The Reagan Undead

Short piece by Charles P. Pierce on the holdover trickle-down zombies that ate our nation's face. And planned the shutdown. Please forgive me for the link. These are desperate times. Heh.

Will the sad detritus of the Saint Ronnie administration ever stop fouling American public life? We have Our Lady Of The Magic Dolphins on the teevee almost every weekend. We had a whole clutch of the foreign-policy fantasts rehabilitated during the late reign of C-Plus Augustus. And now, this guy, who once advocated concentration camps for student demonstrators, who personally oversaw the most embarrassing "investigation" into the porn industry ever conducted, and who functioned as lookout and getaway driver for the Iran-Contra crooks, up to and including the increasingly dim president himself, comes back to help screw up the nation again. Nobody listens to Gary Hart, but Edwin Meese III still has a place in public life. Wingnut welfare is forever.

At least part of the blame has to be shared by those nominal Democrats who, either through their silence on the crimes of that era, or in their admiration for Reagan's "style" and toothy obliviousness. (The latest of these, alas, is Chris Matthews, who has written a book about how Tip O'Neill and Ronnie made politics "work," and who, between 1980 and 1982, probably sold out truly progressive politics for at least two decades.) A number of truly horrible things were set in motion in our political life in the 1980's. The people responsible never have really been called to account for it. Now, one of the worst of them is back, doing further damage. I am, frankly, stunned.

I'm not. Meese's big brag back in the day was that there wasn't quite enough evidence to indict him when he worked for the Alzheimer's President.

Insufficient evidence to indict. The words are not an endorsement. Yet Edwin Meese III waved them like a badge of honor Tuesday as he announced his long overdue resignation as U.S. attorney general.

They're ba-ack...

Headline of the Day

The GOP Has Been Planning The Government Shutdown Since Last Year. Here’s The Proof

This comes as no surprise.

Word

Click to embiggen

A tip o' the Brain to Hammer the Gods.

The Boehner Bunglers

Paul Krugman

The federal government is shut down, we’re about to hit the debt ceiling (with disastrous economic consequences), and no resolution is in sight. How did this happen?

The main answer, which only the most pathologically “balanced” reporting can deny, is the radicalization of the Republican Party. As Thomas Mann and Norman Ornstein put it last year in their book, “It’s Even Worse Than It Looks,” the G.O.P. has become “an insurgent outlier — ideologically extreme; contemptuous of the inherited social and economic policy regime; scornful of compromise; unpersuaded by conventional understanding of facts, evidence and science; and dismissive of the legitimacy of its political opposition.”

But there’s one more important piece of the story. Conservative leaders are indeed ideologically extreme, but they’re also deeply incompetent. So much so, in fact, that the Dunning-Kruger effect — the truly incompetent can’t even recognize their own incompetence — reigns supreme.
...

It has been obvious for years that the modern Republican Party is no longer capable of thinking seriously about policy. Whether the issue is climate change or inflation, party members believe what they want to believe, and any contrary evidence is dismissed as a hoax, the product of vast liberal conspiracies.

For a while the party was able to compartmentalize, to remain savvy and realistic about politics even as it rejected objectivity everywhere else. But this wasn’t sustainable. Sooner or later, the party’s attitude toward policy — we listen only to people who tell us what we want to hear, and attack the bearers of uncomfortable news — was bound to infect political strategy, too.
...

Unfortunately for all of us, even the shock of electoral defeat wasn’t enough to burst the G.O.P. bubble; it’s still a party dominated by wishful thinking, and all but impervious to inconvenient facts. And now that party’s leaders have bungled themselves into a corner.

Everybody not inside the bubble realizes that Mr. Obama can’t and won’t negotiate under the threat that the House will blow up the economy if he doesn’t — any concession at all would legitimize extortion as a routine part of politics. Yet Republican leaders are just beginning to get a clue, and so far clearly have no idea how to back down. Meanwhile, the government is shut, and a debt crisis looms. Incompetence can be a terrible thing.

Not "can be", Paul - "is".

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Republicans Agree to Raise Debt Ceiling
If Obama releases his birth certificate.

Fox News Refers to Government Shutdown as “Slimdown”
Refers to debt ceiling as “Meaningless IOU.”

Obama Tells GOP to “Knock It Off”
“Suck it up,” “cut to the chase,” and “shit or get off the pot.”

Survey: Bible Belt Loves Porn More Than Cosmopolitan Areas
And damn proud of it.

Sunday Emmylou Blogging

This one's for Bear, who noticed...

The Triumph Of The Ratfuckers

An homage to Donald Segretti, the first political ratfucker to call himself that, in the context of what the teabaggers are up to by Charles P. Pierce.

But first a little background. The whole idea of "RF" was started by Big Daddy Roth back in the day. It was "Rat Fink" because we couldn't wear "Rat Fuck" on our T-shirts back then. We knew what he meant. That little hotroddin' rat was an idol and symbol to us teenagers. So was Big Daddy Roth.

The most popular Ed "Big Daddy" Roth monster was Rat Fink. Rat Fink started as a drawing that Ed had put on his refrigerator. Ed "Big Daddy" Roth was a genius at designing cars, but it was Rat Fink that brought him fame. By 1963, teenagers across America were buying Rat Fink model kits and mass-produced Rat Fink T-shirts by Ed "Big Daddy" Roth.
...

The Ed "Big Daddy" Roth Gang included: Rat Fink, Drag Nut, Mother's Worry, and Mr. Gasser. They soon became heroes to young kids across the nation who could relate to the stories and themes of the Ed "Big Daddy" Roth gang.

Back to the modern-day ratfuckin' bastards.

As the Reign Of The Morons enters its third day, let us pause for a moment to pay tribute to a political visionary whose entire career presaged the current moment, anticipating the essential dynamic in play in Washington right now in all of its petulant, kindergartenish glory. Let us raise a morning glass to Donald Segretti, the ratfucker.

(As any student of Watergate knows, "ratfucking" was the word used by Segretti and a number of other officials in the Nixon White House for the dirty tricks they ran in student elections when they all were at the University of Southern California. Segretti -- as well as his pal, Dwight Chapin -- simply transferred these techniques to our national elections.)

There are two basic philosophical foundation stones to ratfucking. The first is that political sabotage for its own sake is a worthy enough goal. There doesn't necessarily have to be an obvious purpose or obvious logic behind it. Everything is simply tactics. Those tactics either work or they don't. To believe this, of course, one must first believe that all politics is a essentially a zero-sum game of power; you win and the other guy loses. Who rules? Period. One cannot for a moment contemplate the notion that politics -- and therefore, government -- has anything to do with the public good. I trust I don't have to spell out the parallels between this elemental basis of ratfucking and what the Republicans are about in their current campaign of vandalism. This has now entered a time in which we are seeing sabotage for sabotage's own sake. Remember, the conservative rump faction has brought this shutdown upon the country because its members refuse to agree to a federal budget that contains lower discretionary spending than even Paul Ryan contemplated. That's because now -- as Congressman Marlin Stutzman pointed out clearly yesterday -- this isn't about the budget, or even about economics, it's about who wins and who loses. It's about whether or not John Boehner, the castrato Speaker Of The House, can keep his job. The public, as was said during our previous Gilded Age, be damned.

The second basic philosophical tenet of ratfucking is that it is essentially bullying. It is essentially about ridicule and deceit as ends in themselves. [...]
...


We are coming into the first weekend -- and therefore, the first Green Room festival -- since the Reign Of The Morons began, so I suspect we will see a lot of ratfucking gussied up as high rhetoric come Sunday. But, for the rest of us, we are living through a living history of sabotage, through a single extended dirty trick. We are all of us, milling around the public square, wondering who cancelled the rally today and somewhere, in a Days Inn near the airport, a clever young man snaps his suitcase shut and moves on to the next town. There is always another rat to fuck, after all.

Ah, Grasshopper, he who fucks the rat will eventually get fucked by the rat he fucked. It is written - he who pitches will also catch.

