Alternate Brain

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Absolutely Nothing

Jim Wright unloads big time on the perps who started the Iraq clusterfuck who are popping out from under their rocks now that their chickens are coming home to roost, and elaborates on the question "What were we fighting for?" which is answered in the title of his piece. Definitely a 'must read' from a pissed-off Veteran.

They had no idea what we were fighting for, those saber-rattling Chicken Hawks, the cowardly connected wealthy weasels who’d managed to avoid serving in their own war, who kept their children out of uniform, but just couldn’t wait to send us into one of their own making. They sent us off with parades and marching bands and cheering crowds … and brought the bodies home in secret, hidden away from the TV cameras and the public.
...

McCain stirred from the yellow fog of his bamboo cage and proclaimed in his best Old Man Yelling At Clouds voice, “We won Iraq! Obama lost it!”

Really Johnny Walnuts? Tell me, what did we win? And what have we lost? Please be specific, because I’d really like to know.

We no more “won” Iraq than McCain’s own father “won” Vietnam.
...

You sons of bitches one and all, you simpering capering madmen, this time at least have the courage to face the cameras, to look into America’s eyes, and tell them that their sons and daughters will be dying because you John McCain, because you Mitt Romney, because you Dick Cheney, because you Donald Rumsfeld, because you George W. Bush you lying bastard, because you conservatives hate Barack Obama…and for no other reason.
...

I’ll tell you what, let’s go back to Iraq.

Oh, yes, let us do that.

I’ll dig out my uniform and strap on my pistol and gird up my sword and ride into battle yet again.

Just so long as Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Rush Limbaugh, Anne Coulter, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, Paul Ryan, Sarah Palin, Rick Perry, and every single one of those powdered, Botoxed talking heads at Fox News are in the vanguard. That’s right, you cowards, you put on a uniform and you lead the charge this time around. The Koch brothers and Mitt Romney can pay for it, every goddamned penny, we’ll bleed them until they’re dry and then we’ll pull the gold fillings from their teeth to pay for it right along with the rest of their Wall Street cronies. You fuckers got rich off the last one, you can damned well pay for this one. And when you run out of money, we’ll take your blood, fair’s fair.

Strap John McCain into the cockpit of an A-4 Skyhawk and let him fly air cover.

If he gets himself shot down and taken prisoner again, well, you know what? Fuck him, leave him to the enemy because frankly his hate and bile and raging insanity have done more damage to this country than Bowe Bergdahl ever did.

The terrorists can keep him.

There is nothing I could possibly add to that.

Monday, June 16, 2014

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

AMERICANS TOLD TO EVACUATE EMBASSY IN BAGHDAD
It should go something like this (above).

House Majority Leader Cantor Loses Primary to Tea Party Candidate
Voters found his anti-immigration, anti-Obamacare, anti-tax, anti-regulation record too progressive.

World Cup Begins
Americans glued to their TVs, tablets, smartphones, watching anything but.

Heh.

Saturday, June 14, 2014

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Alex Jones is a false flag

Raw Story. A 'must read' that esplains a lot about the tinfoil hat loonies in the wake of the 10-minute-revolution/murder spree in Las Vegas.

You might think that Jerad and Amanda Miller were a couple of murderous right wingers who killed a couple of cops and a bystander before killing themselves in a Las Vegas Walmart.

You sheeple need to wake up.

Alex Jones nailed it yesterday when he told off the White House-controlled media that this was, in fact, another “false flag” operation, and, as any second-grader could tell you, the target of this mind-control operation was none other than Alex Jones himself.
...

It couldn’t be simpler. Back in 2012, Jerad Miller married Amanda Woodruff in Lafayette, Indiana because the chemtrails over that fair town had triggered the preprogramming in their brains which MK-Ultra operatives had implanted years earlier.
...

Everything was in place. The Clark County Sheriff’s Office claims that on Sunday, the couple went into a Cici’s pizza restaurant and committed an unspeakable act, offing two cops at point-blank range. (Note the symbolism that would not be missed by the globalists funding the government’s sham operation — “CiCi’s”= “CC,” clearly evoking Chelsea Clinton, which would be reported in the media and would in turn trigger other cells to begin their operations elsewhere.)

Not only was this operation clearly an elaborate setup to smear Jones, with the liberal media dutifully attacking Jones seemingly within minutes of the attacks, but it was almost comically easy to spot as a “false flag.”

In fact, we expect patriots will soon conclude that this event never actually happened at all, and Jerad and Amanda Miller are having a good laugh, along with the two cops they supposedly killed but who of course never existed. The sheriff’s office says the killings were caught on videotape, and we can only laugh that they expect us to take their CGI wizardry seriously (not that we’ll ever get to see the tape. Which of course never existed in the first place).

These false flag attacks by the government are getting so numerous and so easy to spot, you have to wonder why the globalists keep trying the same thing, over and over, all in an attempt to besmirch Alex Jones and take your guns away. Seriously, it didn’t work the first 100 times, and the MK Ultra Masonic International Bankers should just stop trying.

But let us tell you just how far the globalists will go to destroy freedom-loving Americans.

Go.

Monday, June 9, 2014

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

DEMONSTRATORS MOCK G7 LEADERS MEETING IN BRUSSELS
Not shown: demonstrators.

Seattle Raises Minimum Wage to $15 an Hour
To keep pace with rising pot prices.

CIA Opens Twitter Account
Already has 6.3 billion followers.

Texas Republicans Support “Restorative Therapy” for Gays
Reject “restorative therapy” for bigots.

Secret Service Developing Software That Detects Sarcasm in Social Media
“I'm sure they'll build a perfect system,” tweets one Silicon Valley wag.

Saturday, June 7, 2014

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Published on May 24, 2014
Emmylou Harris plays Pancho and Lefty at Brighton Dome on 23 May 2014

Thanks to justix55.

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

How to live wretched and small

Mark Morford on the wretched and small among us.

You can cling to musty dogma, to strict, outdated codes of conduct and belief, all dictated by very scared, very dead old men who lived many hundreds of years ago and in such a state of abject misunderstanding of the world, and God, and sex, and women, and love, and spirit, and life itself, they might as well have written a big, terrible book about it.
Oh wait, they did. Here is the Bible, a numbingly tedious tome written (and re-re-rewritten) by multiple paranoid power-mongers obsessed with genealogy, real estate, women, weird curses, genitalia, shellfish, the blood of sacrificial animals and how to appease a schizophrenic deity who loves you like sunshine one day and covers your body in painful, oozing boils the next.

Ruled by a made-up bi-polar skydaddy is pretty wretched...

Much more.

Monday, June 2, 2014

"Holes In The Boat"

Old Fart Rants about the "I'm not a scientist" school of climate change denying politicians.

So how about this - since they're not doctors, how about they stop telling women what they're allowed to do with their own bodies? Since they're not nutritionists, how about they stop sticking their noses into what food children should be served at school? Since they're not professors, how about they keep their noses out of what should be taught in schools. Since they're not financial planners, how about they stop trying to kill Social Security and Medicare? Since they're not soldiers, how about they keep their noses out of problems at the VA? I could go on, but you catch my drift.
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We need to throw every one of these knuckle dragging idiots, assholes, and oligarch boot lickers overboard in November, and never ever allow them back on the boat ever again - maybe then we can get somewhere before it's too late and the boat sinks.

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Far Right Tea Party-Like Groups Gaining Power Across Europe
Want return to simpler, more tranquil times of August, 1914.

What goes around, comes around...

Poll: Americans More Worried About Global Warming Than About Climate Change
More worried about Armageddon than Apocalypse.

FTC: Data Brokers Know More About Us Than Relatives Do
That's precisely the way we want it.

Study: 4% of Those on Death Row Likely Innocent
“Not too bad,” say prosecutors.

Grrrrr...

Saturday, May 31, 2014

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Making Believe

Thanks to 1000Magicians, UK.

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Neil deGrasse Tyson vs. the right: “Cosmos,” Christians, and the battle for American science

Salon

The real reason conservatives are freaking out about Neil deGrasse Tyson: He's laying bare their worst hypocrisies

He's doing a fine job of it and it's about fucking time.

The religious right has been freaking out about Neil deGrasse Tyson’s “Cosmos” for what feels like an eternity. And, while the theological complaints seem laughable for their rancor and predictability, it’s time we thought harder about what they represent, because the Christian right’s “Cosmos” agita actually indicates a far deeper problem in religious conservatism — the selective acceptance of Enlightenment values. Religious conservatives have selectively adopted the legacy of liberal Enlightenment, from free speech to science, and jettisoned it when it does not suit their narrow ideological aims.

Tiny brains, tiny aims.

