No privacy, no mas

Andy Sullivan

In the wake of the Petraeus scandal, Melik Kaylan sounds the alarm over the loss of privacy in the Internet age:

This is a huge loss that accompanies the huge gain of the Internet. Non-saints all need some zone of privacy if they are to remain sane. And yet no one can really avoid the tools of email and texting and tweeting and Tumblring and Instagramming if they want to be part of society - and any single image or text or email can be instantly communicated to everyone on the planet by almost anyone. Anthony Weiner will therefore always live with the image of his fruit-of-the-loom chubby as if it were stamped to his forehead like a Scarlet Letter of old. Yes, there are great advantages to transparency - we would never have grasped the full extent of the torture under Bush and Cheney if some hadn't taken digital photos of the Cheney-authorized techniques in use at Abu Ghraib. But there is also great human cost.

He goes into more detail but the caution is simple: every time you hit "enter" or "send" or now apparently "save as draft", it is there for all the world to see if someone really wants to. Be careful.

Or more narrowly, clandestine business is best carried out clandestinely. If it isn't written down, it didn't happen, thank you Tom Clancy. This is nothing new. Carrier pigeons fell into the wrong hands sometimes too.

Ahhhhh, yesssss...

From Shrummy:

The GOP Faces Years in the Wilderness After 2012 Election Losses

Sensible Republicans seeking to renew the viability of a conservative party that seems out of touch after a stinging defeat at the polls are being denounced as ‘heretics.’ Robert Shrum on why the party might never find its way back.

Sensible Republicans?! Perhaps it's simply that abject defeat begets a semblance of thought.

[...] Outside the South, President Obama defeated his opponent 55 to 45 percent, winning a landslide there as well as in the Electoral College. The bottom line: Romney got elected president of the old confederacy.

That's good. When the mouthbreathers secede, they can call him. He'll answer the phone. Hasn't got much else to do these days. He can take over another failure, put it deep in debt, and sell it for pennies on the dollar and further enrich himself in the process. One caveat: whoever buys the South has to tow it away. Far, far away. I would suggest the deepest part of the Atlantic Ocean. Then sink it.

Obama pollster Joel Benenson responded that such shifts may require two or three more cycles of presidential loss. [...]
...

That’s not where realistic Republican strategists want their party to be. But four overriding realities militate against a GOP return to the White House in 2016 and perhaps for several campaigns beyond.
...

Second, the nature of the Republican primary electorate hamstrings the party’s capacity to adapt. The religious right and the true believers who dominate the nominating process have their own explanations or rationalizations for 2012. Romney wasn’t conservative enough. [...]

Schmidt recommended that Republicans dispense with the Iowa caucuses, where the litmus test is who’s most for Jesus, according to the narrow measures of right-wing fundamentalists. That change won’t happen, not yet; religious and movement forces on the far right won’t yield their hold on the primary process and their veto power over the nominee. In the last two elections, they sacrificed at least five Senate seats for the sake of ideological ultra-orthodoxy. So why won’t they demand their kind of presidential candidate—no doubts, no flip-flops, always there with them? And they believe the country will come around to them. Former Moral Majoritarian Ralph Reed smoothly explained how. Yes, there has to be change, to “combine core principles with outreach.” But outreach to whom, if the core principles are reaction and intolerance?

Outreach to fewer and fewer scared old white hypocrite Christers, that's who. Continue the march, Repugs!

Instead, in the throes of their self-proclaimed reexamination, many Republicans remind me of a scene in Theodore H. White’s classic The Making of the President 1960. JFK spoke in the Boston garden on the last night of the campaign, with politicians and ward heelers smoking cigars arranged in rows behind him. As the crowd cheered, White wrote, a look passed across their faces. You could see what the pols were thinking: Kennedy has a trick; if only I could figure it out, I could be president.

It was a false and easy conceit. And if what the GOP looks for now is a trick, what it will find is a way deeper into the wilderness.

The GOP has missed the point entirely. They pimped off the fringe right for votes and the tables got turned and now the GOP is the trick. Deep, deep, deep in the wilderness is a good place for them. They could only be improved by being turned into bear scat.

Yes, I'm enjoying the, er, scat outta all this. We sure as scat had it coming.

Update:

If you have as strange a sense of humor as I do, go read Numbers 14, which is the story of the wandering Israelites and an eerily uncanny parallel to the plight of the Repugs. Their plight, our schadenfreude. Heh.

The Country that Cannabis Built

A fun read from YubaNet. Lotsa links.

My, how times have changed. In the 1760's, you could be jailed in this country for not growing hemp! Cannabis was so highly prized that King George III made growing hemp mandatory. Tensions that arose from England's demand for raw hemp fibers from the New World were partially responsible for events that led to the American Revolutionary.

As industrial use for hemp declined, a new market developed. Medical uses for cannabis were almost unknown in Western Europe and the Americas due to the suppression of information from "heathen" cultures by the Catholic church. Medicinal Cannabis wasn't introduced to the West until 1839 by a 30-year old British physician, W. B. O'Shaugnessy, who had observed doctors in the Indian province of Bengal treating all manner of illnesses with concoctions made from hemp extracts. (Bengal means Bhang Land, which literally translates to Cannabis Land.)

One company, Gunjah Wallah, made a highly popular maple sugar hashish candy for over forty years that was advertised in the Sears Roebuck catalog as a "totally harmless, delicious, fun candy."

There ya go! Installs the munchies and takes care of them in one swell foop! I'm trying to order some of that from Sears for Christmas presents. I have some uptight Repug friends who could benefit from it spiritually as well as having their eyes opened.

Next week we will examine how every drug prohibition has its roots in racism aided by yellow journalists who promoted "Reefer Madness" hysteria for their own financial gain.

Enjoy.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

STRONG SALES REPORTED ON BLACK FRIDAY
Based on higher-than-expected number of people trampled per store.

Pope: Jesus Born Years Earlier Than Thought
Long before God even met Mary.

Cat'lick Choich, meet John McCain. Two irrelevant anachronisms that ought to go rock on the porch.

Romney Visits Disneyland
After long campaign, says he's glad to “get back to reality.”

Pundits: Jeb Bush Could Win GOP Nomination in 2016
If he changes his name.

Fine. He can be the next Repug loser.

How John McCain Humiliated Himself on Susan Rice

The Daily Beast

We don’t yet really know as a society what a person has to do to completely and utterly cancel out a record of war heroism, but we may be about to find out. [...]

Grampa Walnuts will be the last to know.

Just as conservatives couldn’t see that Romney was losing because they believed their own propaganda, I think McCain probably isn’t aware right now of what a joke he’s become.

This is good! Go read.

Feel sumthin' tuggin' atcher lip, Fox & Friends?

Raw Story, with video.

In a bizarre interview aired Friday morning, “Fox & Friends” apparently got punked by an author who declared that society absolutely has every reason to “destroy the imaginations of our children.”
...

Asked about the premise of his book, Esolen flipped the conversation on its head. “First of all, we do want to destroy the imaginations of our children,” he said. “Otherwise our economy would collapse and people would stop buying things they don’t need and don’t really even enjoy.”


“You can’t let your kid be outside, because a single blade of grass out there is a more wondrous object than anything a kid will see on a screen in a month’s time of viewing television and video games,” Esolen continued. “So, absolutely, you’ve got to keep them indoors.”

He added that fairy tales are also not advisable because “they are based on what every culture really knows about human beings.

“It’s archetypal, it’s natural human knowledge,” Esolen said. “And we don’t want that because that really taps in the imagination. So, instead we’ve to replace it with stories about who ever happens to be politically favored at the moment. This trains the child away from participation in politics.”
...

If Esolen was in fact punking Fox News, it wouldn’t be the first time this particular show has gotten fooled. [...]

Too easy. Those morons are dumber'n a bag o' hammers. Heh.

Woody Guthrie at 100

By Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! Interview and Video

Guthrie’s most famous song, “This Land Is Your Land,” was written in 1940 in response to Kate Smith’s "God Bless America.” "Woody saw ['God Bless America'] as a strident, jingoistic, complacent, tub-thumping anthem to American greatness,” Kaufman says. “And now, he had just come from the Dust Bowl. He’d just come from the barbed-wire gates of California’s Eden there. He’d seen the Hoovervilles. He’d seen the bread lines. He’d seen labor activists getting their heads busted. And so, he’s thinking, what — God bless — what America, you know, is Kate Smith singing of?” In 2009, Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen performed “This Land Is Your Land” for the inauguration of President Obama.