A Love Letter To Sen. Ted Cruz From a Left-Wing Socialist Hippie Libtard

The last coupla ¶ from a post you should read at The Political Garbage Chute

But one thing is for certain, Senator Cruz. You are going to drag the Republican Party down into the muck and the mire and you have no compunction at all to feel even the slightest bit remorseful for it. You are all Four Horsemen of the Republican’s Apocalypse. You are the Republican House Majority Harbinger of Death — and you will bring about the destruction of the most obtuse, obstructionist, worthless congressional bodies in fifty or more years. That is why I have to love you. You are doing for the rest of us what we cannot do.

You are destroying the Republican Party from the inside, and I for one hope you never, ever stop.

Amen.

We Are Living Through an Attempted Coup:

El Rude-o on the shutdown etc. Links at site.

What the GOP has done, first through the ludicrous overuse of the filibuster and now through the shutdown and the threat of breaking the debt ceiling if they do not get a law overturned, is to use perfectly legal means to achieve their goals. It is, however, a contortion of the Constitution and the rules of Congress that'd make a circus performer say, "How the fuck did you get your head all the way up your own ass?" The ultimate goal of the effort is to undo the will of the people of the United States by forcing the President to accept the GOP agenda.

So let's just call this what it is: it's an attempted coup. (my em)

The Tea Party, having cowed the leadership of the Republican Party, are attempting to stage a creeping coup by using the Constitution against the nation. It's so breathtakingly ballsy it's almost admirable. Fuck, it's even something the GOP laid out in a plan, the Williamsburg Accord. We just didn't pay attention. The nation is currently being wrecked by a tyranny of the minority, and, unfortunately, it's up to the cowards leading the Republican Party to stop it.

And that, dear liberals, dear Americans, is why it's not just economic anxiety that hangs over us like a guillotine blade. It's existential nausea that we may finally reap the seeds of our doom that we planted a generation ago.

I will fight it until my last breath. Obama and the decent people in Congress had better do that too.

"Government Shutdown For Dummies" by Old Fart Rants

You're not dummies. Watch it anyway.

One chickenshit boozehound is holding me, you, and every American hostage over right-wing ideology and fear of losing his cushy job!

Thanks to oldfartrants.

Why Right’s Lemmings Don Suicide Vest

Good article.

The government-sabotaging fervor of the Republican Right – likened by one GOP congressman to “lemmings with suicide vests” – can only be understood from inside the right-wing bubble where a distorted view of the Constitution prevails and actual democracy is disdained, writes Robert Parry.

Long article, go read. The crux of the biscuit:

As Virginian Anti-Federalist leader Patrick Henry warned his fellow slave-owners in urging them not to ratify the Constitution, “they’ll free your niggers!”

The GOP in a nutshell.

Headline of the Day

The GOP Takes Its Clothes Off in Public: It's Not a Pretty Sight, Even for Some Republicans

O the horror! I'm getting an awful visual of Orange Boner and Yertle, and worse, Crazy Eyes Bachmann! I've dragged my computer under the bed and I'm staying here until they put their clothes back on! Hide the children!

Short statement on the debt ceiling by President Gordon

On the theory that the Principal should run the school and not the kindergarteners, I hereby revoke the privilege given to Congress to vote on the debt ceiling, a privilege they have abused due to an inability or unwillingness to do their job of proper governance for the American people. I hereby invoke the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. The full faith and credit of the United States will be upheld. To the House GOP I say so fucking sue me and suck it, bitchez.

Headline of the Day

If Sabotage of the US Economy Is Terrorism, Send the House GOP to Guantanamo

Were I the Prez, they're only ONE of the domestic terrorist groups I would have kept Gitmo open for.

The Reign Of Morons Is Here

Part of a good rant you should read by Charles P. Pierce:

We have elected an ungovernable collection of snake-handlers, Bible-bangers, ignorami, bagmen and outright frauds, a collection so ungovernable that it insists the nation be ungovernable, too. We have elected people to govern us who do not believe in government.

We have elected a national legislature in which Louie Gohmert and Michele Bachmann have more power than does the Speaker of the House of Representatives, who has been made a piteous spectacle in the eyes of the country and doesn't seem to mind that at all. We have elected a national legislature in which the true power resides in a cabal of vandals, a nihilistic brigade that believes that its opposition to a bill directing millions of new customers to the nation's insurance companies is the equivalent of standing up the the Nazis in 1938, to the bravery of the passengers on Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, and to Mel Gibson's account of the Scottish Wars of Independence in the 13th Century. We have elected a national legislature that looks into the mirror and sees itself already cast in marble.

We did this. We looked at our great legacy of self-government and we handed ourselves over to the reign of morons.

This is what they came to Washington to do -- to break the government of the United States. It doesn't matter any more whether they're doing it out of pure crackpot ideology, or at the behest of the various sugar daddies that back their campaigns, or at the instigation of their party's mouthbreathing base. It may be any one of those reasons. It may be all of them. The government of the United States, in the first three words of its founding charter, belongs to all of us, and these people have broken it deliberately. The true hell of it, though, is that you could see this coming down through the years, all the way from Ronald Reagan's First Inaugural Address in which government "was" the problem, through Bill Clinton's ameliorative nonsense about the era of big government being "over," through the attempts to make a charlatan like Newt Gingrich into a scholar and an ambitious hack like Paul Ryan into a budget genius, and through all the endless attempts to find "common ground" and a "Third Way." Ultimately, as we all wrapped ourselves in good intentions, a prion disease was eating away at the country's higher functions. One of the ways you can acquire a prion disease is to eat right out of its skull the brains of an infected monkey. We are now seeing the country reeling and jabbering from the effects of the prion disease, but it was during the time of Reagan that the country ate the monkey brains.
...

Among other things, the Library Of Congress is closed as a result of what the vandals have done. Padlock study and intellect. Wander aimlessly down the mall among the shuttered monuments to self-government. Find yourself a food truck that serves monkey brains. Eat your fking fill.

"The elephant must go down!"

Andy Sullivan on the shutdown:

When ideologies become as calcified, as cocooned and as extremist as those galvanizing the GOP, the American system of government cannot work. But I fear this nullification of the last two elections is a deliberate attempt to ensure that the American system of government as we have known it cannot work. It cannot, must not work, in the mindset of these radicals, because they simply do not accept the legitimacy of a President and Congress of the opposing party. The GOP does not regard the president as merely wrong – but as illegitimate. Not misguided – illegitimate. This is not about ending Obamacare as such (although that is a preliminary scalp); it is about nullifying this presidency, the way the GOP attempted to nullify the last Democratic presidency by impeachment.

Except this time, of course, we cannot deny that race too is an added factor to the fathomless sense of entitlement felt among the GOP far right. You saw it in birtherism; in the Southern GOP’s constant outrageous claims of Obama’s alleged treason and alliance with Islamist enemies; in providing zero votes for a stimulus that was the only thing that prevented a global depression of far worse proportions; in the endless race-baiting from Fox News and the talk radio right. And in this racially-charged atmosphere, providing access to private healthcare insurance to the working poor is obviously the point of no return.
...

I regard this development as one of the more insidious and anti-constitutional acts of racist vandalism against the American republic in my adult lifetime. Those who keep talking as if there are two sides to this, when there are not, are as much a part of the vandalism as Ted Cruz. Obama has played punctiliously by the constitutional rules – two elections, one court case – while the GOP has decided that the rules are for dummies and suckers, and throws over the board game as soon as it looks as if it is going to lose by the rules as they have always applied.

The president must therefore hold absolutely firm. This time, there can be no compromise because the GOP isn’t offering any. They’re offering the kind of constitutional surrender that would effectively end any routine operation of the American government. If we cave to their madness, we may unravel our system of government, something one might have thought conservatives would have opposed. Except these people are not conservatives. They’re vandals.

This time, the elephant must go down. And if possible, it must be so wounded it does not get up for a long time to come.

Amen.

Common Sense At Last!

Raw Story

Farmers in California may finally begin growing industrial hemp under a new law signed Wednesday by Gov. Jerry Brown.

Lawmakers have been discussing the proposal since 1999 to allow approved residents to grow hemp for industrial purposes by reclassifying the plant as a fiber or oilseed crop.
...

Similar bills have been vetoed four times by three different California governors over concerns about federal laws outlawing industrial hemp, which is considered no different from marijuana under U.S. law.

But U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has said the federal government won’t interfere with states that permit the possession or regulation of marijuana.