The scientific consensus about global warming must be untrue, because, as Dr. Innes writes in “Left, Right and Christ,” the world is “not a glass ornament that we might accidentally destroy … we are not capable of destroying it, whether by nuclear weapons or carbon emissions.” [...]

He's right. We will not destroy the Earth. The sun will do that in about 5 billion years. We can, however, destroy life on earth as we know it.

There's a lot more to read in this piece and video too.

Sheldon Cooper on "The Big Bang Theory" described religion perfectly as "Pre-enlightenment mythology" and I won't even try to improve on that.

"This is a country now at war with itself"

Charlie Pierce on the proliferation of gun violence.

This is a country at war with itself because its ruling elite is too cowed, or too well-bribed, or too cowardly to recognize that there are people who are getting rich arming both sides, because the only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun, so you make sure that it's easy for the bad guys to get guns in order to make millions selling the guns to the good guys. This is a dynamic not unfamiliar to the people in countries where brushfire conflicts and civil wars are kept alive because distant people are making a buck off them. In Africa, war is made over diamonds and rare earths. In South America, war is made over cocaine. Here, for any number of reasons - because Adam Lanza went crazy or because Elliot Rodger couldn't get laid - and the only constant in all those wars is the fact somebody gets rich arming both sides.
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It is a guerrilla war, fought on darkened streets against children in hoodies brandishing Skittles, against children in cars who play their music too loudly, against evanescent fears and the ghosts born of ancient prejudice and cultivated dread. Its battles are sudden but, sadly, no longer surprising. The whole country is the battleground now because cynical people have made it so. Our movie theaters are our Wheatfields, our Peach Orchards, or our Bloody Lanes. A quiet college campus is the Hornet's Nest. An elementary school is Cemetery Ridge. Those are the killing zones. The enemy, we are told, is everywhere, and nowhere. This is the country that Wayne LaPierre, that malignant profiteer, talks about when he says, as he did at a conservative conference last spring:

Go read it if you want to. It makes me sick. And angry.

Wayne LaPierre gets paid when his masters sell guns to the bad guys. Wayne LaPierre gets paid when his masters sell guns to the good guys because of the guns he's already arranged to sell to the bad guys. Wayne LaPierre is the strange white man in the Congo who knows where he can get you some AK's. He's the shadowy fellow in the coffee shop in Kabul who knows where RPG's can be had, cheap. He's the well-dressed, silken-voiced operator, sipping his tea on a cool and breezy veranda outside of Bogota, who smiles at you and shows you on the map where you can pick up your order, because it is time once again for you to make war and him to make money. His look is the smooth and shiny black of the vulture's feathers. He feasts on the carrion of nations.

So that is Memorial Day this year, in a country in which its citizens are encouraged to make war on each other because not enough people care enough to stop it. There are more flowers in more places and there is no peace in sight, because we have chosen as a country to slake our appetite for it with blood. The dead are not honored in this war. Only the instrumentality of their murder is, god help us all.

Shorter: It's always about the Benjamins.

I like guns. I own guns. Shooting is a skill I learned in the Marine Corps. Shooting is fun. I pray to all the goddam gods that I never have to use one against another human being.

Monday, May 26, 2014

Memorial Day

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Same Republicans Outraged Over Treatment of Veterans Filibustered Against Better Health Care for Veterans in February
Including treatment for memory loss.

No memory loss - when the Veterans cease to be profit generators for the war profiteers and become overhead, it's time to cut back. It's just business. Grrrrrr...

Report: Climate Change Could Sink Statue of Liberty
Suggests moving it to Kansas.

Some irony is simply too horrid to contemplate.

AT&T to Buy DirecTV for $48 Billion
It's the perfect synergy of massive layoffs and world domination.

Austrian Bearded Drag Queen Wins Eurovision Song Contest
With her stirring rendition of “I'm My Own Grandpa.”

Now that's funny!

Saturday, May 24, 2014

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Something a little different.

Published on May 17, 2014
Emmylou Harris' induction into the Ⓒⓞⓤⓝⓣⓡⓨ Ⓜⓤⓢⓘⓒ Ⓗⓐⓛⓛ ⓞⓕ Ⓕⓐⓜⓔ. [2008] Includes performances by Patty Griffin, Buddy Miller, Lucinda Williams, Guy Clark, Sam Bush, Jon Randall, and Vince Gill.

I'm pretty sure 'Ⓒⓞⓤⓝⓣⓡⓨ Ⓜⓤⓢⓘⓒ Ⓗⓐⓛⓛ ⓞⓕ Ⓕⓐⓜⓔ' is 'Country Music Hall Of Fame'. :-)

Thanks to dahliacorona.

Friday, May 23, 2014

"Operation American Moron"

Heh.

Thanks to oldfartrants.

Monday, May 19, 2014

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

From the "Latest Headlines" crawl:

Everybody 'madder than hell' about decades-old VA mess

Republican Party Finds Itself Divided as it Heads Towards 2016
Establishment far right wingnuts face strong challenge from tea party-backed ultra-fringe super-wacko nutcakes.

All Republican Candidates Climate Change Deniers
Until after the primaries.

Hmmmmm...I thought this was supposed to be irony?!

Rush Limbaugh's Rush Revere and the Brave Pilgrims Wins Children's Choice Book Award
Tells true story of courageous patriot who, while high on Oxycontin and getting hassled by airport security about his penis pump, saves our Founding Fathers from Feminazis.

REMINDER
We're living in the golden age of gilded ages.

Saturday, May 17, 2014

Saturday Emmlou Blogging

This one was up some time ago and was taken down. I'm glad it's back up! A little wide, a little flat, but the tune's good.

Thanks to OldTyme TunesFour.

Friday, May 16, 2014

American Sacked* Spring

*To us mechanics, a spring that has lost its tension and is therefore useless is "sacked".

Operation American Spring warns of FEMA roundup, civil war, chemtrails

This is just getting too good! Note to the rest of the world that laughs at the U.S. becaue of these yingyangs and a good many of our politicians: A lot of us are laughing right along with you. If we didn't laugh at these idiots, they're so embarrassing we'd cry.

"A caller from North Carolina said he feared Obama would declare martial law and begin executing Christian citizens as a prelude to civil war."
...

“I’m so fed up with the tyranny I sold my jet ski,” the caller said. “I’m so fed up with the way the government is manipulating the water with the chemtrails, I’m afraid I can’t even use my jet ski.”

That guy obviously has no idea what the unburned oil in the exhaust from his 2-stroke jet ski does to the water. Yeesh.

“I didn’t see the Civil War,” she said. “But I’m from the South, and we’re still fighting it.”

You're still losing it too. Heh.

Much more, and if you look around the intertubes a bit you will find many more hilarious pieces on this #MajorFail.

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Excerpt of the Day

From "Will Justice Scalia Ever Get Tired of Tasting His Own Ass?" at Political Garbage Chute.

By the time Scalia leaves this mortal coil, his entire career on the high court will be riddled with embarrassing decisions. These decisions will declare to all of history to come after us that he was a bitter, old bigot who used his enormous authority to hurt the average American time and again. Whether by gleefully and unapologetically giving corporations and Wall Street a wide open door through which they can enter and buy off our government wholesale, or by just as gleefully and unapologetically standing up for the rights of the bigots to write laws that hurt minorities, Scalia has been right there to make sure the elite get to keep their oligarchy, and his legacy will be forever tarnished for it.

Along with democracy.

Shit's Getting Real Out West

Charlie Pierce. with video.

It's really time for the Republican party, at the local, state, and party levels, to man up here, or else to say clearly that individual acts of seditious lawlessness are part of the party's basic philosophy of government. Maybe each Republican state committee can have an annual Calhoun-Davis Day Dinner.
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Lyman said the much-publicized ride on the northern section of the 11-mile trail is less about the canyon specifically and more about public access to trails in general. "This is not about Recapture. It is not about ATVs. It is not politics, it is not economics," he said. "It is part of who I am. It is part of Blanding, and it is our culture, too. We don't not want to see groups come in and say these trails did not exist ... it was a thoroughfare since the mid-1800s."

Which is about when a big-government program called the U.S. Cavalry came along and cleared out all the natives so that, one day, Phil Lyman could help people dodge taxes and act like a jackass on weekends.

(And, of course, the local Native Americans objected, too, but they haven't been relevant since "the mid-1800s.")