Over the next hour, we’ll hear from folk singer Pete Seeger, the British musician Billy Bragg and the historian Will Kaufman. But first, Woody Guthrie, in his own words, being interviewed by the musicologist Alan Lomax

ALAN LOMAX: What did your family do? What kind of people were they, and where did they come from?

WOODY GUTHRIE: Well, they come in there from Texas in the early day. My dad got to Oklahoma right after statehood. He was the first clerk of the county court in Okemah, Oklahoma, after statehood, as he is known as one of them old, hard-hitting, fist-fighting Democrats, you know, that run for office down there, and they used to miscount the votes all the time. So every time that my dad went to town, it was common the first question that I ask him when he come riding in on a horse that evening, I’d say, "Well, how many fights did you have today?" And then he’d take me up on his knee, and he’d proceed to tell me who he is fighting and why and all about it. "Put her there, boy. We’ll show these fascists what a couple hillbillies can do."

There ye go! Enjoy.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Here's the differentest one yet! Here's all you need to know:

Unsere Rubrik "Pop Secret" geht den bizarren, lustigen, tragischen und skurrilen Legenden und Mythen der Rock- und Popgeschichte auf den Grund. Sie sehen eine kurze Episode aus der Welt des Rock und Pop, die später zur Legendenbildung geführt hat. Und am Ende fragen wir nach einem Detail, das mit der Geschichte zu tun hat.

Finden Sie die Lösung, können Sie gewinnen!

Unter allen richtigen Lösungsvorschlägen verlosen wir ein Comic aus dem Kreuzberger Comicladen Modern Graphics.

Thanks to RBBradioeins, Guessenziewhere.

Ain't it amazin', Macy...

Yesterday was the big Macy's Thanksgiving parade in Noo Yawk City. I couldn't care less about that shit, but Mrs. G likes to watch it so I caught a little bit of it on one of the all-day reruns. I think forty years as a motorcycle mechanic gave me a slightly odd take on things.

Go see this copyright protected photo of an NYC motor cop. Take note of the cop's left hand.

There were about a dozen of these NYPD motor cops leading the parade, every last one of them slipping his clutch in unison with ballet-like precision so they could go that slow and maintain perfect formation.

I saw that and lost my mind just for a second and wished I had the contract for NYPD's motorcycle service business. I'm better now... Heh.

Heh...

Thanks to YubaNet.

Grand Old Planet

Paul Krugman gets to the heart of one of the cruxes of the biscuit about Repugs. Links at site.

Earlier this week, GQ magazine published an interview with Senator Marco Rubio, whom many consider a contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, in which Mr. Rubio was asked how old the earth is. After declaring “I’m not a scientist, man,” the senator went into desperate evasive action, ending with the declaration that “it’s one of the great mysteries.”

It’s funny stuff, and conservatives would like us to forget about it as soon as possible. Hey, they say, he was just pandering to likely voters in the 2016 Republican primaries — a claim that for some reason is supposed to comfort us.
...

By the way, that question didn’t come out of the blue. As speaker of the Florida House of Representatives, Mr. Rubio provided powerful aid to creationists trying to water down science education. In one interview, he compared the teaching of evolution to Communist indoctrination tactics — although he graciously added that “I’m not equating the evolution people with Fidel Castro.” Gee, thanks.

What was Mr. Rubio’s complaint about science teaching? That it might undermine children’s faith in what their parents told them to believe. And right there you have the modern G.O.P.’s attitude, not just toward biology, but toward everything: If evidence seems to contradict faith, suppress the evidence (my em).
...

And then there’s the matter of using evidence to shape economic policy. You may have read about the recent study from the Congressional Research Service finding no empirical support for the dogma that cutting taxes on the wealthy leads to higher economic growth. How did Republicans respond? By suppressing the report. On economics, as in hard science, modern conservatives don’t want to hear anything challenging their preconceptions — and they don’t want anyone else to hear about it, either.

So don’t shrug off Mr. Rubio’s awkward moment. His inability to deal with geological evidence was symptomatic of a much broader problem — one that may, in the end, set America on a path of inexorable decline.

Shorter: Mustn't say anything that contradicts the stupid beliefs of the ignoramuses who vote for them.

They are, after all, the ones who believe that Willard lost because he wasn't conservative enough!

Denialists, Whiners, and Wackjobs

Paul Begala

I used to think Republicans were a monochromatic monolith specializing in Group Think, though without the Think part. The Republicans’ reaction to the reelection of Barack Obama, however, has shown a surprising diversity in GOP thought. At least five distinct -approaches have emerged.

The Vince Lombardi Republicans. Political parties exist to win, this group says. If you don’t win, you can’t enact your agenda, can’t protect your values, can’t advance your cause. The Lombardi Republicans are pragmatic. They saw President Obama win 72 percent of the Latino vote—the fastest-growing segment of the -electorate—and they had a “Ven a Jesús” moment. [...]
...

I happen to think the Vince Lombardi types are right. But, let’s face it, they’re outnumbered by less admirable Republicans.

The Sour Grapes Republicans. For a movement that aspires to macho stoicism, there sure are a lot of whiny wusses in the GOP these days. I hate whiners. I coach my kids in baseball and basketball, and I have two inviolable rules when they lose: don’t blame the other team and don’t complain about the officials. Sour Grapes Republicans do both. Donald Trump, the village idiot of a city of 8 million (my em. Heh.), took to Twitter to call President Obama’s reelection “a total sham and a travesty,” to propose a “revolution in this country,” and to allege (falsely) that Obama had lost the popular vote. Clearly, Trump is living proof that hair spray causes brain damage.
...

The Flat-Earthers. When you listen to Flat Earth Republicans, you’d think they actually won. Karl Rove, the legendary Republican bogeyman, led groups that spent $300 million in opposition to the president and congressional Democrats. Ninety-four percent of that money was spent supporting candidates who lost. Rove’s analysis after the election: “We did good things this year.” Really? It’s not like they spent the money trying to do something truly good, like artificially inseminating zoo pandas or inventing untraceable email so Army generals can make love as well as war. No, Rove spent hundreds of millions and lost bad. That’s an abysmal year. But you wouldn’t know it listening to Flat Earth Karl.
...

The Crazies. An Arizona woman allegedly ran over her husband with her SUV when she learned he hadn’t -voted. She was apparently upset that Obamacare wouldn’t be repealed. Let’s hope her poor husband gets all the health care he needs. Lord knows he’s suffered enough.
...

The Blame America Firsters. On a conference call with his major donors a week after the election, Mitt Romney blamed his loss not on his painfully lame campaign style, his unfocused advertising strategy, or his multiple gaffes and insults. No, he blamed the American people. President Obama, he told his fellow millionaires, followed “the old playbook” of giving “gifts” to special-interest groups, “especially the -African--American community, the Hispanic community, and young people.” First, Mitt, if it was an old playbook, why weren’t you ready for the plays? [...]

I believe Lincoln got re-elected for the same reason. "Gifts" to African-Americans. Like the Emancipation Proclamation and the 13th Amendment. Even if said African-Americans couldn't quite vote for him. Heh.

The real “gift” of 2012 is that, in the toughest economy of our lifetime, the American people had the good sense to turn away from a party that holds them in such contempt.

Give thanks.

A holiday guide to arguing with your right-wing relatives

Article here, but since facts don't matter to them and you don't feel like pissin' into the wind, fuck 'em. Tell 'em if they don't STFU they're gonna be damned uncomfortable eating pumpkin pie with a turkey carcass shoved up their ass.

Give thanks

GOP's Domination Was Only Temporary

Headline of the Day

Would You Like Some Crow With That Rice, Senator McCain?

Wherein McCain is described as an "irascible douche". A little high-toned but it works for me. Heh.

No Twinkies please, we’re dying

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford going on about goings on.

Surely you must see. Surely you must understand. Don’t you know rockets are falling all over Gaza and Israel? Do you not read that more than 100 people have died already in brutal and insidious fighting that’s been going on since God was knee-high to a bogus misconception?

