JFK 50 Years On

Charles P. Pierce on JFK's assassination.

The murder of John Kennedy in broad daylight in the streets of an American city remains, to me, an unsolved crime. I do not accept the notion that the Warren Commission, created to allay public panic and not to investigate, and composed of wise men from Washington who had made careers out of knowing more than they ever would tell, somehow still managed to stumble onto the correct interpretation of all of the events of that surreal weekend. (Hell, Allen Dulles was on that Commission and Kennedy had fired his lying ass less than a year earlier.) I stopped believing in the Warren Commission even before it was put together. I stopped believing in the Warren Commission when I sat on my living room floor and watched the accused murderer of the president get gunned down on live TV in a roomful of Dallas cops. I stopped believing in the Warren Commission when I watched a lynching with my parents while the dead president was lying in state in the White House and as the country went numb around me.

The Warren Commission was a natural outgrowth of a mentality that had infected the government from the moment that the government decided that it would build, in secret, a weapon that would not only win World War II, but also have the potential to end civilization if it -- or the men who allegedly were in control of it -- ever ran amok. What historian Garry Wills calls the "Bomb Power" was based from its beginnings in the notion that there were things about their government that the American people need not know. From this came an irresistible impulse to treat the American people -- for whom the Founders intended all of what John Adams called "the awful knowledge" about their leaders -- like fragile children who must be protected at all costs from what their government found necessary to do on their behalf. From this has come a hundred commissions and boards and gatherings of the shamans of the security state -- the slow bureaucratic response to the Watergate crimes, the Tower Commission on Iran-Contra, even the Simpson-Bowles budget commission -- all of which sprang from the notion that the nation's elite should conduct the nation's business in as quiet a manner as possible, so as not to disturb the horses or wake the children. The Warren Commission was the first of these, and it did its job very well. What unruly bloggers call The Village can be said to have been founded in the premise that the American people needed to be shielded, for their own good, from the full knowledge of the facts surrounding the murder of their president in broad daylight in the streets of an American city.
...

I don't know if we'll ever settle who shot from where. But I do know that, almost from the start, the government has known more about this event than it has been willing to share with the people who, allegedly, govern themselves through it. It is long past time for that to end. It has been 50 years. So many people connected, in one way or another, and by one person or another, to the events in Dallas are dead. The Soviet Union is dead. Do not protect yourselves by claiming to protect us. We have been protected for too long and from too much of what the government has done in our name. We are not children, huddled at the classroom door, wondering why the nuns are weeping, and why the world has suddenly gone so silent all around us.

I was mercifully shielded from the events surrounding JFK's assassination. It happened on my 4th day in the Marine Corps and consisted of one short announcement from my Drill Instructor, "The President's been shot. Stand by.", and that was it. I got to watch his funeral on an 8-inch black-and-white TV crammed together with about 200 other recruits in a dark, dank shower room. I hardly watched TV during my enlistment, and the war of words about it was raging when I got out three years later.

I'd like to know who did it. The only thing I'm convinced of is that Oswald did not act alone if he acted at all. Too much hearsay/speculation/revelation to the contrary. The Warren Commission was a pack of lies/whitewash/coverup. "Magic bullet" my ass. So far, the best answer is a CIA/Mafia effort, but I don't know for sure. I hope I live long enough for it to come out.

Why Fund the Library When You Could Build a New Jail?

Truthout

Lindel Toups, the chair of the Parish Council’s “New Jail Committee,” had contended that the library had more than enough funds and that its budget is “an area that we don’t think is absolutely necessary.” He singled out Biblioteca Hispana, a Hispanic-language segment of the Golden Meadow library branch, as one reason that the libraries’ funding should be redirected to the proposed jail. As Toups said,

“They’re teaching Mexicans how to speak English. Let that son of a b—- go back to Mexico. There’s just so many things they’re doing that I don’t agree with. … Them junkies and hippies and food stamps (recipients) and all, they use the library to look at drugs and food stamps (on the Internet). I see them do it.”

As Sanders noted about Toups, there are some additional reasons that he might be seeking to garner additional funds for the new detention center. Toups has some ”family members that are incarcerated,” according to Sanders, a reference to both Toups’ son and grandson having been charged in 2009 with possession of methamphetamine and drug paraphernalia.
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The ACLU Foundation of Louisiana has raised concerns about the proposed costs for the jail and requested that the Parish Council commission an expert to review those made by a consultant, Michael LeBlanc. So far, the estimated cost and capacity needs of the proposed $25 million, 540-bed jail are entirely based on the recommendations of LeBlanc, who was hired by the Parish Council as the project’s consultant.

LeBlanc is also an “aspiring architect for the job” which comes with a “lucrative design contract,” according to the Tri-Parish Times. The Louisiana Board of Ethics has said that the architectural and consulting contracts for the proposed jail “are not mutually exclusive” even if the some person (i.e., LeBlanc) were to hold both contracts.

Shorter: The Incarceration Industry is more important than Learning Centers. It's all about the Benjamins.

In this particular case, it seems as if favors for connected cranksters plays a role as well.

Great Balls Of Hashish And Frenzied Goat-Dancing

In addition to the GOP stealing the heretofore exclusively liberal pastime of eating great balls of hashish and doing frenzied goat-dancing on the Capitol steps (unlike us libs, who like to do it in mixed company in the snowy woods), Charles P. Pierce talks about why we can't have nice things. Last ¶:

It has become remarkable how the people of this country, an ostensibly self-governing republic, fail to get what an overwhelming percentage of them say they want from their government, over and over again. You can argue, and I have, about the power of money, increased by an order of magnitude through the egregious Citizens United decision. You can argue, and I have, about the unforgivable vandalism practiced by the Republican party and the modern conservative movement that has been the prion disease in the party's higher functions that has driven it mad. But the fact remains that, dammit, there has to be a political price to pay for actively opposing something 66 percent -- or, in the case of the background checks, 91 percent -- of the people say they want. And the electorate is the only body of citizens empowered to exact these penalties, and it has been shamefully lax in doing so. Parts of the country have contented themselves with electing morons and crazy people. (How in the name of god does a buffoon like Louie Gohmert ever run unopposed?) Great portions of the country can be duped, or frightened, into voting against their own economic interests. And the great undifferentiated apathy that attends most of our elections is a deadweight on the democratic process that grows heavier by the year. If our politicians are not responsive to our needs, then it's time for new politicians, and we're the only ones who can bring that about. And yet, it's easier to complain about an inconvenient website, or a scary letter from an insurance company, or bullshit anecdotes that fall apart under the barest scrutiny. The country is ungovernable because we, The People, have decided not to govern it any more. That, to borrow a phrase from the president, is on us.

Hey, some of us are still trying.

By The Year 2016...

Will Durst on the '16 election.

Predicting the nominees right now is like betting on what the weather will be like in Wisconsin in April. Ten years from now. If everyone is so damn clairvoyant, why don’t they throw some money down on lottery tickets? These modern day alchemists might be better off focusing their skills on spinning straw into gold.

A week in politics is a lifetime. A month is two eternities. But three years is like an afternoon at your great aunt’s, while uncle Harry with the mole on his nose that 4 inch hairs grow out of, shows slides of their recent trip to the Azores.

We’re not talking jumping the gun, this is more like jumping the application of the lane chalk. Think of all the stuff that could happen between now and 2016:
...

By the year 2016, the Tea Party might be holding its annual convention in the banquet room of a Casper, Wyoming Applebee’s.

We can only hope...

By the year 2016, Jeb Bush might change his last name to something less polarizing, like Hitler. Or Nixon.

He can change it to whatever he wants. We'll know. No more Bushes. Ever.

Much more.

"Save A Flush!" Headline of the Day

Bashir: Maybe someone should poop in ‘world class idiot’ Sarah Palin’s mouth

There's so much shit comes outta her screechy piehole she'd never notice a little going in.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Despite Rumors, Vatican Says Pope Not in Danger From Mafia
“Our boys can handle their boys,” says Cardinal Fungi, in charge of Holy See security.

They'll make 'em an offer they can't refuse - eternity in hell. Heh.