This is an elected official, not some racist wrinkle-bag like Cliven Bundy. If you vote for Phil Lyman, you are voting for sedition. If you are Fox News, and you celebrate him, you are celebrating sedition. It is long past time for the Republican party to fish or cut bait on this end of movement conservatism. Either support the seditious philosophy of local control, or oppose it. But they shouldn't be allowed any more to use its energy during election years and then walk away after the votes are cast.
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There far too much loose talk in respectable Republican circles about nullification, secession, and the crackpot theories of county government that used to be the exclusive ideological province of the Posse Comitatus movement. (There is also too much loose talk about impeachment, too, but that's a whole 'nother kettle of scrod.) Increasingly, there is no apparent fringe to conservative rhetoric, let alone any real limits. Somebody within that party has to step up and rein this lunacy in, or else embrace it publicly as the party's basic philosophy, or else euphemisms may not be the only things that die in those deserts.

I would be thrilled fucking shitless if it's the Repuglican't Party that dies in those deserts. Make their bleached bones a national monument to the death of right-wing stupidity.

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Boxer On Benghazi

My Senator. Thank you, Babs.

You don't need a degree in political science to know that the House Republicans' latest "investigation" of Benghazi is a political witch hunt.

It was clear before the Republican chairman of the new Select Committee on Benghazi suggested he wants to put the administration on "trial."

It was clear before the House GOP rejected House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi's offer to have a fair panel with equal representation from Republicans and Democrats.

It was clear well before the National Republican Congressional Committee and top Republicans began fundraising off this tragedy.
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Republicans have only one goal: to turn this tragedy into a scandal. Their relentless campaign to use the events in Benghazi to score cheap political points ahead of the midterm elections is appalling.

This is Plan B since Obamacare is succeeding. Those idiots don't think, if such is the word, very far ahead.

Here's another thing the GOP won't be investigating -- the tragedy and scandal of more than 4,000 Americans killed in the Iraq War based on phony intelligence.

Between 1998 and 2013, there were at least 501 significant attacks against U.S. diplomatic facilities and personnel in 70 countries, which resulted in the deaths of 586 people, including 67 Americans. During the Bush administration, there were 166 attacks, which killed 116 people, including 18 Americans.

Those attacks were all terrible tragedies. The difference is that we never had a political party spend years exploiting them for political gain.

The New York Times had it right last week when they wrote:

"They won't pass a serious jobs bill, or raise the minimum wage, or reform immigration, but House Republicans think they can earn their pay for the rest of the year by exposing nonexistent malfeasance on the part of the Obama administration."

The Republicans' kangaroo court on Benghazi isn't just a waste of taxpayer dollars -- it's a national disgrace.

My 2¢: The only thing that will make these Repugs happy in their already-dead failed attempt to keep Hillary from being President is if a video surfaces of her with an AK-47 in either hand and a Quran in the other, wearing a hijab and ululating wildly, personally leading the attack on the Benghazi CIA facility.

Monday, May 12, 2014

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

From the Latest Headlines crawl:

Supreme Court approves conversion of Jews to Christianity

China Considers Building Underwater Bullet Train to U.S.
Using American laborers in search of a better life.

Greece Ranked Most Corrupt Nation in EU
Roughly on a par with New Jersey.

99.5% of Wonder Bread's Political Contributions Went to Republicans
Who eat nothing but.

Helps make them bland and tasteless and makes them think they are eating real food. that esplains a lot.

Las Vegas One of Several Finalists for 2016 GOP Convention
Others being looked at: Macao, Dubai, Shanghai.

They forgot to add: Adelson to make final decision.

Saturday, May 10, 2014

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

No info but looks like "Later...with Jools Holland". Buddy Miller accompanying.

Thanks to StashPuppets.

Monday, May 5, 2014

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

REPUBLICANS REOPEN BENGHAZI INVESTIGATION
Also want to take another look at Bobby Baker scandal, and why FDR sent a Navy destroyer to pick up his dog Fala in the Aleutian Islands at taxpayers' expense.

Papers From 1982 Reveal British Diplomats First Thought Reagan a “Bumbler” and a “Bozo”
Later, of course, they'd come to see him as a “bumpkin” and a “boob.”

Chance of City-Killing Asteroid Striking Earth Higher Than Previously Believed
Public urged to move to rural, uninhabited areas.

Charles Koch, in Wall Street Journal, Calls His Critics “Collectivists”
Term last used (but favorably) by Leon Trotsky.

Saturday, May 3, 2014

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Published on Apr 29, 2014
A Townes Van Zandt Song. Emmylou gave him his first big hit .1982

Thanks to orvsha.

Friday, May 2, 2014

Cliven Bundy: Clown Car or Trojan Horse?

William Rivers Pitt is soooo good!

Fox News, and especially Sean Hannity, immediately began hyping the story all day and night, elevating Bundy to the status of instant Founding Father. How could they resist? Here was a guy who denies the existence of the US government while riding his horse on federal lands with an American flag strapped to his saddle. Cognitive dissonance is the meat and mead of Fox News, and the dissonance in that one image was weighty enough to bend the very light (my em).

It took about two weeks for everything to go sideways.

First, Mr. Bundy delivered his now-infamous rant about Black people being happier picking cotton as slaves, a statement he doubled down on later by comparing himself to Rosa Parks before saying that if Black people didn't like his opinions, it's because "Martin Luther King hasn't gotten his job done yet."

Skreeeeeeech went the needle off the record. Every right-wing media personality and politician who had rushed to publicly embrace Cliven Bundy immediately fled his presence as if he was covered in Goliath tarantulas. I think there still may be a Hannity-shaped hole in the studio wall at Fox News.

His ardent gun-toting supporters at the ranch stood their ground...until a few days ago, when there was a sudden falling-out between Bundy's own ranch security - commanded by a man actually named Booda Bear - and a contingent of Oath Keepers who had come to the ranch because Jesus, or something. Their leader, one Stewart Rhodes, informed Booda Bear (God, I could type his name all day) that he had "intel" from a "source of intelligence of high value" that Eric Holder and the Justice Department were going to deploy a "hot drone strike" against the Bundy Ranch within the next 24 hours. Because of this, the fearless leader was forced to re-deploy his stalwart troops off the ranch and into hotels with room service back in town.

This did not sit well with Booda Bear, who told Radio Free Redoubt's John Jacob Schmidt, "This is a battle front in some sense of the word and to remove them is kind of, ah, that's some yellow curd, ya know, spineless backbone piece of shit maneuvering right there. He had pretty much said, 'Well, I need to pull my guys back so they can allocate resources to the exterior of the area,' meaning go into the next town and get hotel rooms, get showers, gamble, eat steak dinners, while we're out here on the battle front...and just so everybody knows, as Booda, head of security for the Bundy family, I can swear on the white skin that covers my ass there will not be an Oath Keeper - there WILL NOT BE AN OATH KEEPER allowed to set foot on the internal ranch property."

And so not with a bang, but with a Derp, solidarity at the Bundy ranch "battle front" fell to dust that swirled and eddied around the white skin of Booda Bear's ass.
...

...and note you well: here in America, you can point a high-powered rifle at federal officers and get off scot-free with your gun still in your hand. Sit down at a peaceful Occupy protest on the campus of UC Davis in California, however, and you get a gushing face full of Mace for your trouble...while the cop who sprayed you gets $38,000 in compensation for "anxiety and depression."

Far more insidious is the fact that, until he pulled his little "What, Me Racist?" number for all the world to see, Mr. Bundy's most dedicated supporters were a couple of billionaire brothers named Charles and David Koch. The Koch Brothers, if truth be told, could not give less of a damn about Cliven Bundy and his band of merry men, but until Bundy blew out like an old, racist tire, they were intensely interested in using him as the avatar for a fight they've been waging for twenty years: placing control of publicly-owned federal lands back into the hands of the states, so the states can lease or sell those lands to companies like Koch Industries for cattle grazing, mining, drilling, fracking, and lumbering.

Right now, those lands are protected from such activities, but the Koch Brothers were hoping to ride Cliven Bundy's cause to a massive land grab. The fact that Cliven Bundy upended the intentions of the Koch Brothers by being a racist idiot on television does not change their intentions one whit. They want to drill, to mine, to frack, and to profit off those lands that belong to us, for now.

So, as matters currently stand, Cliven Bundy can certainly be quantified as a human clown car. Do not, however, lose sight of the real story here: Mr. Bundy was also a Trojan Horse filled with Koch Industries drilling equipment until he blew it. Bundy may be gone from the news soon, but the Koch Brothers still want that land, because the world is not enough for guys like that, which is why, to no small degree, the rest of us can't have nice things like clean air and water that doesn't catch on fire coming out of the tap.

The moral of the story is that, to the Kochs and their ilk, it's always about the Benjamins and these wannabe militia goons are useful idiots to their ends.

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

The NRA has declared war on America

Ana Marie Cox at The Guardian. links at site.