Jesus Christ, quit whining about Twinkies already.

He then proceeds to read the riot act to a certain shallow culture we know all too well. Enjoy.

Just sayin'...

A tip o' the Brain to Grandpa Eddie.

2d Amendment rights are for Repugs only

"I was really hoping that the conservatards would have learned something from having their asses handed to them in the election. So much for optimism! All they've done is act like a bunch of whiny babies and sore losers."

Note to Old Fart: they're not acting.

"How ironic is it that a gun store in AZ which has some of the loosest gun laws in the country is actually doing more to limit people's constitutional right to purchase firearms than the Obama administration has?"

I'm sure the irony is lost on that crybaby. Either that or he's afraid us pussy liberals will arm ourselves. Note to gun store jerk: some of us already are. You will be shocked, shocked I tell you, to find that out. I hope the day never comes, but we won't be the ones to start it. End it, maybe.

More likely, to paraphrase this old tune: "We fired our guns and the wingnuts took to runnin'. There wasn't nigh as many as there was a while ago."

Thanks to oldfartrants.

Shameless Hometown Whoring

YubaNet

Truckee, Calif. November 19, 2012 - Truckee has found itself in good company sitting among the world's best ski destinations, earning a distinguished accolade from the editors of National Geographic Adventure as one of the world's top 25 ski towns.

The article, which was posted this month on the online home page of National Geographic Adventure, breaks down what constitutes a classic ski town. Truckee is celebrated as "an inviting mountain burg steeped in ski heritage, amenities, and culture."

Truckee is heralded as being a relaxed town where locals live. Squaw Valley, famed for its extreme terrain, is referred to as Truckee's "alpha mountain,"and calls out Northstar, Sugar Bowl, Tahoe Donner and Soda Springs reflecting the variety of terrain and opportunities nearby.

The article has some fun exploring what makes a place really tick by asking local luminaries for insider tips. Truckee's own Daron Rahlves, four-time Olympian, 15-year member of the U.S. Ski Team stepped up to answer the journalist's questions, recommending his picks of where to stay, play, and party.

To view the story online go to: http://adventure.nationalgeographic.com/adventure/trips/best-ski-towns-photos/

"This article provides the reader with a sense of Truckee's colorful history and authentic charm, and also makes it clear that we sit right in the midst of many world-class ski resorts," said Lynn Saunders, president and CEO of the Truckee Donner Chamber of Commerce. "Truckee's mountain culture and fun-loving lifestyle are a draw for people who live here, visit here, and for those who decide that they want to be part of our remarkable community, by moving here."

The article fails to mention that one of the most fun things to do around here is watch the skiers (the "S-word") and boarders try to drive in the snow and stuff it into the snowbank. The corollary is you don't have to go out in the cold to see it. Just go to Safeway where it's nice and warm. They shop just like they drive. Which is to say they don't give a damn what anybody else is doing. The crashes are every bit as comical.

Also not mentioned is that the aprés ski activities are largely fueled with drugs and alcohol, which adds to the local charm and town coffers.

I love it here!

Hater Gasbag Tanks Stocks

Kos

The Rush Limbaugh Show is distributed to 600 radio stations via several radio industry networks. The show is syndicated by privately-held Premiere Networks, which contracts with Cumulus Media, Dial Gobal, and other networks to secure broad access in as many media markets as possible.

On Friday, November 16, Dial Global took a huge financial hit, resulting in the company voluntarily de-listing from NASDAQ. Dial Global's stock dropped by nearly 77 percent. The company identified three causes for its troubles, including "advertisers' response to controversial statements by a certain nationally syndicated talk radio personality in MARCH 2012."

Now, it is becoming apparent that Cumulus is also a troubled company. Dial Gobal appears to be on the ropes; Cumulus is, so far, failing to thrive. Both companies have publicly blamed Rush.

Ahhhhhhhhh...:-)

One hopes that millions of AM radios in F150s will fall forever silent when that pusillanimous puke racist gasbag is shown the door. Or at least replaced by some equally hateful local preacher sponsored by the feed store on stations that don't reach a mile from the transmitter.

Tea Party Leader: Romney Can Still Win

Joe My God

"Mitt Romney carried 24 states. We need to have conservative activists from all over the nation contact the electors, the Republican Party and the secretary of state in all of these states and tell them not to participate in the Electoral College when it meets on Dec. 17. If we can get 17 of those states (just over one-third) to refuse to participate, the Electoral College will have no quorum. Then, as the Constitution directs, the election goes to the House of Representatives. That is how we can still pull this election out and make Mitt Romney president in January. We need this concept shared with every tea party, liberty and patriotic group throughout the country. We have time to act, but we must pressure Republicans to do the right thing. It does not matter who gets credit for this. The credit is not important. Using our last chance to defeat Barack Obama is important." - Tea Party Nation founder Judson Phillips, telling World Net Daily how Romney can still win.

RELATED: This summer Phillips said that President Obama should prove he isn't a gay crackhead before making tax return demands on Romney.

Labels: batshittery, crackpots, electoral college, Mitt Romney, racism, Tea Party, teabaggers, World Net Daily

A real diehard. That's fine as long as he dies.

Thanksgiving Blessings 2012

Will Durst

To be perfectly honest, a four-day weekend devoted to food, family and football might be the perfect prescription distraction to help us through these rebuking times. So here's a couple rough examples of what a middle-aged, round-headed political comic counts as blessings over folded hands before performing a perfectly executed triple somersault into the gravy boat.
...

General David Petraeus: Who knew generals had groupies? Proves old high school adage: chicks dig stars. The larger the fruit salad, the more noxious the flies.
...

State of Florida: 12 years later, and they still can't count. Time to circumcise America. Cut Florida off and kick it into the Caribbean. Rename it North Cuba.
...

Michele Bachmann: Because every comedian needs a good right-wing nut job every now and then.

I think we have a right-wing nut job overload, but that's just me...

Many more.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

White House Inundated With Petitions From Various States To Secede
Feel they can do just fine without interstate highways, space program.

They want the checks from the rest of us to keep coming, however. As far as I'm concerned, they can fucking starve. Most of 'em need to lose weight anyway.

Romney Blames Loss on Obama Giving “Gifts” to Minorities, Young People
Bought them off with life, liberty, pursuit of happiness.

Methamphetamine Found To Reduce Risk of Flu
Ask your dealer if methamphetamine is right for you.

Biggest problem I've seen with crank is running out after you take your car apart. Heh.

??? - News Quiz - ???
Mitt Romney lost the election because:
A ) he's cruel to dogs.
B ) he's out of touch with average Americans.
C ) he has no sympathy for people who need government help.
D ) he holds positions on social issues at odds with a majority of Americans.
E ) he never paid his fair share in taxes.
F ) he avoided military service but supports an expansionist American military.
G ) he thinks half of us are lazy moochers.
H ) he wants undocumented immigrants to be hounded out of the country.
I ) he changed his position on a range of issues numerous times.
J ) he made his living pleasing investors at the expense of American workers.
Hint: he had us at dogs.

This had to happen:

Cracker Jack Introduces Caffeine-Coated Version
Created in response to longer baseball games.

The "7th inning stretch" was replaced with the "7th inning snooze" some time ago.

"Ley de fuga" - Lynch Law in Arpaio's AZ

I guess "show me your papers" isn't enough for that asshole.

Raw Story

Newly re-elected Sheriff Joe Arpaio on Thursday pledged to put an automatic weapon in the hands of every Maricopa Country deputy because “[m]ore and more illegal aliens are attempting to escape.”

In the United States, the cops generally aren't supposed to shoot you simply for running from them. Run from a cop in Mexico, however, and the next thing you will feel is a .45 round between your shoulder blades. This is because Mexico uses "Ley de Fuga". This is nothing new. Note the date at the link.

The lynch law of Latin American justice is the "ley de fuga" (law of flight). This is supposed to empower police to shoot fleeing prisoners, but in practice often means that a troublesome prisoner is set free, then drilled before he can scoot out of range. From León in Mexico's State of Guanajuato last week came a tale of ley de fuga perfect except in one particular.

