be come November when facing a Democrat. A Democrat, mind you, who sees nothing at all wrong with blacks eating at a luncheonette counter with whites. Hard to believe we're still actually debating this racist shit in 2010. For that we can thank Mr. "Huge Victory" Paul and his narrow-minded Tea Bag bigots...

One thing's clear: the hypocrisy that permeates the Republican Party also can be found in the "grass roots" Tea Party movement. Case in point, Paul's decision to hold his victory celebration at an exclusive, tony country club in Bowling Green. White men--even the populist Tea Bagger kind--sure do love their golf, don't they

Nah, it ain't the golf. Affluent white people like hangin' out with other affluent white people at places that keep out the riff-raff.

Related:

Joe Conason in Salon:

The roots of Rand Paul's civil rights resentment

Lurking beneath the Paul family's libertarian politics is a strategy of pandering to "populists" like Pat Buchanan

It's worse than that. Good short piece. Go read.

Update, after which I will knock off the Paul shit for the day unless something really juicy pops up later:

MINNEAPOLIS (The Borowitz Report) – In a sign of his increasing prominence in the so-called Tea Party movement, a new poll shows Kentucky senatorial candidate Rand Paul topping former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin among voters who describe themselves as morons.

“I never thought I’d say this, but if Palin is going to stay competitive with Paul, she’s going to have to start dumbing down her message.”

The stupid, it burns...

The Truth Shall Not be Spoken in Arizona

Glen Ford

The State of Arizona has very ambitious goals. It will not be satisfied simply to impose a kind of apartheid system in which Latino-looking persons have no rights that a policeman is bound to respect. Oh no, Arizona’s legislature and governor have a grander plan, a much larger vision to rewrite history so as to place white people back where they think they belong: at the unchallenged center of all things worth knowing and learning. In order to do that, it is necessary to erase and outlaw the past and present of those who are not white. Governor Jan Brewer thinks she can whitewash history and put barbed wired around the present and the future with the stroke of a pen. In signing what is effectively a ban on teaching any version of history other than the approved, white version, in elementary and secondary public schools, the governor seeks to impose an ethnic cleansing of the mind – a kind of official genocide of past generations. She intends to wipe the white historical slate clean of actual genocides, enslavements, land piracies, and all manner of crimes against darker peoples. The truth shall not be spoken in Arizona, if it is detrimental to the reputation and sensibilities of white people. Apparently, the true facts of history cause white Arizona great pain, like sunlight shining on Dracula. Gov. Brewer wants to shut out the light, by shutting down ethnic studies in the classroom, making the schools safe for white lies.

Well said, Mr. Ford.

The Mrs. thinks* I'm crazy ...

But I think the greatest thing is that I can give the President of the United States a piece of my mind (which I do several times a week) on his Facebook page. I understand Barry probably doesn't even know he has a page, let alone look at it, but it's somehow satisfying to vent at the man in charge.

*Correction: After 20-odd years together, she knows I'm crazy.

Once again ...

It ain't terrorism if white folks do it:

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) — An antigovernment Ohio man who had had several run-ins with the police around the country was identified Friday as one of two people suspected of gunning down two officers during a traffic stop in Arkansas.

...

About 90 minutes before the shootout with the police, Sgt. Brandon Paudert, 39, and Officer Bill Evans, 38, were killed with AK-47 assault rifles after stopping a minivan on Interstate 40 in West Memphis, Ark., the authorities said.

...

I mentioned another attack the other day that was met with complete silence by the national media. Obviously, we have more to worry about from our own people than Muslim Jihadis.

Great thanks to Tristero for the NYT link.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

This is from Emmylou's fabulous album Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town. It was one of very few 8-tracks I ever saw that you could leave on all night in a camp full of dirt riders out in the desert and your rig's battery cable wouldn't be cut by morning. Some other tapes might stop abruptly. Heh.

From Dutch TV; Rotterdam Country Music Festival 1980

Emmylou Harris ~ Easy From Now On

Thanks to 1000Magicians, UK.

Light Blogging Today

Light blogging today. I've run up against a perfect storm, perhaps literally, of Murphy's Law.

A few days ago I bought a new distributor cap, rotor, spark plugs and wires for my Dakota, a little job to be sure, but one that has been bugging me since I changed just the spark plugs 50,000 miles and ten years ago.

The guys down at the local NAPA store, aka "the jewelry store", are my pals but Murphy's Law Of Auto Parts, "when given the choice of clips or screws, sell the distributor cap you have in stock even though it will inevitably be the wrong one", held up and I have to go first thing to get the replacement.

Yesterday was a beautiful day to work on the truck and today it's supposed to snow but the weather window is still open so I have to try to get this job done before that starts.