California lawmakers have said industrial hemp should obviously be permitted, since it’s not even technically a drug.

Governor Moonbeam is working out quite well for my state the second time around! Probably better than the first time.

Flashback

N.Y. Times columnist says the GOP is finally having its ‘60s — and Ted Cruz is the new Abbie Hoffmann

Mopping keyboard, righting chair, change shirt for one with no snot/coffee on it...

“What’s happening here ain’t exactly clear,” Keller said, quoting a 1966 song written by Stephen Stills. “But I have a notion: The Republicans are finally having their ‘60s. Half a century after the American left experienced its days of rage, its repudiation of the political establishment, conservatives are having their own political catharsis.”

Keller cast the retrograde Texas Sen. Ted Cruz as the “spotlight-loving” Abbie Hoffman, because this is a 1960s analogy, and the tea party was compared to the “manifesto-brandishing” Students for a Democratic Society.
...

“To those of us who lived through the actual ’60s, the conservative sequel may seem more like an adolescent tantrum than a revolution,” Keller writes. “For obvious starters, their mobilizing cause is not putting an end to an indecent war that cost three million lives, but defunding a law that promises to save lives by expanding access to insurance. Printing up unofficial ‘Obamacare Cards’ and urging people to burn them is a silly parody of the protest that raged 50 years ago. But bear with me.”
...

He compares the “libertarian flank” who were drawn to the sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll of the 1960s radical movement to the “political freeloaders drawn by the addictive drugs of power and television attention.”
...

“Conditions are ripe for the rise of new leaders, some of whom will be demagogues and charlatans,” Keller writes.

Gee, ya think? I think you have a slightly belated grasp of the obvious, Mr. Keller.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Poll: Most Americans Have No Idea Obamacare Launches This Week
Nearly half never heard of Obama.

AIG CEO Says Criticism of Large Bonuses “Just as Bad” as Lynching
Except without the noose, the sudden breaking of the neck and spinal cord and the fact you still have the $5.8 million they gave you for Christmas.

North Carolina Town's School Board Reverses Ban on Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man
After some faceless, nameless black guy complained.

Pope: Atheists Can Be Redeemed if They “Do Good”
Like, say, give money to the Church.

"California’s economy is booming because ‘we’re tea party-free!’ "

MUST SEE! Stories at Raw Story and HuffPo.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Thanks to 1000Magicians, UK.

The Crux of the Biscuit...

A tip o' the Brain to Seniors for a Democratic Society. Also on Facebook.

Tailgunner Ted Will Yap Until He Can Yap No More

Charles P. Pierce

I wasn't ready, but the 2016 Iowa caucus campaign kicked off this afternoon when Tailgunner Ted Cruz announced that he would bop-til-he-dropped before he'd let the Affordable Care Act get funded. This was preceded by some lovely soprano trilling by newly minted eunuch, Mitch McConnell. As has been pointed out, this is something of a mock filibuster, but that's because it isn't an attempt to do serious legislative business. It's an extended campaign commercial, B-Roll for the local stations in Ottumwa and Council Bluffs.
...


We have been joined at the moment by konztitooshinul skolar Mike Lee of Utah, who just talked about "the devastating impact of inflation," of which there is, at the moment, none. "Whenever government acts," Lee just mentioned, "it does so at the expense of our own individual liberty."

Cruz is back. "The founding of our nation embodied many revolutions." He also referred to the Founders as "we."

He'd look stupid in a wig.

Looks pretty stoopid even without one.

This is like taking a history class from Abbott and Costello.

At least they were funny and didn't obstruct the progress of the nation.

How Bad Is the GOP Rift? Worse Than Democrats in the 1980s

Good. Stu Rothenberg

Political parties seem to suffer through internal battles periodically, but the current state of the GOP is much worse than what Democrats went through some 25 years ago, when organized labor and old-style liberals fought against the Democratic Leadership Council for the soul of the party.

I still remember going to post-election events during the 1980s and watching Al From, then president of the DLC, blame his party’s presidential defeats on liberals and organized labor, only to have someone from the party’s liberal wing whale on From or Will Marshall, the DLC’s first policy director, as Republicans impersonating Democrats.

Pretty much.

Now, libertarian and tea party elements of the GOP are in open warfare with pragmatists and institutionalists. Republicans in the House and Senate taunt each other on a daily basis in newspapers or on cable television, which is only too happy to provide a platform.

More platform! More platform!

But while the GOP has lost the popular vote in five of the past six presidential contests, the races have been close enough that party ideologues have ready excuses – bad candidates, a long war in Iraq and Afghanistan, an unfair media, etc. As a result, they have not yet confronted their political problems the way Democrats did, particularly after Michael Dukakis’ defeat in 1988.

But Republican control of the House, which could well extend at least through the rest of the decade, particularly if another Democrat wins the White House in 2016, should not obscure what is happening. Party infighting and the weakening of the party’s pragmatic impulses will continue to erode support for the party until the obvious happens.

“The only remedy for a party that is deluding itself is a major defeat,” (my em) says Marshall, thinking back to the 1980s.

That is already making 2016 look like a potentially dangerous election for the GOP.

Let's have a "dangerous election for the GOP" in 2014 and get the House back two years before we get President Hil.

Repugs were WHAT?!

For Jay in NC. Eerily apropos, I think, given his comment on the second post below this one. :-)

It's crazy-makin' ta think the Repugs were once the liberals! Of course, then came civil rights and letting The Other (than white men) vote and the Southern Strategy and on and on...

Cruz Does Not Understand Green Eggs and Ham

Kos

Among the more bizarre moments of Senator Cruz's fake filibuster tonight was his reading of the Dr. Seuss book Green Eggs and Ham from the floor of the U.S. Senate....

This is an odd choice of a book for Senator Cruz to read in that its message actually supports the position of the Democrats that the Affordable Care Act (otherwise known as Obamacare) should be allowed to go into effect as scheduled.

In the story Green Eggs and Ham, the narrator starts by telling the reader how he does not like Green Eggs and Ham under any circumstance. A lot of the book contains lists of circumstances under which the narrator would not eat Green Eggs and Ham.

Some of the lists of circumstances are there if you feel the need.

Then the narrator, after much urging by Sam-I-Am, eats the green eggs and ham to prove Sam-I-Am wrong. However, much to the narrator's surprise, he actually likes Green Eggs and Ham.
...

The narrator then goes on to actually thank Sam-I-Am for encouraging him to try the Green Eggs and Ham.

I do so like
green eggs and ham!
Thank you!
Thank you,
Sam-I-am

Senator Cruz-Obamacare is like Green Eggs and Ham. Like the narrator in the story, some people have come to the conclusion (after hearing a lot of right wing propaganda) that they won't like Obamacare even though they have never tried it. A lot of their opposition is based on their fear of trying something different from what they are used to. However, like the narrator in the story, once the American people try Obamacare, I think that they will like it. And like the narrator in the story who thanks Sam-I-Am for forcing him to try the green eggs and ham, I think that the American People will ultimately thank President Obama and the Democrats for Obamacare.

So do I.

Update:

Meep Meep Watch

The title will be instantly explained when you go see Andy Sullivan's post.

David Corn echoes a lot of what I’ve been arguing about Obama’s trajectory at this point in his second term. Politico-style pageview-grabbers keep talking about a “lame duck” while the GOP keeps talking as if Obamacare, which only truly gets going next month, is already fatally wounded. McCainiacs talk as if getting Putin to take ownership of preventing further use of chemical weapons in Syria is some kind of defeat for the US – which it is only if you truly want another Middle East War. And in Washington, Obama’s solid refusal to jump into negotiations over the defunding of Obamacare or the debt-ceiling has allowed the Republicans to organize themselves into a Dick Cheney hunting expedition. After Syria, moreover, there is the first real chance of a deal with Iran over its nuclear program along the lines of Assad’s sudden volte-face. The long term strategy of sanctions and an open hand is bearing fruit.

None of this will please Maureen Dowd. And yes, of course, much can still go awry. Politics requires nimbleness of action and steadiness in strategy. But when I watch Karl Rove laying into Congressional Republicans, and Bill Kristol, in panic-mode, calling for Israel to strike Iran, I can’t help but smile. This terrible strategic president, this useless schmoozer, this aloof, Washington inadequate has a lot of foes back on their heels right now.