With seven bullets in his back, Cattleman Tomas Manrique was found by passers-by and bundled off to a hospital. There he explained that after having been falsely arrested for stealing 50 head of cattle, he was set free in a deserted spot. Before Tomas Manrique had taken three steps toward liberty, a rattling volley cracked. He expected to make ley de juga history by recovering.

This comes at a bad time for "Loco Joe". From Think Progress:

The United States has hit net zero on illegal immigration, as fewer people are trying to cross the border illegally. In fact, a recent report found that more Mexicans appear to be leaving the United States for Mexico than are leaving Mexico for the U.S.A for the first time since the Great Depression.

Arpaio made his bones on being hard on undocumented immigrants. Less of them means his power is waning and he might have to use his deputies for arresting people for, you know, real crimes which won't get him near enough publicity.

Better to keep the populace in fear of The Little Brown Other by arming his deputies to the teeth to protect themselves from the backs of running Mexicans. I hope the deputies are smart enough to realize that an autopsy report that shows CoD to be multiple bullet holes in the back of an otherwise innocent person will be cause for Arpaio to throw them under the bus for their bad judgment, never his.

Someone's inevitably going to die because of this. Sorry 'bout that, chief, but I hope it unseats Arpaio so it will not have been in vain.

Please proceed, Governor*

*Obama's way of saying "Yer about to trip over yer own dick, dipshit. Far be it from me to stop you!" at their 3rd debate.

Even in Defeat, Romney's Gift of Gaffe Keeps on Giving

Willard's big mouth cost the Repugs the election and he appears to be working on losing them the next one. I hope he keeps it up.

Travel Destination

Quick! Call your travel agent before this joint gets too booked up!

No crap: 'Restroom Cultural Park' opens in S. Korea

The Boxer

Very pretty version.

Thanks to desiderii, Germany.

Do Re Mi Redux ¡O Si!

To everybody with a brain who flees the newly seceded Deluded States Of Dumbfuckistan who might head our way - Bienvenidos, amigos, and take the hint about what you're headed into from this highly unusual version of Woody Guthrie's cautionary song to refugees from the Dust Bowl by SoCal homeboy Ry Cooder. A song whose time has come again, perhaps.

Ry Cooder and the Chicken Skin Band play 'Do Re Mi' (written by Woody Guthrie) live at Shepherd's Bush Television Theatre, London in 1977.

Band Lineup: Guitar, Vocals - Ry Cooder, Alto Saxophone - Pat Rizzo, Drums - Isaac Garcia, Bass - Henry 'Big Red' Ojeda, Bajo Sexto - Jesse Poncé, Accordion - Flaco Jimenez, Vocals - Eldridge King, Terry Evans, Bobby King

Thanks to Honeyboy Walter, UK.

Hell On The Highway

Edgar Allen “Tow” Stratton chains up his ‘03 379 Peterbilt during a March 28 snow event while Jonathan Berman catches every move. Stratton's company Dependable Tow will be featured in National Geographic's documentary “Hell on the Highway,” airing Wednesday nights.

I just threw the photo in because I've known Edgar for 30 years.

"Hell On The Highway" is the somewhat overblown title of a new TV show on NatGeo TV on Wednesday nights. Story in our local fishwrapper, the Sierra Sun from yesterday.

TRUCKEE, Calif. — Winter rages across Donner Summit, 100 mph wind gusts blow Pacific storms of blinding snow that ravage the 7,240-foot pass on Interstate 80 above Donner Lake. The brutal storm systems dump an average snow accumulation of 415 inches yearly — the 2010-11 winter a massive 700-plus inches, with 250 inches still piled high on May 23, 2011.

Who better to capture the trials and triumphs of keeping the pass open for travel and commerce than National Geographic, airing the 10-part documentary “Hell on the Highway” Wednesdays at 10 p.m.?

“We are telling the story of the men and women in tow trucks, Caltrans, the California Highway Patrol who fight the snow every winter to keep Donner Pass and I-80 open,” said Conal O'Herlihy, line producer with America's Star Media, an outfit that creates award-winning documentaries, such as “Deadliest Warrior.”

“An element to the story is how vital I-80 is, not just to California, but to the nation. WalMart sends 250 trucks over the pass each day,” O'Herlihy added.

Swell. Not to mention the rest of the nation's commerce, the Chinese gambling tour buses, anybody and everybody who has business or pleasure east of Northern California, most of whom can't drive a lick on snowy roads. That includes a lot of truckers. One big rig on its side up there can stop the whole fucking nation! Heh.

Caltrans Superintendent Bryan Carlson, who worked in South Lake Tahoe for 29 years and now manages the Kingvale station, gave the camera crews a taste of local snow removal life. “I put them in the seats with operators — snow blowers, graders, sanders — to give them an overview of what we do,” said Carlson. He joked about the public perception that Caltrans doesn't “do anything.” If you got a look at the substation, you would be impressed with what goes on October through May. A 90-room dorm accommodates a 24/7 staff, with kitchens for crews pulling 12-hour shifts and a staggering 200-plus employee payroll. It's a nerve center of operations evaluating and staying ahead of winter storms.

Episode descriptions here. Check your local listings.

We live here and have better sense than to go over Donner Summit under bad storm conditions, so this is an interesting show for us.

By the way, there's a difference between Donner Summit and Donner Pass. Donner Summit is a geographical area of several square miles. I-80 passes through it. Donner Pass is just that, a pass through the mountains. It lies along old U.S. 40 and also passes through Donner Summit. The terms are often used interchangeably. You can get stuck in the snow there whatever you call it.

Cpl. Aaron Mankin: "Our Story"

I was a Marine Corporal too, but this young man has me outranked and outclassed by a mile. He speaks with passion and good humor. This made me mist up.

Cpl. Aaron Mankin spoke at IAVA's Sixth Annual Heroes Gala on Tuesday, November 13th in New York City. Aaron, IAVA's 2011 Veteran Leadership Honoree, is an Iraq Veteran and spokesman for UCLA's Operation Mend. Visit IAVA.org to learn more about how you can support vets like Aaron: http://iava.org

Thanks to IAVAVids.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

An old favorite.

Thanks to JasonKT.

Fantasyland

Things to do this morning. I'll be back later. In the meantime go read Daddy Frank's latest feature article. Teaser:

[...] Such is the conservative version of history that when the website Right Wing News surveyed 43 popular conservative bloggers to determine the “worst figures in American history” two years ago, Jimmy Carter, Obama, and FDR led the tally, all well ahead of Benedict Arnold, Timothy McVeigh, and John Wilkes Booth.

Headline of the Day

Liquid alert!

White House scrubs petition to ‘punch Grover Norquist in the dick’

Heh.

Quote of the Day

From a Rude post entitled "Republicans Are Some Sour Grape-Sucking Sons of Bitches" which you should go read for some more of the fun we've earned by having to listen to that twit and legions of other Repug dickheads:

We didn't just dodge a bullet by denying the presidency to this preening ass, this mock Thurston Howell, we dodged a fucking missile.

Word.

Update:

TPM

The Republican critics of Mitt Romney have had enough of their party’s failed presidential nominee.

My God, after 30+ years of disagreeing with those bastards on everything, something we agree on! Mind boggling...

Their reasons are different from ours so I doubt if we'll be giving each other wet kisses and sharing warm showers with them anytime soon.

Headline of the Day

Barbour: We’ve got to give Republicans ‘a very serious proctology exam’

Heh. With a telephone pole. Mind your head or pull it out first, GOP!

Shopping Day

See yas later.

The Confederacy of Takers

Dana Milbank brings up the best reason to let the whiny-ass Red states form the world's newest third-world nation.

President Obama’s opponents have unwittingly come up with a brilliant plan to avoid the “fiscal cliff.” They want to secede from the union.

If Obama were serious about being a good steward of the nation’s finances, he’d let them.
...

Red states receive, on average, far more from the federal government in expenditures than they pay in taxes. The balance is the opposite in blue states. The secession petitions, therefore, give the opportunity to create what would be, in a fiscal sense, a far more perfect union.
...

Yet would-be rebels from the red states should keep in mind during the coming budget battle that those who are most ardent about cutting government spending tend to come from parts of the country that most rely on it.

Unfortunately, we'll be here when you come crawling back, bitches.

Twilight of the old white guys

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford on 21st Century America.

