So much for the 7th Commandment...

South Carolina's good Christian adulterers have spoken.

As he was leaving for Florida, Neutie was heard to say, "So long South Carolina. The money's on the dresser."

And Willard is still going to be the nominee. Wall St. has spoken and the Repug establishment listens.

Maybe the Apocalypse won't be such a bad thing after all...

Better Austin Today benefit, at the Moose Lodge.Austin, Texas.

Eliza Gilkyson ~ When The Great Correction Comes

Thanks to minorw.

The words are a little hard to understand so here are the lyrics:

down on the corner of ruin and grace
I’m growin weary of the human race
hold my lamp up in everyone’s face
lookin for an honest man
everyone tied to the turnin wheel
everyone hidin from the things they feel
well the truth’s so hard it just don’t seem real
the shadow across this land
people round here don’t know what it means
to suffer at the hands of our american dreams
they turn their backs on the grisly scenes
traced to the privileged sons
they got their god they got their guns
got their armies and the chosen ones
but we’ll all be burnin in the same big sun
when the great correction comes
down through the ages lovers of the mystery
been sayin people let your love light shine
poets and sages all throughout history
say the light burns brightest in the darkest times
it’s the bitter end we’ve come down to
the eye of the needle that we gotta get through
but the end could be the start of something new
when the great correction comes
down through the ages….
down to the wire runnin out of time
still got hope in this heart of mine
but the future waits on the horizon line
for our daughters and our sons
I don’t know where this train’s bound
whole lotta people tryin to turn it around
gonna shout til the walls come tumblin down
and the great correction comes
don’t let me down
when the great correction comes

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Technically. Emmylou backs up Patty Griffin on a pretty song she wrote about Jesus' mom.

Thanks to 1000Magicians, UK.

Ride 'em, cowboy!

This one's for Fixer. Buncha Noo Yawk gals wanta ride him into the sunset...

Red Molly performing at the Towne Crier Cafe in Pawling, NY

Thanks to mdoe.

"Hypno Toad One - Jesus Zero!"

Recommended but not required prequel, "Jesus Vs. The Hypno Toad".

Thanks to oldfartrants.

The Case Against Liberal Despair

OpVid from The Daily Beast.



Shorter: Quit whining and FIGHT.

How to survive an SF cold snap

If it's Friday it must be two days past Wednesday which means Morford's late and going off on the weather in Frisco.

Here's a fun fact: Every wonderful female I have ever known in San Francisco has complained about the weather like it was a pissy Old Testament God and they were tormented, forlorn Job. Every. Single. One.

It's true. The mercury drops 15 degrees and suddenly their toes turn to ice, they can't feel their faces and their ears fall completely off, and with blue, chattering lips buried beneath nine layers of fleece, they will say this is the absolute coldest they have ever felt in their entire lives, despite the fact it's still 52 degrees out and the sun is blazing and they're standing in line outside Bi-Rite to buy baby panda-flavored ice cream for something like $17 a lick. I love them all.
...

[...] Which is why, male or female, if you're going to live in San Francisco, you need lots and lots of...

Alcohol. What, you think God invented rum and whisky and anejo tequila for the hell of it? For binge-drinking old people and irresponsible frat boys named Greg? I don't think so.

Heh. Get a few shots in Granny and she wants to do stuff the youngsters think they invented! With frat boys...

No foolin'?

Mitt Romney has "street cred"?

Quote of the Day

The Rude One:

... Because Newt Gingrich voters are divided between two groups: the Who-Gives-a-Fuck group and the Jesus-Forgave-Him-So-Can-I group. The former group's members are so deluded that they will tell you that the Clinton impeachment was about perjury. The latter group's members are so desperate for a candidate that, as long as he said he believes he's made peace with God, they wouldn't care if Newt had strangled his second wife with his first wife's intestines.

...

In the bubble ...

Kevin Drum:

...