That doesn’t happen entirely by accident.

Say what you will, Obama is showing himself to be the Stealth Ninja Jedi Prez I've been calling him for years now. He plays the long game and is flexible. Not perfect by any means, but no one is and I'm still down wid him.

It’s Hard to Hate Rand Paul

So says Daddy Frank in his latest monthly article. I'm most certainly no fan of Paul except for the blessed damage he is doing to the Repugs. An interesting read.

Though he has been at or near the top of near-meaningless early primary polling, he is nonetheless a long shot to ascend to the top of the GOP ticket, let alone to the White House. And a good thing too: A Paul presidency would be a misfortune for the majority of Americans who would be devastated by his regime of minimalist government. But as we begin to imagine a post-Obama national politics where the Democratic presidential front-runners may be of Social Security age and the Republicans lack a presumptive leader or a coherent path forward, he can hardly be dismissed. Nature abhors a vacuum, and Paul doesn’t hide his ambitions to fill it. In his own party, he’s the one who is stirring the drink, having managed in his very short political career (all of three years) to have gained stature in spite of (or perhaps because of) his ability to enrage and usurp such GOP heavyweights as John McCain, Mitch McConnell, and Chris Christie. He is one of only two putative ­presidential contenders in either party still capable of doing something you don’t expect or saying something that hasn’t been freeze-dried into anodyne Frank Luntz–style drivel by strategists and focus groups. The other contender in the spontaneous-authentic political sweepstakes is Christie, but like an actor who’s read too many of his rave reviews, he’s already turning his bully-in-a-china-shop routine into Jersey shtick. (So much so that if he modulates it now, he’ll come across as a phony.) Paul doesn’t do shtick, he rarely engages in sound bites or sloganeering, and his language has not been balled up by a stint in law school or an M.B.A. program. (He’s an ophthalmologist.) He speaks as if he were thinking aloud and has a way of making his most radical notions sound plausible in the moment. It doesn’t hurt that some of what he says also makes sense.

The hell it doesn't! Heh. But then again, I agree with Pat Buchanan sometimes too. It's disturbing, until I realize that even a blind pig can find an acorn once in a while.

But not everyone on the right believed Christie had thrown a knockout punch at the infidel within the GOP. Writing in Commentary, Jonathan Tobin noted that other conservatives had been echoing Paul’s condemnation of the “national security state” and accused as unlikely a subversive as Peggy Noonan of defecting to the “old line of the hard left.” Even the ultimate GOP tool, the party chairman Reince Priebus, had praised Paul’s filibuster as “completely awesome.” Tobin worried that a “crack up” of the “generations-old Republican consensus on foreign and defense policy” would be at hand if others didn’t follow Christie’s brave example and stand up to Paul and his cohort before “they hijack a party.”

The truth is that that consensus cracked up long ago—done in by the Bush administration and the amen chorus, typified by McCain, Kristol, and Krauthammer, that led the country into the ditch of Iraq. As Reason, the Paul-sympathizing libertarian magazine, pointed out approvingly, Paul’s filibuster “could have been aimed 100 percent at George W. Bush and the policies the Republican party and the conservative movement have urged for most of the 21st century.” And he had gotten away with it despite the protestations of the old conservative guard. Christie may think he can rewrite or reverse this history by attacking Paul, but he’s in denial. Bellicose exhortations consisting of a noun and a verb and 9/11 reached their political expiration date with the imploded Giuliani campaign of 2008.
...

None of this means that Paul has any serious chance of appealing to centrist and liberal Democrats in significant numbers in a national campaign. He labors under most of the same handicaps as the rest of his party. He has no credible commitment to serious immigration reform. He is an absolutist on guns and abortion. He is opposed to gay marriage (though trying, like many Republicans these days, to keep the issue on the down-low). In a speech at the Reagan Library this year, he acknowledged that the Republican Party will not win again until it “looks like the rest of America,” but his own outreach efforts have been scarcely better than the GOP’s as a whole. His game appearance at the historically black Howard University backfired when he tried to pretend that he had never “wavered” in his support of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 even though his recent wavering was a matter of public record, captured on video.

While Paul has tried to stay clear of the loony white Christian-identity extremists who gravitated to his father, he had to sacrifice an aide who was recently unmasked as a onetime radio shock jock prone to neo-Confederate radio rants under the nom de bigot “Southern Avenger.” What was most interesting about the incident, however, was the response of another cardinal of the waning GOP Establishment, the George W. Bush speechwriter turned Washington Post columnist Michael Gerson, who argued that Paul’s harboring of the Southern Avenger illustrates why it is “impossible for Rand Paul to join the Republican mainstream.” By that standard, the party would also have to drum out Rick Perry, who floated the fantasy of Texas’s seceding from the union, along with all the other GOP elected officials nationwide who are emulating Perry’s push for voter-suppression legislation in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s vitiation of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. That Gerson would hypocritically single out Paul for banishment in a party harboring so many southern avengers is an indication of just how panicked the old GOP gatekeepers are by his success. They will grab anything they can find to bring him down.
...

He is a godsend for the tea party—the presentable leader the movement kept trying to find during the 2012 Republican freak show but never did. Next to Paul, that parade of hotheads, with their overweening Obama hatred and their dog whistles to racists, nativists, and homophobes, looks like a relic from a passing era. For that matter, he may prove equally capable of making the two top Democratic presidential prospects for 2016, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, look like a nostalgia act.

Biden maybe, but speaking as a guy who's going to turn 68 in a coupla days, Hil's a babe!

Read it or don't, your call, but it's an interesting article.

.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Sixteen States Introduce Rules Restricting Access to Advice About Obamacare
Explain “what they don't know won't hurt them.”

Microscopic Images Reveal Planthopper Insects Have Gears
Hailed as Steampunk Animal of the Year.

$800 Million Salvage Effort Rights Cruise Ship Costa Concordia
In time for passengers to board for 3-day cruise to Sardinia.

“Hello Kitty” Beer Debuts in Asia
Each can bears warning for 6-year-old girls to drink responsibly.

The Kochs, A Nazi Past, Oil & The Foundation of The Right

Unknown Journal, wherein the writer ties the Koch brothers to Ilse Koch, "the bitch of Buchenwald", Hitler, Stalin, the John Birch Society, and thence the Tea Party. Very long and interesting read. Here's the last ¶:

In the Koch family’s alliance with American Republicans: conservatives, constitutionalists, racists, tea partiers, military hawks, drooling fearful populists… the Koch family has found an alliance in the continued homogenization of society. Republicans gain purity in a world they have always viewed as a dirty, impure space and corporate empires like Koch Industries, built under the care of Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union, rise to lead the police state.

When it comes to the "vast right-wing conspiracy" I have no trouble believing all this.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Published on Sep 20, 2013
1980 Pop Goes The Country

Thanks to 1000Magicians, UK.

Snippet of the Day

Charles P. Pierce

Uh-oh, without even knowing how he did it, because that is what happens when you wander through the monkeyhouse blindfolded, Tea Party fave-rave Tailgunner Ted Cruz has gotten himself crossways with his fellow nutballs in the House because he has declined to produce magic sparkle ponies from out of his arse.

Heh. Everyone wants a pony, but...

Quote of the Day

From an op-ed in that commie rag, The Wall St. Journal:

Republicans must threaten to crash their Zeros into the aircraft carrier of ObamaCare. Their demand is that the House pair the "must pass" CR or the debt limit with defunding the health-care bill. Kamikaze missions rarely turn out well, least of all for the pilots.
...

The kamikazes could end up ensuring the return of all-Democratic rule.

Ah, so. WSJ got THAT right - the GOP are ALL a buncha Zeroes. Sayo-fuckin-nara assholes. I wish you all a speedy trip straight down with a big splash into oblivion.

Gee, they say that last sentence like it's a bad thing. Heh.

Headline of the Day

Stewart: Republican diplomacy ‘is like a glory h*le: Just stick it in and you worry about the consequences later’

Go watch Stewart do Miss Lindsey to a T damn near to her fainting couch!

Just for shits 'n giggles:

Thanks to YubaNet.

The Right’s Sickening Syria Spin

By Michael Tomasky. Today's 'recommended read'.