Wayne LaPierre and Co are not out merely to defend the Second Amendment or Newtown or gun laws anymore. They want you to pay the price for freedom and they want their money now

...NRA executive vice president Wayne LaPierre exhorted the crowd to a morally obligated vigilantism. He drew a vivid picture of a United States in utter decay and fragmented beyond repair, Mad Max-meets-Hunger Games, divided by Soylent Green:

We know, in the world that surrounds us, there are terrorists and home invaders and drug cartels and car-jackers and knock-out gamers and rapers, haters, campus killers, airport killers, shopping-mall killers, road-rage killers, and killers who scheme to destroy our country with massive storms of violence against our power grids, or vicious waves of chemicals or disease that could collapse the society that sustains us all.

LaPierre's bleak vision is exaggerated dystopianism in service of sedition, a wide-ranging survey of targets that put justice against the intrusions of the IRS on a continuum with (as an advertisement he ran during his speech put it) workplace "bullies and liars".
...

You cannot have it both ways. You cannot be both winning and losing, alone but united, the minority but the majority. It is almost (almost!) as if Wayne LaPierre intended to mislead his audience with this whiplash oratory, intended to dizzy them into acceptance of his underlying message, which is almost disappointingly mundane: give us money. Give the NRA money. Give us money so we can create the legal environment that allows gun manufacturers to make more money so that they can give us more money.

Conspicuously absent from LaPierre’s list of grievances was any serious consideration of the economic system that might have a role destabilizing the society for which he pantomimes such concern. [...]
...

The problem with the NRA lies with the people who lead it.

No shit. I joined the NRA when I was in the service, in the days when you had to be sponsored ny an NRA member to join. My company commander sponsored me. I like firearms and the shooting sports and I enjoyed their magazine and that was about it.

I dropped my membership like a hot rock when the NRA went right-wing in the late '70s. It wasn't all that political before that.

It's WAY worse than that now. Now it's part of the "domestic enemies" that I swore to defend the Constitution from in my Oath of Enlistment which I never un-took.

BTW, there was a shooting near a town in Georgia today where folks are required by law to keep a gun. Where were all the "good guys with guns" anyway? Another right-wing lie perhaps? Or are they just afraid to actually go in harm's way and maybe get their AR-15 giant penises blown off?

Headline of the Day

This just in. Choices have consequences and words are choices. This is just a bitch slap to a billionaire but I'm down wid it.

NBA Bans Donald Sterling For Life

Fixer has chimed in on this and says he's impressed with NBA commissioner Adam Silver. So am I. Neither of us are basketball fans but we're interested in speaking truth to power.

Monday, April 28, 2014

Oh. the irony

Ironic Times

VATICAN: TWO POPES CANONIZED
In historic “Buy One, Get One Free” ceremony.

Bill Introduced in Congress Would Create National Park on the Moon
Already, the wait for a decent campsite is 6 months.

Claiming an Error, Feds Rescind Approval of Powdered Alcohol Product “Palcohol”
Seemed like a great idea, until they sobered up.

Those who'd rather mainline booze directly into their bloodstream are also in luck. Palcohol can be snorted!

What could possibly go wrong ... ?

Los Angeles Clippers Owner Caught Telling Girlfriend to Not Bring Blacks to Games
Clippers, with only J.J.Redick and Hedo Türkoglu available, lose to Golden State, 319-12.

Recent Book Proposes U.S., Canada Merge
We get oil, maple syrup, hockey players, they get Bible belt, high fructose corn syrup, baseball players.

War with Canada on the horizon...

Saturday, April 26, 2014

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Thanks to OldTyme TunesFour.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

WOO HOO!!!

This is so good I just swiped the whole thing!

Burning Man organizer plans anything-goes ‘Bundyfest’ to mock scofflaw rancher (via Raw Story )

Some of the organizers of the annual Burning Man festival are planning an event aimed at mocking the claims of a Nevada rancher who refuses to pay government-mandated fees for using federal lands. “For years, we paid permitting fees to hold Burning…

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

BERLUSCONI SENTENCED TO ONE YEAR COMMUNITY SERVICE WORKING WITH ELDERLY
Court rejects his request to work with troubled teens.

Heh. Will he get any bunga-bunga? Depends...

Fired Yahoo! Exec Receives $58 Million Severance Package After Just 15 Months on Job
“Yahoo!” he exclaims, and files for unemployment.

Only 1 in 6 Americans Can Find Ukraine on a Map
Only 1 in 600 Americans can find a map.

NCAA Approves Unlimited Food for Division I Athletes
If they sign an agreement before each meal not to unionize.

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Real, phony, mox nix. Fuck each other up toot de sweet. For the children...

The Difference Between Real And Phony GOP Civil Wars

Just a taste:

[...] But as we learned the last week, Paul is exposed as a heretic whenever his positioning takes him beyond standard GOP Obama-bashing into the past or future.

The 2009 video of Paul suggesting that the 2003 Iraq War was in no small part the product of Dick Cheney’s concerns for Halliburton profits didn’t just anger hard-core neoconservative defenders of the nobility of that war. It also carried him well beyond the pale of acceptable criticism of GOP foreign policy and of the two-term elected GOP Vice President of the United States.
...

In the end Paul may have made at least mild dissent from decades of Reaganite pro-military orthodoxy a bit more acceptable within the Republican Party. But anything more fundamental would indeed require a “civil war.”

Prediction: Not only will Ayn Rand Paul never be President, the next Repug President hasn't been born yet. Other than that, I hope all the different Repug factions stomp each other into mudholes and walk each other dry.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

CORRECTION: Mrs. G informed me that we sat two rows behind Linda and Bernie Leadon at the Ash Grove when we went to see Country Gazette. If the memory ain't the first to go, I can't remember what is...

I have been a Linda Ronstadt fan since before I even heard of Emmylou. The closest I've been to her is the width of Santa Monica Blvd. in West Hollywood. I worked at the Standard Station across the street from The Troubadour where she played frequently in the late '60s. This is about Linda.

Published on Apr 11, 2014
A tribute to Linda Ronstadt. With Glenn Frey. Recorded in Brooklyn, NY on April 10, 2014

Thanks to Johnny Rotten.

Bonus Twofer:

Published on Apr 14, 2014
Inductor Glenn Frey of The Eagles and friend Emmylou Harris each talked about the talent, friendship, and health of Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame inductee Linda Ronstadt as she was tributed with an all-star singing cast of Harris, Stevie Nicks, Bonnie Raitt, Carrie Underwood, and Sheryl Crow.

Thanks to ArtisanNewsService.

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Bundy is a lawbreaker, freeloader, and thief

There's been an awful lot of stuff on RWNJ rancher Bundy and his standoff with the feds out in East Cow Pie, Nevada.

States' rights activists flock to Nevada (video)

"Cliven Bundy is not a hero; he's not a victim. He's a guy who got away with breaking the law for 20 years." –Nevada political journalist Jon Ralston"

But ... IOKIYAR

Cliven Bundy Exposes the Cravenness of the Modern Right

Call it "individualism" or "libertarianism" or whatever you want, but those who declare themselves a Republic of One and raise their own flags are in a very literal sense being unpatriotic.

That's why I'm alarmed by the support in many conservative precincts for the Nevada scofflaws who have been exploiting public lands for private purposes and refuse to pay for the privilege because they choose not to "recognize" the authority of the United States. Totally aside from the double standards involved in expecting kid-glove treatment of one set of lawbreakers as opposed to poorer and perhaps darker criminal suspects, fans of the Bundys are encouraging those who claim a right to wage armed revolutionary war towards their obligations as Americans. It makes me really crazy when such people are described as "superpatriots." Nothing could be more contrary to the truth.

The details of the Bundy case have gotten a lot of attention at conservative sites, but the details really don't matter. Bundy has a baroque claim that the United States has no legal right to grazing land in Nevada; for over a decade, every court has summarily disagreed. It's federal land whether Bundy likes it or not, and Bundy has refused for years to pay standard grazing fees—so a couple of weeks ago the feds finally decided to enforce the latest court order allowing them to confiscate Bundy's cattle if he didn't leave. The rest is just fluff, a bunch of paranoid conspiracy theorizing that led to last week's armed standoff between federal agents and the vigilante army created by movement conservatives.

Read "Koch brothers' AFP".

The fact that so many on the right are valorizing Bundy—or, at minimum, tiptoeing around his obvious nutbaggery—is a testament to the enduring power of Waco and Ruby Ridge among conservatives. The rest of us may barely remember them, but they're totemic events on the right, fueling Glenn-Beckian fantasies of black helicopters and jackbooted federal thugs for more than two decades now. Mainstream conservatives have pandered to this stuff for years because it was convenient, and that's brought them to where they are today: too scared to stand up to the vigilantes they created and speak the simple truth. They complain endlessly about President Obama's "lawlessness," but this is lawlessness. It's appalling that so many of them aren't merely afraid to plainly say so, but actively seem to be egging it on.