Christie Half Way To Weight-Loss Goal
After losing 200 pounds.

New Evidence Dogs Originated 20- 30,000 Years Ago in Europe
After efforts to domesticate saber-toothed tigers ended in tragedy.

Famous last words - Watch this! Here kitty kitty...

Study: PG-13 Films Now More Violent Than R
Shooting people with assault weapons ok; using bad words offensive.

Sounds about right.

Blackwater is no more

Good. Me'n Fixer railed against these bastards for years. They're gone. I hope Prince dies broke and under a bridge.

Crooks and Liars with video and links.

Oh, poor widdle Erik Prince.

It's all us mean liberals' fault that Blackwater is no more. They were no match for our powerful anti-war scapegoating; just incapable of withstanding the force of of our "cold and timid souls" intent on taking down this patriotic company protecting Americans from the evil 'terrists'.

Seriously, how pathetic is that logic? Man up, Prince, and take your lumps.

Admit that Blackwater was a cesspool of corruption done completely without the input or influence of those 'timid' liberals at whom you sneer.

Did liberals make you run guns?
Did anti-war activists force you to charge the government for prostitutes?
Was it the timid souls who told you to massacre Iraqi civilians and get yourselves kicked out of Iraq?
Was it us big meanies who so tainted the name "Blackwater" with fraud, murder, corruption and out-of-control mercenaries that you were forced to change the name to Xe (which didn't work as well as you hoped and now the name is Academi) and move the corporation outside the US Justice Dept controls to the United Arab Emirates? Need I go on, because there are a ton of corruption and fraud charges levied against Blackwater/Xe/Academi?

Cry me a river, you WATB. The slime and filth that is Blackwater's reputation is entirely of your making. You just aren't man enough to admit it. Nor are you smart enough to be apologetic for it. The way the world views the US is in no small part tainted by the corruption and crime brought to the Middle East by Blackwater. We all pay for your cowardice.

We paid through the fucking nose too, in more ways than one. Thanks for fucking Fallujah you undisciplined arrogant pieces of shit. Thanks for all our troops who got shot up in a ville because YOU pissed off the locals against Americans before they got there. And thank you Rummie for the brilliant fucking idea of "military contractors" to do the jobs of real soldiers and Marines at a hundred times the price without the regulation and discipline. I hope your pal Cheney is sharing the blood money with you.

If it was up to me, private contractors, mercenaries, would be an automatic free fire zone for our REAL troops in a war zone.

Exactly!

A tip o' the Brain to Being Liberal.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Thanks to Classic Country Music.

Obama to Nation: Keep Your Fuckin' Plans, You Stupid Cowards

Guess Whom

Instead of Barack Obama and the House GOP agreeing that the law is the law and making it function for Americans, we get the sight of Obama appearing before the press corps and saying, more or less, "Goddamn, I'm sick of you motherfuckers whining about your shitty ass health insurance getting canceled because your provider is just a bunch of sick, greedy dickheads who would murder you where you sit if it would squeeze one more cent of profit out of your useless bodies. You wanna cling to your high deductible, low benefit policy for another year because you're scared that the black man president might be right and all that Fox 'news' noise might be wrong? Fine. Fuck it. Kiss my ass and keep your shit plan. Don't come whining to me when it turns out that your insurer drops your sorry ass when you get too sick for it. You asked to be grandfathered in, so lick grandpa's balls and tell me how tasty they are now. Now, can we please talk about the fact that Republicans want to kick over 100,000 people who just got insurance off it?"

Ever so much more...

We knew that...

Daddy Frank

CBS’s Benghazi Report Was a Hoax, Not a Mistake

[...] n Logan’s case, she perpetrated an out-and-out fictional character: a pseudonymous security contractor who peddled a made-up “eyewitness” account of the murder of four Americans in Benghazi. The point seemed to be to further Benghazi as a conservative political cause (instead, Logan’s hoax boomeranged and extinguished it) and to melodramatically exploit the tragic slaughter of Ambassador Chris Stevens and his colleagues as titillating prime-time network entertainment. Logan’s phony source, who in fact was at a beachside villa and not on site to witness anything, cooked up violent new “details” for the Benghazi narrative that seemed to have been lifted from a Jean Claude Van Damme movie.
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[...] (3) What was the relationship between Logan, her source, and the source’s publisher, which is also owned by CBS? Accounts of the 60 Minutes scandal keep referring to that publisher as Simon & Schuster, but that’s not strictly accurate. Logan’s source was not being published by the S&S that is bringing out Doris Kearns Goodwin’s new book on Teddy Roosevelt. His book was being published instead by an S&S subdivision, Threshold, whose authors include Glenn Beck, Karl Rove, Mark Levin, Lynne Cheney, and Jerome Corsi, best known for promoting the Swift Boating of John Kerry and the birther conspiracies about Barack Obama. Why would Logan and CBS News be in bed with such a partisan publisher? Who was the editor who vetted the book containing the same hoax that Logan aired on 60 Minutes? (Threshold’s editor-in-chief is Mary Matalin.) (4) Logan said in her apology that it was “a mistake” to have included her source in her report. But as many have asked, what was the report without that source? Inquiring minds do want to know.

More. And farther along in the piece:

Excuse me for being a stickler on this point, but I see zero chance that Chris Christie could be nominated for president by the GOP unless the entire Republican convention is controlled by his unofficial campaign organization, MSNBC’s Morning Joe. The base of the GOP — the activist base that will actually vote in primaries and caucuses — loathes Christie and much of the squishy conservatism he stands for. He will fare no better with this base than Rudy Giuliani did, and Rudy at least had 9/11 at his back. In any case, your theoretical Clinton vs. Christie race would be all too predictable and tedious in style and substance, if not outcome. On the other hand Warren vs. Cruz, while also implausible, would be one hell of a ride. Or what about Rand Paul vs. Wendy Davis? Three years until Election Day, why not dream?

The High Cost of War for America’s Veterans

A 'recommended read' at Truthout.

We are a jingoistic nation, saluting the Armed Forces everywhere from Super Bowls to automobile dealerships. But this is an abstract commercial patriotism that makes us feel comfortable with ourselves while we down another beer during halftime. On the individual level, the military casualties almost have been forgotten except by their loved ones. Unfortunately, the reception for and treatment of these soldiers far too often fails them.

Men make war. (There's no getting around the fact that war is a guy thing.) Then they make a deal to stop shooting and withdraw. (The US once used to win wars, but now it just makes deals.) (my em)

We worry - if at all - about how vets are treated when they return because of our mistaken notion that Vietnam vets suffered mightily from not being greeted as heroes. What Vietnam veterans truly suffered from was not their reception, but the war. That fact we tend to forget. Consequently, we think we can resolve all the possible nasty consequences of war by waving flags at airports as troops return. The deeper problem is that none of these veterans of the wars of choice in Iraq and Afghanistan - not one of them - should ever have been sent to war. But without a draft that can potentially strike any family in the country, those who have no fear that a family member may be compelled to serve are free to ignore the whole political and public relations process by which leaders drag the country into war and carry it on. War can be left to a supposedly "all volunteer" standing army - those poor kids with no job options or a shot at college - which is precisely what the founding fathers warned against, believing that a standing army would be used by autocrats to destroy democracy. That volunteer army, of course, is shadowed by a larger privatized for-profit army of mercenary contractors. The standing army of the poor and patriotic is alienated from the general public and left at the mercy of the president. Our recent presidents and their cronies, who hold a nearly unblemished record of evading military service, have thrown kids into war with an enthusiasm undampened by any real knowledge of what war is, while the most influential segments of the general public, feeling both grateful and guilty that their kids are safe, make no effort to restrain those war-loving leaders.

MARK KARLIN: You ask in the book, "Could there be any connections between the size of those corporate profits and Washington's patriotic dedication to eternal wartime?" This profiteering involves the private contractors on the ground in our wars, consultants and those corporations that sell big ticket items to the Pentagon, doesn't it?