I don’t know about you, but I’m not very interested in being lectured that Bashar al-Assad has no real intention of giving up his chemical weapons by the very same people who a decade ago were pushing this country into war—and having the deranged gall to call the rest of us unpatriotic—on the argument that there was no possible way a monster like Saddam Hussein had given up his chemical weapons. Barack Obama has been forced to spend about 70 percent of his presidential energies trying to repair crises foreign and domestic that these people created, and forced to do so against their iron opposition on all fronts; and now that he’s achieved a diplomatic breakthrough, they have the audacity to argue that he sold America out to Vladimir Putin? It’s staggering and sickening.
...

The second question concerns Assad. Conservatives are now asserting that this deal means Assad has gotten away with it; that he used chemical weapons and will now pay no price. What does that even mean? If he even partly or mostly honors the terms of the deal, he’s paid a price. I suppose the critics really mean that Assad paid no military price, and strictly speaking that’s true. But do these critics really think Assad is sitting in Damascus laughing? He was afraid the world’s largest and best military was going to bomb him. And I’d bet he knows all too clearly that if he uses them again, he will be bombed. If Assad is mad enough to use them again, Obama won’t mess with Congress or even Russia. He’ll be credited by most observers—except America’s enemies and the Republican Party; food for thought there (my em)—for having shown restraint the first time, and more people will agree at that point that Assad must be punished
...

What Obama has screwed up on Syria is process stuff. He’s changed his mind. That’s unforgivable, in the Washington Village. It shows no “resolve.” Well, Bush showed resolve. I’ll give him that. And as he dragged us into a full-out war premised on lies that were crafted to shift an originally skeptical public sentiment in his favor, the pundits largely applauded. Obama has spoken honestly to the American people, obeyed their strong majority view, and secured a deal that for the moment represents the outer limits of the possibility of doing good in Syria. The brickbats thrown by the very people who turned the world against us are not only hard to take seriously, they’re a moral offense.

In related news:

McCain feels a ‘little lonely’ because nobody wants to attack Syria

Suck it, Grampa Walnuts. It must be an awful feeling to wave your pistol around, holler "follow me!", go over the top and get halfway across no-man's-land, turn to check on your devoted troops and [crickets]. The devoted troops are back in the trench divvying up your liquor ration and dry socks. Heh.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Standard & Poor’s Claims Government Lawsuit “Retaliation” for Its Downgrade of U.S. Debt
Fact that S&P committed massive fraud only “coincidence.”

There's Wall St. "thinking" for you!

Chinese Students Riot to Block Monitors to Prevent Cheating on National Exams
Insist sophisticated cheating methods crucial to hoped-for careers on Wall Street.

Japan's Damaged Fukushima Nuclear Plant Leaking Radioactive Water Into Ocean
But local authorities downplay health risks associated with glow-in-the-dark sushi.

Self-lighting raw fish. Swell.

Balloon Crossing of Atlantic Fails
But some kid in Newfoundland has a great birthday party.

Like, DUH Headline of the Day

“Brighter future for politics and policy requires a different Republican Party”

If a motorcycle was in the same state of disrepair as the GOP. we would say to remove the gas cap and slip a new motorcycle under it.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Published on Sep 3, 2013
Emmylou Harris and the Hot Band perform a live version of the Gram Parsons/Tom O'Brown song "Return Of The Grievous Angel" from a show in 1984.

Thanks to AlsoTakenAlso, UK.

Quote & 'Toon of the Day

From Tea party Sen. Ted Cruz is eager to force a government shutdown

Sanity, however, is seen as weakness by the Republican militants.

The GOP in a nutshell.

Oh, the irony...

I usually post this on Mondays, but I was driving and it slipped my mind 'til now. Just getting over truck lag.

Ironic Times

Report: NSA Can Decrypt Almost Anything
Only Navajo code talkers safe.

Sen. McCain Caught Playing Video Poker on His iPhone During Syria Hearing
He's holding aces and eights.

Now THAT'S funny!

Blaming Sequester, CIA Closes Office That Declassifies Historical Documents
Forced to choose between that and flying coach.

Texas Becomes More Eco-Conscious
Right: oil pump powered by clean, renewable wind energy.

Urp...

Stupid is as stupid does

Some days, it DOES pay to chew through the restraints! There's stupid, and then there's double-dipped right-wing hater stupid. Do not drink anything while you read this lest it comes out yer nose and shorts out everything in front of you.

Controversial pastor Terry Jones arrested before carrying out Quran book-burning in Mulberry

Mulberry, Florida -- 10 News has learned that controversial Gainesville pastor Terry Jones was arrested before he could carry out his plan to burn nearly 3,000 copies of the Islam holy book the Quran in Polk County on Wednesday afternoon.

Jones planned to burn the books at the county-owned Loyce E. Harpe Park in Mulberry, but was denied a permit, with officials saying he filed his request too late and that he does not have permission for an event of that magnitude.
...

But shortly before he planned to set the books on fire at the Mulberry park, Jones and associate pastor Marvin Wayne Sapp Jr. (aptly named! - G) were stopped. Their truck was towing a large barbecue smoker, which reportedly had copies of the Quran inside, already doused in kerosene.

"We couldn't allow that container to continue down the road, with the flammable liquid in that container," said Polk Co. Sheriff Grady Judd in a press conference. "It was flammable and it was dangerous."
...

Polk deputies took Jones and Sapp into custody at the Mulberry Pharmacy on N. Church Avenue on felony charges. They are both charged with unlawful conveyance of fuel.

Jones was additionally charged for unlawful open carry of a firearm, while Sapp Jr. was additionally charged with not having a valid registration for the smoker trailer. He will also receive multiple traffic citations for not having proper lighting on the trailer.

Some "Christians", huh? Jesus woulda had taillights on his Quran bomb!

I hope this incident keeps this "pastor" busy for a while.

Two Guys, a Girl and a Pita Place

The Daily Show

Sam Bee, Bob Odenkirk and David Cross apologize to the citizens of Egypt for sending America's three stupidest people to their country.

The Daily Show with Jon Stewart
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,The Daily Show on Facebook

What the hell was the State Department thinking, letting these yingyangs represent the United States abroad? Yeesh.

Get the net...

Following up on yesterday's Headline of the Day. I love the picture! From Addicting Info. This is NOT from The Onion!

Tinfoil Hat Alert: Obama Plots To Exterminate Human Race And Rule As Immortal Cyborg
...

Alex Jones has decided that the United Nations (and Obama, of course) have embarked on a course of destabilizing and destroying countries so they can reduce the world to a primitive state and control it from “jetcopters” as Methuselah cyborgs.

I swear I am not making this up. Here’s the eight minute rant via Media Matters but the good part comes at 5:40:

Got that? Agenda 21 will put us all back into the Dark Ages so the UN is evil. Science will allow the “elitists” to live longer and merge man and machine so science is evil. Hollywood is a propaganda tool to sell collectivism so Hollywood and its flying red carpets (Huh?) are evil.

But if you’re “informed” like Alex Jones (no really! He said that!), you know the truth about all of these insidious plots! Normally, this would be the part where I make fun of Jones and anyone stupid enough to buy into anything he says but, honestly, I know when I’m outclassed. Who could possibly add anything to that rant to make it even more of a parody?

My hat is off to you, Mr. Jones. You are truly a work of art.

"Work of art" is not exactly the term I would have used. "Piece of ... work" is more like it.

The upshot is that Obamacare covers Obama Derangement Syndrome but I think "Crazy Alex" has a terminal case. That's fine with me.

Facepalm Moment of the Day

Rand Paul asks Americans to form alliance with Assad regime

Note to Paul: Get "Political Aspirations" tattooed on your ass and kiss it good-bye after this suggestion. Yeesh.

9/11 Reflects...

The Rude Pundit

It's funny, 9/11 thinks. She feels weary, worn-out this morning, and it's strange because she believed that she would feel so much stronger than usual. After all, the new building is nearly done and, truth be told, it's so much better than the steel and concrete monstrosities that were leveled a dozen years ago. But, of course, one doesn't wish to do urban renovation through disaster and death.

