It is with great regret ...

There's a radio station (WBAB) here on Long Island I've been listening to for 35 years. It's a rock and roll station and it provided the background music for my youth. I listen to them every morning on the way to work, decent (if corporate-programmed) music and timely traffic reports (on Long Island, these are a must).

So, it is with great regret I say I will not be listening anymore. WBAB has two morning idiots who've taken the station to depths I would never have expected from people attempting to do business in such a diverse area.

The two idiots I refer to are Roger & J.P., two cracker morons who think it's fun to disparage immigrants, mainly of the Latino pursuasion. These guys did a bit called 'Wetback Steakhouse' a take off of the Outback Steakhouse commercials.

Then, yesterday morning, I hear them basically repeat the Republican talking points on the flag burning amendment, shot down in Congress earlier in the week. J.P. actually had the balls to say that veterans in our wars fought and died for the flag itself.

Listen to me, you little shit. I put my ass on the line and it sure wasn't for a piece of fucking cloth. It was for the principles and foundation the flag represents. I've seen shit that would make J.P., let alone Roger, shit themselves and end up sucking their thumbs in the fetus position. I did my bit in the military to ensure the right of freedom of speech remains as the Founders intended, and burning the flag in protest is part of that.

It's just like the American Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan, whom I personally think should all be put up against the wall. If flag burning is banned, should their hate speech be banned too? Should Roger & J.P.'s anti-immigrant drivel be banned? Should whatever Ann Coulter says? I served this nation to protect all their rights, even the assholes who want to deny them to others.

Maybe Roger & J.P. are just under-informed, though Roger sounds as if he listens to Fox 'News' every free minute he gets, and not paid shills for the Republican Party (isn't Peter King the rep from the radio station's district?). Maybe they're just a couple stupid chicken shits? Who knows? But I can tell you this. WBAB, after over 35 years, will not be able to call me one of their listeners until these two jerkwads are on the unemployment line.

Dear New York Times,

An outstandingly on-the-mark rant from Athenae:

...

No, that's not me being hysterical. That's not me being unhinged. That's me taking a look at the day's news and saying well, if this isn't the logical conclusion to six years of Ann Coulter, Michael Savage, Glenn Beck, I don't know what is. If this isn't the ultimate expression of the attitude of Assrocket talking about the "Pulitzer Prize for felony murder" and his shit-shack being named Time's Blog of the Year, I don't know what is.

This is what happens when you ignore the warning signs. This is what happens when you hold yourself above the fight and pretend it's all too much for your tiny brains to handle. This is what happens when you don't dignify things with answers. This is what happens. You get called killers on the floor of the House.

...

Careful 'Gray Lady' your people might end up in Gitmo before we do.

Pennsylvania

I know I've been harping on getting Holy Joe out of his Connecticut Senate seat in favor of Ned Lamont and I've been completely neglecting our neighbor to the left. Probably because there are so many great PA bloggers out there, Atrios, PSoTD, and Ol' Froth being but a few (not that I'm dissing any Connecticut bloggers but I used to live there and I have an affinity for the place). If you've got some cash to spare, there's a guy named Joe Sestak who could use the help unseating Crazy Curt Weldon.

Dogs . . . again

The Old White Lady has a new kitty, go see a pic of the new member of the family, and we were talking about spaying and neutering. I realzed it's time to repost my 'responsible dog owner' rant that I wrote a couple years ago:

You know I'm a dog lover and so's the Mrs. So, naturally I got a problem with a lot of folks who own dogs. Listen to me, please.

...

The rest below the fold.

More Republican "Do as I say, not as I do..."

U.S. News & World Report

FRANKFORT, Ky. (AP) -- When Gov. Ernie Fletcher's day is over, he leaves his Capitol office, climbs into a Lincoln Town Car driven by a state trooper and returns to the Governor's Mansion - which is just across the street.

Meanwhile, his administration is encouraging Kentuckians to get out and walk more for their health.

Fletcher and his administration have been under fire for the past year. He is under indictment on charges of illegally hiring and firing employees on the basis of their political loyalty.

Julian Carroll, governor from 1974 to 1979, said it would take nearly as long to get into and out of a car as it would to walk from the mansion to the Capitol.

"It never occurred to me to do anything but walk," he said. "I can't ever remember an occasion when I did other than walk. For goodness sakes, it's only 500 feet or less."

And when it rained?

"I carried an umbrella," he said.