Later. Go read Morford on oil spill conspiracy theories and nuclear terrorist supernuns.

Update:

Mission accomplished. I got the firing order right the first time too! That cut my failure rate on that particular job on Dodges to 50%. Perhaps the mantra I've been chanting nonstop for three days helped - "clockwiseeighteenfortythreesixtyfiveseventytwo".

We will now wait for Fixer and 'Nucks to quit laughing...

The truck runs noticeably better and the only casualties were a petrified PCV Valve hose which I replaced with in-stock heater hose, and one teeny little flap of skin, a willing sacrifice to the mechanical gods. If ya don't bleed on it, it won't work.

See yas.

SSI primer ...

A good post by GP on how Social Security actually works and why "fixing it" will end up screwing us like the last "fix" did:

...

2. You already "fixed" Social Security, in 1983. In that fix, Ronald Reagan and the Greenspan Commission (yep, Alan Greenspan) recommended increasing Social Security taxes on the middle class, but not on the Big Boys, the wealthy. The declared goal was to put tons of cash into the Social Security Trust Fund — create a huge rainy day stash — for when Boomers started retiring. (If you click the Trust Fund link, watch what happens to the last column, the total amount, starting in 1984.)

Why is it important to understand this?
Everyone making less than $100k per year has been paying for that fix — every working day since 1983. They robbed you once, so they wouldn't have to do it twice. Want them to do it twice?

...

Take a look at how the tax rates on the rich have steadily decreased over the past 30 years.

"Why do you rob banks?"

"Because that's where the money is."

The rich won't be happy until they've bled us all dry and we come to them, begging for crumbs.

Quote of the Day

Deacon Blues:

But if Rand Paul and his ilk are the new face of the modern GOP, then let’s get this party started ...

BP Rules

Raw Story

As oil from the massive BP spill in the Gulf of Mexico approached the US coastline, a CBS News crew was threatened by the US Coast Guard with arrest if they attempted to film a beach in South Pass, Louisiana.

"When we tried to reach the beach ... a boat of BP contractors with two Coast Guard officers on board told us to turn around under threat of arrest," CBS's Kelly Cobiella reported on Tuesday.

"This is BP's rules, it's not ours," an officer can be seen calling from the other boat in the CBS video.

Hey Coastie, does your paycheck say 'BP' on it? Oh, that's right - you get a check from one of their wholly-owned subsidiaries.

I know the Coasties were just doing their job which they swore to do - protecting the United States of BP from domestic enemies like the First Amendment and trial lawyers.

Headline of the Day

Birther Queen: Obama Persecuting Me with Placenta Painting!

That broad is so far beyond paranoia that she can watch her own back. Yeesh.

Hmmmmm...

Fixer has made it known that he wants to retire in Paree. Is it possible he has hit on a method of financing it?

BP: Beyond Prosecution

How Bush's DOJ Killed a Criminal Probe Into BP That Threatened to Net Top Officials

Why doesn't this surprise me?

We've had 1½ oilmen in charge of our country and look at the mess they made. It will be with us for many expensive years. Never again.

US/Israel Challenged on Iran

The very last thing the United States - or the world - needs is another American military clusterfuck in the Middle East over made-up bullshit, but that's exactly what the goddam neocons are up to. Ray McGovern writes about two nations that agree with me. A 'must read':

The times may be a-changin’ – at least a bit – with the United States and Israel no longer able to dictate to the rest of the world how crises in the Middle East must be handled, though the new reality has been slow to dawn on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her neocon friends in Congress and the U.S. media.

They may think they are still in control, still the smart ones looking down at upstarts like the leaders of Turkey and Brazil who had the audacity to ignore U.S. warnings and press ahead with diplomacy to head off a possible new war, this one over Iran.

Tellingly, U.S. officials and their acolytes in the Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) could not bring themselves to believe that Brazil and Turkey would dare pursue an agreement with Iran after Clinton and President Barack Obama said not to.

However, the signs were there that these rising regional powers were no longer willing to behave like obedient children while the United States and Israel sought to take the world for another ride into a Middle East confrontation.

By all rights, the surrender of half Iran’s uranium should lessen those concerns, but the bomb does NOT appear to be Israel’s primary preoccupation. You see, despite the rhetoric, Israel and its supporters in Washington do not view the current dispute over Iran’s nuclear program as an “existential threat.”

Rather, it is viewed as another golden opportunity to bring “regime change” to a country considered one of Israel’s adversaries, as Iraq was under Saddam Hussein. As with Iraq, the selling point for intervention is the accusation that Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon, a weapon of mass destruction that might be shared with terrorists.

Thank you Turkey and Brazil for having the sack to stand up to the neocons and warmongers in the U.S. and Israel and derailing their plans somewhat. I hope others follow your lead. Are ya listening, Russia and China?