She looks in a mirror and says to herself, "You think you'd be happy, at least a little." After all, while the candidates for mayor in New York City invoked her name more times than they needed to, including Bill de Blasio in his speech last night, she isn't tossed around as casually. She's been mostly absent from the discussion of bombing Syria. She was used to being paraded around, plastered with makeup, made a whore by Giuliani and Bush, imprisoned and roughly fucked by Cheney and Rumsfeld, burned with cigarettes and pissed on by Karl Rove, who jacked off into her hair after. Most of that ended a few years ago, of course, of course, although she pities her Libyan namesake who is little more than a fuck doll for conservatives who love having exotic tongue on their dicks and clits.
...

She stares back at the mirror. She can see herself. She's sure of that. "I'm not a ghost," she says. "Not yet."

She realizes, though, that she feels as if she is haunting the debate about Syria. She may not be called on by politicians or even many pundits to justify a new pseudo-war, a war lite, if you will. But she's sure that they've been ringing her door buzzer and running away. All of the terrible things done in her name - the Iraq nightmare, the Afghanistan slog, the breaking down of rights big and small, the drone attacks, the torture and indefinite detention, the surveillance state - hang there. She didn't want her existence to change so many things, but they did change. She didn't do it herself, but others say she caused them to do it. That's why, exhausted and used-up as she is, 9/11 feels it is her just punishment to take all who visit into her bed. Or, in the case of Rove, over the radiator, on the bathroom floor, or hanging in the closet.

There are those who tell 9/11 that she's suffered enough, that whatever implied sins she wishes to atone for have been fucked clean. They have it wrong, though. 9/11 says to them that it's not her sins that must be forgiven. It's that she is taking on the sins of others and trying to redeem them. She's just failed. She's failed, but she keeps trying.

Even as the cries of "Never forget" echo through the canyons of Manhattan, through the monuments of DC, 9/11 wants to be forgotten. Because it would be better to be forgotten than to be remembered in this way for all history.

I too wish she could quit being used the way she is, as a handy fuck piece for politicians.

21 awesome features missing from the new iPhone

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford on Features He'd Like To See. Heh.

The new iPhones with iOS7 are packed, nay packed with amazing new features, colors, camera abilities, software doodads, and more. They’re nothing short of miraculous hunks of modern tech gloriousness. But they’re also, shockingly, missing a few key features we’d really like to see in future models. Such as:

1. Snicker Muffler. For every hipster under 40 who struggles to stifle a disbelieving chuckle when they see their Midwestern elders scooping heaps of freeze-dried, lint-colored misery from giant, Costco-sized tins of Maxwell House into pale mugs of watery sadness, and you’re all, like, “Really? You call that coffee? I pay six dollars for a single, hand-poured cup of Lost Guatemalan Ultra Orangutan Intestine Blend from Blue Bottle! [Snicker].”
...

14. Toxic Goo Proximity Sensor. Emits shrill alarm and displays a highly detailed photo of multiple gastrointestinal cancer polyps anytime your phone is within 100 feet of Taco Bell.
...

19. Wasabi Detector. Special sensor detects just how much wasabi the sushi chef snuck under that piece of hamachi nigiri before you eat it and your face explodes. Phone will tear up accordingly, wave hand in front of itself in desperate fanning motion as Siri goes “OhmyGodohmyGodohmyGod” and reaches over and chugs all your sake.

22. Me. I wouldn't have one of those things up my ass if I had room for a boxcar.

Just ... go ...

Headline of the Day

Alex Jones: Syria diplomacy a plot to extinguish humans so Obama and elitists can be cyborgs

When I see shit this stupid I don't know whether to laugh at the asshole or cry for the morons who think it must be true because you can't put it on the radio if it isn't.

Headline of the Day

Home safe and sound. Between being burnt down to my socks from hangin' with all them 68-year-old party animals for three days and a helluva case of truck lag, I'm easin' back inta all the shit that's goin' on. This is as good a place to start as any:

Republicans Are Torn Between Their Racist Hatred of Obama and Eternal Love of Bombing the Crap Out of the Middle East

Enjoy!

No Saturday Emmylou Blogging

I'm being lazy. Fuck everything until at least Tuesday.

Headin' out

We're going out to the coast for a few days for Mrs. G's 50 year High School reunion. Blogging will be light to bupkis, but I'll do what I can. See yas.

Headline of the Day

Maddow to Iraq War architects on TV: ‘Your opinion is no longer required on matters of war and peace’

Word.

Note to Rummie: You better keep your lying pie hole shut and thank your lucky stars you ain't in prison.

Headline of the Day II

If We Stay Out of Syria, Assad Has Bush to Thank

No shit.

Quote of the Day

Tag line from a piece by Charles P. Pierce on the Syria hearings:

John Boehner has no power. John McCain has no power. Only the Stupid has the power now. Fear the Stupid.

Headline of the Day

REPUBLICANS OFFER SYRIA STRATEGY: “WE MUST DEFUND OBAMACARE”

Why do I have no trouble believing that?

The Burn

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford, back from Burning Man with 92 photos.

Keep in mind, this gallery is but a tiny sample, a glimpse, a taste; I’d say it represents not even 10% of what’s really out there. And it’s utterly impossible to capture the tremendous scale of the thing, the vast flatness, two miles across and 360 degrees of brain-melting, body-blasting, anima-pumping, skin-scorching sensory overload like you can find nowhere else in the world. Trust me. And that’s not just the stimulants talking. Mostly.

That's the only warning you're going to get. Heh. Enjoy.

The End of U.S. Imperium - Finally!

David Stockman

Next week Congress can do far more than stop a feckless Tomahawk barrage on a small country that is already a graveyard of civil war and sectarian slaughter. By voting “no,” it can trigger the end of the American Imperium—five decades of incessant meddling, bullying, and subversion around the globe that has added precious little to national security but left America fiscally exhausted and morally diminished.
...

The screaming strategic truth is that America no longer has any industrial state enemies capable of delivering military harm to its shores: Russia has become a feeble kleptocracy run by a loud-mouthed thief, and the Communist Party oligarchs in China would face a devastating economic collapse within months were they to attack their American markets for sneakers and Apples. So the real question now before Congress is, how is it possible that the peace-loving citizens of America, facing no industrial-scale military threat from anywhere on the planet, find themselves in a constant state of war? The answer is that they have been betrayed by the Beltway political class, which is in thrall to a vast warfare state apparatus that endlessly invents specious reasons for meddling, spying, intervention, and occupation.

I don't necessarily agree with all the writer's points but I'd like to see the end of American Imperialism, in particular the mess we've made for ourselves in the Middle East. Please read the rest.

"He knew that this was so wrong that he didn’t want to tell anyone"

Yes, Obamacare is going to be a disaster. To all the usual suspects' bottom lines.

Raw Story

Georgia governor gets paid through secret PAC to obstruct Obamacare
...

Contributors to Real PAC include Aetna, Humana, Blue Cross, United Health care and other interests that want to keep health insurance premiums and other costs as high as possible. Bryan Long of activist group Better Georgia told Raw Story that the list of donors shows who Gov. Deal really works for.
...

“What’s remarkable about this isn’t that there’s money in politics,” he continued. “We all know there’s money in politics. He knew that this was so wrong that he didn’t want to tell anyone. He tried to keep it a secret for two years.”\
...

Last week, state insurance commissioner Ralph Hudgens was caught on tape boasting to a crowd of supporters that his office is deliberately obstructing the implementation of the Affordable Care Act. As Floyd County Republicans called out “Amen!” and applauded, Hudgens said that his office is interfering with the certification of the ACA’s insurance policy “navigators,” individuals hired to help consumers choose policies on the open market.

“Let me tell you what we’re doing (about Obamacare),” he said. “Everything in our power to be an obstructionist.”

Got caught because he bragged about it. Nothing will happen to this yingyang because IOKIYAR. Business as usual. Yeesh.

9 Years

Today is the 9th anniversary of my tour at the Brain. Fixer started it on 4 July 2004. Lotta water under the bridge. I came along a little later, and depending on who's telling this war story, I was either left on his porch in a basket with a $50 bill pinned to my chest or he tracked me down with dogs. Either way, he gave me a home and I've never looked back. I didn't even know how to cut and paste when I started. I know a lotta tricks now.