Is it not the most astonishing thing? The country is not getting any whiter, older white bigoted people are helpfully dying off, and we now have a messy and nearly incomprehensible Catherine wheel of assorted nonwhite minorities (and women) all spinning, dancing and surging into the limelight – not to mention the cross-breeds, the already mixed, the racially unidentifiable who are, say, a quarter black, a quarter Chinese, a quarter Indian, a third polyamorous and a tenth Cuban kinky hipster lesbian schoolteacher, with a no-religious-affiliation kicker. Sweet.

This is your new American majority, each and every one of whom terrifies the old guard, the rich white guys, Ted Nugent, Bill O’Reilly, and the way it used to be. And this is why the Republican party threw every repulsive weapon it had at Obama to try and avert the inevitable; deep down, they sensed their own imminent obsolescence, even if they didn’t quite believe it was possible.

And oh, they tried everything. Racism. Birtherism. Sexism. Abortion, birth control, “legitimate rape” and irresponsible “sluts.” Religious intolerance, homophobia, xenophobia, Socialism, Communism, Nazis, Kenya, monkeys, Big Bird, gun rights, tax laws, welfare, elitism, oil shortages, health care reform that would secretly herd up and kill the elderly. Just for starters.

Nothing worked. Check that: It all worked. Just not as well as it used to. As one distraught fundamentalist Christian activist said, “It wasn’t that our message didn’t get out. We got the message out. But our message was rejected.”

Only because your message sucks wet monkey ass and folks finally got sick and tired of it.

Read the rest of this. Good one, young Mark.

And by the way, not all of us old white men are scared of The Other. They're here, they're black and brown and queer. We're all children of whatever gods there are or aren't. Enjoy it or live in misery and rightly so. Your call.

Clowns laugh neo-Nazis outta the joint

Kos. Go see this. My take on one part of it:

Hate was on the agenda the day the Neo-Nazis came to town. They came to Charlotte, NC from Detroit & joined with the National Socialist Movement to drum up support for the creation of an alternative third party based on its platform of white supremacy.

I think that's a great idea! When they have their convention we can get 'em all with one round.

They've Lost Their Fucking Minds Again (Limbaugh Edition)

The Rude One. Will no one put this wounded walrus out of its misery? That would help my happiness quotient too.

Think of radio host Rush Limbaugh at this point as an old, wounded walrus, lying half on the rocks of an Alaskan island, half in the water, bellowing sadly into the Arctic night, waiting to be finished off by either a polar bear or a killer whale, its blubber being enough to keep other beasts warm for the entire approaching winter
...

"When Democrats lose elections, do they ever say, 'You know what? We may have to give up this gay marriage position of ours and sort of abandon that. We may need to stand up for traditional marriage.' Do the Democrats ever say that when they lose elections? No. After the Democrats lose elections, do they ever say, 'You know, I think we've got to abandon this effort to shut down Second Amendment. We're gonna have to understand it. We're really out of touch. We're alienating our voters who love guns. We're gonna have to become big advocates of the Second Amendment'? Do Democrats ever say that when they lose elections? Do the Democrats, after they lose elections, all run to the media and start agonizing over where they're going wrong?"

Limbaugh went on like that yesterday, asking if Democrats ever think they need to cut taxes when they lose, or if Democrats ever think about toning down their "rhetoric," or, horror of horrors, "Do Democrats, when they are losing elections, ever blame their media?"
...

This is going to be one strain of Republican reaction: don't abandon the program - it is good and right - just sell it better. That's like saying that you didn't get syphilis because you like to bang whores without a condom, but because you chose the wrong whorehouse. Oh, hey, let's try fucking across the street and see how that works out. Not only does it not occur to you to use protection, but you can't see that perhaps you shouldn't be banging whores at all.

Here is the message you need again and again: it is what you believe. And it is how you relate to the world. Democrats went right in the 1980s and 1990s. Republicans went further right to differentiate themselves, so far that they went out the door.

And now a few conservatives are saying, "Perhaps we've gone too far." And a fat, decrepit bastard whose ability to pay alimony depends on whipping up more and more hatred is demanding that the reflection end before it begins.

Enjoy the war, GOP. You've earned it.

Fuckin' A they have. I don't know if they're going to enjoy it, but I sure as shit will.

No comment...

...other than snicker, snort, and chuckle. Heh. With video.

Raw Story

Oh, the irony...

Better late than never. Ironic Times.

Some in Congress Not Worried About Fiscal Cliff
Jan. 1, 2013 “eleven days after Mayan apocalypse,” says one.

Washington, Colorado Legalize Marijuana
Sara Lee stock soars, Coors calls it quits.

Post Mortem: Republicans Blame Loss on Vicious Name-Calling, Demonizing
“I can't believe Americans chose a foreign-born Muslim with a Communist agenda over a real American who tells the truth,” says one.

Romney Victory Website Accidentally Goes Online After Election
Some supporters book flights to attend inaugural.

Heh. They're gonna wonder who the colored kid in the warm-up act is.

This is so much fun to watch!

Right wingers careen into craziness to explain Obama's victory

President Obama’s reelection has caused right-wingers to become completely unhinged. They are purple-faced and apoplectic, convinced that an ignorant horde of government-dependent social leeches has destroyed traditional America and banished God from the country.

Not a huge step. Their hinges were kinda squeaky and loose to begin with. Heh.

All the usual suspects. Enjoy yourself. Go read.

This is a necessary self-deception. Otherwise, conservative crazies would have to face an inconvenient truth: On election day, a majority of real Americans rejected them.

The crux of the biscuit. I hope they choke on their fuckin' snake oil.

Headline of the Day

Texas Republican Wants State To Leave U.S. Over Obama Win

¡Adios, pendejos! Don't hitcherself in the culo with the puerta on the way out.

Fat fuckin' chance. More wackadoodle sour grapes. Heh.

The Blame Game

I suppose I'll get over it but right now I'm purely enjoying the shit outta all this! Remember, it's not whether you win or lose, it's how you place the blame.

Thanks to YubaNet.

They haven't quite figured out yet that they lost because:

A) Their whole fucking message sucked wet monkey ass and not enough voters over the Dead End Quarter, who'll fall for anything that satisfies their prejudices, were stupid enough to fall for it .

B) An extremely poor candidate. Better than the rest of their primary lops, who were enough to keep a few Repugs out who could have won.

C) Demographic arrogance. Grumpy old white men ain't enough anymore.

I doubt if they'll figure it out. They're not very good at looking in the mirror. Too much reality in reflection. I kinda hope they double down until none of them are left.

Rove's Last Ride

From my Facebook page via Teabonics.

From "comments":

"It's not the frog march I was hoping for, but it'll do."

Yes, yes it will. Heh.

The "inside baseball" war is getting underway. Excellent! From Politico:

Richard Viguerie, a pioneering direct-mail consultant, called for Republicans to purge from their ranks Rove and Ed Gillespie — who helped found Crossroads and later moved over to Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign — as well as Romney advisers Stuart Stevens and Neil Newhouse. “In any logical universe,” he argued, “no one would give a dime to their ineffective super PACs, such as American Crossroads.”

I love the smell of sour grapes in the morning!

Is the conservative media killing conservatives?

Hopefully. Salon. Barf alert!

Liberals like me have spent a lot of time in recent years mocking conservatives for the silliness of their media, wherein Steve Doocy is a star, Sean Hannity is an insightful analyst, and Rush Limbaugh is a brave crusader for truth. Beyond the jokes, we’ve talked a lot about the pathologies produced by the self-reinforcing worldviews propagated in the conservative media ether. One of the key features of those media, and what differentiates them from partisan left media, is the way they talk about the rest of the media. Liberals may like to watch MSNBC, but if you watch MSNBC you won’t be reminded ten times an hour that everything you see in your newspaper or on another television station is a vicious lie concocted by conservatives to deceive you as part of their plan to destroy the country you love.

But that is what you’ll get if you watch Fox, listen to Rush Limbaugh, or consume many other kinds of conservative media. It’s not just a diet of information congenial to your beliefs; it’s also a message of distrust of any other source of information that isn’t explicitly conservative. Which is why it’s not in the least bit surprising that many conservatives were so shocked by the results of Tuesday’s election; if you’re soaking in that rhetoric, the idea that a majority of American voters could voluntarily choose to give Barack Obama—the socialist, the foreigner, the apologist, the black nationalist—another term in office makes no sense whatsoever. It cannot be.