ANN JONES: Absolutely. But it goes well beyond that. In 2011, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont released a Defense Department study showing that at least 300 contractors providing goods and services to the DOD had committed fraud. They included major corporations such as Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and the big winner of the war in Iraq, Halliburton. But during ten years of warfare, the DOD had given to the top 37 fraudulent contractors alone some $1.1 trillion. The DOD got that money from Congress, and I'll let you guess the identity of the top contributors to the campaign funds of Congressmen. It's said that when President [Dwight] Eisenhower drafted his famous farewell speech to the nation, he wanted to warn citizens against a "military-industrial-congressional complex." Someone, perhaps a Congressman, persuaded him that the phrase would be catchier if he left out the word "Congressional," but Congressmen are surely in it now up to their ears. It's now next to impossible to get elected to government in this country if you oppose war because the money is on the other side. Even the Supreme Court, when it declared corporations to have the rights of people, helped mightily to facilitate that arrangement.

It's always about the Benjamins. Benjamins for the care of returning Veterans cuts into the Benjamins for the MIC.

War has been a racket for-fucking-ever, since one caveman figured out how to stay safe and make money by collecting rocks to sell to the others.

War Is A Racket

A speech delivered in 1933, by Major General Smedley Butler, USMC.

WAR is a racket. It always has been

It is possibly the oldest, easily the most profitable, surely the most vicious. It is the only one international in scope. It is the only one in which the profits are reckoned in dollars and the losses in lives.

A racket is best described, I believe, as something that is not what it seems to the majority of the people. Only a small "inside" group knows what it is about. It is conducted for the benefit of the very few, at the expense of the very many. Out of war a few people make huge fortunes.

In the World War [I] a mere handful garnered the profits of the conflict. At least 21,000 new millionaires and billionaires were made in the United States during the World War. That many admitted their huge blood gains in their income tax returns. How many other war millionaires falsified their tax returns no one knows.

How many of these war millionaires shouldered a rifle? How many of them dug a trench? How many of them knew what it meant to go hungry in a rat-infested dug-out? How many of them spent sleepless, frightened nights, ducking shells and shrapnel and machine gun bullets? How many of them parried a bayonet thrust of an enemy? How many of them were wounded or killed in battle?

Go read the rest.

Headline and Lead-in of the Day

How Republicans Rig the Game

Through gerrymandering, voter suppression and legislative tricks, the GOP has managed to hold on to power while more and more Americans reject their candidates and their ideas

Headline of the Day

Good read.

How the Tea Party’s Apocalyptic Politics Are Destroying the Republican Party

Yo, 'baggers, speed it up, willya?

No thanks

Thank you for please not thanking me for my service on this Veterans Day. I don't need it and I don't want it. Instead, I think we should APOLOGIZE to Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans, the living, wounded, and dead, for being so horribly used IN OUR NAME for NOTHING but an imperialistic neocon wet dream that has come to naught but a terrible butcher's bill.

George W. Bush really was trying to bring about the end of the world

Rachel Maddow

Friday night on her MSNBC show, Rachel Maddow cast a critical eye toward former President George W. Bush’s decision to speak at the Messianic Bible Institute, the headquarters of the apocalyptic cult Jews for Jesus.

She compared what we know about Jews for Jesus with evidence of meetings held during the Bush presidency and said that one can only conclude that Bush was trying to bring about the Rapture and the apocalypse in order to hasten the second coming of Jesus Christ.
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Apparently, Rapture-baiting, pro-apocalypse religious fanatics were holding sway over U.S. foreign policy before and during the War in Iraq, the War in Afghanistan and the rest of the Bush presidency. So it should come as no surprise that the former commander in chief is consorting with these groups in the wake of his presidency.
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Maddow said that she can’t wait until the national archives takes control of the Bush Presidential Library, “and we’ll finally get an actual exhibit or a diorama about that part of the Bush foreign policy, where it wasn’t just an accident that we were almost bringing about the end of the world, it was the point!”

And from Booman:

Last year, Glenn Beck was the main attraction at the Messianic Jewish Bible Institute's annual fundraising banquet. This year, the guest of honor will be former President George W. Bush. That shows you about where President Bush stands on the speechmaking circuit.
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There is something so right with the optics of this tiny group of nuts sitting around in Jerry Jones' gargantuan Cowboy cathedral, talking about converting Jews to Christianity while eating pork barbecue and waiting for Glenn Beck to speak.

It's something only Hunter S. Thompson could hope to adequately explain. Who but a person with a headful of amyl nitrite could possibly put into words the tentacled depth of deranged wrong-headed bug-nuttery involved in that scene?

It's right where Dubya belongs.

With his base.

The 27%.

The Dead End Quarter. I'm praying for The Rapture just so I can see the looks on the faces of all the phony christians who thought they were going to go and didn't. God, being a humanly concocted manifestation of the mystery of the universe, doesn't want the whackos either.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Bill Banning Discrimination Against Homosexuals Passes Senate
After an exception is made for those whose homophobia is inspired by religious faith.

Wouldn't surprise me.

Scalia Says “Of Course” He Believes in the Devil, Citing Bible as Evidence
Devil says “Of Course” he believes in Scalia, citing his vote on “Citizens United.”

Of course he believes in Scalia. He holds the paper on his soul.

Harley-Davidson Introduces Lighter, Smaller Models
For little old ladies who want to join motorcycle gangs.

Earth 7 Times More Vulnerable to Catastrophic Meteor Impacts Than Previously Thought
So you can relax about global warming.

Whew!

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Mostly Willie, but pretty new.

From the 2013 Legacy / Sony Legacy album, To All the Girls

Thanks to goodelady.

The U.S. shifts left

After 33 years of rightward and downward slide, it's about fuckin' time. E.J. Dionne.

The center of gravity in American politics moved left in Tuesday’s off-year elections.

Republicans took a big step back from the tea party. An ebullient progressive was elected mayor of New York City. And a Democrat was elected governor of Virginia after campaigning unapologetically as a supporter of gun control and a liberal on social issues.
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And in the one direct intraparty fight over the GOP’s future, a tea party candidate lost a primary in Alabama to a more traditional conservative. A telling distinction between the victor, Bradley Byrne, and the defeated Dean Young: Byrne said that Obama was born in the United States; Young suggested the president was born in Kenya.

Young’s persistent “birtherism” is a reminder of how far right the American political discussion veered after the elections of 2009 and the midterms of 2010. The pendulum is swinging back.

I hope it swings fast and seizes solid somewhat left of center.

Republicans would be wiser to pay attention to the fact that McAuliffe re-created the coalition that twice elected Obama. When Democrats lost Virginia in 2009, Obama supporters stayed home in large numbers. This time, the electorate was significantly more Democratic, and the African American share of the vote rose sharply. In next year’s midterms, Republicans cannot count on the sort of Democratic demobilization that was helpful to them in 2010.

To say that this election nudged the nation leftward is not to claim a sudden mandate for liberalism. But it is to insist that the center ground in American politics is a long way from where it was three years ago — and that if there is a new populism in the country, it is now speaking with a decidedly progressive accent.

Shorter: We're winning. Continue the march.

The Conservative March Toward a Society of Sociopaths

Forward Progressives

Last night when discussing Stan and some of what I refer to as his asinine political beliefs, it occurred to me—Stan is exactly how Republicans want Americans to behave.

And Stan is a sociopath.

He’s a white male, strongly opposed to most other races and immigrants. Believes every single far right-wing economic theory imaginable and actually cited Argentina as a “beacon for true capitalism.” He has no remorse for others, seems to live in a world where he’s the focal point but he presents himself as extremely charming and personable when you first meet him. He has no problem ignoring social ethics or morals if it benefits his self interest. He’s told my friend that people should only worry about themselves, and not care about the struggles of others. That in life, self interests should trump everything else.
...

See, Stan is exactly the kind of person Republicans want to create.
...

Which leads us to the rapidly de-evolving Republican party. A party that doesn’t care about the environment, health care access for Americans, children, education, the well-being of our military or the poor.