A few specs: We've had 1,126,894 pageviews; 20,471 posts; 12,471 comments; and thank you to our 53 followers. We get 1000+ pageviews per day on average, and have had as many as 5000. The trick is to use the same headline as the article I'm posting so it pops up on browsers. Heh. That's my story and I'm stickin' to it!

A lot has changed in 9 years. When we got going, Kerry was running for POTUS against the Chimp, and Repuglican't Rule lasted 4 more years. Nowadays, the Repugs are well on their way to being an officially backward and shrinking party of old scared Southern white people and their ilk elsewhere. Their antics have gone from day-in-and-day-out outrageous to mostly comedy gold, and I'm enjoying the shit out of them swirling the drain.

On the federal level, that is. If you live in one of the states they run, times are bad. Throw 'em out in '14, '16, whenever you get the chance. Show up and vote. Dems in general dropped the ball big time in '10 and I hope we've learned our lesson: Off-year elections get less turnout, but ALL the morons we're trying to defend against crawl out from under their rocks and vote and so must we or we're screwed. 2010 NEVER AGAIN!

I figured out early on that opinion writing is too much work so I find real writers who say things I like and quote them with short, pithy even, diabolical genius comments of my own. I'm spending more time on Facebook these days, like Fixer is, and I know the Brain has suffered for it. On the flip side, I get a lotta good material off there.

I discovered I'm not as liberal as I once thought I was. I believe in liberty and justice for all, and if that makes me a godless commie fuck, so be it. Damn, I wish a 'bagger would say that to my face just so I could tell him to tell his friends he got those shiners from a pussy liberal!

I believe that Repugs in any of their 5 factions are the worst enemy our country has ever faced, and anything else is better. Despite his flaws, I'm still down with Obama and will be with Hillary too.

This isn't as much fun without Fixer.

Thank you all for reading and commenting. You're the reason I plug away at this. Here's to 9 more.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

PUBLIC DOESN'T SUPPORT STRIKE ON SYRIA
Supports strike on Time Warner Cable.

Heh.

Revealed: NYPD Has Secret Spy Cab
Discovered when someone got a ride from the airport and was driven directly to their destination and charged the proper amount.

Obviously unclear on the concept.

Oxford English Dictionary Adds “Twerk,” “Selfies” and “Vom”
Removes “linguist,” “spinning” and “grave.”

Unpaid Laborers Begin Raising Billions for Their Wealthy Masters
College football's back.

Women Protest Across the Globe August 25th
on Go Topless Day
And you missed that?

How the Republican Party lost its mind

Excellent article at Salon.

Now, in 2013, we have the politics that 50 years of this process have created. The Democratic Party has fewer conservatives than it once did, but is still a broadly coalitional party with liberal and moderate elements. It controls the coasts, has strength in the industrial Midwest, and is making inroads in the upper, more urbanized South and in Florida. It confronts a Republican Party almost wholly dependent on the interior states of the old Confederacy. (The party continues to win in the mountain and prairie West, but the region is too sparsely populated to provide any real electoral heft.) Because of its demographic weakness, it is more beholden than ever to the intensity of its most extreme voters. This has engendered a death spiral in which it must take increasingly radical positions to drive these voters to the polls, positions that in turn alienate ever larger segments of the population, making these core voters even more crucial — and so on. We have a name these days for the electoral residue produced by this series of increasingly rigorous purifications. We call it “the Tea Party.”
...

Unfortunately, our government isn’t designed to function in these conditions. The peculiarities of our system — a Senate, armed with the filibuster, that gives Wyoming’s 576,000 people as much power as California’s 38,000,000; gerrymandered districts in the House; separate selection of the executive and the legislature; a chronically underfunded elections process, generally in partisan hands and in desperate need of rationalization — simply won’t permit it. What we get instead is paralysis — or worse. The Republican Party, particularly in the House, has turned into the legislative equivalent of North Korea — a political outlier so extreme it has lost the ability to achieve its objectives through normal political means (my em). Its only recourse is to threats (increasingly believable) that it will blow up the system rather than countenance this-or-that lapse from conservative dogma. This was the strategy it pursued in the debt ceiling debacle of 2011, and if firebrands such as Ted Cruz and Mike Lee have their way it will guide the party’s approach to the same issue this fall, and perhaps to government funding (including “Obamacare”) as well. Realignment and polarization have led us to gridlock and instability.

The relentless radicalization of the Republican Party since 1964 is the most important single event in the political history of the United States since the New Deal. It has significantly shaped the course of our government and will continue to do so for the foreseeable future. But this means it has also shaped the individual life of every citizen— the complex amalgam of possibilities and opportunities available (or not) to each of us. The conservative visionaries of the ‘50s and ‘60s wanted a new world. We’re all living in it now.

We have been for thirty years and it sucks.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Emmylou gets more of an assist on this one. That's OK. I've been a Linda fan even longer.

Thanks to Larry Privat.

"I wish I had another fifty years in me."

Robert Reich

A few days ago I had breakfast with a man who had been one of my mentors in college, who participated in the struggle for civil rights in the 1960s and has devoted much of the rest of his life in pursuit of equal opportunity for minorities, the poor, women, gays, immigrants — and also for average hard-working people who have been beaten down by the economy. Now in his mid-80s, he's still active.

I asked him if he thought America would ever achieve true equality of opportunity.

"Not without a fight," he said. "Those who have wealth and power and privilege don't want equal opportunity. It's too threatening to them.They'll pretend equal opportunity already exists, and that anyone who doesn't make it in America must be lazy or stupid or otherwise undeserving."
...

But have we really made progress? Inequality is widening. The middle class and the poor are in many ways worse off than they were decades ago."

"Yes, and they're starting to understand that," he said. "And beginning to see that the distinction between the middle class and poor is disappearing. Many who were in the middle have fallen into poverty; many more will do so."

"And, so?"

He smiled. "For decades, those at the top have tried to convince the middle class that their economic enemies are minorities and the poor. But that old divide-and-conquer strategy is starting to fail. And as it fails, it will be possible to create a political coalition of the poor and the middle class. It will be a powerful coalition! Remember, demographics are shifting. Soon America will be a majority of minorities. And women are gaining more and more economic power."

"But the 400 richest Americans are now wealthier than the bottom 150 million Americans put together — and have more political influence than ever."

"Just you wait," he laughed. "I wish I had another fifty years in me."

Me too, and even that may not be long enough. Dammit.

Old men try to turn back clock

This is specific to North Carolina but applies across the U.S.

Asheville Citizen-Times

What we’ve been witnessing at the General Assembly in Raleigh the past few months is the futile attempt by fearful, old, white men to hang onto the power and control to which they assume they’re entitled. These extremists imagine that if they can push women, gays, blacks and Latinos back to the status these groups held before the mid-20th century, they can hang onto their perch at the top of the pecking order.

Now don’t get me wrong; I have nothing against old white men. In fact, I am one. But I do take issue with any group, regardless of skin color, sex or age, that abuses its power in a deceitful and un-American attempt to keep others from experiencing the fruits of liberty — equal rights for all, the unfettered opportunity to vote, a quality education for all our children, clean air and water for every citizen. ...

I could go on.

If you look at the data, it’s clear that the demographic shift taking place in our nation will be the death knell of this Caucasian paternalism. [...]

Soon, please.

Thus, no matter how forcefully the Tea Party (née GOP) shamefully endeavors to suppress the vote, strip women of their rights, push people of color to the back of the bus and keep our children from developing the skills they need in the 21st century, the appalling efforts of our state legislators are doomed to failure in the long run.

I'm hoping it's the last gasp of the throwback mentality but I know it isn't.

It’s obvious from their strident protestations that most of these right-wing zealots imagine they are doing God’s work (though it’s quite clear they are actually following the marching orders of ALEC, the Koch Brothers and Art Pope).
...

So we North Carolinians who are deeply concerned about our state’s current backward direction have choices to make: We can sit around for a decade or two while the old guys pass from the scene; or we can stand up for our values and vote the instigators of the most abhorrent state legislation in the nation out of office.

I wish there was a faster way, but that's how we do it, people.

"2010 NEVER AGAIN!"