Perhaps Mr. Fletcher could ride to work in a sedan chair. That would create four jobs - five on rainy days: someone's got to carry the umbrella - and those four employees would get in fine shape carrying his lard ass around.

VA Senate candidate fights back at swiftboating

Jim Webb, my pick for the next Senator from Virginia, has been swiftboated by that puke Allen. Pensito Review posts on it and links to a good example of how to counterattack.

The campaign staff of Sen. George Allen of Virginia attempted to swiftboat the senator's Democratic opponent Jim Webb this week over the issue of flag burning. In stark contrast with the reaction by Sen. John Kerry to a similarly sleazy attack in the 2004 presidential campaign, Webb's staff has attacked back:

Webb, a former Republican, is a much decorated former Marine and was the Sec. of the Navy during the Reagan Administration. His adviser Steve Jarding responded:

George Felix Allen Jr. and his bush-league lapdog, Dick Wadhams, have not earned the right to challenge Jim Webb's position on free speech and flag burning. Jim Webb served and fought for our flag and what it stands for, while George Felix Allen Jr. chose to cut and run. When he and his disrespectful campaign puppets attack Jim Webb they are attacking every man and woman who served. Their comments are nothing more than weak-kneed attacks by cowards. George Felix Allen Jr. needs to apologize to Jim Webb and to all men and women who have served our nation.

Note to Dems: More of this!

Note to Dems: More of this!

The War Bush Said He Wanted

This is the most succinct, all-in-one-pile explanation of Bush's criminal war I've yet seen. OpEd News:

Of course Bush's stated purposes for the war were not his actual reasons. Beyond the obvious purpose of seizing Iraq's oil reserves, Saddam Hussein became an embarrassment for the US, which had supplied him with arms and technology through his twenty year reign. It's important to remember that during the Iran-Iraq conflict, the US played both ends against the middle, selling arms openly to Hussein while surreptitiously supplying arms to Iran in order to secure the release of American hostages and fund the illegal Contra war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Hussein also wanted OPEC to raise the price of oil by cutting production, a move that was opposed by Kuwait, which continued to produce oil at high levels keeping the price low. Another reason was to gain a military foothold in the Middle East to try to quell the influence of Iran and Syria, cutting off aid and weapons supplied to the Palestinian group Hamas, and the Syrian group Hezbollah while insuring transport routes for oil imported from Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan to the Strait of Hormuz. And of course, war is always a great way to provide government contracts to corporations that feed our military, build the bases, and supposedly reconstruct the countries we destroy.

The American people want to know why their sons, daughters, husbands, wives, brothers and sisters in combat are being forced into the meat-grinder known as Iraq. The first candidates who confirm the electorate's well earned suspicions about the US presence in Iraq will be the new leadership our country so desperately needs.

The only way any of it is going to come out to the point of Bush&Co being held accountable is to elect Dems this November. The magic words are "Subpoena Power".

Bush Confused About Leaks

Larry Johnson

Bullshit alert! After watching George Bush and Dick Cheney weep and wail over the "damage" done by the New York Times for reporting that financial data is being dumped into the CIA as part of an effort to find terrorist networks, I kept waiting for Darryl Hannah to pop up and say, "Live, from New York, it's Saturday Night." Does George have Alzheimer's Disease? Has he forgotten that he used to love the New York Times? The only thing funnier is that most of the mainstream media is reporting the antics of these clowns as straight up news.

I guess Bush and Cheney decided that leaks to the New York Times were no longer kosher when their go to girl, Judith Miller, got canned. [...]

President Bush crying about "leaks" to the New York Times is like listening to former Hollywood Madam Heidi Fleiss complain about sexual promiscuity. Sorry George, we ain't buying your song and dance.

Prostitution is a much more honorable profession than Republican politics. The point of either one is to screw people for money, but at least hookers admit it. Moral values, you know.

Murtha

Bob Geiger has a great article up about the man:

...

Despite Murtha's standing as a highly-decorated combat Veteran, who served in the U.S. Marine Corps for 37 years, it was off to the races for the right-wing smear machine. They immediately set upon Murtha, who just turned 74, for requesting moderation and a cautious course when risking the lives of our military men and women stationed in Iraq.

And who did most of the attacking? Conservative chickenhawks, who have never served a day in uniform in their lives, but who immediately began talking tough and accusing a man of Murtha's stature of running from a fight. [my ems]

...