I'm not going to rehash Ruby Ridge which was an FBI fuckup or Waco which didn't have to happen either.

Here's the deal - that land is our land which the feds administer for us and usually not very well, but Bundy is refusing to pay us for its use to his own profit. He's a lawbreaker, freeloader, and thief in the guise of a "patriot", in other words. an average wingnut teabagger.

Note to Bundy: Yo dude, ass, gas, or grass, nobody rides for free. Cough it the fuck up.

If it had been me in charge, I would have rounded up his cattle, sold them on the free market, and given him the change on his prison commissary account.

Further, I would have gone all Louis L'Amour on the fucking militia wannabes that gathered around him. Metaphorically speaking I'da flipped the loop off the hammer of my revolver and told 'em to open the ball. When the dust cleared, it would have been from them making tracks running away.

I know the feds don't want a shooting confrontation and that's why they returned his cows, but dammit, someone needs to take those fuckers on and settle it once and for all.

Monday, April 14, 2014

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Rand Paul: GOP Can't Just Be “Party of Fat Cats, Rich Guys”
Shown: speaking before group of fat cats, rich guys.

Report: Hillary Clinton “Thinking” About Running for President
Also “thinking” about when to take next breath.

Heh.

By 2030, ¼ of U.S. Licensed Drivers Will Be Older Than 85
Blind as bats, mostly lost, mad as Hell.

You rang, bunkie?

Colorado's First Pot Vending Machine Operational
Not shown: line three miles long waiting to use it.

Saturday, April 12, 2014

The United States of John Roberts

Watch it on Vimeo.

United States of John Roberts from MarkFiore on Vimeo.

Thanks to Seniors for a Democratic Society.

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

"Long Black Veil" is a classic old Lefty Frizzell tune.

Thanks to Larry Privat.

Monday, April 7, 2014

Oh. the irony...

Ironic Times

1/3 of Top 1,000 Donors to Campaigns in 2012 Worked in Finance, Real Estate, Insurance
All the rest in drug smuggling, arms trafficking, murder-for-hire.

Putin's Divorce Official
She gets Crimea.

Clapper Admits NSA Performed Warrantless Searches on Americans
Won't say any more until he's out of office and has a seven-figure book deal firmly in hand.

Goblet in Spanish Church is Holy Grail, Says New Book
With other Holy Grail claims across Europe, experts now believe Jesus gave them out as Last Supper souvenirs.

To go with the biggest PR stunt of all time - the "resurrection", wink, wink, nudge, nudge. Heh.

Saturday, April 5, 2014

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Thanks to Rick Medina.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

GOP INSIDERS LEANING TOWARD JEB BUSH IN 2016
But not sure he'll be willing to change his last name.

Wouldn't do any good. We know...

Two More Giant Pharaoh Statues Unveiled in Egypt
An expedition is immediately dispatched from London to steal them for the British Museum.

Spain Reaches Out to Jews, Expelled in 1492
They can return, no questions asked.

Vocabulary Builders
Oligarchy n., look around you.

Monday, March 31, 2014

GOP Strippers in Vegas

A "must read" by The Rude Pundit!

Whether its super-rich Jews in Vegas, super-rich Christians in Virginia Beach, or super-rich Muslims in Buffalo, there's just something crazy creepy about gatherings of religion-based political groups. Fuck, it's creepy that this is what politics has come to in the United States: pleasing the oligarchs. It's even creepier when the aforementioned Jews in Vegas, the Republican Jewish Coalition, met this past weekend because essentially the event was all just a chance for potential presidential candidates to do a shimmying striptease in front of gratuitously wealthy billionaire, Sheldon "Poster Child for Everything Wrong in America" Adelson.

Adelson is the owner of the Venetian Hotel and Casino, the Sands Convention Center, and loads of other shit. His money is made from gambling and the availability of legal whores, so, of course, he is the Uncle Sugar of the Republican Party. And he's a Jew. That's significant because he bankrolls the RJC and the RJC, while also concerned about general Republican nonsense (which mostly is "Fuck that Obama"), it is mega-concerned with Israel. The RJC has an Israel dildo so far up its ass that they yell, "Bibi!" when they ejaculate (my em). This means, of course, that if you're a Republican, you better say that you will stone cold murder anyone who throws the stink eye at Israel. You better shut that shit about giving rights to Palestinians. You better be willing to bomb the fuck out of Iran. Otherwise, if you just blow Israel's circumcised cock and neglect the balls, like Obama, you are not a "friend" to the Jewish state.

So it was at the RJC's Spring Leadership Meeting, and what a time it was. What with war criminal and former VP Dick Cheney defending the NSA at the Gala Dinner, a poker tournament where the buy-in was probably more than most of us make in a year, and a chance to watch madman John Bolton talk about what a pussy President Obama is, it was like a bar mitzvah on top of a Gaza missile strike of a party.
...

Then New Jersey's Chris Christie came out like a meth-craving slut at a South Amboy truck stop/all-nude club. He was down to a g-string about two minutes into his 40-minute speech, tossing out incomprehensible-but-tough-sounding bullshit like "I am not in this business to win the argument. I am in this business to win elections." Then he ripped off the g-string and bent over to present his puckered asshole to Adelson when he talked about meeting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin "The Greatest, Braves Living Man Living" Netanyahu: "I was extraordinarily taken by his strength and resolve under circumstances that none of us can imagine." Except, oops, looks like while he was standing there, Christie ended up farting. He said, "I took a helicopter ride from the occupied territories," and those last two words are apparently the worst thing you can say ever because Christie had to let Adelson's personal assistant fuck his ass later while Adelson giggled and clapped and threw hundreds at them both.

Ever so much more! Read on!

Ukraine’s Inconvenient Neo-Nazis

When Ukrainian neo-Nazis – infuriated over the killing of an ultranationalist leader – surrounded the Parliament in Kiev, the incident presented a problem for the U.S. news media which has been trying to airbrush the neo-Nazis out of the Ukraine narrative, Robert Parry reports.

The U.S. media’s take on the Ukraine crisis is that a “democratic revolution” ousted President Viktor Yanukovych, followed by a “legitimate” change of government. So, to mention the key role played neo-Nazi militias in the putsch or to note that Yanukovych was democratically elected – and then illegally deposed – gets you dismissed as a “Russian propagandist.”

But Ukraine’s neo-Nazis are not some urban legend. Their presence is real, as they swagger in their paramilitary garb through the streets of Kiev, displaying Nazi insignias, honoring SS collaborators from World War II, and hoisting racist banners, including the white-power symbol of the Confederate battle flag.

Over the past few days, the neo-Nazis have surged to the front of Ukraine’s unrest again by furiously protesting the killing of one of their leaders, Oleksandr Muzychko, known as Sashko Bily. The Interior Ministry reported that Muzychko died in a Monday night shoot-out with police in Rivne in western Ukraine.

But the right-wing paramilitaries claim that Muzychko was murdered in a cold-blooded contract hit, and these modern-day storm troopers have threatened to storm the parliament building if the interim Interior Minister is not fired.

There is no such thing as "cold-blooded murder" of Nazis. They should be shot on sight, in my not so humble opinion.

This renewed disorder has complicated the storytelling of the major U.S. news media by challenging the sweetness-and-light narrative preferred by U.S. policymakers. The New York Times, the Washington Post and other leading news outlets have worked hard to airbrush the well-established fact that neo-Nazi militants spearheaded the coup on Feb. 22.

There's more, including Crimea voting itself Russian, but here's my bottom line:

If neo-Nazis take over Ukraine, we should HELP Putin take it back. We rid the world of that scourge once at great cost, and should stomp it out much more quickly when it raises its evil head or we didn't learn a damn thing from WWII.

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Published on Mar 26, 2014
[Stereo feed] Ms. Harris performs this song on late night USTV, and tells an interesting story of tracking down a steel guitar while on tour in Ireland, during the interview.

Funny interview!

Thanks to What's for afters?

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Man Gets Gerrymandered In Half

The Anti-News

"I love serving the people of my district", lied Mr. Gasbag, as he washed back his dolphin steak with a gulp of Jack & Pepsi. Texas District # 5 (Chauncy Gasbag's) stretches for almost two thousand miles as it weaves its way across the state, capturing within its boundaries only the sleaziest of shitbirds, fanatics, bigots and assholes. Starting in Dallas (at Cleb's Shoot & Drink Firing Range) District #5 extends west into Fort Worth, encompassing three fundamentalist mega churches, a whites only country club, and a bullet factory. The district then splits into three 'tentacles', each about a mile wide. One extends west towards Lubbock, where it includes an endangered species hunting ranch, and a cluster of ethnically cleansed counties. The second tentacle reaches east about two hundred miles (avoiding all the black people) to a training compound for angry white militias. The third tentacle sprawls south, where it includes all of Waco and Texas A & M fraternity row.