Marijuana Fuels a New Kitchen Culture

If you like to get high and eat better stuff than the contents of the local 7-11, you'll like this article in the NYTimes.

Call it haute stoner cuisine.

The chefs of the haute stoner cuisine movement are just as obsessive about their marijuana as they are about olive oil, wine or coffee.

“It’s like getting the best cheese,” Mr. Falcinelli said. “I have like four or five different types of marijuana in my refrigerator right now.”

The sensibility extends to the latest wave of coffee culture. Coffee geeks are as infatuated with their Pacas varietal beans from Central America as pot users are with their sticky sinsemilla from Humboldt County in California.

Enjoy.

Behind the 8-Ball ...

I've been a painting fool this morning. As you'll remember, I began the master bathroom work before we left for Bermuda. Well, thanks to a few SNAFUs (nothing to do with the project), I'm way behind schedule, so I'm spending every spare minute dicking with that. I'll have pics of the progress up later.

They didn't care ...

When they used to burn Negro churches either:

On May 10th, a middle-aged man carried a can of gasoline and a pipe bomb into the Jacksonville Islamic Center of Northeast Florida during evening prayers and detonated it. Fortunately, there were no injuries to people, though the bomb did damage property.

...

So, a mosque is bombed by a white guy and the bomb isn't exactly small, but the national media sees no value in reporting it? Really? And yet, that is evidently the case.

...

Muslims are the new Black, don'tcha know ...

Update:

And they're doing stupid shit in another country that I love too:

...

The French government decided Wednesday to impose a $185 fine on women who wear a full-face Islamic veil in public, pushing ahead with a controversial ban despite signs of tension between France’s Muslims and the Christian-tradition majority.

...

The French have a strong right wing undercurrent too (not as bad as it is here), most notably the National Front, with a Bill Donahue-esque leader named J.M. Le Pen. No place is perfect but at least over there, most of the really insane crap we have to put up with here is laughed at.

Random Observations on Yesterday's Vaguely Meaningful Voting Activities

El Rude-o

2. However, the Republican Party is now owned by the Tea Party so, hey, enjoy the smell of Sarah Palin's ass. The base has been stolen by the wackanoids, and Mitch McConnell's enormous philtrum must be quivering and sweat-covered about now. The old guard GOP has a choice: double-down on Jim DeMint-like crazy or try to crawl its way back to relevance. The latter takes guts. So you know which way things are about to go in the Congress until November. Bring out the tranq guns, 'cause it's gonna be a long summer.

If ya shoot yourself in the ass it doesn't hurt much. The peace and quiet is worth it.

4. Other than Arlen Specter, is anyone even vaguely upset that Arlen Specter lost? Fuck, the President pretty much shivved him at the end there, when Specter was begging Obama to come in and hold a rally. Obama had promised Specter all the help in the world in exchange for the party switch, but when the end was nigh, Obama told him to shove a magic bullet up his Bush-loving ass. The lesson here? When Barack Obama is done with you, he's fucking done. Pick up your shit and get the fuck out. Besides, Joe Sestak appears to actually have...wait, what's the word?...oh, yeah, principles. Funny things, those.

Funny things, those.

Time and Tide and Devil Horns

Mark Morford on the passing of Ronnie James Dio, a hard rocker I never heard of:

It's a little disquieting. The lions of hard rock, guys like Robert Plant, Roger Daltrey, Brian Johnson, Rob Halford, these monsters feel completely timeless, iconic, eternal. They simply shall not, will not, do not die. It's almost impossible to imagine a musical world without Robert Plant. No metal fan of any stripe can imagine a day when, say, Iron Maiden shuts it all down because Bruce Dickinson turned 85 and suddenly can't remember the lyrics to "Hallowed Be Thy Name." Metal revels in the raw energy and unchecked phantasmagorical ridiculousness of youth. It is all fire and testosterone and rebellious fantasy. It doesn't go well with reality.

So it is for hard rock and a guy like Dio, an elfin titan with an undying love for lasers and sorcery, dragons and kings. The man wrote some terribly corny metal songs, but he sang every one with a ferocity and love and total honesty. He also wrote some of the finest hard rock melodies of all time, sang them with a precision and love unmatched by any hard rock singer since. It's a rare thing to give metal some heartfelt props. It is time. Raise your devil horns and salute.

Metal ain't my cuppa tea and it doesn't matter whether I heard of him or not. The loss of a powerhouse of whatever genre is sad. Tempus fugits on. So long, Ronnie.

New Bumpersticker and State Motto?

Will Texas change its slogan from "Don't Mess With Texas" to "Texas Blows"?