Everybody — yes, everybody — is subject to confirmation bias. We all get the warm fuzzies when someone tells us something we want to hear, and we resist listening to people who tell us things we don't want to hear. But there's still a difference. As Paul says, "Conservatives and liberals are not equally prone to huddle within their self-reinforcing cocoons." Liberals don't immediately dismiss as a conspiracy everything they hear from the news media that doesn't fit their preconceived notions. They might downplay unwelcome news or even ignore it, but they're still willing to listen to it. Increasingly, conservatives simply aren't. They want to believe the world is a certain way, and they're just flatly not willing to countenance anything that might challenge those beliefs. This is not a healthy development for a modern democracy.

What Fox 'News' and conservative talk radio have done to this country will take generations to repair.

Nightmares ...

Benen points out Romney is a walking bad dream:

...

That the reflexive “go back to Russia” attitudes are coming from a far-right politician who amassed a vast fortune after laying off thousands of American workers, wants to give himself another tax cut, owns multiple luxury homes, and stashes cash in the Caymans — all while pursuing an agenda that would make things tougher on American’s working class — makes me feel as if I’m trapped in a Dickensian nightmare.

Last night's Clown Car ...

Charlie Pierce watched it so the rest of us didn't have to:

...

For the first time, Willard Romney looked as though he knows he could lose this thing. He was shaky, and easily shaken, and came damned close to a Rick Perry moment while fumbling for an answer on why he hasn't released his tax returns yet, and got booed for his trouble. He got maneuvered into defending the health-care plan he'd signed in Massachusetts — even, at one point, referring to it as "Romneycare," which I don't believe he's ever done before — and he looked out of practice trying to do it. And, as was the case in 2008, he doesn't seem to have any actual allies to bail him out. (Governor Nikki Haley is his primary surrogate down here, and her favorability ratings, as we reported earlier, are tanking faster than his.) He has a chronic inability to inspire loyalty from anyone outside his immediate family. It's more than a simple lack of empathy; Willard seems to ignite an active dislike. If he's trying to run out the clock on this campaign, he's doing it in what amounts to a One Corner Offense. Genuinely nonplussed by having Republicans cast him as Mr. Potter, Romney's now open to every attack from every direction.

...

Heh ... It looks like it's tightening up again. Gonna have to get more popcorn.

Johnny Otis 1921-2012

I hate when this happens but time grinds everything away. I loved The Johnny Otis Show on L.A. TV when I was a kid.

LATimes

Johnny Otis dies at 90; R&B singer wrote 'Willie and the Hand Jive'

Johnny Otis, (wiki) who is white, grew up in a predominantly black neighborhood and had a deep connection to black culture. He discovered Etta James and Little Richard.

He wrote the song that became James' first charting hit — vaulting her to No. 1 on the R&B chart in 1955 — with "The Wallflower," popularly known as "Roll With Me Henry." It was a female-centric response to Ballard's sexually charged hit "Work With Me Annie" that raised eyebrows for its frankness.

Then he came up with a variant on Bo Diddley's signature 1955 hit "Bo Diddley" using the same five-count "shave-and-a-haircut, two-bits!" beat and created a smash of his own in "Willie and the Hand Jive." It's been recorded dozens of times by a wide variety of musicians, most notably by Eric Clapton in 1974.

Otis wrote other R&B hits, including "So Fine," "Double Crossing Blues" and "All Nite Long," and produced early recordings for Little Richard, Big Mama Thornton and Johnny Ace.

"Today's musicians are better technically," Otis said in 1979, "but that's not a virtue in itself. What's important is the emotional impact.... Most rock or disco today doesn't stir up anything in my heart — not the way a Picasso does, not the way the blues or gospel does."

Amen.

There are lots of videos of "Willie and the Hand Jive" but I like the dancing in this one. Shot in New York in '58.

Thanks to TheTomMunday.

So long, Johnny O.

Headline of the Day

Ron Paul hot air balloon cited for ‘improper lane use’

I bet Paul inflated it all by himself! Heh.

How Republicans Killed Their Own Pet Oil Pipeline Project

TPM

They relished the idea of forcing President Obama to take a public stand on the pipeline early in an election year, instead of after the election as he had wanted. And they were eager to force him to choose between supporters in the labor movement, some of whom are pushing for the pipeline, and others in the environmental movement who vehemently oppose it. So they decided to go for it.

At the same time they knew he’d likely have to reject the project, and for them that created a dilemma.