Adelson Pays Out to the U.S. Government

The Daily Beast

Adelson’s casino company, Las Vegas Sands Corp., cut its losses this week when it agreed to pay $47 million to the U.S. government to settle a federal money-laundering investigation with ties to a Mexican methamphetamine cartel. In exchange, Obama’s Department of Justice agreed not to prosecute the company for failing to report suspicious activity on the part of Zhenli Ye Gon, a high-rolling customer whose shady money transfers ought to have alarmed casino compliance officials and been reported to authorities.

Known as “Mr. Ye” on the Strip, the Chinese businessman gambled at least $126 million from 2006 to early 2007—most of that at the Sands’s Venetian and Palazzo on the Las Vegas Strip—prior to his arrest by Drug Enforcement Administration agents. A suspected money launderer with alleged ties to the violent Sinaloa cartel, Ye Gon currently faces potential drug-trafficking charges in Mexico. (Similar charges in the U.S. were dismissed.)

When Ye Gon’s home near Mexico City was raided in 2008, agents found approximately $207 million in U.S. currency. Some of the fat stacks of $100s were held in place by Venetian casino wrappers. In the non-prosecution memo in the case, Adelson’s company admits Ye Gon was “the largest all-cash, up-front gambler the Venetian-Palazzo had ever had to that point.”
...

For his part, the usually loquacious Adelson is so far uncharacteristically quiet. The mercurial and litigious casino baron, whose profits from casinos in Triad-infested Macau have helped drive his personal net worth above $25 billion according to published reports, is suspiciously silent.

When he was busy trying to pave Mitt Romney’s path to the White House last year, Adelson was a veritable quote machine. Perhaps he figured sometimes it’s better to shut up and cut the check.

$47mil is about half of what Adelson flushed down the shitter to try to get Willard elected, or at least someone who could stop the investigation. It's a drop in the bucket but at least he's STFU.

Doom, gloom, shut up and smile

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford on climate change.

Good news is, climate change is an equal opportunity offender: you will be affected no matter if you’re a vegan libertarian, shrugging nihilist, Wall Street millionaire or a Tea Party dingbat who believes that thousands of the world’s most distinguished scientists, climate researchers and Nobel Prize winners are no match for your skeptical 5th-grade home-schooled right-wing dumbed-down Christian mal-education.
...

Elsewhere and not long ago, for a sexy but little seen publication, I wrote the following:

Some Hindu scholars believe we are in the midst of what’s called the Kali Yuga, the fourth and final, darkest stage of grand cycle of humanity marked by vice and greed, violence and superstition. The Kali Yuga is the most intense, nonspiritual period when man is most divorced from his higher self, deceit and duplicity run rampant, and our natural storehouse of wisdom and virtue is nearly empty, soon dwindling to zilch until Shiva cracks his third eye and it all starts over again.

Or maybe not. [...]

All will be revealed. Go...

Just sayin'...

If I were Emperor (EOTUS) and be glad I'm not, and it was up to me to retaliate against Syria, here's what I would do:

The chemical rockets were apparently fired from four military bases. I would send FIVE strikes. The four bases and Assad's Palace or White House or whatever it's called. Then five more just to make the rubble bounce because I could.

Then, after a decent interval to allow people's ears to stop ringing and let government agents swarm these places looking for survivors or whatever, five more strikes with chemical weapons, mustard gas, tear gas, shit plant residue, whatfuckinever, to render them uninhabitable for a long fucking time.

Then, just for shits and giggles, I'd find a very remote spot in Syria and blow off a nuke right in the middle of it. Sort of a "knock off the cheap shit" message.

Without too much provocation, I'd do the same thing in the more egregious red states too.

And I'm supposed to be a pussy peace/love/dope Liberal. Heh.

I know I'm gonna get suggestions. Let 'er rip!

Quote of the Day

From El Rude-o on the CIA's admission that the U.S. was complicit in Saddam's use of chemical weapons.

We are a nation that has been led by war criminals. Hell, they even worried a little bit about that in those CIA files.

Once again, once again, we're in the position of now Knowing For Sure what we knew but didn't have confirmed.

I think it was pretty well confirmed years ago but it's never for sure until the lawyers say it's OK to say it on TV.

Da Jesus Book

Dis is jus' too good! Via my Facebook and actual frien' Jeff Apaka.

Dis, da Hawai`i Pidgin New Testament (Da Jesus Book) wit 39% a da Ol Testament (Da Befo Jesus Book) dat stay ready fo use. You can find any chapta an verse. Fo any word, you can find all da places wea get dat word. Make um easy fo read an study da Bible.

On da firs' day, Godfella him go surfin'...

Former U.S. Attorney Reads Breitbart's Butt Boy The Riot Act

Via TPM.

The conservative video maker James O'Keefe has turned his cameras on the former federal prosecutor whose office brought charges against him and his accomplices in the phone-tampering of a Democratic U.S. senator.

In a video released by O'Keefe's Project Veritas on Monday, former U.S. Attorney James Letten can be seen shouting at O'Keefe and his colleagues. Letten can also be seen filming O'Keefe with his own smart phone.

"You went to my house, you terrorized my wife, you're violating federal law, you're trespassing, you're a nasty little cowardly spud," Letten says in the video. "All of you, you're hobbits. You are less than I can ever tell you. You are scum. Do you understand?"

That ain't the half of it! Not sure that "hobbits" is the correct choice of words, but they probably won't be offended since they don't exist.

This is an O'Keefe video, so the usual caveats and grains of salt apply.

Just turn it off when the shit starts getting deep.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Solar Panels Re-Installed At White House
First installed by Carter, then removed by Reagan, they'll remain until next Republican president removes them.

29% of Louisiana Republicans Blame Obama for Poor Katrina Response
42% blame Carter for Watergate.

Geez, Carter got two mentions already today!

Review of 63 Scientific Studies: Atheists Smarter Than Believers
But, believers say, according to The Bible, they're smarter.

Heh. Keep telling yourselves that, believers. It's what you want to hear.

GOP Congressman: Businesses Can't Find Enough “Sober,” “Drug-Free” Workers
And when they do, they turn out to be humorless party poopers.

Who won't work for minimum wage. Dope 'n booze cost money, you know!

The Nor Cal Tea Party and Fracking

An entertaining read at YubaNet. Shorter: the frackers know exactly where to go to find people who will fall for their snake oil.

The Nor Cal Tea Party Patriots were sponsoring a discussion on "fracking" by an "energy expert". This energy expert was a person my wife had tried to hear at an industry summit, but she was turned away at the door for being on a "Do Not Admit" list. No Enviros Allowed.

This was a "two for one" in my twisted mind: an industry apologist and a meeting of right wing extremists. [...]
...

John McDonald is part of the Industry Front group: the Coalition of Energy Users. Their sole purpose is to create the political and intellectual space for large scale Fracking operations to begin in California.

"Low cost energy is freedom" McDonald said, "High cost energy leads to the Obama Plantation" Yes, he actually said that. John started out with economic and social advantages with the new fracking revolution that has increased gas and oil production in the United States, disproving Hubberts peak. "If you care about the poor, you want low cost energy". McDonald swooned.

This led McDonald into talking about the wonders of Texas. "Texas is amazing" stating that if Texas was its own country, they would go from being 12th in the world in oil production to 9th, this year alone. Texas is currently pumping 3 million barrels a day, because of fracking. All of it on private land. And with oil production comes money to the Texas coffers: Texas will bring in "900 million dollars in revenue due to oil".

But is it safe? "All my life, when I look at what Environmentalists really state, I find lies", adding: "They lie every time". In a more hopeful tone, swarming to the enraptured crowd of Social Security pensioners, "You can combat the lies".

I guess I should have given you a "liquid alert". Sorry 'bout that...

On to the business of oil: "You can't get around the laws of business". We shouldn't "demonize things that are precious and beautiful. It is wrong to criticize oil companies". "We need to be kind and loving to our oil companies". We need to tell these companies we love them".

Yes, he said that. All of it.
...

The crowd was pretty excited about all the money that awaits us because California has 2/3rds of the recoverable oil and gas in the United States. We just need to stop the nasty Liberals and Environmentalists from getting in the way of the prosperity that is our birthright.

Most of the attendees at this snake oil commercial won't be around when their grandchildren enjoy the "prosperity" of having to buy "safe" drinking water from Nestle et al because of the fracking.