They only care about themselves and how much they can possess. People who place value on inanimate objects like guns or money before human beings. Then nothing you can tell these people will convince them of anything, because your opinion doesn’t matter
.
Because the sociopath isn’t concerned about what you, I or anyone else thinks of them—only what they think of themselves. Which is why any type of disgusting behavior they exhibit is perfectly acceptable. That behavior got them something that they wanted—and to a sociopath their own self interests are all that really matter.

And that’s exactly the type of society conservatives are trying to march us toward.

And that's exactly why we're here and what we're trying to prevent. I think after 30 years of right-wing bullshit, folks are catching on and we're gaining steam. They think they've won and are getting more and more egregious in trying to undo the societal gains of the last 75 years. They're not even trying to hide it any more. It's finally out in the light of day and people don't like it. Sunlight is a great cleanser.

I saw this somewhere the other day: "The next Republican President hasn't been born yet". Fine with me.

Heh...

Who knew Ken Cuccinelli had a secret plan to force oust Bob McDonnell?

WATCH The Rachel Maddow Show explain.

They promised it's there somewhere, but the photo was too good not to share. Heh.

How to die long before Christmas

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford on crass Christmas commercialism and Dia de los Muertos. I've been getting Christmas catalogs since August. Not so much as ONE Dia de los Muertos catalog.

It was 81 degrees outside. It was still early October, not even yet time to set clocks back an hour or pay way too much for a pumpkin in the city. Nearly three months stood like a lump of crushed hopes between that particular moment and Christmas – and yet, there they were, rows of holiday fare awaiting their rotation in the cycle of commercial life, because, well, why the hell not? Does anyone even notice or care anymore? Drug stores churn through this sort of prefab holiday crap like crack anyway, and candy canes have the shelf life of nuclear fuel rods. Might as well just leave them out all year long.
...

It’s almost enough to induce chronic bitterness. It’s almost enough to make you think there’s no other way. There is always another way.

Two days after Halloween, I stood, surrounded by walking skulls and candles, ritual and death, corrected.

It was Dia de los Muertos, of course, swarming through SF’s Mission district like a breath of fresh, funky, coffin-like air, a quirky, morbid, wonderful slap in the face to every American holiday ritual in existence, along with the ruthless machinery of capitalism that define them.

Talk about everything bland, oversold American culture is not – giddy, weird, moribund, playful, creepy, home-spun, solemn, completely noncommercial, no marketing and no major advertising and no noxious commercial jingles, no smarmy Coca Cola ads featuring diabetic polar bears sucking down toxic sugar water and not dying from global warming.

Also: Not a single megastore offering a special Day of the Dead deal on big-screen TVs. No tasteful, sweatshop-made ornaments from Pottery Barn. No special drinks, no immature misinterpretations of Jesus’ birth or death, no reindeer sweaters. It was sort of miraculous.

Instead, Dia de los Meurtos is, to my imperfect understanding, a time to honor the dead, respect your ancestors and pay homage to those loved ones you’ve lost, all during the few days when it’s believed the veil separating the living from the dead is thinnest. There are cacophonous processionals, offerings, marigolds galore (the Aztec flower of death, to which souls are drawn), photos of the deceased everywhere, altars and shrines from sublime to silly, mementos and trinkets and sugar skulls in abundance. It’s sacred, potent, playful, deeply moving. You know, just like Christmas never was.

But it’s also, if I understand it correctly, a day to sort of mock Death itself, that skinny, weak bag o’ bones who couldn’t possibly carry you away right now, and who doesn’t scare you not one bit, even though he totally does.

Is that not refreshing? No wonder American commerce hasn’t swarmed all over this idiosyncratic ritual. Unlike Mexico (and Brazil, Spain, and many others) we haven’t really developed the means to handle death or the afterlife with anything other than fear and denial. Halloween is as close as we get, and that’s become far more about kids gorging on candy and adults gorging on cocktails. The old pagan rituals? The Celtic harvest festivals? Not a clue.

My sentiment exactly. Dia de los Muertos makes more spiritual sense than Halloween, and is a better celebration than almost any of our commercially-driven "holidays".

Dick Dynasty II

TBogg via Raw Story.

When we last checked in on la famiglia Cheney, family patriarch and Undead Thing Dick Cheney was hitting the gasbag shows and flogging his heart surgery book The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter Who Shoots You In the Face. Grande dame and soft-core lesbian fan-fic author Lynn Cheney was going Full Metal Carrie on Alan Simpson at some Wyoming society event and, yes Wyoming does too have society events so stop laughing right this minute mister or be forever persona non grata at the annual Greater Laramie Sheepherder’s Embraceable Ewe Cotillion and Tractor Pull.

But what of daughter Liz’s campaign to return, Odysseus-like, to her ancestral home in McLean, VA. as well as join the Senate as the distaff version of Ted Cruz … but without the charm?

More.

Lizzie has gone from "Daddy's 5th Deferment" to "Serious Adult Daddy Issues". Looks like the Wyomingstanians ain't having it.

The TSA shootings at LAX highlight America’s real terror threat

From The Guardian via Raw Story.

So, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that the first Transportation Security Administration (TSA) agent to be killed in the line of duty was not slain by an al-Qaida terrorist, but rather by an American with a gun.
...

Now, of course, if the shooter had screamed “Allah Akbar” as he needlessly took the life of TSA agent Gerardo Hernandez, or if he had had links to an al-Qaida terror cell, there’d be no question about how to describe this incident.

As far as I'm concerned, the guy was a terrorist in a cell headed by the likes of Glenn Beck and Alex Jones. They should be up on charges as accessories before the fact.

Headline and Quote of the Day

Food stamp cuts are ideological, not fiscal: Republicans make the poor pay to balance the budget

“The capitalists can always buy themselves out of any crises, as long as they make the workers pay.”

One more in a long list of reasons the GOP needs to die.

Couldn'ta said it better myself...

A tip o' the Brain to Being Liberal.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Republicans Outraged That Obamacare Is Destroying America
And isn't rolling out smoothly enough.

Rand Paul Accused of Plagiarizing Entire Section of His Latest Book
Even titled it “The Fountainhead”.

Marijuana Likely to Be Decriminalized In Washington, D.C. by February
Just in time for Choom Gang reunion at White House.

Man Drives From New York to LA in Under Twenty-Nine Hours
Then drives from Brentwood to West Hollywood in an hour and forty minutes.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

An old favorite.

Thanks to AlexPap48.

The simple meaning of Dia de los Muertos

Please watch this beautifully animated, and heart felt, short film about a little girl who visits the land of the dead, where she learns the true meaning of the Mexican holiday, Dia de los Muertos.
Student Academy Award Gold Medal winner, 2013!!

Muchas gracias to The Cgbros.

Uh ... yup...

A tip o' the Brain to Crooks and Liars on Facebook.

The War On The Poor

Paul Krugman

So what’s this all about? One reason, the sociologist Daniel Little suggested in a recent essay, is market ideology: If the market is always right, then people who end up poor must deserve to be poor. I’d add that some leading Republicans are, in their minds, acting out adolescent libertarian fantasies. “It’s as if we’re living in an Ayn Rand novel right now,” declared Paul Ryan in 2009.

But there’s also, as Mr. Little says, the stain that won’t go away: race.

In a much-cited recent memo, Democracy Corps, a Democratic-leaning public opinion research organization, reported on the results of focus groups held with members of various Republican factions. They found the Republican base “very conscious of being white in a country that is increasingly minority” — and seeing the social safety net both as something that helps Those People, not people like themselves, and binds the rising nonwhite population to the Democratic Party. And, yes, the Medicaid expansion many states are rejecting would disproportionately have helped poor blacks.

So there is indeed a war on the poor, coinciding with and deepening the pain from a troubled economy. And that war is now the central, defining issue of American politics.

Shorter: The blacks and browns are no longer subservient to the white ruling class and tend to vote Democratic. They're uppity and must be punished. Makes no difference that most of the poor are white.

Teabaggers are safe from zombies!

A tip o' the Brain to Being Liberal.

Quote of the Day

Paul Krugman

And Republicans still dream of dismantling Medicare as we know it, instead giving seniors vouchers to buy private insurance. In effect, although they never say this, they want to convert Medicare into Obamacare.