Eternal Patrol

June 27, 2006 - Let us take you on a journey, to the quiet waters of the Gulf of Thailand. Two hundred feet below the surface, 100 miles from any port, Navy divers have examined what they believe is the wreck of the USS Lagarto.

...

God bless them all. Rest easy, boys.

Don't worry about us ...

All these journalists are paying too much attention to the lefty blogs and not enough to covering their own asses:

Are any big-media "journalists" reading this? In case you didn't understand the context of the current discussion, treason carries the death penalty. They're talking about killing you.

...

Smart

These things are all over Europe and the Mrs. and I have been saying for years they are great urban transportation. Every European city we've been to has specially marked parking spaces for them where other cars won't fit.

Media shills

Stupid, stupid people ...

Via Atrios

Like cranked-up weasels...

The Rude One:

Sometimes following Republican logic is a little like watching a ferret that just got into a meth stash. You're watchin' that twitchy fucker spin all over the place, and you wish that it'd just die already and get it over with instead of breaking all the glass in the apartment and bleeding and shitting everywhere.

Damn, he's good!

Texas guv race

From Cursor:

A Texas governor's race poll finds incumbent Gov. Rick Perry leading the pack -- and Independent candidate Kinky Friedman in second place.

Other polls (at Kinky's site) show him winning. This is gettin' good!

Geesh,I take a few hours off,and I miss all the fun

Everyone's favorite ewwwww-zing pustule 0'fun,Rush Limbaugh had a little run in with US Customs yesterday.....

Now if this was you or me,our asses would have been in jail for doctor shopping and having someone buy illegal hillbilly heroin for us.But I'm sure this is all just a big misunderstanding,really.

So,Rush was coming back from the Dominican Republic,eh? Just to be clear,I'm not implying anything here,but it is a rather curious situation.Viagra and a known sex trade destination? Nah,has to be a big old coinky dink,surely. Though it admittedly reminds me of Tom Delay's many visits to the Mariana Islands. But surely Tom had no clue whatsoever about all that stuff,because after all,he's a family values kinda guy....

And to steal a line from Driftglass,You can be a good American,or you can be a Republican,but you can't be both,not anymore.

Oh,and if there's any doubt,it's illegal to be using prescription drugs not prescribed to you.Penalties for that probably depend on the drug in question(controlled narcotics vs something like Viagra),but the doctor responsible can be in deep shit no matter what the drug in question is.At the very least their medical license could be in jeopardy.

This could also screw up Mr Happy Pant's previous plea deal.He does have one of Florida's best defense attorney's on his payroll,so he could skate,but judges tend to not take kindly to offenders who ignore their plea argeements.

What we are ...

Our good friend Lurch looks at georgia10's observations of the press and the way they regard us. A really good read and a couple paragraphs struck me:

...

We have always been here, of course. The only difference is that the internet has allowed us to meet in a 21st century public square of sorts. And yeah, like people do when they get together for change, we (gasp!) organize and we (holy shit!) debate strategy. We argue. We support each other. We raise money. We spend money. We make miracles happen, and we make mistakes. And, unlike the Republican base, we do this all publicly. Our debate is online, naked and raw. Millions attend our town hall meetings, and each participant speaks out in her own unique (and yeah, usually anonymous) voice.

I suppose it's only natural that when presented with something so unconventional, the media have tried to understand it in conventional terms. The fundamental flaw in the media's discovery of the Democratic base though is that they presume that the same traits they have observed in the Republican base apply equally to us as well. Thus, we have seen the effort to shove our movement into the jello-mold form of the Republican grassroots movement that has dominated politics thus far. [my ems]

...

The basic difference between us and the Right is we think for ourselves and develop our own opinons, and those opinions are welcomed. And if you'll notice, almost all of us have comments sections.

Too bad, so sad ...

uh oh, roger ailes is mad at the entire faux news network, because apparently they're losing viewers...

You can only piss on people for so long before they figure out it's not raining.

Ned!

"If it talks like George W. Bush and acts like George W. Bush, it's certainly not a Connecticut Democrat."

Ned's new ad.

Thanks: C&L

Utility

Thanks to Mary at Left Coaster, I got this nifty new utility from Congress.org. Under the 'Complaint Department' header in the left sidebar, you'll see a form to help you find your senators and reps contact info easily. There's also an 'issues' menu so you can search that way too. Did I also mention the 'contact the media' feature? Well ... what are you waiting for? Start bitching!!!