“It’s a question of whether we’d rather have the pipeline or the issue,” said one of the GOP aides. Black or white.

In the end they chose the issue.

Well of course they did. They'd rather have something to use against Obama than do anything useful.

At her own Capitol briefing Wednesday, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi took issue with these claims.

“If the Republicans cared so much about the Keystone pipeline, they would not have narrowed the president’s options by putting it on the time frame they did,” Pelosi said. “They left him very little choice…. This oil was always destined for overseas. It’s just a question of whether it leaves Canada by way of Canada, or it leaves Canada by way of the United States. So without taking a position on the pipeline, I don’t agree to the stipulation that this is oil that’s going to China now instead of the US. It was always going overseas. I don’t know where to, but it wasn’t for domestic consumption. And that’s really an important point because the advertising is quite to the contrary.”

Tar sands oil is junk. They have to add natural gas to it to get it to flow. The idea of burying a coupla-thousand-mile-long piece of steel so they can pump toxic flammable abrasive sandblast media across our nation so they can refine it INTO LIQUID CRUDE OIL so they can sell it on the world market has always seemed stupid and greedy to me. When that shit ground its way through the pipe and/or sprang a leak into the Ogallala Aquifer or anywhere, it'd be Katy-bar-the-door and OUR problem and fuck us, eh?

Putting the pipe in a lined trench, roofed against the weather, with an automatic shutoff every coupla miles and a constant human patrol would be prohibitively expensive. Burying it is quick and dirty and more profit while it lasts.

Note to Canuckistan: Run the goddam pipe due west to British Columbia so it'll be YOUR problem. I bet you're not allowed to do that either.

Update:

Just sayin'...

Word ...

Pic stolen from Stop the Republican Governors FB page.

Quote of the Day

Pam Spaulding on the Facebook, responding to the news that the recount in Iowa makes Santorum the winner over Romney:

Santorum surges all over Mittens in Iowa

Heh ... This is the article she cites.

You know ...

If you're too stupid to remember you have a gun in your bag when boarding a plane (especially after 9/11), maybe you shouldn't be allowed to carry.

A 65-year-old woman was arrested this morning at the Dallas airport after police said she passed through security with a .38-caliber revolver in her purse and boarded a Houston-bound American Airlines flight, according to news reports.

...

NBC 5 has video of the woman being questioned. The station reports that she told police she forgot the gun was in her bag.

...

But in Texas, I would think, this qualifies you to run for governor.

I need a P.O. box ...

In the Caymans or Liechtenstein. Thing is, in order to evade taxes in one of those places, you need more money than I will ever see in a lifetime:

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney has been hesitant to disclose his tax records and personal finances, and now it might be clear why: the former Massachusetts Governor has hidden tens of millions from the U.S. Treasury in secret offshore accounts in the Cayman Islands, according to ABC News.

Offshore accounts used as so-called “tax havens” cost the U.S. over $100 billion a year, and are commonly utilized by the wealthiest citizens and corporations as a means of avoiding U.S. taxes on lucrative profits.

...

You know, the Republicans love finding excuses to deny or revoke an American's citizenship if they don't wave the flag properly or worship a god other than the "approved" white christian one. How about we start jerking citizenship from these rich assholes who hide their money offshore instead of making their appropriate contribution to keep this country, their country, running? They pay little enough in taxes as it is, how about, at the very least, we close the loophole that allows them to pull these frauds?

It works ...

The Internet Strike yesterday worked!

Jan. 18 (Bloomberg) -- Six U.S. lawmakers dropped their support for Hollywood-backed anti-piracy legislation as Google Inc., Wikipedia and other websites protest the measures.

Co-sponsors who say they can no longer support their own legislation include Senators Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, Roy Blunt, a Missouri Republican, and Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat. Republican Representatives Ben Quayle of Arizona, Lee Terry of Nebraska, and Dennis Ross of Florida also said they would withdraw their backing of the House bill.

...

People have had it with special interests trying to curtail our rights in order for them to make a profit. I'm tired of protecting industries that cling to an outdated business model instead of changing with the times. If you can't adapt, get off the field instead of attempting to change the rules.

Great thanks to DU for the link.