Yeah, oh the horror! Heh. Suck it, bitchez.

[...] But perhaps it’s time to look at the conservative media as a weakness, even the right’s Achilles’ Heel.
...

The next four years will be boom times for conservative media; it’s always good for business when your enemies are in power. They will continue to infuriate liberals. But the next time you see Fox propagating some absurd fantasy of Barack Obama’s perfidy, or see Limbaugh and Carlson ramping up another episode of race-baiting, remind yourself that they’re probably doing the most harm to their own side.

And that, folks, is a good thing.

The Weight

I saw this on ACL last night. It was a tribute to Levon Helm. Terrific. Article here.

Saving the best for last, the episode ends with an emotional “supergroup” performance of “The Weight.” The song may be familiar, but the lineup is pretty rare, featuring Bonnie Raitt on slide guitar, Larry Campbell on acoustic, Booker T. on keys, and a handful of powerhouse singers — including Emmylou Harris, Amy Helm, Brittany Howard, Teresa Williams, and the Alabama Shakes’ Brittany Howard — on vocals. It’s a moving tribute to the late Levon Helm, and you can watch it here, two days before it hits TV.

Well, not here you can't. Heh.

"America Wins!"

This is the best plainly spoken explanation of the election that I've seen yet. Progressives/liberals/Democrats will enjoy it. Conservatives/teabaggers/Republicans will not, but I highly recommend that they hold a gun to their own heads and force themselves to watch it.

Thanks to oldfartrants.

"For Honor, For Country"

The Commandant and SgtMaj of the Marine Corps, Gen. James F. Amos and Sgt. Maj. Micheal P. Barrett, present the 2012 Marine Corps Birthday Message celebrating the 237th Anniversary of the USMC. Footage includes historical b-roll and images from Guadalcanal as well as interviews with WWII veterans, subject matter experts, active duty Marines and Marine spouses. Happy Birthday Marines! Semper Fi. The Marine Corps Birthday is November 10, 1775.

This video is from the Department of Defense and as such is in the public domain. Any copying, editing or reproduction is authorized and encouraged.

Notable quote: "We have the Eagle, Globe, and Anchor tattooed on our soul."

Yes, yes we do.

This is nice high-sounding stuff, but mostly we just like to kick ass.

Happy Birthday, Mom!


Update:

Here's the bullshit we really want you to believe. Heh. From some Marine-related Facebook page or other:

“Ten November 1775. I was born in a bomb crater. My mother was an M16 and my father was the devil. Each moment that I live is an additional threat upon your life. I eat concertina, piss napalm and I can shoot a round through a flea’s ass at three hundred meters. I travel the globe festering on anti-Americans everywhere I go for the love of mom, Chevrolet, baseball, and apple pie. I’m a grunt. I’m the dirty, nasty, stinky, sweaty, filthy, beautiful little son of a bitch that’s kept the wolf away from the door for over two-hundred and twenty-five years. I’m a United States Marine. We look like soldiers, talk like sailors, slap the shit out of both of ‘em. We stole the Eagle from the Air Force, the Rope from the Army, and the Anchor from the Navy. Warrior by day, lover by night, drunkard by choice, Marine by God. Semper Fidelis.”
-Anonymous Marine

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

This is a really good video! Thanks, Laurie!

Promo video for Emmylou's recording of this Lucinda Williams song for her Cowgirls Prayer CD Marc Savoy on accordian

Emmylou Harris ~ Crescent City

Thanks to 1000Magicians, UK.

Republicans are ripping Rush a new one

Kos, with video.

Republicans are kicking Rush Limbaugh in his privates over racial insensitivity, apocalyptic pronouncements, and feeding the right wing mis-information bubble.
...

A few weeks ago, Limbaugh mentioned "the Daily Kos, that bedwetting bunch of website Democrat base people." Yesterday no less than the senior editor of The American Conservative accused Limbaugh of pants-wetting:

"I went to bed last night thinking we've lost the country," said Limbaugh, on the day after [the election]. "I don't know how else you look at this."

So a plain-vanilla Republican like Mitt Romney losing a close election to Barack Obama amounts to the Conservative Apocalypse? Good grief. Where does this pants-wetting hysteria end?

—Rod Dreher, Senior editor, The American Conservative

I think Rushbo's bladder would burst before he had enough piss to put out his pants on fire. That'd be OK. I guess the Repugs are pissin' on him to help.

Makes ya wonder how come the Repugs are coming down on their intellectual leader all of a sudden. Did something bad happen to them recently that he mighta had something to do with?

Or are they just mad that there weren't enough Shittoheads to win the election?

Me? I just wanta see Rushbo's heart explode right out of his chest while he's on air.

Karl Rove's Former Leather Slave Comments on His Ex-Master

You know who.

He leaned in. "I masturbated while Karl was losing his mind over Ohio," he said and then smiled. "I saw him on fire there, burning, burning, writhing and yelping, rolling on the ground, until he collapsed into ashes, and I just jacked it. It felt so good." He paused and got wistful, staring into the amber liquor. "You don't wanna know what he would have done to me Tuesday if he still had me. I don't know if I could have survived it. The razors..."

"You don't--"

"It's okay." He slugged back what was left and ordered another. We drank on, the Rude Pundit and the thin man, shooting whiskey and sharing glee over Rove's desperate attempts to justify his existence and his failures, over his absurd, pathetic spin that Obama "suppressed the vote" by saying mean things about Romney and his supporters, coming up with ways that Rove would have to pay back the hundreds of millions of donated dollars - the phrase "Sheldon Adelson's dick lamprey" was used by one of us, and laughing at how degraded Rove must have felt over being called out by Megyn Kelly on the air, repeatedly. "And Bill Hemmer!" the thin man said. "That guy's so dumb, you could put a dunce cap on him and he'd thank you for making his head bigger."

I've been angry with Turdblossom kinda constantly over the years. I've had visions of yanking his skull out through his asshole. Or pulling the lever that dropped him on a long fall on a short rope to his fiery reward.

This is the first time I've gotten to laugh at him and it feels GOOD.

I'm not complacent. Unless his donors sue him until he's living under a bridge like the putrescent troll he is, he'll be back.

Toke and Change

Enjoy. Smoke 'em if ya got 'em...

Former Washington, Colorado cops explain: What’s really going to change now that marijuana is legal? (via Raw Story )

Following wins for marijuana legalization in Washington and Colorado on Tuesday night, a former Seattle police chief and a former Denver police officer sat down with Raw Story to discuss what the laws will actually do and how they think things will change. “Today is a great day for America!” exclaimed…

Man Behind Anti-Islam Video Gets Prison Term

NYT

LOS ANGELES — A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced the man behind “Innocence of Muslims,” the anti-Islam YouTube video that ignited bloody protests in the Muslim world, to one year in prison for violating parole.
...

In accordance with the sentencing request by Robert Dugdale, the assistant United States attorney who prosecuted the case, Judge Christina A. Snyder ruled that Mr. Nakoula would serve one year in prison followed by four years of probation. She rejected a request for home confinement in lieu of prison from Mr. Nakoula’s lawyer, Steve Seiden, telling Mr. Nakoula that he had already “struck a deal far more favorable than he might have otherwise suffered.”
...

“His deception actually caused real harm to people,” he said.
...

Mr. Nakoula was arrested in September and was ordered held without bail. Out of concern for his safety, he has been kept in protective custody at the Metropolitan Detention Center here. A string of Muslim religious leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan have offered bounties for the killing of the film’s maker.

I sincerely hope he enjoys some reflective moments of prayer with some rather large Muslim gentlemen over the next year.

Headline of the Day

Fox News Audience Abandons Ship After Obama Wins

The sharp drop-off in viewership that occurred only on Fox reveals the sensitivity that the Fox viewer has to actual, truthful information.

Yes, when FauxNews couldn't get out of it and finally had to tell the truth its viewers didn't want to hear, they scurried down the anchor chain and swam for it.

"All you have to do to stay on that gravy train is vote"

El Rude-o on the blame game from wingnut gasbags accusing us of reelecting Obama because we want "things". Yeah, "things" like the right to vote.