Heh. Somebody oughta 'splain "irony" to those clowns, not that they'd get it.

Crashing Glitching Bores

Will Durst on the Obamacare rollout mess hearings.

The sight of these grandfatherly types who couldn't tell a glitch from a Sneetch pretending to speak conversantly about something they have the same familiarity with as a calico cat does with calculus makes keeping a straight face difficult. Especially considering their extreme remonstrations of concern, which sound similar to cobras worrying that the mouse door is often unlocked.

Thing is, they're perfectly right. The rollout went less smooth than a 40 foot square steel donut rumbling down a pressed tin bridge. Democrats agree the website technology for Obamacare is so outdated it looks like Health and Human Services rescued it from Compuserve's trash using a dial-up modem. There are at least six or 17 areas of this country where a class of fifth graders could have constructed a more navigable site during study hall.

The ultimate techie nightmare. More crashes than Windows Vista through 27 stories of skylights. A health care portal with all the compassion and efficiency of the DMV. Coming soon: leeches. Although many claim that plenty of licensed barbers are already caucusing with the House majority. Face it, if the government created the Cloud, it would be called the Smog and leak antifreeze.
...

But by focusing their attention on the website, the GOP seems to be signaling they've accepted Obamacare, at least in theory. After trying to repeal it 50 times then shutting down the government in an attempt to defund it, they are finally, reluctantly, on board. And just want to straighten things out by letting the American people know this is the worst legislation in the history of ever.

In other words, they've graduated to complaining about the choice of the font on the menu and not the ingredients of the feast.

More.

If ya can't beat 'em, threaten 'em

From Kos in toto.

The teabagger core argument: Takers, makers and the violent end of democracy

Yeah, this is a mid-week nutpick, but it's a nutpick with a mission: To help explain the current conservative mindset.

It's a comment on a thread on Breitbart which is literally trying to unskew yesterday's Washington Post poll of the Virginia governor's race.

A veteran Virginia pollster, Breitbart News has learned, this the results of the poll are "at least" 6 points off, and notes that the Post polls ordinarily overestimate Democrat performance in the Commonwealth.

Ha ha ha! I never tire of the unskewers! But that's not what I want to focus on. Rather, it's this comment:

no amount of economic or cultural chaos and disaster will ever incite those people to turn on their democrat masters. However, considering Obamacare's devastation..should Virginia choose to drink the kool-aid too...and elect McAuliffe ...it will all but convince me that the country has totally surrendered to a communist future....and there won't be any turning the tide in 2014....

There are simply too many takers extracting from a shrinking class of makers in this country. The intricate web of taxation and regulation has imprisoned the economy....guaranteeing that the Cloward and Piven blueprint will succeed.

After that...it could be anarchy....insurrection...or revolution.....who knows?

The entire conservative mindset is encapsulated in those three short paragraphs—the sense that everything has gone to shit, but people stick with Democrats because they're takers while conservatives are makers, and that if it continues much longer ... violence! All wrapped up in a nice bundle of f'd up punctuation. (At least it was run through a spell checker.)

That whole "makers" vs "takers" was the basis of Mitt Romney's 47 percent nonsense. And it's also the modern formulation of the racists' lament, in case you were wondering why race was missing in the comment above. It's not good white people doing the taking, you know?

But that comment also hints at the desperation and resignation coursing through today's conservatives: The notion that they've lost the battle. Sure, 2008 and 2012 were big blows, but they were softened by 2010's GOP wave. They want to believe those two presidential years were anomalies, but they know better. Once Virginia goes Blue, bucking a 40-year trend in which the party in the White House lost the governor's race, it'll confirm their worst fears. They will have lost the country and 2014 will only ratify the nation's new direction.

Thus, the final appeal to violence—because if democracy fails them, then what is left? The question will be whether that violence will remain a fantasy as they politically disengage, or whether they'll begin to act on it.

The "skewed" polls show the top three spots - gov, lt gov, and AG - in VA will go to Dems. I certainly hope so. The Repug candidates are fucking crazy. Why is Breitfart trying to gin up violence?

Other than it's Breitbart (he's still dead), because the 'baggers/wingnuts/fundies/haters are starting to lose big time and they're sore losers and whiny little bitches. They talk a big game, but they're all flaps and no throttle and when all is said and done, more will have been said than done, as usual.

GOP Still Worried About "Those People"

Paul Krugman

Lots of commentators have been referencing a report from Democracy Corps about focus-group meetings with Republicans, and with good reason: Stanley Greenberg, the organization's co-founder, has basically provided a unified theory of the craziness that has enveloped American politics in the last few years.

What the report makes clear is that the current Republican obsession with attacking programs that benefit Americans in need, ranging from food stamps to health care reform, isn't about some philosophical commitment to small government. It's about anxiety over a changing America - the multiracial, multicultural society we're becoming - and anger that Democrats are taking Their Money and giving it to Those People. In other words, it's still race after all these years.

One irony here is that at this point it's the liberals who believe in America, while the conservatives don't (my em). I believe in our ability to change while retaining our essential nature; I believe that today's immigrants will be incorporated into the fabric of our society, just as Italian and Jewish immigrants - once regarded as fundamentally incompatible with American ways - became "white" by the middle of the 20th century.

Another irony is that the great right-wing fear that social insurance programs will in effect buy minority votes for Democrats, leading to further change, is becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy. The G.O.P. could have tried to reach out to immigrants, moderated its stances on Obamacare, and staked out a position as the restrained, sensible party. Instead, it's alienating all the people it needs to win over, and quite possibly setting the stage for the very liberal dominance it fears.

Good.

Headline and Quote of the Day

Britney Spears's Music Is Used to Fight Off Somali Pirates (Stop Laughing)

“I’d imagine using Justin Bieber would be against the Geneva Convention.” Heh.

Heh.

Dark Money Kochsuckers pay fine

ProPublica. Much more and many links at site

Two dark money groups linked to conservative billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch have paid a record $1 million in fines to California to settle allegations that the combined $15 million they spent on two ballot proposals in the state was not properly disclosed.

The civil settlement, announced Thursday afternoon in Sacramento, caps a year of investigation into the activities of the two Arizona groups, Americans for Responsible Leadership and the Center to Protect Patient Rights.
...

“What is the takeaway from this trail of dark money?” asked Ann Ravel, the outgoing head of California’s Fair Political Practices Commission, which investigated the groups along with the state attorney general’s office. “This is a nationwide issue. These groups exploit loopholes in the law to undermine the clear purpose of the law, to give essential information to the public.”
...

Anonymous money funneled through social welfare nonprofits and trade associations has become a major factor in federal elections since the Supreme Court’s Citizens United decision in early 2010 opened up the door to unlimited corporate and union spending on outside ads, as documented by ProPublica. In the past two election cycles, social welfare nonprofits have spent more than $350 million, mostly from unknown donors, on election ads telling people to vote for or against federal candidates.

"Social welfare non-profits" my ass. That's a carefully engineered loophole you can drive an aircraft carrier through. More like a container ship fulla Benjamins.

And while the groups have been linked to the Koch brothers, it’s not clear how exactly they’re connected. The Center to Protect Patient Rights, which operates out of a post office box in Arizona and doesn’t even have a website, has been described practically like an ATM machine for various groups affiliated with the Koch brothers. The press release issued by California authorities says the Center and Americans for Responsible Leadership “operated as part of the ‘Koch Brothers Network’ of dark money political nonprofit corporations.”

The Kochs have long been known for spending millions to influence elections behind the scenes, through a complex network of groups that critics have nicknamed “the Kochtopus.” The Kochs themselves have remained determinedly in the background.
...

The fine is the largest in California history in a campaign-finance case.

The manner in which the groups paid it speaks volumes about how dark their money really is.

They paid by cashier’s check, sent by a Sacramento lawyer’s office Thursday morning, betraying no clue to the money’s origin.

They paid the fine, chump change to them, and we still don't know who they are.

This shit has to stop, but as long as we have a right-wing SCOTUS it will not.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Iran Removes Anti-American Posters as Western Nuke Talks Loom
“Death to Satan” replaced by “Welcome Satan.”