"We need to include every nutbag in the state", said gerrymandering expert Stanley Noneck, "so we've had to draw some pretty careful boundaries." In fact, District #5 spider webs its way down through Austin (where it's only one inch wide) and then fans out towards Houston, cherry-picking for fringe dwelling kooks for another six hundred miles. It sidesteps the house of State Senator Wendy Davis, skirts around the residence of progressive Ryan Linehan, zigs up supermarket aisles, zags down alleys, and dives beneath a Planned Parenthood clinic, before resurfacing near Odessa, TX and splitting the Parker family home clean in half.

The district boundary divides the king-size bed of Thelma and Braxton Parker. [...]

Heh. You KNOW you want to read the rest!

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

Leak at New Mexico Nuclear Waste Dump Causes Closure, Incoming Waste Being Stored in Parking Lot
Spokesman: “Not to worry, we've got nuclear waste stored in parking lots all over the country.”

In Beijing, Michelle Obama Calls Free Speech, Open Access toInformation “Universal Rights That Are the Birthright of Every Person on This Planet”
As reported by Tibetan News Service.

Your iPhone Can Now Wake You Up to the Smell of Bacon
Available soon in coffee, roses, parmesan cheese.

Robot Solves Rubik's Cube in 3.25 Seconds, Faster Than Any Human
Fastest human, after witnessing feat, smashes robot into million pieces in just 1.03 seconds.

Saturday, March 22, 2014

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Hardly strictly Emmylou but I think you'll like it.

Written by Patty Griffin. Harmony vocals by Emmylou Harris.

Accompanied by Buddy Miller and ... ? Lyrics at YouTube.

Thanks to pennstatefan1.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

A Secession Plan That Works

Joel Stein in Time magazine. Because you may not be able to access it behind their paywall, here it is in toto.

Why should Ukraine be the only country that’s ripe for splitting in two?

The reason there’s so much dysfunction and gridlock in Washington, I tell people, is honesty. It’s not like the two halves of our country ever got along great, but for a while we had an uneasy compromise, because Southerners refused to join the party of Lincoln. So red Democrats muted blue ones, and rich Northerners, who had no reason to join this weird compromise, became liberal Republicans, muting the red ones. So for 200 years, politicians from the two halves were able to make compromises that were good for everyone except black people. Then, like some great national therapist, Ronald Reagan turned the South Republican by encouraging it to express how it really felt, which ruined everything. Now we fight all the time, and it’s not good for the kids. Half our country watches Fox News, the other half watches MSNBC, and both watch Duck Dynasty but for very different reasons.

We should peacefully break into two countries, one made of red states and one of blue. The red one would still be called the United States of America, since it would otherwise have to alter the lyrics of every song its citizens know. The blue one would be renamed something racially inclusive and exceedingly long and hard to remember. The Exceedingly Long-Named Country would be free to have the laws it has always griped about not being able to pass. Instead of guns, cops would carry Change.org petitions. Strip malls would be full of Planned Parenthood clinics. Recreational drugs would be sold at convenience stores instead of in convenience-store parking lots. It would be a Scandinavia-like country where very few people worked, income was redistributed through taxes and all the citizens lied to one another about which movies they saw.

Once the blue states were their own country, they would develop a greater appreciation for the South, as a foreign country they could visit when Mexico seemed like too much effort and Canada too little. A land filled with charming storytellers so friendly they say “Hi” even though they don’t know you. A place with the best breakfasts in the entire world. Where it’s easy to navigate since everyone speaks English, but figuring stuff out is still a bit of a fun challenge because, after all, it’s not really English. A place where you can shoot guns, drive cars with combustion engines and drink beer that isn’t painfully bitter–all at the same time. Best of all, the vacation would be really cheap. Imagine the fun of paying for your bed-and-breakfast with colorful Southern money. “Two Dolly Partons and one Merle Haggard? That’s like half a Samuel Gompers!” And just like when Northerners visit any other foreign country, if they get sick on vacation, they’ll want to come back home since the hospitals down there definitely won’t take their health care coverage. This split would in no way prevent Southerners from vacationing up North for the same reasons they always have: they have relatives there and have no choice.

The South would serve as a buffer between the North and Mexico, allowing Northerners to pass all the immigration laws they want without actually having any immigrants. They could make environmental treaties with foreign nations about how to extract natural resources, since they’ll have no natural resources anyway. The South, meanwhile, could pass laws every month not to raise its debt ceiling since, let’s face it, no one is going to lend a Southerner money.

One reason people are reluctant to do this, I know, is that they feel it would waste all the hard work done by Abraham Lincoln. Not at all. The Civil War provided vital benefits, such as ending slavery, turning us into a superpower and keeping our dads busy with piles of nonfiction books. But since the Cold War ended, we haven’t had any decent competition and we’ve been slacking. Splitting the U.S. in two will spur us on. We’ll have the two biggest militaries, the two biggest economies and, it’s safe to assume, the two gaudiest flags. Israel will be thrilled to double its number of allies. The Super Bowl will be way more exciting when instead of the AFC playing the NFC, the USA will face off against the Exceedingly Long-Named Country. The Miss America Pageant, however, will be exactly the same, other than having only 25 contestants.

While we work out all the paperwork to separate into two countries, we’ll have to go back to getting along and agreeing to compromise. Because if we keep up with the gridlock in D.C. and the vitriol in our conversations, our breakup is going to be far too acrimonious to allow President Jan Brewer and President Jon Stewart to get along.

Monday, March 17, 2014

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

CRIMEANS VOTE TO JOIN RUSSIA, SECEDE
Reject alternative (Secede, Join Russia).

World on Brink of Another Cold War
Three new Bond films greenlighted.

Analysis: GOP Split by Generational Divide
Old guard opposes same-sex marriage, abortion, legalizing marijuana, immigration reform, affirmative action, food stamps, Medicare, Medicaid, social security, taxes and any programs to help the poor; young guard disagrees with them on pot.

California Gov. Brown Unsure About Pot Legalization, Asks, “How Many People Can Get Stoned and Still Have a Great State?”
Then answers his own question: “Wow, man, that is such a total mind bender...”

REMINDER
Ask your pot dispensary if they accept bitcoins.

The Answer Is Turnout: Vote, You Jackass

It's not too early to be thinking about this.

William Rivers Pitt

Bill Clinton, in his first inauguration speech, said, "There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be fixed by what is right with America." One of the things that is right with America is your right to vote, and when I hear people say voting does not matter, does not make a difference, it makes me want to tear my teeth out.

Math: the coocoobirds who think dinosaurs don't exist because they aren't mentioned in the Bible comprise, give or take, about 12% of the voting population in America. They are a small minority within a minority party. When only 50% of the voting population shows up to vote in a presidential election year, that 12% doubles to 25%, because those 12%-ers go to the polls even if it is raining live jaguars outside...which means any right-wing candidate who says the right things about Jesus, fetuses and guns is halfway to the 50.1% needed for victory before they put their pants on come election day. To call that an enormous advantage is to devalue the definition of "enormous."

...and in midterm elections - the ones that decide the entire House and a third of the Senate - turnout tends to sit somewhere around 35%, which means that 12% dead-bang guaranteed turnout actually flexes to about 40%. Which explains the current House of Representatives pretty succinctly.

So don't don't don't don't just don't you dare tell me that voting doesn't matter. That is a heaping crock of lazy crap. In point of fact, the decline this nation has endured over the last fifty years, the empowerment of the moneyed few over the many, and the rise in power of Taliban Christianity, exactly and precisely matches the dwindling turnout numbers on election day...which, by the bye, has a direct relationship to the "lesser of two evils" candidates you holier-than-thous refuse to turn out for. If you don't like your choices, it's because you didn't make a choice in the last election, and the one before, and the one before. Nature, and politics, abhor a vacuum. If you don't like what has filled it, non-voter, find a mirror and stare into the eyes of the reason why.

If you don't vote, you are responsible for this. If you vote, you can fix this. I have a fever-dream involving 80-90% turnout across the board in two consecutive elections, midterm and then general. Such a one-two punch event would change the country overnight, and these candidates you can't stomach would scurry back to the dark corners they came from. That kind of turnout would obliterate the power of money in politics in one fell swoop.

Shorter: The well-funded nutzoid right-wing voters make it a point to turn out to vote en masse for their sorry ideological shit and that's why we're fucked. WE OUTNUMBER THEM only if we show up and we had better.