Scared, scared white men all, blaming those demographically-different (or, you know, black and Hispanic) people who want stuff, the half of America that pours gravy from the train, gravy like Medicare and the GI Bill and Pell Grants, acting as if the Bush tax cuts and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan weren't the indulgent luxuries of a fading empire that chose frivolity and fantasy over the mundane work of actually taking care of the country and its citizens. But that would require self-reflection, and it's always easier just to blame the spics for stealing your hubcaps rather than realizing they're gone because you hit the curb a while ago because you're a shitty driver.

We kept the keys from them for another four years.

Bwahahahaha!

Credit Cards Linked to the Romney Campaign Canceled Immediately Following Concession Speech

Aides taking cabs home late that night got rude awakenings when they found the credit cards linked to the campaign no longer worked.

All those $million$ and a cheapskate too! Priceless!

"A fool and his money are soon parted"

Well, my theme yesterday was "America Won!". Today it seems to be about recrimination and backlash on the right, top and bottom alike, which is every bit as cheerful!

Romney Donors Complain They Were Ripped Off And Lied To

Shorter: Waaaaaaaaaaah!

No, you're co-conspirators in the fraud that was attempted to be pulled on the American people. A campaign about nothing and with no values, true positions or consistency.
...

In the end, these tools are still about money and themselves. Are they upset at their lost chance to serve the nation? To make history? To achieve great things? To serve their citizens for a higher purpose? To do good and serve benevolently? No, they're pissed they lost some cash. Pathetic.
...

You know what guys? You hang out with trash long enough, pretty soon you start smelling like it. The Romney crew was trash. They didn't care about anything other than power. They're not in it to tell truth to power. To serve the people. They're there to tilt things back to the folks they approve of and themselves. Period. Fuck them. Fuck their whole ilk. I hope the whole lot of them is declaring bankruptcy in a year. They suck. They are despicable. They deserved to lose even worse than they did and they have zero respect for America, democracy, honesty, higher callings and most of the American people.

That last paragraph summed up eight+ years of the Brain.

Headline of the Day

For the Radical Right, Obama Victory Brings Fury and Fear

There, there, babies. Everything will be OK, righties. Stay under the porch. We'll protect you from everything except your own imaginations. I believe Obamacare covers those.

Go read this. These people are fucking nuts.

The Real Real America

Paul Krugman

So, for a while there during the campaign it seemed very iffy. But in the end, discipline and being on the right side of the issues prevailed. Yes, Elizabeth Warren won!

Oh, and that guy Obama too.

Tomorrow — or I guess today — comes the cleanup; when thousands, perhaps millions, of right-wing heads explode, it makes quite a mess.

Gimme a squeegee...

For a long time, right-wingers — and some pundits — have peddled the notion that the “real America”, all that really counted, was the land of non-urban white people, to which both parties must abase themselves. Meanwhile, the actual electorate was getting racially and ethnically diverse, and increasingly tolerant too. The 2008 Obama coalition wasn’t a fluke; it was the country we are becoming.

And sure enough that more diverse and, if you ask me, better nation just won big.

Word.

Kick Rocks, Turdblossom

Good read by Plaid Adder.

Mr. Rove, I have been keeping your political eulogy on ice for years now, waiting for the moment when I coudl finally and definitively say: you are done. And glory hallelujiah, the moment has arrived.
...

"He used his own data." That tells the sad, enraging, corrupt and gut-wrenching story of 2004 in a nutshell. It's painful looking back on that.

But you know what? I LOVE knowing that in 2012, he sat there on FOX News and tried to pull the same stunt...and nobody listened to him. Not even the delusional bastards at FOX News. Instead, they basically laughed at him...or thought, as one of their newscasters said as they cut back to McCormick Place, "AWKWARD!"

I guess Rove never made it back into the reality-based community after 2004. He was evidently unable to accept the idea that citing his secret Ohio data would not be enough to swing this one. And do you know why, Karl? Because after eight years of Bush and four years of Obama there were just not enough people left in America who were dumb enough to sign up for four years of Romney. No, not even in Ohio. No, not even after voter suppression and whatever other shenanigans your pals organized out there. ...

Because, after four years of a president who has something to offer besides humiliation, greed, and contempt, Karl, the American people no longer love the way you lie.

Because the number of bigoted white men willing to believe any bullshit as long as it makes them feel like they're king of the world is no longer a large enough percentage of the population to swing an election. Or even to swing Ohio.

I'd still like to have five minutes alone with that roly-poly piece o' shit sonofabitch before the billionaires have him killed. I hope he's found in a shallow grave with his arm sticking straight up with a fanned-out deck of cards in his hand. Now there's a cheery thought.

Steel Cage Death Match On Bullshit Mountain*!

Tom Friedman. Yes, that Tom Friedman.

The G.O.P. has lost two presidential elections in a row because it forced its candidate to run so far to the loony right to get through the primaries, dominated by its ultraconservative base, that he could not get close enough back to the center to carry the national election. It is not enough for Republicans to tell their Democratic colleagues in private — as some do — “I wish I could help you, but our base is crazy.” They need to have their own reformation. The center-right has got to have it out with the far-right, or it is going to be a minority party for a long time.

A long time would be fine. I was gonna say "leave the Speedos at home, boys" but that would be even worse...

*Reference here.

Headline of the Day

Koch Brothers Invoice Romney 500 Million For ‘Services Not Rendered’

Bwahahahaha!

Note to Willard: Don't worry about Adelson. Just put a little on his commissary account at Marion every month. :-)

A Thrashing

Michael Tomasky

This was a thrashing. I don’t yet know the full electoral college total, but it’s looking like at least a 100-vote margin. That’s a thrashing. Over at 11:13? And the truth is, it wasn’t even that dramatic. It was over around 9:00. The next two hours were just waiting around for it to be official.
...

Was it the ground game? Was it the 47 percent? Was it Sandy? Was it Chris Christie? It was a little bit of all those things. But mostly it was two big things, and this election was about big things.

The first big thing is that a very clear majority of Americans saw the truth about the past four years. Exit polls showed that voters still blamed the economic problems on George Bush’s administration. They thought Obama tried hard and did a pretty good job (no, he hasn’t done a great job yet), and they notice the change and improvement recently. I didn’t write all these things down, but in state after state exit poll as they went through them on CNN, more people thought—finally!—that the economy was headed in the right direction.

The people know who created the problem, and they know who’s fixing it. That’s number one.

And number two? The second big thing here is that the Republican Party is just too far to the right. Not just to win a national election. It’s too far to the right even to compete really seriously in one. The thing some Republicans are saying now is absolutely true: They should have been able to win this year. No incumbent president has ever been reelected with this kind of unemployment rate, and there’s no good reason it should have happened now. They could have won.

But it’s a fringe party that has become too extreme to win the White House. I’d imagine they’re going to blame Romney. I don’t like Mitt Romney. I’m indescribably relieved that after tonight, I never have to hear that man’s wretched voice again (my em). He ran the lyingest campaign in modern history—just outright and blatant lies. [...]
...

[...] But tonight, America told the guy who’s been trying that they appreciate it. And they told the crazy party: you’re crazy.

The crazy people are always the last to know they're crazy, and then they'll deny it and still say everybody is crazy but them and double down on it. We'll be living with batcrap crazy for a long time yet.

Obama's Anger Translator - Victory

Liquid alert!

Thanks to comedycentral.

A Few Brief Notes to Republicans on the Day After Their Defeat by Barack Obama

What would a post-victory day be without a weigh-in from The Rude One? Incomplete, that's what. He does not disappoint.

In four of the last five presidential elections, you lost the popular vote (we won't get into the fact that you really lost four of the last five elections completely). Is that telling you something? No, it's not. Because you're Republicans. And you don't care what reality is. You prefer to attempt to bend reality like a contortionist porn actor trying and failing to lick his own taint from behind.

Holy crap. I thought it impossible, but Rude just outdid himself in the unlikely and possibly physically impossible sexual positions department. I will savor the visual until the bleach tanker arrives...