7-Eleven Begins Offering Premium Wines
To wash down those Slim Jims.

Not to worry. They still have cheap vodka.

Cop That Pepper-Sprayed Students Awarded $38,000 for Psychiatric Damage
Cops that beat the crap out of Rodney King hire a lawyer.

New Theory: Earliest Cave Paintings May Have Been by Women
Experts cite dearth of pornography.

Airlines Shrink Size of Seats, Add More of Them in Economy
Hoping to eventually break our will and force us to upgrade to business.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

This is a little different!

Thanks to ajack2boys.

Why Poor Whites in Red-States Vote Against Their Interest

via Occupy Democrats.

In what is quite possibly the most powerful, insightful, and concise answer to the age-old question of why poor whites residing in red-states always vote against their own best interest, Michael Eric Dyson hits the nail right on the head and gives some powerful advice to these red-state voters.

In this powerful 90-second response to a viewer’s question, Dyson doesn’t attack nor belittle these white voters, but he does provide a very powerful example given by the Rev. Martin Luther King that shows why these voters living in red-states would be much better served by joining in solidarity with other poor Americans of every color in fighting for better wages, a fairer economy, healthcare for the poor, and the stemming of growing socioeconomic inequality.

It's too bad most of the poor people in red states won't see this on FOXNoise.

Headline of the Day

Democrat Blasts GOP’s Obamacare Hearing: ‘I Will Not Yield To This Monkey Court’

And a phrase is coined!

This cocaine tastes like Oreos

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford on corporate scientific engineering of addiction.

Then came a flawless little orgasm of a headline, a pitch-perfect, viral-ready soundbite of awesomeness packed with all the keywords Americans love most – Drugs! Cocaine! Oreo cookies! You! Rats! Addiction! Obamacare! Sex! – all about this cute little study that reveals how it lab rats, not all that surprisingly, love those famous, chocolatey discs of sugar and lard just as much as they love cocaine, and btw just kidding about the Obamacare and the sex. Sort of.
...

OMG, Oreos! Right? Tasty and barely digestible wheels of refined sugar, lard, chemicals and $20 billion/100 years of slightly evil marketing? And cocaine! Popular and cheaper-than-ever whiffs of refined coca plant, $1 trillion in completely failed drug war and absolutely zero marketing required, ever? Perfect.

You're on your own. I'm gettin' the munchies. Gotta go chop up an Oreo or ten and line 'em out...

We won't hit ourselves in the ass with the door on the way out...

Let the Dysfunctional Plantation-Based Red States Secede

I've got no problem with this. If we learned anything from last time, it's that you can't fix stupid. Better to let 'em go than fight to keep them.

Simply put, the Tea Party represents the 21st century rebirth of angry 19th century white male Confederates who wanted to secede from the United States and start their own dysfunctional country based on a plantation economy.

Maybe we should let them.

That was the slow pitch. Now for the fast curve:

And while we’re at it, let’s make it easier for Ted Cruz, Michelle Bachmann and the rest of their Tea Party friends to start their own plantation-economy style country, by starting a secessionist movement of our own in the “blue” states.

The idea of northern industrialized states seceding from America is nothing new.

Bada bing! If they won't secede, and they won't because they like our money too much, maybe we should.

It’s time for a new Hartford Convention.

So what would an America free of Southern lunacy and Tea Party radicalism look like?

Long list follows.

And, the Medicare eligibility age would be lowered to the moment birth, giving us a national single-payer healthcare system.

When this is accomplished, America will reflect a 21st century version of the ideals and visions of the Founders.

If it takes a secession of “blue” America to achieve all of this, then so be it.

It’s time to let small-minded bigots go back to their plantation-style economies and let them run their states like third-world countries.

Maybe instead of us seceding, we oughta just throw their ignorant racist asses out. It would be a grand experiment during which we would prosper from not sending more tax money to the moocher states than they pay in, and it would be over as soon as the people started to starve and begged to be let back in. Maybe, just maybe, they'd figure out the world doesn't work now the way it did 200 years ago and develop a little humility. I'd be happy if they'd just STFU. Ah, never happen.

Ever the optimist, I'm going to invest in chain link fence, barbed wire, and land mine companies. Might as well make a little money from the border fence that keeps sane people out of crazyland or the other way 'round. It'll be a long one.

Grrrr...

HuffPo

A senior official from former President George W. Bush's administration is quoted in “Days of Fire: Bush and Cheney in the White House” saying American troops went into Iraq because the U.S. was looking for a fight.

"The only reason we went into Iraq, I tell people now, is we were looking for somebody’s ass to kick. Afghanistan was too easy," the anonymous official said, according to Politico.

Afghanistan didn't have any oil, either.

Nice going, Dumya and The Dick. The ass "you" ended up kicking was OURS. Bastards.

Headline of the Day

From Red To Blue — Why the House Will Absolutely Change Hands Next Year

I don't really much care why as long as it does.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Violin Played by Titanic's Bandleader as Ship Went Down Auctioned Off
Winning bid made by Ted Cruz.

Fitting - the fiddle is known as "the devil's instrument":

Some conservative Christian denominations condemned dancing -- along with card playing and drinking -- as sinful and Satan-inspired. But listening to a good dance fiddler, even conservative Christians were apt to find themselves irresistibly lured into tapping their feet or moving to the music. The hypnotic and seductive lure of good fiddle music makes it a tool of the Devil.

Post Shutdown, Democrats Choose New Slogan for 2014 Elections
“Not Crazy.”

Michelle Bachman: We're in God's End Times
Offers herself as evidence.

Physics Nobel Prize-Winner Peter Higgs Doesn't Own Computer or Cell Phone
Was informed of his win by owl.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Marty Stuart on mandolin

Thanks to 1000Magicians, UK.

Wrecking Ball

Put down your drink! Ya might wanta hold off on lunch for a little while too...

If this goes viral, there won't be enough bleach in the WORLD!

On the flip side, I'm beginning to like Miley Cyrus.

Thanks to American Family Voices.

"48 Solyndras"

Thanks to oldfartrants.

Transcript:

The so called party of fiscal responsibility just wasted the equivalent of 48 Solyndras in taxpayer dollars in just 2 weeks! According to ratings agency Standard & Poor's, the shutdown cost $2 billion in real money, and over $24 billion in lost economic activity - which makes the $60 million Republicans wasted trying to repeal Obamacare over 40 times knowing it was impossible look like peanuts! To the GOP and fleabagger Bible thumpers, wasting billions of dollars on political stunts that have no chance of working over ideology and pride is more obviously more important than stopping starvation in America. And based on putting on a show about their hatred for Obamacare and Obama, they had no problem throwing millions of people under the bus, closing down services which millions of people depend on, and making the United States the laughing stock of the world, again, and a bad credit risk - again! This whole thing was over nothing! They could have done the deal they ended up doing 2 weeks ago - all John Boehner had to do was call a vote - but the Tea Party had him by the balls. So every dollar lost and bit of blame for this fiasco is on the heads of John Boehner, and the Republicans and teabaggers in his house. Approval for the GOP is at the lowest level in history! Every single poll proves it. When they say they're listening to the American people they're lying through their teeth, and always have been -- and anybody who believes it is an idiot! Stupidity is a bigger threat to America than terrorism is. Stupid people elect stupid leaders. What we just saw was an attempted coup by a handful of fascist billionaires who not only tricked a bunch of gullible idiots into voting against their own best interest, they actually infiltrated the US Government with anarchists, and they actually took down the government -- for awhile! This should scare the living shit out of everybody. Thomas Jefferson said "people get the government they deserve." I beg to differ - we deserve a lot better than this. And this is not what the majority of people in America voted for. We have elections for a reason. Well let me tell you something righties - we're coming for you, you treasonous fucks, we're coming in 2014, and again in 2016. But just keep doing what you're doing - it's working just fine... for us ;)

Lunch is served!

Bwahahahaha! Enjoy, bitchez!

A tip o' the Brain to the Brain's Facebook page. It's confusing...