Saturday, March 15, 2014

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Click the YouTube icon in the lower right and read a lengthy and interesting piece on Irish music.

Published on Mar 11, 2014
Click "Show more" below for ++ eolas / info ! Bringing it all back home (to Ireland),Irish USA music,Philip King

Thanks to TG Amhrán.

Monday, March 10, 2014

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

U.S. INTELLIGENCE FAILED TO PREDICT RUSSIAN MILITARY INVERVENTION IN CRIMEA
But did predict your patio makeover after you discussed it on the phone with Aunt Millie.

Priorities...

Washington, D.C. Decriminalizes Marijuana
It's now as legal for an adult to buy a joint as it is for a tobacco lobbyist to buy a congressman.

Radio Shack to Close 1100 Stores
Blames reduced demand for replacement vacuum tubes for Victrolas.

Report: Climate Change May Cause “Cascading System Failures”
First the ice caps will melt, then the coasts will flood, then the power grid will go out, then the cable will go out — and that's when it get serious.

Saturday, March 8, 2014

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

You know the songs...

Thanks to Larry Musicman.

Friday, March 7, 2014

Why We Did It - the unrated version

I'm sure a lot of us watched Rachel Maddow's report on why Cheney and Bush lied us into their criminal war in Iraq. We knew why 10 years ago. The report did flesh out some of the details and was well done but nothing earth-shatteringly new.

Daily Kos brought up some stuff I for one had not thought about. Worth a read.

MSNBC's short documentary titled “Why We Did It” that aired March 06th, 2014 was somewhat informative but mostly anticlimactic. The only people in this country who have never believed that these actions were about oil are either disingenuous for political reasons, or stupid.

A few simple facts:
a) Saddam Hussein was planning to switch to the Euro as his reserved currency, which would have had drastic effects on the value of the Dollar and the U.S. Economy. This is widely considered to be the prime motive for taking him out.

b) The spot price of oil bottomed out in 2002 at around $20.00 a barrel. By July 3rd, 2008, the spot price of oil had reached a peak of $145.31 a barrel. This upward trend tracks the progress of the war with an interesting parallel between a drop in Iraqi casualties in Jan 2008, the beginning of the Great Recession, and the sharp reduction in the price of oil after July 2008.

c)There is a bubble of record high profits by oil companies between late 2003 and 2008. Record oil profits track the war, not the peace.

They knew we had shale oil and that the infrastructure to extract shale oil was practically a pipe dream with oil prices at $20.00 a barrel. Meaning that the wars were not just a device for maximizing oil profits and the profits of oil tech companies like Halliburton but also a means to get the extraction infrastructure in place in the U.S. before demand from the new emerging BRIC countries would take hold.

The war wasn't to secure oil. it was about making the price of oil increase, both for sheer profit and to make fracking financially viable to make even more profit.

It's always about the Benjamins, dame Bush and Cheney's eyes.

Thursday, March 6, 2014

CPAC Panderass Headline of the Day

Christie To Harry Reid: 'Stop Picking On Great Americans' Charles And David Koch

Tell the fuckin' loonies what they want to hear, I guess.

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Headline of the Day

Vladimir Putin is Every Republican Bigot’s Wet Dream

Uh ... yup ...

First Pro-Marijuana Commercial Debuts on Major Network

I'm kind of kidding Fixer with this since he likes sushi aka "bait". :-)

Published on Feb 26, 2014
First Marijuana Commercial Debuts on Major Network produced by MarijuanaDoctors.com, the only service that connects patients with physicians for medical marijuana recommendations.

Visit www.MarijuanaDoctors.com to book your appointment or call 1-866-996-9333

Thanks to MarijuanaDoctors.com.

Monday, March 3, 2014

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

From the "Latest Headlines" crawl:

Russian Olympic biathlon team seizes control of Crimes
...

'12 Years A Slaveowner' wins Hoodie at KKK Awards
...

Senate cafeteria replaces Russian dressing with Thousand Island dressing

UKRAINE CRISIS THREATENS NEW COLD WAR
Hegel orders all nuclear forces to immediately stop taking drugs and try to pass their proficiency exams without cheating.

Arizona Governor Vetoes Bill Allowing Businesses to Refuse Service to Gays
Says God told her to do it, “or lose the Super Bowl.”

Swiss Bank Helped Rich Evade Taxes
Also, this winter in Switzerland, it snowed.

Ukraine: Abandoned Yanukovych Estate Opened to Public
Used same decorator as Saddam, Qaddafi.

Ukrainegate

El Rude-o. Links at site.

Look to Bush and Iraq, Not Obama and Syria, If You Think the U.S. Has Lost Influence in the World

One consistent theme throughout the coverage of Ukrainegate (why not?) is that President Barack Obama is a big, wet pussy getting roughly fucked by the manly man Vladimir Putin. Obama drew a red line over Syria that he had to back down from, they say, because Putin stepped in to help get rid of Syria's chemical weapons, so Russia felt free to ignore Obama's red line on the Ukraine last week. Obama is naive or inexperienced or dumb or incompetent or some combination of those, others bitch. "Weak" and "indecisive," as Senator Lindsey Graham said, essentially repeating what he tells the young South Carolina twinks he picks up who are unsure if they wanna fuck an old man's ass.

There's one thing the Rude Pundit knows for sure about President Obama. He never came out of a meeting with Vladimir Putin and said, "I looked the man in the eye. I found him to be very straight forward and trustworthy and we had a very good dialogue. I was able to get a sense of his soul." That is what the last president of the United States, one George W. Bush, said in June 2001 at a press conference with the ex-KGB spy standing next to him. Democrats criticized Bush at the time (as did some conservatives), but they didn't go bugnuts condemning him as a throbbing vagina. They just thought it was weird. And anyone could see that Putin was conning the rube. As Joe Biden said then, "I don't trust Putin; hopefully the president was being stylistic rather than substantive." But what does Biden know?

The other thing that the Rude Pundit knows is that President Bush started a war in Iraq by lying not just to the American people, but to the leaders of nations around the world about weapons of mass destruction. Remember the "Coalition of the Willing," the countries that were led by credulous fools or easily cowed wimps or the bribe-able who agreed to help in some way with the completely worthless attack on a sovereign nation? This ain't "Blame Bush" only. It's geopolitical history, motherfuckers. The shame of it all is that the people who helped engineer our slow demise in world influence, like Graham and John McCain, are still allowed to act as if they know what's best for the nation.
...

Whatever happens in the Ukraine will be dictated primarily by how much of a power play Putin is after (or, you know, so the Rude Pundit thinks after his one-hour of research). Obama's limited in how he can respond, not only because we're not fuckin' going to war with Russia, but because the rest of the goddamn planet thinks we're a bunch of assholes who need to pay a goddamn price for dicking everyone over.

Everyone loves to see the giant squirm when he's been a global dick.

Saturday, March 1, 2014

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Published on Feb 27, 2014
Going through my old LP collection and converting them to digital format. Lots of old gems have popped up, including this one. Such a melancholy song, made even more so by Emmylou's plaintive voice. What a treasure Emmylou has been, huh? I've been listening to her for over 40 years now. Can't say that about very many artists.

From the album "Cimarron", which I consider to be one of her best, if not *the* best. Written by Clinton Codack and Wendy Special.

I agree.

Thanks to Bob Marshall.

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Quote of the Day

From "Bobby Jindal Gives Up, Joins the 'Stupid Party'":

Which is to say, if “Jindal 2016” were a race horse, I wouldn’t just hedge my bets—I’d buy shares in the glue factory.

Jindal's presidential aspirations died with his Howdy Doody/Kenneth the Page GOP response to the SOTU speech years ago. He's the only one who doesn't know it.

Update: Bonus QotD

From "Bobby Jindal: The Motherfucker at Work" by The Rude Guess Whom:

And then Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, likely loser in the 2016 presidential race, walked up to the mike and decided, quite vividly, "Fuck this shit. I got some primaries to win."

Fearless prediction: He won't win even one. He will likely not even make a serious run at it if anyone has the balls to tell him he's darker "colored" than Obama and the south has had enough of that uppity shit!

Tinfoil Hat Brigade To March On D.C.

"1.8 Million Definite Militia Members" to March on DC, Install New Government

Harry Riley has a dream. On the morning of May 16, somewhere between 10 and 30 million (estimates vary) God-fearing patriots will assemble in Washington, DC, for what Riley, a retired Army colonel from the Florida panhandle, is calling "Operation American Spring." They’ll protest outside the White House by day and set up in campgrounds and RV parks outside the city by night. They won't leave until President Barack Obama, along with Attorney General Eric Holder and congressional leaders of both parties, resign and appear before a specially convened investigative tribunal for further disciplinary action—a polite version of a tea party coup. It's not likely to happen—but two former Fox News personalities have endorsed the endeavor.