You lost. It wasn't close. It wasn't a squeaker. It wasn't a nailbiter. All of your internal magical mathematicians were wrong. It was over the second the polls closed on the West Coast because it was over before the election even started. It was over because you nominated a fraud, a Tin Man who spent the entire campaign looking for a heart not because he really wanted one but because his advisors told him that he needed one. It was over because whatever else he tried to be, Mitt Romney was as close to a caricature of a rich dick as you could get without looking like he was merely plagiarizing The Simpsons or Dickens. It was over because, despite every effort to smear and lie about the President, Americans saw that Barack Obama was not your crude Bolshevik monster, but a cool, rational man who kept trying to get things done despite monumental opposition, despite monumental debt, despite a monumental storm. You won't see these things, though, because you're Republicans, and self-reflection is to you what a hot needle is to a cyst on your ass.

He ends his post on a darker and realistic note. Go see for yourself.

"Karl Rove’s head just exploded"

Bwahahahaha! Ah, sweet schadenfreude...

Watch this!

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Via Raw Story.

The Great Obamagasm of 2012

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford creamin' his jeans. Heh.

This just in: The pro-choice, pro-women, pro-environment, pro gay-marriage, pro-education, pro-health care-reform black guy who seems to genuinely care about the state of the world and helping as many people as possible even though he’s imperfect and can’t get it right every time, he beat out the hollow, wildly dishonest, anti-choice, anti-gay, anti-environment, anti-everything rich guy no one really liked and everyone knew would slam us back a couple generations and a Mormon half.

And lo, it is a good day indeed.

Much more. Enjoy.

4 More Years

America won tonight.

The fun will begin tomorrow when the Repugs go to war with themselves over who is to blame. It will be fun to watch so lay in extra popcorn. There will be weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth and rending of garments, not to mention whining, moaning, snivelling, bitching, kvetching, complaining, and much fingerpainting, oops, sorry, fingerPOINTING (although there may be some of the other as well). Note to the GOP: look inward, my brothers. I know exactly why they lost and I'm interested to see if they can figure it out by their next chance in 2024. 

We the People, and the New American Civil War

A 'recommended read' by Robert Reich.

In other words, white working-class men have been on the losing end of a huge demographic and economic shift. That’s made them a tinder-box of frustration and anger – eagerly ignited by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and other pedlars of petulance, including an increasing number of Republicans who have gained political power by fanning the flames.

That hate-mongering and attendant scapegoating – of immigrants, blacks, gays, women seeking abortions, our government itself – has legitimized some vitriol and scapegoating on the left as well. I detest what the Koch Brothers, Karl Rove, Grover Norquist, Rupert Murdoch, and Paul Ryan are doing, and I hate their politics. But in this heated environment I sometimes have to remind myself I don’t hate them personally.

Bobby's very smart, but he's too nice. I hate everybody he mentioned and it's personal.

The Republicans' last hurrah

USA Today

The Republican Party's last hurrah is fast approaching. The GOP's coming demise may not be obvious from the outcome of this election, but I think it's all but certain.

I'm not talking about the Republican Party that was created in the 1850s by opponents of slavery. That GOP drew its last breath a long time ago. It was trampled to death by the herds of anti-civil rights Democrats,social conservatives and money-grubbers that started swelling the Republican Party's ranks in the 1960s.

Since then, the core of the Grand Old Party has consisted mainly of the rearguard of those who oppose the social and cultural changes the civil rights movement ushered in, and a small band of greedy plutocrats who seek to profit from such intolerance. In recent years, this eclectic group of Republicans has been joined by the Tea Partiers, a collection of small-government, anti-tax, no-compromising political activists. The common strand that laces through all these groups is race: Their membership is nearly all white.

It is this lack of diversity that is plunging the party toward extinction. [...]

Faster! Faster!

Sure, Republicans have had a lot of success racking up election victories with little help from black and Hispanic voters, but that's not going to continue very far into the future.

Like a dying sun, the GOP's impending doom is masked by a final burst of energy that might keep it competitive through a couple more election cycles. But as the nation's demographics change, the Republican Party is destined for the political scrap heap in the not-too-distant future.

Best news I've had all day.

We need more than one party - three would be good - but the current Repugs ain't one of them.

Voting: A Love Story

El Rude-o

He had had some doubt that his polling place would even be available since there are still areas here in Sandyland that are without power. But it was up and running on a generator, with no heat. And everyone, from the black guy who told the Rude Pundit where his district's table was to the Hispanic woman who found his name in the Big Book o' Registered Voters to the elderly Indian dude who monitored the booth to make sure the vote went through, was kind and friendly; they were even patient with others who did not show up in the Big Book. It went as smoothly as it could have possibly gone, an idealized version of what participation in democracy should be, not the ludicrous, racist, oppressive, and childish version of things in states that went for Barack Obama that are run by Republicans. The Rude Pundit lives and votes in a working class neighborhood that is overwhelmingly non-white, and there are no problems at all because no officials from the state or county are causing them.

More.

In the End, Vote for Obama Because Fuck Romney

Today's 'must read' from The Rude Pundit. In toto Below The Fold.

Finally, at the end of four brutal years of the 2012 presidential campaign, the Rude Pundit is exhausted. He's exhausted and disgusted, and there's so many factors as to why, some of them Sandy-related bullshit, some of them political bullshit, that he'll just bring it down to one: that we as a nation put ourselves through a four year-long campaign because, truly, once Jeb Bush and Chris Christie decided they weren't going to run for president, the election was over. Why did they take the 2016 off ramp? Because they knew the inevitable outcome and they didn't want to dim whatever gleams they have reflecting off them. They knew, as the Rude Pundit knew (demonstrably), that Barack Obama was going to win reelection. If they thought he could lose, they would have run. So the smart narcissists got out of the game, leaving only the dumb narcissists.

And the dumbest, richest narcissist of them all bought the nomination for himself because that's the only fucking way such an illegitimate, empty vessel of a religious fanatic, this charlatan, this con man could have gotten this far in our nonsensical system of choosing a leader.
...

Romney needs to have election results shoved up his ass and down his throat because he has approached the presidency as something that is his by some kind of rich white man's birth right.
...

No, Barack Obama ain't poor and he ain't perfect. And this blog has pissed off more than a few readers by pointing that out, especially on civil liberties, and even more especially on drone attacks. He could have been even more aggressive with those who opposed him. He could have developed a way to communicate what the health care reform law does, what the stimulus has done, and more. We could list a shitload of his accomplishments, and that would be enough.

But it's also enough to say this: Fuck Mitt Romney. Fuck him and everything he represents. Vote to make him pay in a way he never has had to in his entire awful life.

(Note to fellow liberals: If you don't wanna vote for Obama or want to vote for Jill Stein, well, it's your vote, motherfuckers. Do with it what you will. Some people spend all their money on meth. It might fuck up their lives permanently, but they sure feel good while they're doing it.)

Headline of the Day

Liquid alert!

Texas marching band features Big Bird decking Romney as Obama does backflips

In TEXASS?!

With video!

Question of the Day

Why Was Uncertified 'Experimental' Software Installed on ES&S Tabulation Systems in 39 OH Counties Just Days Before Presidential Election?

We know why.

The Republicans’ Closing Argument

Borowitz

In its entirety, the argument read as follows: “We’re strongly opposed to FEMA and health care, but basically O.K. with rape.”
...

Mr. Priebus also had this message for the American voter: “Your vote is important. We’ve spent billions trying to buy it.”

Not included was his statement, "We tried to be nice and buy it, but if that doesn't work we'll steal it."

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

CANDIDATES MAKE LAST PUSH IN FINAL DAYS OF CAMPAIGN
Obama urges his supporters to get out and vote; Romney urges his supporters to get out and stop them.

In Pitch for Bipartisanship, Romney Pledges Regular Meetings with Democrats
Once a year, in the servants' quarters.

At Christmastime, to get their bonus lump of coal.

Fact-Checkers Chastise Both Sides in Final Days
Romney claim Chrysler, GM sending jobs to China deemed false; Obama claim oldest daughter now 5' 9" deemed off by 1/4".

That's called "equivalence".

More Than Two-Thirds of Republican Voters Believe in Demonic Possession
Explains why they vote against their own best interest.

That esplains a lot...

"You can't hide your lyin' eyes"

This one goes out to W. Mittens Rmoney.

Thanks to mrtamberineman123, UK.

SNL

In case you missed it. This is funnier'n shit!