The Sabotage Of American Democracy

Andrew Sullivan

What the Tea Party represents, in stark contrast to conservatism, is a radical attack on the very framework of our governing system. It is not right or left within our democratic system. It is a form of secession from it and a de facto abandonment of the notion of one country under one rule of law. It is about sabotage rather than opposition. It is bad enough when one party will seek to sabotage the law of the land – by attempting to rally the public to spurn the new healthcare law, in the hopes of causing it to collapse. But when the dominant faction of one party is bent on sabotaging our democracy, it must not simply be tolerated or appeased the way John Boehner shamefully did. It must be defeated. Anything less is a form of appeasement of forces and ideas that are truly antithetical to the democratic way of life and to constitutional governance.

Yes, in my view, the situation is that grim. If the Republican right’s fanaticism still blinds them to the error of their ways after they nearly destroyed the global economy (and brutally damaged the American one), it becomes clear that only a total collapse of the American government and economy could truly teach them the futility of their deluded aspirations. The rest of us cannot and must not tolerate that. We must draw a line. That line, for those who still believe in the regular order of our democracy, is November 2014.

Priority 1 in '14.

You are all completely insufferable

No, not you...

There's a lot going on today. Needs some time to settle out. Shorter: we're winning.

I almost forgot that if it's Morford it must be Wednesday. Here young Mark goes on about the Dark Side of the interwebs.

Ah, the Internet. It’s an equal opportunity debaser.

Hate and meanness, you could say, have reached epidemic levels, seem to have poisoned the national dialogue in ways we’ve never seen before. Witness Congress, the modern GOP and its own pet hate group, the Tea Party, contaminating the US government with an open loathing for the black president so virulent and barefaced, they’re willing to shut down the government, default our national debt, and destroy lives of their own constituents to prove it. Now that’s commitment.

It wasn’t always like this. Sure, we’ve always detested various groups for no valid reason; our prejudices and intolerance for race, gender and nationality are legendary. But America used to be all about broad areas of hate, wide swaths of intolerance: your tribe, your silly god, your heritage, your idiotic national sport. The French! Blacks! Chinese and Jews and the Irish! Gays, New Yorkers, Russians! Feminists who hate love and God and men! My team of violent helmeted thugs is better than your team of violent helmeted thugs, and I’ll shoot you dead and riot in the streets to prove it! See? Easy.
...

And then there’s anonymous commenting. That one gets my vote – and I’m far from alone – for Worst Invention of the Millennia; few things have done more to destroy healthy, intellectual dialogue than allowing anyone to say whatever they want about any topic, news story or piece of journalism without recourse, without any real knowledge of the subject, without putting their real name, face, or email address to their sneer. The consensus is universal: Anonymous commenting encourages the very worst, lowest aspects of the human animal.

Yes, please sign a name or be anonymously ignored.

But I have to say, there is a key distinction to be made between pointed satire/cultural criticism, and straight-up meanness for its own sake, just to get attention, just to hear itself scream and draw more bloody hate into the fray. Not surprisingly, this distinction is completely lost on those who think things like higher education, science and books are for elitist jerks.

Harrumph. At least us elitist jerks are smarter than them ignoramus jerks.

I'm going dark 'til tomorrow unless something breaks that's wonderful enough I need to tell you about. See yas.

Just for fun

Constitutional scholar Sarah Palin explains complicated Constitutional law words to you

Neverending punchline and holder of the Bump-it Industries Constitutional Law Chair at Mat-Su GED’s-r-Us University takes time out from palling around with Canadian terrorists to explain to America that that there Obammer fella is cruisin’ for an impeachable bruisin’ if he doesn’t pay America’s bills the way the Founding Fathers and Jesus would want him to:

(Note: this is also a drinking game. Every time Palin writes the word “debt”: drink a Bartles & Jaymes. But if you wake up tomorrow and find yourself to be a knocked-up-teenager, it’s your own damn fault. Whore.)

I’m sorry. Where were we? Oh yes, Prof. Dr. Palin, please proceed:

Go.

The worm turns...

The funniest thing to me about the teatard rally at the White House is, for the first time in my memory, it was old white right-wingers calling the cops who were there - without pay - to preserve order tools of the establishment instead of young lefties. Probably old law-and-order racist voters too. Also probably the first time they weren't cheering the cops on to whup up on the demonstrators as well.

I see yer deuce-high and raise ya...

I like Eugene Robinson, but he's usually a little too mild for me. He's upped his game some in this piece.

A crazy thing is happening in shuttered, dysfunctional Washington: Democrats are pushing back.

This phenomenon is so novel and disorienting that many Republicans in Congress, especially the tea party bullies, seem unable to grasp what’s going on. They keep expecting President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to fold like a cheap suit because, well, such a thing has happened before. I guess it’s understandable that the GOP might have forgotten the difference between bluffing and actually holding a winning hand.

Dems are famous for caving and snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. Not this time, and it's about goddam time. Will they hold? We will see.

It is understandable that the activist Republican base might think victory through blackmail is the natural order of things. It’s not. It’s a distortion of American democracy that weakens the nation, and it has to end.

I'm looking at this less like a poker game and more like finally confronting the schoolyard bully. I hope the Dems don't think a bitch slap will do the trick. He needs to be left prone, bleeding and crying.

Update:

Bobby Reich makes my point:

Suddenly the Republicans are acting like the school-yard bully who terrorized the playground but finally got punched in the face. They’re in shock. They’re humiliated. They’re trying to come up with ways of saving face.

With bloodied nose, House Republicans are running home. They’ve abruptly turned negotiations over to their Senate colleagues.
...

The question is how thoroughly President Obama has learned that extortionist demands escalate if you give in to them.

We will see.

Headline of the Day

Read This One Document If You Want To Understand Why Republicans Followed Ted Cruz Off A Cliff

I may just wait until I can go stand on the edge and piss on the pile of 'em...

Oh, the irony...

I need some comic relief. Ironic Times.

GOP Confused, Divided About Why It Shut Down Government, What It Wants
As predicted in Revelations.

REMINDER
There's no such thing as a free credit score.

Actually, there is: AnnualCreditReport.com

More Drama in NYC Motorcycle Melee
Everyone involved was an undercover cop.

Now that's undercover work!

Weighing Campaign Finance Law, Scalia Says, “I Don't Think $3.5 Million is a Heck of a Lot of Money”
Barely enough to buy a Congressman.

Scalia Says He Believes in the Devil
Consults him regularly.

Easy. Ol' Scratch shares a phone number with the Koch bros on Fat Tony's speed dial.

Hanukkah, Thanksgiving Fall On Same Day for Last Time In Nearly 80,000 Years
Providing extremely rare eight days of indigestion.

Burrrrrp....

"Let's go wave the slave flag in front of a black guy's house! That'll show 'em!"

10/16 - Thanks to Crooks and Liars for the link!

The Confederate Flag Won't Help Conservatives Win the Shutdown

Someone actually thought it was a good idea to bring a Confederate flag to protests at the White House, ones attended by Sarah Palin and Ted Cruz. Shockingly the flag's presence is backfiring for conservatives who hoped today's protests would be the big momentum turn in their favor.
...

Never mind the horrible polling numbers that show Republicans taking a huge hit for the shutdown. At their big turnaround effort to win public opinion, the Confederate flag reared its ugly head and undid any progress or good will they hoped to earn on Sunday. Many were quick to explain just how terribly, impossibly bad this looks for Republicans:

A tweet:

Good for the media. They've finally found the grand mastermind of all conservative politics: some random jackass with a Confederate flag.

Typically representative, I would say.

The secesh, aka "the losers", slave flag is reviled by MOST of this country. If brains were dynamite, the teatards couldn't blow their nose.

The asshole in the center is disgracing MY Marine Corps flag. It needs to be properly disposed of by burning. With him wrapped in it if it was up to me. The goddam slave flag needs to be properly pissed on. Who the fuck do these clowns think they are, anyway? Good Americans? My ass.

If ya can't fix 'em, fuck 'em

This is unconscionable and needs to stop toot de fuckin' sweet. Dopin' 'em up rather than spending money and time on 'em is no way to treat Veterans or anybody.