"We have 1.8 million definite militia members coming," promises Operation American Spring spokeswoman Karen Smith. (The Anti-Defamation League pegs the number of American militia members at about 20,000.) "Other than that, we're not keeping a list of concerned people or whatever because how are we gonna do that?"

According to Riley's introductory note, which he posted on Facebook, about 1 million activists will stick around DC after the march in a nonviolent attempt to shut the city down. According to the the document, the real work will occur after the transfer of power: "Those with the principles of a West, Cruz, Lee, DeMint, Paul, Gov Walker, Sessions, Gowdy, Jordan, Issa, will comprise a tribunal and assume positions of authority to convene investigations (my em), recommend appropriate charges against politicians and government employees to the new U.S. Attorney General appointed by the new President."
...

For Riley & Co., the stakes couldn't be higher. "My knees will not touch the surface as a result of some piss ant occupant of the White House or a corrupt legislator, or outside element," Riley wrote. "I will fall to my death standing if necessary."

Says the outside element. I wish him well falling to his death. More.

Mark your calendars. I do not recommend laying in extra popcorn. It'll go stale while you're waiting for something to happen. Heh.

Monday, February 24, 2014

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

U.S. Reassures Persian Gulf Allies
Reminds them of our consistent support of repressive monarchies.

Analysis: Ukraine Ideologically Split Down Middle
Half capitalist lapdogs, half Soviet apologists.

Arizona Passes Bill Allowing Businesses to Refuse Service to Gays
Rejects more moderate measure allowing shoddy service.

New Georgia License Plate
Features Confederate Flag
For drivers who prefer not to be
pulled over by police.

They love being losers.

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Uploaded on Jan 21, 2012
Emmylou Harris, an American singer-songwriter and musician sings 'To Daddy' to Johnny Hallyday, France's favourite rocker, in Nashville in 1984.

Thanks to iMariola.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

An Open Letter to Ben Gozzi

Political Garbage Chute

Go Get Your Big, Red Rubber Shoes, Bozo

You’re a failure, Mr. Issa. If your job is to find out what’s broken or wasteful in our government so that we can fix it, you have failed in truly comical proportions. Which brings me to why I write this letter. You see, I think I have a proposal for you that is mutually beneficially for all of us — we the American people and you, the American dumb ass. Apparently there’s a growing need within this country — a labor pool that is shrinking and I think you’re the man to fill it.

There’s a real, honest-to-God clown shortage in America, Rep. Issa, and who better to lead the clowning community in this country to a new day than the GOP’s clown prince himself? You’ve pretty much been spending the last five years honing your comedic timing and inane banter, both things that clowns really excel at. And when it comes to big, flashy gags that are meant to keep the masses entertained but that always wind up blowing up in your face, no one can top you spectacular crashes. You’ve all but perfected the Congressional Pratfall. That’s where you puff up your chest, say some really incendiary things, and then have them all blow back in your face when pesky things like “facts” or “truth” trip you up.
...

You’ve been the GOP’s chief bozo since taking over the oversight committee and promising to expose the Obama administration as the “most corrupt administration” — your words, not mine — in history. You’ve packed your hearing rooms with fellow clowns Louie Gohmert of Texas, Mike Rodgers of Alabama, and Trent Franks of Arizona. I even have your clown name picked out, Darrell — Ben Gozzi the Clown. Bozo was already taken, or you’d have just been handed that one. But I think Ben Gozzi suits you best.

Much more.

Issa wasn't a very good car thief or arsonist and he's a terrible congressman and an embarrassment to us reality-based Californios.

Vultures And Vote Rustlers

Truthout Interviews Greg Palast on the Koch Brothers and Chris Christie

Investigative reporter and Truthout contributor, Greg Palast, has spent most of his career exposing the corrupting effects of money and politics in many hard-hitting pieces. Greg is gifted in his ability to connect the dots between billionaires and politicians by following the money. In the Citizens United era, it can be more difficult to follow the money because of the anonymity 501(c)(4) Super PACs afford their donors. But that hasn't stopped Greg, who shares with me some of what he has uncovered in his Truthout article, "Christie and Koch in Cahoots? It's Time to Subpoena the Committee for Our Children's Future."

A little long, but gives a good insight on where democracy went.

Thanks to Ted Asregadoo.

Also see:

How Dark Money Flows Through the Koch Network

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

U.S. Finishes Ahead of Haiti, 133 Other Countries in Annual Press Freedom Index
Only Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Luxembourg, Andorra, Liechtenstein, Denmark, Iceland, New Zealand, Sweden, Estonia, Austria, Czech Republic, Germany, Switzerland, Ireland, Jamaica, Canada, Poland, Slovakia, Costa Rica, Namibia, Belgium, Cape Verde, Cyprus, Uruguay, Ghana, Australia, Belize, Portugal, Suriname, Lithuania, United Kingdom, Slovenia, Spain, Antigua and Barbuda, Latvia, El Salvador, France, Samoa, Botswana, South Africa, Trinidad and Tobago, Papua New Guinea and Romania finished ahead of us.

Sochi: Putin Refuses to Turn Down Olympic Flame
Giant torch being blamed for record temperatures, slushy snow, soft ice, lackluster performances.

Billionaire Tom Perkins: Rich Should Be Given More Votes
Instead of having to spend their own money to buy them.

1 in 4 Americans Doesn't Know Earth Circles Sun
1 in 6 thinks babies delivered by storks.

Saturday, February 15, 2014

Saturday Emmylou Blogging

Whole set! Late '70s.

Emmylou Harris & the original Hot Band live on stage in Holland

Thanks to Larry Musicman.

Monday, February 10, 2014

Oh, the irony...

Ironic Times

PUTIN WELCOMES WORLD TO SOCHI OLYMPICS
Says security not a problem.

In Future War, Justice Scalia Doesn't Rule Out Internment Camps
For people who look like liberals, say.

Heh. Fat Tony's one administration late. It's the RWNJs that are worried during this one.

NASA: Kepler-413b Binary System Has Planet Where Seasons Change Almost Daily
Scientists hope to simulate planet's conditions by spending two weeks in Chicago.

Spreadsheet Listing 40 Top Koch Donors Mistakenly Left Behind by Guest at Seminar
In brief: don't eat Papa John pizza or buy Jockey underwear.

Thursday, June 19, 2014

Monday, June 16, 2014

Saturday, June 14, 2014

Wednesday, June 11, 2014

Monday, June 9, 2014

Saturday, June 7, 2014

Thanks to justix55.

Wednesday, June 4, 2014

Monday, June 2, 2014

Saturday, May 31, 2014

Thanks to 1000Magicians, UK.

Tuesday, May 27, 2014

Monday, May 26, 2014

Saturday, May 24, 2014

Thanks to dahliacorona.

Friday, May 23, 2014

Thanks to oldfartrants.

Monday, May 19, 2014

Saturday, May 17, 2014

Thanks to OldTyme TunesFour.

Friday, May 16, 2014

Thursday, May 15, 2014

Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Monday, May 12, 2014

Saturday, May 10, 2014

Thanks to StashPuppets.

Monday, May 5, 2014

Saturday, May 3, 2014

Thanks to orvsha.

Friday, May 2, 2014

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Monday, April 28, 2014

Saturday, April 26, 2014

Thanks to OldTyme TunesFour.

Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Monday, April 21, 2014

Saturday, April 19, 2014

Thanks to Johnny Rotten.

Thanks to ArtisanNewsService.

Tuesday, April 15, 2014

Monday, April 14, 2014

Saturday, April 12, 2014

Thanks to Seniors for a Democratic Society.

Thanks to Larry Privat.

Monday, April 7, 2014

Saturday, April 5, 2014

Thanks to Rick Medina.

Tuesday, April 1, 2014

Monday, March 31, 2014

Saturday, March 29, 2014

Thanks to What's for afters?

Tuesday, March 25, 2014

Saturday, March 22, 2014

Thanks to pennstatefan1.

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Monday, March 17, 2014

Saturday, March 15, 2014

Thanks to TG Amhrán.

Monday, March 10, 2014

Saturday, March 8, 2014

Thanks to Larry Musicman.

Friday, March 7, 2014

Thursday, March 6, 2014

Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Thanks to MarijuanaDoctors.com.

Monday, March 3, 2014

Saturday, March 1, 2014

Thanks to Bob Marshall.

Tuesday, February 25, 2014

Monday, February 24, 2014

Saturday, February 22, 2014

Thanks to iMariola.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Thanks to Ted Asregadoo.

Saturday, February 15, 2014

Thanks to Larry Musicman.

Monday, February 10, 2014