VA doctors tell House lawmakers of pressure to prescribe veterans opiates

Department of Veterans Affairs physicians told a House subcommittee today that hospital administrators regularly pressured them to prescribe highly addictive narcotic painkillers to patients, even those they had not personally examined.

The hearing marked the first time VA officials have spoken publicly about the skyrocketing number of painkiller prescriptions since The Center for Investigative Reporting revealed the trend last month.

“There are multiple instances when I have been coerced or even ordered to write for Schedule II narcotics when it was against my medical judgment,” said Dr. Pamela Gray, a physician who formerly worked at the VA hospital in Hampton, Va.

Primary care doctors who don’t want to prescribe large amounts of opiates may resign, do as they are told or be terminated, Gray said. Gray was fired.
...

CIR found that VA scientists have known for two years that the fatal overdose rate among the agency’s patients is nearly double the national average. Since then, CIR’s analysis showed, the rate of opiate prescriptions has continued to rise.
...

Veterans told lawmakers that alternative treatments to opiates existed only on paper and that they find it very difficult to get medical care that goes beyond powerful medication.

Please read the rest. This is disgusting.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Emmylou Harris is joined by Gillian Welch and Dave Rawlings for a live version of "Your Long Journey" from an event in 2012.

Thanks to AlsoTakenAlso, UK.

A Message To House Republicans From Guy Fawkes

Goblinbooks

I know what you're going through, people. I've been there. I don't want to brag, but government shutdowns are kind of my thing.

You get a great idea to reform the whole system. Radical? Sure, maybe. "But damnit," you think, "It's got to be done."

And then the whole thing collapses. Someone exposes your role in the plot, and suddenly everyone thinks you're the Bad Guys. Yeesh.
...

You might not get elected to the big offices (and I'm leaning heavily on the word "might," here)... but people will respect you for being true to yourselves.

This isn't Obama's shutdown. It's not a Democratic shutdown. It's your shutdown, and by God, you'd do so much more if you could only get away with it. Because you really believe you're right and everyone else is a socialist who hates this country, don't you? Yes, you do. Let the world know it.

You need to let that freak flag fly, kids. You're going to shock and disgust plenty of people, sure. But in a few hundred years, you will inspire generations of fringe activists and kids who want to piss off their parents. Ted Cruz's pasty mug on thousands of masks in the streets. Can't you see it? It will be magical.

Heh. Dark magic.

Be careful what you wish for...

The Kochs Can't Control the Monster They Created

The billionaire conservatives join the ranks of business interests trying to rein in the populist right, but they're no longer in a position to dictate to the movement.

When it finally penetrates the teabaggers' thick skulls how bad the Kochs et al punk'd 'em, the billionaires who started all this shit will be begging for Obama to send 'em to Gitmo where they'll be safe. Heh.

Gotta get a bumpersticker like this...

Help Wendy Davis fuck some shit up

El Rude-o is soliciting donations for Wendy Davis for Governor of Texass. He doesn't usually do this.

Davis is gonna need all the help she can get. Texas is one of the nation's breeding grounds for dumbfucks who want to turn the clock back to 1950something. But it'd be worth it to start to wreck the Republican machine that has dominated Texas for a generation. It'd be worth it to make Rick Perry and Ted Cruz cry. And it'd be worth it because you know that Ann Richards and Molly Ivins would be behind her with all the intensity and cutting wit they could muster.

Let's help her fuck some shit up.

Fuckin' A. We'll kick down.

Shortcut

Note to Repugs: Why bother with voter suppression? Just do it this way:

Azerbaijan released election results before voting had even started

Supply-Side Jesus and the Death of Shame

William Rivers Pitt. This is a good one!

The single greatest political strength of the modern Republican Party is their utter and complete lack of shame. They will say anything - literally anything, no matter how delusional or self-contradictory - if it gets them what they want, or at least deranges the political debate in America enough to keep the other side from getting what it wants.

I have written or spoken those words more than a thousand times in the last twenty years. It is a bedrock principle for me, one of the core underpinnings of my political world view. It has been true ever since the rise of Ronald Reagan and the injection of Supply-Side-Jesus evangelical Christianity (Video by Al Franken - G) into electoral politics and fundamental American economics. Every time I say it, and every time I write it, it is truer than it was the last time.

Case in point: on Tuesday afternoon, following President Obama's press conference regarding the shutdown, House Speaker John Boehner called a presser of his own to push the GOP's galactically shameless dialogue pivot about how the shutdown never had anything to do with defunding the Affordable Care Act, but has actually been about the debt and the deficit and the future of our children and stuff.

No, really, he said that... [...]

I just love this next ¶:

And while all this fuss and feathers was taking place, this: Senator Ted Cruz, who with each passing day appears more and more to be the likely product of a test-tube combination between a dented egg from Phyllis Schlafly and the weakest sperm Joe McCarthy ever produced, hates the very idea of socialized medicine. He did that little faux-filibuster to tell you about it. He has aired ten billion commercials about it. He has raised all kinds of money railing against it. He geeked up the House Tea Party caucus to fly face-first into a windshield because of it.

Yet the veterans are still getting screwed, the dead soldiers are getting doubly screwed, and all by the same pack of brazen liars who trumpet their love of the military after pouring body after body after body into the meat grinders of Iraq and Afghanistan. The amoeba in the mud puddle knows those were Republican wars, the soldiers and veterans know it for damn sure, and the American people know it, too...and now that this glad-handing pack of conservative hucksters with flags on their lapels and "Support The Troops" on their lips have gutted the basic services provided to those troops and veterans, a lot of scales are falling from a lot of eyes.

Veterans benefits offices are closing. Veteran's benefits are on the verge of ending, and until the Fisher House Foundation stepped in, the families of soldiers killed in the line of duty were well and truly screwed...but the posh, exclusive gyms for members of Congress that are funded with taxpayer dollars remain open, thanks to a word from Speaker Boehner, because they are "essential."
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President Obama and the Democrats in Congress, to their great credit, have held the line. No "Grand Bargain," no deals of any kind. Pass a clean CR, raise the debt ceiling, period, end of file. Nothing, but nothing, is more important than standing firm on this, because hostage politics must end.

In the meantime, let their lack of shame do its brutal, corrosive work on the hull of the death ship that is the Republican Party. They are taking on water and listing badly. Let them sink, and let us finally bury Supply-Side Jesus and all his adherents under fathomless fathoms of cold, dark water.

Amen.

Headline of the Day

GOPers willing to lose House in losing bid to kill Obamacare

We're more than willing to help.

How to get lucky

If it's Wednesday it must be Morford on why some people are lucky and some people aren't.

See? Obvious. But there’s a catch: Despite its simplicity, it’s not at all easy to change modes and switch that luck energy on. After all, misery is addictive. Millions of people are deeply attached to their suffering, their haphazard convictions, their inability to see how their own nervous monofocus and attachment to particular goals or obsessive desires might be blocking out all manner of opportunity right here and now, in the white-hot immediate moment.
...

Can we extend this a little? Can we say, with reasonable seriousness, that this is perhaps a fundamental difference between the progressive and conservative mindsets? Open-minded, flexible and awake versus regressive, uptight and fearful? It’s not a perfect formula, but my guess is it’s not far from a universal truth.

This much we know: When conservatives and fundamentalists of any sort don’t get the world they demand and expect, what happens? They rage. They lash out. Regress. They wallow in paranoia and resentment, or dig their heels into the bogus idea that the “old ways” were better, when they almost never were.

They also reject current reality. Maybe they buy guns, listen to hate radio, join reactionary movements, see liberal conspiracy everywhere, become libertarians or NRA members or (worse) Tea Party zealots who can’t tolerate, much less understand, the realities of nature, God, science, love, sex, the world. “It’s just not fair,” they say, like a toxic mantra, until they die.

It will be great good luck for the rest of us when they do.

HotD II

How The Shutdown Taught The GOP To Love Big Government

Bwahahahaha! The GOP has always loved them some big government as long as it's THEIRS! Sorry, Crazytrain, we ain't havin' it.

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.
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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.
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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...